On July 4, 1905, this was already the second day of the 1st Marine Division to replace the exhausted 3rd Marine Division, yesterday's heavy rain made the position muddy, and it was no longer clear whether it was blood or rain in the potholes in front of them.

But Jiang Fangzhen knew that this situation would end soon, the group army would not let such a defensive operation last too long, the nearly 100,000 Japanese troops on the opposite side were already less than 60,000, and the morale had dropped to the lowest point, the defensive operation consumed the number and morale of the Japanese army to the greatest extent, and the indiscriminate bombardment of the airships every day made Jiang Fangzhen wonder if the Japanese troops on the opposite side were still alive?

This is the sorrow of the weak, in the face of the strong, you can only fight to the death, the commander of the Kyushu garrison, Utsunomiya, knows this, the general of Tokyo knows this, and even the ordinary soldiers know this. During the nearly week-long battle, the Japanese soldiers behaved worthy of the emperor's trust, and they launched wave after wave of attacks on enemy positions with simple weapons, and even death could not stop them.

However, the fate of the weak was doomed from the very beginning, and the Kyushu Group Army of Huaguo would not let these Japanese escape and bring trouble to the control of Kyushu after the war!

At the rear air base in Kagoshima, several days of intense construction have basically completed the field airfield, the air force fighters coming by transport ships have been assembled, the bombers that have taken off from the Shanghai Air Force airfield and arrived here via Jeju Island have also been prepared, and the first and second armies of the army are also ready to attack, and the Kagoshima counterattack is about to begin!

Air Force Captain Bai Zhai sat in the conference room of the brigade and listened to the commander's briefing on the war situation. Since he entered the Air Force in 1902, it has been more than three years now, and Bai Zhai has become the most skilled and longest-flying pilot in the Air Force. Also a squadron leader. But this kind of honor is not what Bai Zhai wants, he wants to go crazy if he wants to participate in the war, in fact, there is no such idea within the Air Force, but the overall strategy requires them to stay in obscurity for more than three years, and now it is finally the turn of the Air Force to appear. Therefore, what Bai Zhai wants to do most now is what he wants to do the most. It is to kill the enemy plane and become an ace pilot, that is the greatest compliment for a pilot!

"The mission of our 2nd Flying Group is to provide reconnaissance to the Army, obtain intelligence from the air, and support ground operations according to the needs of the Army." The captain's words made Bai Zhai stunned, and he immediately reacted, damn it, the **** little devil doesn't have an air force!

Not only does Japan not have an organized air force, nor does it have any aircraft that can be used in combat, but all countries in the world do not have an air force as a military branch. Airships have been around for a long time. However, most of them are used for civilian transportation or artillery observation, and due to the high cost of helium, no country uses airships in large quantities for military purposes. It was not until the 1911 war between Italy and Turkey that airships made their debut in the war, and the German "Zeppelin" airships caused great panic to Britain and France during World War I.

As for airplanes, there are too few people who have heard of this word, and Lu Liang's deliberate concealment has not changed much in the development of airplanes in the world, and the Wright brothers made their first flight in 1903, and in 1905 they made an airplane that could stay in the air for more than an hour. But the US authorities ignored it. However, the interest in aircraft continued to rise after that, and it played an important role during World War I.

Now Lu Liang has advanced the progress of history. The Zhenguo Army Air Force has a combat/reconnaissance division with three aviation regiments, each with three brigades. There were a total of 540 combat/reconnaissance aircraft, and the 1st Air Regiment was sent to fight this time, and the other two could only stay in the country temporarily due to airport restrictions in order to gain experience in the war. They will rotate with the 1st Air Regiment.

In addition, the Air Force also has a bomber aviation regiment with 200 bombers and an airship brigade with 50 airships, which are the main forces for ground support and bombing.

In terms of aircraft type. The fighter and the reconnaissance aircraft use the same type, and the F01 combat reconnaissance aircraft uses the Fokker D fighter as a template, although it is a biplane, it is the best model in World War I. Squadron Leader Bai Zhai can't put down this kind of aircraft, and can't wait to sleep on the plane every day, if he knows that the military factory in the rear is developing a monoplane, which is faster and has better performance, I don't know if he will like the new and hate the old?

With the improvement of the industrial level, the level of weapons that can be produced by military factories is getting higher and higher, and the Zhenguo Army will soon usher in a replacement of weapons, fighters, bombers, transport aircraft, infantry weapons, etc. are all in the plan, of course, this will have to wait until after the war against Japan.

Captain Bai Zhai's trump card dream could not be realized in Japan, because there was no enemy in the air at all, and with disappointment, Bai Zhai led two planes to start the first combat patrol. When looking down at the earth from the air, the comfortable mood returned to Bai Zhai's heart, sitting on the plane is always pleasant, and compared to the two brothers Le Fei and He Guangsha, he is still lucky, after all, he is on the battlefield!

Le Fei's Sixth Army is still training hard in China, and the General Staff has no intention of transferring it to the battlefield, he can listen to the stories of the little devils after Bai Zhai returns to China, but the captain battalion commander He Guangsha doesn't need to listen, because he has just received the order to assemble.

On July 1, He Guangsha's unit departed from Ningbo and arrived in Kagoshima by boat, which was the last unit sent to Japan in China. From a small soldier to a military academy, and then to the current army, after nearly four years, Captain He Guangsha can finally go to the battlefield again!

The 1st Armored Brigade of the Zhenguo Army is an experimental unit, organized into a brigade headquarters command platoon, a motorized cartographic detachment, and a guard detachment. Two armored battalions, an armored grenadier regiment, a motorized artillery battalion, an armored engineer battalion, and a communications company, quartermaster company, transportation company, and health company directly under the brigade headquarters are more complex and huge than different infantry divisions, and they are also incomparable with motorized infantry.

Such an armored brigade has made Lu Liang feel tricky, and all kinds of equipment are good to say, mainly because the construction of an armored force costs a lot of money and the demand for logistics support is strict, as for a larger scale of armored troops, it will take time, and the current battle does not need too large-scale armored force assault, so it is experimental in nature.

Whether to send this force to the battlefield, Lu Liang also thought about it for a long time, once it appeared, it will definitely attract the attention of the world powers and trigger imitation, although China can occupy the advantage in a few years, but the extremely powerful industrial advantages of the powers are likely to surpass Huaguo, even if the quality is not exceeded, the quantity will scare people to death.

In contrast, there are many benefits to appearing in the armored forces, the first is to make other countries more afraid of China and dare not easily intervene, which is of great benefit to enhance the country's soft power. The second is to make the war between the great powers more tragic and consume more of the national strength of the great powers. The third is that China can selectively sell tanks and other armored weapons to the foreign powers, so as to balance the previous strength of the foreign powers and achieve the strategic goals of Lüliang.

The benefits obviously outweigh the disadvantages, and Lv Liang decided to let the armored forces appear in Japan, so that most of Lv Liang's hole cards were shown in this war, including the navy and super battleships, the air force, and the armored forces, anyway, these were prepared for this war, and the appearance was a matter of course.

At three o'clock in the afternoon of July 4, on the Makien front, another Japanese offensive was stopped, and they returned to their starting positions to rest temporarily, and the commander of the garrison, Utsunomiya, was hesitating to launch another attack before it was too early in the morning.

On July 1, Lieutenant General Utsunomiya was under tremendous pressure, and on July 1, Senior General Okuhoko rebuked Utsunomiya on behalf of the headquarters, expressing dissatisfaction with the fact that the garrison of 100,000 troops could not break through the Chinese position, and that His Majesty the Emperor personally intervened in the war and demanded that the enemy be defeated as soon as possible. Despite his dissatisfaction, Utsunomiya stated to the headquarters the unfavorable situation on the battlefield -- the Chinese army had superiority in defense, firepower, and soldiers, the garrison lacked artillery and guns, and more than 40,000 people had been killed and wounded on the Makuen position, and the Japanese troops attacking on both sides were also repulsed, and they were also bombarded by airships in the sky.

"In the battle of the homeland, even if there are 50,000, 100,000, 1 million deaths, the enemy must be driven out!" Of course, the Japanese upper echelons are still very clear about the situation here, but the situation in other parts of the country is also very difficult, the blockade of China has made the domestic supplies increasingly scarce, and the mobilized soldiers lack medical care and medicine, and the average four people have a rifle.

In order to strengthen the forces on Kyushu Island, Okuhoko ordered 100,000 mobilized soldiers to go to the Kyushu front line from Shikoku and Honshu in various ships. A large number of fishing boats were requisitioned and crossed the Seto Inland Sea to Kyushu. Because the Seto Inland Sea, which was full of mines, made it impossible for the Chinese fleet to enter, fishing boats with shallow drafts could safely enter Kyushu Island, and as of July 4, Vice Admiral Utsunomiya's strength had once again reached 120,000 troops, and was still rising, and it was expected to reach 150,000 troops by the early morning of the 5th. This restored Utsunomiya's determination to attack to the death. (To be continued.) )