The expected Japanese surprise attack on the fleet did not appear, and when the scorching sun once again shone on the Ryukyu Islands, the army's heavy artillery battalion prepared for night attacks from the sea joined the battle. Being on an island, whether it's an attacker or a defender, requires a lot of courage. Because in this environment, there is simply no room for maneuver and dodge, and even the most ordinary 75-mm field guns can hit from one end of the island to the other, so the battle for the island has never been said from the rear.

For the tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides, there are only two paths in front of them, either death or victory.

In the face of Kumejima's fortification group, which was carefully arranged by Kuribayashi Tadamichi, the soldiers of the Marine Corps and the Infantry Division "gnawed" almost inch by inch, and every 100 meters advanced, they had to pay a great price. In order to take it as soon as possible, at 10 o'clock in the morning, after the fleet returned, Liao Changfeng once again invested two infantry divisions, and also sent three special engineering armored battalions to the island to strengthen the attack.

The young Zhang Tianrui carried the radio on his back, lay down in the crater with his comrades, and used the scope to search for the Japanese army's fire points and fortifications on the hillside. He was an artillery fire guide, and his task was to find the target and provide accurate coordinates for the heavy artillery behind. Although the school firing aircraft are becoming more and more advanced, they still cannot replace their tasks, especially in mountainous areas, dense forests and narrow areas, and manual guidance is still the most important auxiliary means of artillery. "Over there!" At the reminder of his comrades, a 75-mm gun barrel protruded from the cliff face. As you can see, the fortification was cleverly designed, and the shelling window resembled a sliding door, which was made of thick steel plates of similar color to granite. After each fire, the Japanese would quickly retract the barrels, close the gates, and wait until they found the next target to reopen. And because it is deep into the cliff and has its back to the sea, it is difficult to be directly targeted by artillery fire. But this time, it was not ordinary artillery that guided it to aim at it. "Tin Hau Mountain. Target type: solid granite, height 122, ruler 37, coordinates. ”

"Lie down! Lie down! ”

"Boom!"

After the call for fire suppression, two 305-mm "Crusher" heavy mortars deployed on Owu Island began to wield. This short-range obstacle-breaking and suppressive artillery is not as powerful as yesterday's large-caliber naval guns, but it is definitely the favorite of the infantry. The 460-kilogram extra-heavy ground-penetrating projectile using tungsten alloy landed on the top of the hill of the artillery fortification, and the warhead easily penetrated into the mountain at a depth of five meters. Two violent serial explosions directly hit the position of the Japanese bunker, blowing up a huge gap with a diameter of 30 meters. The entire fortification flew into the air with the shattered and collapsed rocks. In the smoke and dust, you can even see the mutilated corpses of Japanese soldiers.

"Gasoline engine! Rush up! Fire cover! "The Marines, who are highly trained and work with islands and terrain on a daily basis, are quick to respond. When the bunker was blown off by the shells, an officer immediately commanded the artillery fire, concentrated the fire to suppress the scattered fire points around the bunker, and the infantry also quickly detoured to the sides, diverted the enemy's fire, and protected the two strange-looking tracked armored vehicles to climb the hillside.

It is strange because these two armored vehicles have a very strange appearance, and they look like a huge "square box" that is extremely thick. This is the tank tank, affectionately called the "gasoline engine" by the soldiers. Tank tanks. It was completely modified according to the protection standards of the Type 36 tank, and even the weaker top armor was greatly strengthened, and small arms hit it, and even sparks could not splash up. But don't think it's a tanker truck for someone else. In fact, it's a terrible all-mechanized arson machine! Along with the "gasoline engine" there were two Type 36 C engineering tanks of the infantry division. This kind of engineering tank, which exerted its prestige in Central Asia and made the Soviet army helpless, sprayed flames up to 100 meters long, crushing all the way. When close to the "roller" after blowing up the gap. On the "gasoline engine", a foldable spray gun with a length of more than 20 meters was stretched out, and the oil gun was slowly raised. Slipped through a twenty-meter-high gap. In an instant, two tons of high-pressure gasoline gushed out of the vent, and the high-temperature oil and gas flow of more than 200 meters long drilled into the hole deep in the fortification, along the tiniest vents and cracks, and continued to go deeper. As soon as the more than 100 Japanese soldiers hiding inside were lucky enough to escape from the heavy artillery, they were scorched and melted by the flames, and they could not even shout.

In terms of individual soldier ability, willpower, and hard-working spirit, the Japanese army can definitely rank first among the world's strongest armies, but the country's strength and serious lack of mechanized warfare concepts make them simply not know how to fight a mechanized war. Although China's national defense forces are not as wealthy as the United States, which is engaged in motorizing the entire army, they have a commander-in-chief who is proficient in mechanized warfare, and they can popularize the concept of mechanized warfare in 20 years, and then concentrate financial and material resources on research and equip elite units such as the Marine Corps with sufficient mechanized equipment. Among these equipment, there are not only standard tank armored vehicles, but also emergency weapons such as "gasoline engines", which are purely designed by soldiers according to fire trucks and put together by themselves. However, whether it is a standard or a patchwork, it shows that the troops have explored and summed up the ideas and tactics of mechanized warfare.

A sea of fire raged on the cliff, and the permanent fortifications of the Japanese army at low altitudes were also destroyed. These fortifications were easier to deal with, the soldiers first set up makeshift cement mixing plants on the beach, then burned any opponents who dared to resist with Spitfire tanks, and finally dumped cement concrete into these holes with forklifts or engineering tanks. Dozens of tons of fast-drying cement concrete, it only takes a few minutes, it will quickly condense, and the Japanese soldiers inside will also be doomed to die of slow lack of oxygen in the dark and fear.

The attacks of the Marine Corps and infantry divisions were unhurried and steady, with the "crushers" smashing open the gaps, the "gasoline engines" and Spitfire tanks following up and setting fires, and finally the cement sealed the doors. Every time you grab a hole, there will definitely be an oil pipe sticking into it, and then hundreds or thousands of tons of oil and gas will be sprayed into the mountain and set fire to it. This style of fighting, not to mention ordinary Japanese soldiers, even Kuribayashi Tadamichi could not have imagined.

In the end, in order to resist the fierce offensive of the opponent, the Japanese army even launched a "meat attack tactic". On some of the opponent's roads, use the night to bury empty barrels, let soldiers carry mines into them, and then cover them with earth and bury them. When the Wehrmacht passed, the mines were detonated and they were killed. Some Japanese soldiers simply strapped their bodies with explosives, hid between cliffs and cliffs, and when they saw the tanks approaching, they ignited the explosives and jumped down at the target, but these crazy suicidal tactics could not save Kumejima from defeat. The overwhelming artillery shells, incendiary bombs, special obstacles to break the ground and drill heavy mortars, strange-shaped fire-breathing tanks, and finally the cement blocking the door to a small Kume Island, dispatched hundreds of pieces of various mechanized equipment, mobilized tens of thousands of tons of ammunition, poured thousands of tons of oil and gas into mountains and caves, and used valuable transport ships to transport tens of thousands of tons of fast-drying cement.

By the afternoon of April 20, the number of squadrons of all kinds that had landed on Kume Island had exceeded 80,000, and it took several months to build the permanent fortifications, caves, and bunkers that were incomparably strong in the eyes of the Japanese army, and there were only a few Gufeng cliffs that could not be climbed by mechanized equipment, and the rest were all destroyed, and nearly 20,000 soldiers defending the island were killed or wounded. And the opponent has even begun to build an airfield in the south of the island, completely ignoring the remnants of Gumi Mountain. Faced with this irretrievable defeat, Kuribayashi Tadamichi, who had made it clear before the war that China should not go to war, looked up to the sky and sighed. But what made him even more angry was that for several days, the navy, not to mention the capital ships, had not even sent a single destroyer, so angry that he sent a farewell telegram directly to the emperor.

"The battle situation is at the last moment, and the soldiers are outnumbered, and they are desperate to repay the emperor's kindness. However, after several days of death, not a single naval ship was seen. All the people donated, and the soul of the Yamato Sea was abandoned, but he abandoned the safety of the country and disregarded tens of thousands of loyal souls. In addition to being resentful, I hope that the Holy Emperor will ask him to tell the soldiers. Serving on the front line, praying for the victory of the imperial kingdom and chanting for long live the Holy Emperor, so as to eternal. ”

After Ugaki finished pestering the telegram that Emperor Hirohito had specially forwarded to the fleet, he secretly glanced at Yamamoto with an expressionless face, and put it on the table with a few copies: "This is Prime Minister Tojo's, this is Prince Miyakanin, General Nagano, General Shunroku Hata, and Umezu Mijiro of the Okinawa Front. "A telegram is a reminder. Kuribayashi Tadamichi's farewell telegram to Hirohito caused an uproar in Japan, and the whole country almost aimed the spearhead of the bitter battle on Kumejima at the navy, and some radical army officers, even demanded that the navy collectively cut itself and hand over the fleet to the army command.

"The Emperor has summoned the Cabinet and General Nagano many times, and according to the news that has come out, His Majesty is already very dissatisfied with us, and the War Department thinks that we are deliberately delaying time, and we are too timid to fight a decisive battle."

The more Yamamoto listened to it, the deeper his brows became, and if it were someone else, he would not care about these accusations. As the commander of the Combined Fleet, the first thing is to look for the best opportunity to defeat the enemy. But now, the Emperor forwarded Kuribayashi Tadamichi's telegram to himself, no doubt telling himself that His Majesty the Emperor was dissatisfied. This made him very uneasy, originally according to the plan, the decisive battle of the fleet should be the landing of the Chinese Navy on Ryukyu Oshima, because landing on Oshima requires the investment of hundreds of ships, which will definitely cause all the main forces to be pinned, but will it be too early now?

Thinking of this, a wave of heat rose from the bottom of his heart, unbuttoned the two buttons, and asked, "Has Kume Island been lost?" ”

"Kuribayashi-kun is still insisting, but it shouldn't be long. Eighty thousand soldiers have been put in China, and the fleet has been supporting it all the time. ”

"Then let Kurita-kun go. Let Nagumo also speed up, and be sure to converge with Inoue and attract the 21st aircraft carrier fleet of China. Yamamoto Fifty-six looked at the table full of urging telegrams and decided to strike.

====

ps: Tomorrow and tomorrow the day after the annual meeting of the hippo unit, there should be no more tomorrow, ask for leave from everyone in advance. If you come back early the day after tomorrow, you will continue to code words. In addition, inform all book friends in advance that this New Year's holiday will try to be updated every day...... (To be continued......)