Another disadvantage for them was that the soldiers who had gained a lot of experience after fighting the Chinese army could not return to the rear, and therefore could not impart combat knowledge to other Japanese soldiers. The end result was that the Japanese soldiers were always at the beginning of the line, the reserve did not grow, and the standing soldiers did not become elite.

This position was breached, the Japanese soldiers were also swept away, Li Fei lifted the top hatch, when the battle was fierce, he did not dare to show his head to observe, the dangerous position was not sure when a bullet would fly over, and there was the cover of the grenadiers, he could rest assured and boldly command inside the tank.

"Clean up the battlefield, rest for five minutes, and prepare for the Japanese counterattack!" A grenadier platoon commander gave an order loudly, and then walked to tank No. 114, Li Fei jumped down, and the grenadier platoon commander took out a cigarette and handed it to Li Fei.

"The little devils are all dead?" Li Fei took a deep breath, and the cigarette entered his lungs down his throat, circled around and then erupted from his nostrils. The stimulating product composed of nicotine and tar calmed Li Fei's mood, and several tank crew members behind him also emerged from the tank and lit cigarettes to relax. The Leopard looked dirty, scarred by enemy blood, dirt and bullet marks, just like the soldiers.

"Well, the little devil who bought the hammer is crazy, he just doesn't surrender or run, and the last little devil wants to pull the grenade and die with us, and my boys are very shrewd, and they will kill him from afar. Li Fei, I'm afraid that after this war is over, I will become a murderer, and when I see a person, I think it is a Japanese soldier who wants to die with me. ”

"Hey! There's no way, the little devil just won't surrender, and there will be a fight! Prepare to defend, the little devil should fight back soon. ”

After a few words, a cigarette butt was left, and the two separated, and Li Fei also had a lot to do. Here there was only one tank No. 114, forty grenadiers, and according to experience and reconnaissance, there were at least a hundred Japanese troops who counterattacked.

"Third child, how much ammunition is left?"

The ammunition hand named Lao San threw away the cigarette butt in his hand, his thick arm was almost comparable to Li Fei's thigh, he glanced down, raised his head and said lazily after ten seconds: "Fifteen high-explosive shells, thirty-three armor-piercing shells, machine gun ammunition and four bullet chains, boss, we don't have much ammunition, let's send some later!" ”

"Fourth, go to the battalion headquarters, I hope the supply truck can come before the Japanese attack, otherwise we will have to get off the car and become infantry." After Li Fei finished talking about the mountaineering tank, he looked around, and then ordered the tank to drive behind a small dirt slope on the right side of the position. The grenadier platoon commander had already arranged the defense of his men, and the position was quite strong, except for the lack of heavy firepower.

Unexpectedly, the Japanese army did not counterattack after half an hour, which is very abnormal, after losing a position, the Japanese will quickly organize a counteroffensive in the rear to try to recapture the lost position. The Chinese army took advantage of the positional terrain and firepower advantage to destroy a large number of Japanese living forces, and then attacked again, breaking through the weak Japanese positions in one fell swoop. This pattern has almost become the norm, but it didn't happen today, which made Li Fei feel a little weird.

Not only Li Fei's position, but there was a brief calm on the dozens of kilometers long front, and the grassroots summarized the news after reporting it. The commander of the Third Panzer Army, He Guangsha, meant that the armored forces would continue to attack, but the group army meant to send a reconnaissance force to find out the reason why the Japanese army had stopped its counterattack -- the commander of the Chinese army group army was not cautious, and the more the encirclement was compressed, the stronger the Japanese army would be and the more fierce the resistance would be. Judging from the previous battles, it was rare to find the heavy artillery positions and tank units of the Japanese army, and it stands to reason that they had a certain amount of heavy firepower, which was also the reason why Jiang Fangzhen, the commander of the 11th Group Army, was uneasy.

The commander of the 1st Tank Division of the Japanese Army, Uemura Danzo, stood on the command tank, with a serious face and a tall body, and the shaking of the tank could not drive this resolute general. At the age of thirty-eight, he was an infantry brigade commander before being ordered to form a tank unit and was one of the veterans of the Japanese tank unit. Compared with the optimism of the soldiers, Uemura Danzo was more hesitant, and the more he knew, the more he could feel the gap between his views and those of the Chinese army's armored forces. However, his Type 08 tank is not bad, at least it can cause a lot of damage to the Chinese tank, which is his greatest expectation.

The troops left the dense forest at 3 a.m., and after an hour and a half of advancing eastward, the terrain became flat, and the tanks moved faster, and it was expected to arrive at the predetermined position in two hours, and after a brief rest, they began to attack the Chinese positions, and finally captured Wumu and cut off the connection between the north and the south of the Chinese army.

"General, this is a list of losses for our tanks, most of them are engine failures." The command tank was parked on the side of the road, and a military staff officer disembarked from an American-made motorcycle and handed over a list of statistics.

"Thirty-five of them broke down, engines were damaged, replacement parts were replaced, gearboxes were damaged." Uemura Danzou has not finished muttering about the list of statistics, the 1st Tank Division has 55 Type 05 tanks and 166 Type 08 tanks, but either way, the failure rate is frighteningly high. He knew that this was because of the limitations of Japan's industrial level, and in the face of war, he could only meet the needs of quantity first, and then consider the requirements of quality.

"Where have the 19th and 55th Divisions arrived?" Uemura was more concerned about the speed of the infantry, and without the cover of the infantry, he did not dare to venture into the position of the Chinese army, which had strong anti-tank forces.

"The 19th Division is about three kilometers behind our right, and the 55th Division is about six kilometers behind our left, but they are not advancing fast, and the infantry is always slower than our tracks. And they also had two regiments of heavy artillery, and those heavy guys dragged down the advance of the troops. ”

"Let them speed up, and urge the baggage troops to keep up, and when we arrive at the predetermined location, our tanks need to be refueled, and there can be no delay!"

"Hey!"

The troops continued to move forward amid the rumbling of tank engines, and Uemura Danzo seemed to vaguely hear something, and when he looked up, the sky was covered with clouds, but he did not find anything suspicious. Just after he got into the tank, a Chinese reconnaissance plane came out of the clouds, and this P51 fighter took off from the Kagoshima military airfield, which was one of the forty or fifty reconnaissance planes sent by the command, and it was lucky to discover the movements of the Japanese army.

"Tower, tower, Eagle Falcon 65 report, found Japanese tank troops, more than a hundred Japanese tanks!" The pilot repeated the call several times, and the high-power wireless equipment at the airport picked up the pilot's call and ordered him to scout carefully. Subsequently, the airfield mobilized more reconnaissance aircraft there.

After receiving the reply from the airport, the pilot breathed a sigh of relief, and found that this was the first time he knew that there were so many enemy tanks, and the credit would not be less, but he would not return home. His fighter did not carry bombs under the belly, but the ammunition on the nose cannon and wing machine gun was sufficient, so at least strafe for a while and then return home, and try the anti-aircraft fire of the Japanese tank troops!

The pilot, who had made up his mind, adjusted his posture and altitude, and then dived down, at this time the movement of the P51 had been discovered by the Japanese troops on the ground, and when Uemura Danzo got out of the tank, he found that the Chinese plane had already dived down.

Again, the Japanese did not have self-propelled anti-aircraft fire, and a significant number of anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-aircraft guns took a long time to deploy. Before that, the Japanese army could only use rifles to vent their inner dissatisfaction.

Aiming at the Japanese tanks lined up on the road, the P51 nose cannon opened heavy fire, and the pilots trained in ground attack played quite well. The 20mm cannon shell swept through the top armor of a Japanese Type 08 tank, which was quite fragile, similar to the rear armor of the tank, and could not be used as a cannon shell falling from the sky. The tank burst into flames in an instant, and more than a dozen Japanese soldiers in the vicinity were affected, dead in front of large-caliber machine gun shells.

After all, it was not a professional ground attack aircraft, and this P51 pulled up and left after getting too good of it, leaving only the screams of the attacked place and the anger of Uemura Danzo. With the increase of the number of reconnaissance planes of the Chinese army, the 1st Tank Division was harassed more and more, and then the infantry divisions responsible for covering the two wings were also discovered by the Chinese army, and the Uemura regiment became more and more nervous - in this case, the Chinese army would definitely make arrangements in advance, and it was estimated that the attack would not be smooth.

It turned out that Uemura Danzou was still too optimistic, and the upper echelons of the Chinese army were surprised after discovering the main tank force of the Japanese army, they were less than two hours away from the Chinese defense line, and if the fragile defense line was broken, the Chinese army's transportation line would face a catastrophe! A fleet of 55 P51s and 130 dive bombers descended on the 1st Tank Division, which was responsible for slowing down the Japanese advance and hindering the Japanese tanks. Unexpectedly, the Chinese Air Force performed very perfectly, and almost ate the Japanese tank unit in one go. (To be continued.) )