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~890 U.S. Siege Network XII Who is the Paper Tiger?

On May 26, at 6 a.m., the Japanese artillery group, which had exposed its target due to open fire, finally summoned groups of American planes! Thousands of tons of American bombs were poured on the heads of Japanese artillerymen as if they were not paying for it. At the same time, more than 300 long-range 105mm self-propelled guns/howitzers and 155mm howitzers in the rear of the US army also began to fire at Japanese artillery groups. Bullets rained down around the Japanese heavy artillery clusters hidden in the woods or in the villages. The anti-aircraft machine guns on the ground, which were converted from Type 92 heavy machine guns, also clicked into the air and spat tongues of fire, and dozens of 20mm anti-aircraft guns also raised their muzzles and opened fire at the highest rate of fire, covering the artillery groups that were being attacked. But there are simply too many American planes! The planes swooped down in groups, and the fire of bombs and machine guns swept through, blowing up the artillery, vehicles, and Japanese on the ground to pieces!

And those Japanese are really not afraid of death! Ignoring the indiscriminate bombardment of US planes, they just loaded their ammunition as fast as they could, and then launched it! It seems that the whole value of their coming into this world is to pull a few American broadmen on their backs with their own destruction! This one-sided massacre carried out by American planes from the sky lasted about 15 minutes, and all 144 Japanese artillery pieces were destroyed! Groups of Japanese artillerymen were killed by aviation machine guns and bombs on the gun emplacements, most of them were bloody and fleshy, and some of them even turned into pieces of corpses emitting black smoke and smelling corpses! On the other hand, three US planes were shot down by Japanese antiaircraft fire, and another six planes were injured to varying degrees, with no more than 10 casualties.

At the same time as the tragic artillery operations, air raids and counter-air raid operations, the armored units of the US army had already broken through to the front of the Japanese army. The Japanese artillery was suppressed by the American army, and the 884 group rushed into the Japanese defense line with almost no losses!

The desperate resistance of the Japanese infantry ensued, and the anti-tank guns and the remaining anti-tank guns all desperately opened fire on the 27.9-ton steel behemoth, but the Japanese anti-tank firepower was clearly too weak. Anti-tank gun against M3 Grant. The armor on the front of the Li medium tank, which was up to 51mm thick, had no effect, except for the clanging of sparks on the tank's armor plates. And the Japanese Type 94 37mm anti-tank gun could not deal with the M3 Grant even at an ultra-close distance of 100 meters. Lee's 51mm frontal armor can only leave craters like white spots on its surface. Only a small number of Zero 47mm anti-tank guns could be used against the M3 Grant, which had performed badly on the European battlefield. The Lee tank posed a threat.

Thus, the battle was fought on the 47mm anti-tank gun and the Grant. Lee Tank unfolded between them. As soon as a few Zero 47mm anti-tank guns were fired, a Grant. Li Tank, so that the tank began to emit black smoke, and several American tank soldiers who were on fire all over their bodies got out of the tank, rolling on the ground and screaming. However, before the Japanese artillery had time to cheer, Grant. The Li tank's 75mm howitzer, 37mm cannon, and machine guns opened fire together, and a burst of shells and bullets hit them, and those 47mm guns suddenly turned into scattered fragments along with the Japanese artillery who operated them!

Dense fire from American tanks swept across the entire front. The Japanese couldn't raise their heads at all, and the infantry sitting on the M3 light armored vehicle and on foot also rushed up, using the 106mm recoilless guns on the M3 light armored car, and some large-caliber machine guns to shoot desperately at the Japanese positions and fire strongholds! The so-called "anti-tank special attackers" who dared to show their heads were beaten to the ground. The suicidal tactics that were good against the U.S. Navy in the past seem to be completely ineffective against the U.S. Army. Some desperate Japanese officers and soldiers routinely took out the spirit of sending people to death with broken cans, or picked up rifles with bayonets, or hung grenades all over their bodies, shouting "Onboard!" Onboard! The slogan rushed up, but most of them were knocked down by the superior firepower of the American army, and occasionally a few lucky ones only pulled the grenades hanging on their bodies near the tank. However, how could the 37mm armor steel plate, which could not be penetrated by even 51mm armor-piercing shells, be blown up by the Japanese grenades? Such a suicide attack cannot be said to be a fight at all, but just suicide!

Although the attack of the US military is very sharp. However, the Japanese defense was still extremely tenacious, and in Chapter 884, the group was hit by direct fire from the Japanese anti-tank artillery. Li medium tanks were shot one after another and caught fire. At the same time, the infantry in the Japanese trenches and firing points continued to use machine guns and mortars to stop the American infantry and sappers shooting behind the tanks.

The cluster of American tanks caught in the minefield suddenly fell into a bitter battle! General Patton, who was watching the battle from the rear, quickly noticed the change in the battle situation, so he ordered 108 M7 Priest 105mm self-propelled howitzers of 6 armored artillery battalions to move forward and use their 105mm cannons to bombard the Japanese positions at close range! At the same time, he ordered the two regimental combat teams on standby to outflank the Japanese left flank.

When the 108 M7 Priest self-propelled guns joined the battle, the Japanese 884th formation attacked the weak flank of the Japanese 16th Division. At 9 o'clock in the morning, the "Hoffman Battle Group" finally made a breakthrough, and together with the "Kim Battle Group" and "Johnson Battle Group" responsible for the flank attack, broke through the positions of the Japanese 16th Division.

However, these three American legion-level combat teams also paid a heavy price under the desperate resistance of the Japanese army! In particular, the "anti-tank special attack team" of the 33rd and 38rd wings of the 16th Division, under the leadership of Second Lieutenant Toshi Mukai and Second Lieutenant Iwa Noda, achieved certain results. Two "anti-tank special attack teams" with 150 men used anti-tank grenades, explosives packets, and Molotov cocktails to destroy 4 and 5 U.S. M3 Grants, respectively. Li tank, the price is the total annihilation of these 300 Japanese officers and soldiers. Basically, it takes 30 lives to get 1 American tank! Due to the breakthrough of 3 American regimental combat teams, the Japanese 16th Division was threatened with encirclement.

At 12 o'clock on the 26th, the division began to retreat under the orders of the commander of the 11th Army, Mitsuru Ushijima, the former commander of the Japanese army, but suffered heavy losses under the pursuit of American troops. Among them, the 38th Infantry Wing was once besieged, forced to burn the military flag, and prepared to break through with the help of the neighboring 104th Division. Subsequently, the 104th Division's own left flank was also exposed to three U.S. regimental battle groups due to the retreat of the 16th Division, and it was also forced to retreat after resisting for more than an hour. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the 26th, the Japanese 102nd Division, which finally insisted on the battlefield on the south bank of the Panuco River, was surrounded and beaten by 6 American regiment-level combat teams, and finally it was difficult to parry, and had to abandon its position and begin to retreat! Unlike the 16th Division and the 104th Division, which had retreated in an orderly manner, by the time the 102nd Division collapsed, the Japanese defense line had completely collapsed, and there were no troops that could play a role in containing the US armored forces on the battlefield.

The battle on the south bank of the Panuco River turned into a pursuit battle from this point on, and the three defeated Japanese divisions under the command of Mitsuru Ushijima retreated in panic in the direction of Bayes City. On the way back, in order to delay the pursuit of the American army, Ushijima Mitsuru hurriedly organized two lines of defense with two wings of Japanese troops, but they all collapsed under the joint attack of American armored forces and aircraft, and by 8 o'clock in the evening of the 26th, the American army had chased more than 20 kilometers, after all, Tamuin, 26 kilometers west of the city of Basye. At this time, General Patton ordered the whole army to stop the pursuit, ending the battle on the south bank of the Panuco River. And in this big battle, which lasted nearly 20 hours, the US army was clearly victorious! According to General Patton's report after the battle, the U.S. forces routed three Japanese divisions in this battle, killing and wounding 25,723 Japanese officers and soldiers (16,536 in Japanese war reports) and taking 46 prisoners; However, the U.S. military itself had only 3,232 killed, seriously wounded, and missing (13,556 in the Japanese war report), of which 1,525 were killed, 1,324 were seriously wounded, and 383 were missing; 236 tanks were lost (455 in the Japanese war report), of which 107 were completely damaged and could not be repaired.

While General Patton was commanding two U.S. armored divisions to flatten three Japanese divisions on the south bank of the Panuco River, the U.S. 3rd Panzer Division (reinforced by the 31st Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 7th Division) under the command of Major General Walker was rapidly moving south along the Panuco River valley, preparing to copy the Japanese rear route (which was not necessary at all).

To the surprise of General Patton and Major General Walker, a mighty army of two Japanese divisions and one Japanese tank brigade had advanced 30 kilometers north along the Panuco Valley the night before, under the cover of night! During the day on the 26th, this Japanese army hid in the mountains and forests on the east side of the road, evading the reconnaissance of the US Air Force. On the night of the 26th, Lieutenant General Toshinoi Maeda, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese army, received an order from General Yamashita Fumifumi to "march north at full speed and capture Mante City at all costs"! And this "strange" order will become the object of study for Japanese military history enthusiasts in the next few decades. What was the idea of Yamashita and Ishihara that they ordered Maeda Toshiyui, who had a roundabout mission, to continue northward even when the three divisions of the main force had been routed by General Patton's armored forces?

With the U.S. Armored Forces and Army Air Corps already showing great combat effectiveness, it seems that it would be most advantageous to maintain the two intact divisions and retreat to Mexico City, or simply to Panama, together with the remnants of the 16th, 102nd, and 104th Divisions, as well as the 105th Division in San Luis Potosí.

However, Lieutenant General Maeda Toshiwei at that time did not have a chance to think about these issues, in fact, he had no idea that the three divisions under the command of Ushijima Mitsuru had been defeated by the Yankees on the south bank of the Panuco River! In order to "not affect the morale of Maeda's troops", Yamashita Fengfumi and Ishihara Wanji concealed the defeat report of the three divisions! Of course, he was not informed about the strong combat effectiveness of the American armored forces. So at this moment, in the heart of the second-generation Marquis Maeda of Kanazawa, US imperialism is still a paper tiger with more steel and less gas, and everyone is bullied!

At about 2 o'clock in the morning of the 27th, the 6th Cavalry Wing, the vanguard of the "Maeda Force", encountered the mechanized cavalry reconnaissance battalion belonging to the 3rd Armored Division of the American Paper Tigers in the northern part of the Panuco River Valley! In just a few minutes, more than 400 saber-wielding Japanese devils fell victim to more than 700 American paper tigers driving M3 light armored vehicles and using M2 large-caliber machine guns or 106mm recoilless guns.

After losing more than 400 warriors on horseback, Maeda did not feel sad at all, but felt extremely excited. The Japanese army in this era is quite confident in their night combat skills! In their opinion, the land battle during the day was first in Germany, second in China, and third in Japan; And at night, the combat effectiveness of the Japanese army is definitely above that of China and Germany! As for the reason...... No one can tell. But at the moment, what Maeda Hou Ye encountered was not Germany or the Chinese Army, but the vulnerable American paper tiger! And it's the night battle that the Japanese are best at, what else does Hou Ye have to worry about? As a result, the 6th Division was immediately ordered to prepare for the attack on the spot, and the 56th Division was ordered to occupy the mountains on the right side of the Japanese army with one wing, two wings to cooperate with the 1st Field Brigade to deploy behind the 6th Division, and another one to serve as the general reserve.

However, just a few minutes after Lord Hou's order was issued, a burst of overwhelming artillery fire hit the head of the 6th Division that was unfolding! It turned out that 54 M7 Priest 105mm self-propelled howitzers of the three armored artillery battalions belonging to the 3rd Armored Division of the United States had already fired first.

The first group of Japanese to be bombed belonged to the 13th (Kumamoto) Wing, the backbone of the 6th Division of this wing and one of the most effective units of the Japanese Army. Therefore, after being attacked by a round of stormy artillery fire by the US army, he did not panic, but launched on the spot according to Maeda Toshiwei's order, and opened a covering position at the front of the whole army.

By this time, the US Third Armored Division under the command of Major General Walker had completed its deployment. The division's 3 tank battalions still have 185 M3 Grant at the moment. The Lee and M3 Stuart tanks were used, and the three tank battalions formed a regimental combat team with one armored infantry battalion and one motorized infantry battalion, respectively, and were named "Smith Battle Group", "Arnold Battle Group" and "Mario Battle Group" respectively according to the commander's last name.

At 2:45 a.m. on the 27th, only 3 quarters of an hour after the initial encounter between the two armies, the "Smith Battle Group" and the "Arnold Battle Group" of the US 3rd Armored Division began to attack the 13th Wing, the vanguard of the 6th Division of the Japanese Army, under the cover of self-propelled artillery!

In the face of the overwhelming superiority of the U.S. army, which consisted of about 7,000 soldiers and 123 medium and light tanks, the 13th Wing commanded by Tanaka Shintaro Ozu also put on a posture of strict defense. Although this wing is one of the most elite wings of the Japanese Army, its weapons and equipment and the number of personnel are no different from those of ordinary Japanese infantry wings, with nearly 3,800 officers and men, and 14 artillery pieces of various calibers, including 4 75mm mountain guns, 6 70mm infantry guns, and 4 37mm anti-tank guns. Although all of these guns were equipped with armor-piercing shells and the gunners received rigorous anti-tank training, none of the 14 guns, including the four 37mm anti-tank guns, penetrated the M3 Grant. The ability of the frontal armor of the Lee tank!

Therefore, the role of the 13th Wing of the Japanese Army tonight is only to buy time for the 1st Tank Brigade of the Japanese Army to unfold, and the real decisive battle will be fought between Japanese and American tanks!

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