Kume Island, the fifth largest island in the Ryukyu Islands. Like all volcanic islands, the island is hilly with a maximum drop of 178 meters. To the northeast of the island is Gumi Mountain, with two natural volcanic lakes on the mountain, to the south is Alashan Mountain, and in the middle is slightly smaller Tianhou Mountain. To the southwest there is a narrow coral dune where the dunes meet the main island, and two small islands hold the damnation. To the southeast, the mouth of the Shirase River and Kanjo Port is the center of the island.

It is a small island of 59 square kilometers with a population of less than 10,000 people, but it is located between the continental shelf and the Ryukyu Islands, and has become an outpost of Japan's "absolute defense line" in the sea. In order to defend against China, after losing Taiwan in the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese army used the Ryukyus as the first line of defense against China. In addition to building more than a dozen fortresses of various types on the Ryukyu islands, hundreds of small bunkers were built with cement and steel bars, and a large number of underground caves were excavated, making full use of the advantages of rock caves and highland drops, in an attempt to build Ryukyu into an "unsinkable sea fortress group". Kume Island has also been fortified over the past two decades, and at the top of Mt. Gume, the highest mountain on the island, there is a fortress equipped with large-caliber shore guns, with the fortress as the center, forming a defensive structure supported by hidden fortifications and caves.

After the outbreak of the war, the Chinese Air Force bombers bombed the island's defenses many times, and destroyed the Gumishan fortress with "rolling thunder" radio-guided bombs, but the bombing effect on the caves and hidden fortifications was not good. With many defeats at sea, Japan realized that a Chinese landing on the Ryukyus was inevitable, so it withdrew all the islanders within a few months and strengthened the original garrison from 3,000 to more than 15,000. A large number of caves have also been excavated, some of which are more than 10 meters deep into the surface, connecting the caves in series to form a complex underground network, and the entrance of the cave is covered by vegetation, which is extremely difficult to find. Under these circumstances, the General Staff and Navy of Beijing also thought of bypassing Kume Island and taking the Ryukyus directly, but from the mainland to the Ryukyus. The transport lines are long, the logistical pressure is high, and the bombers cannot take off with full loads. In addition, the General Staff also believed that the Mariana raid and the subsequent Marshall and other landing battles were different from the Ryukyu with depth and width, and that there would inevitably be a long tug-of-war after the landing, so it was necessary to use this place to test the troops before landing on the Ryukyus, and to use it as a forward base for the sea and air in the tug-of-war.

Therefore, half a month ago, the Air Force once again carried out continuous bombing of Kume Island, using napalm and burning surface vegetation and buildings. Try to expose the caves that are hidden. After more than 10 days of aerial reconnaissance and bombardment, the Admiralty also divided Kume Island, a 59-square-kilometer area, into 176 shelled plots.

This shelling table is now in the hands of the gunners of the battleship Shandong.

"Turret No. 1 is ready."

"Number three is ready."

"Number two."

"The hydraulics are normal, the power supply to the port side is normal, the pressure relief valve is open normally, and the foremast rangefinder is in place."

"Attention deck personnel, wear earmuffs and level 2 shock preparation."

Every time the sound of "ready" sounded on the beep and beep phone, the indicator light lit up on the combat readiness dashboard of the navigation bridge. The 12 406 mm guns slowly raised the thick and terrifying barrels under the watchful eye of the crowd, and the deck light was also lit. Zhang Xiaoyu, together with all the soldiers, held the nearest handrail tightly. "Boom." Like a spring thunder, like a landslide and tsunami, a loud sound that can't be heard. It shook my ears and cracked my ears. Without waiting for the first anticipation, the recoil of more than 10,000 tons will bring the hull with a draft of 11 meters and a total weight of more than 70,000 tons. Pushed out more than ten meters away, everyone couldn't help but shake their bodies and stumble under their feet.

300 kg ordinary propellant pack. While pushing the 860-kilogram high-explosive bomb 18 kilometers away, the overflowing wind formed a shock wave at the muzzle of the gun, which pressed the seawater on the port side down to a depth of two meters, forming four hemispherical huge depressions with a diameter of 50 meters. Twenty-two seconds later, the shells landed on the hard volcanic rock, creating craters six meters deep and thirty meters in diameter. The shrubs within a hundred meters of the surrounding area were uprooted, and the dust was swept up by the shock wave, blooming more than a dozen gray-black mushroom clouds.

In order to test the results of the training, the gunners deliberately adopted naval combat tactics, requiring six rounds of salvo fire within five minutes to test the ability to fire in a rapid burst. After the last shell landed and the reconnaissance plane sent back the data of the radius of the dispersion point of 800 meters, Zhang Xiaoyu nodded with satisfaction. Although it is worse than the Beijing, as a new ship that has just been delivered for a few months, this achievement is already good, which shows that the soldiers are gradually adapting to the new optoelectronic fire control operation mode.

After the results of the training are checked, it will be time for normal ground support. The four Beijing-class battleships, which had not fired before, joined the shelling one after another. "Boom, boom." 12 406-mm naval guns and 36 380-mm naval guns were shelled one by one under the guidance of the school-firing planes. Among them, the most important islands are Gumi Mountain in the north, Alashan Mountain in the south and Tianhou Mountain in the middle, which were repeatedly shelled by Shandong and Beijing.

A huge roar shook the heavens and the earth, and large chunks of cracked rocks splashed up with flesh and blood, undulating explosions, expanding clouds of smoke, and stretching over the island. Even the reinforced concrete bunkers built by the Japanese army could not withstand such a fierce bombardment. All kinds of targets exposed to the surface of the earth are collapsing little by little like disintegrating building blocks. In the hidden caves and positions, many Japanese soldiers were so shocked by the thunderous roar that they were bleeding from their ears and noses, and they huddled in the corners, not daring to raise their heads, and no one dared to move. The 406-mm high-explosive bomb weighed 862 kilograms, and the 380-mm high-explosive bomb weighed 800 kilograms, and at a constant rate of one round per minute, shells were poured on Kumejima, and in just over an hour, 780 406-mm and 2,232 380-mm grenades were thrown, with a total throw of 2,458 tons. On average, 42 tons of ammunition were subjected to bombardment per square kilometer. If the standard 500-kilogram aerial bomb is calculated, even the H-7, which has the largest bomb load at present, needs as many as 250 planes to take off with a full load.

But this was not the end, with the experience of his predecessors on Iwo Jima, Yang Qiu specially requested that the fire preparation time be extended, so after the battleship formation was withdrawn, the fire support formation composed of light and heavy cruisers and six modified fire support ships sailed to a place less than seven kilometers from the coast again. The 60 130-mm 32-barrel rocket launchers on the deck of the latter gave the marines who were preparing to land a glimpse of what it means to have full firepower. 5,151 white phosphorus incendiary rockets and 6,777 155 and 203 mm grenades were scattered across the island in half an hour. The sky was full of gray-white tracks left by rockets. Unlike the heavy naval guns, the Navy did not expect light artillery to smash through hard volcanic rock from the start, so it simply used incendiary bombs and continued to incinerate surface vegetation and all obstacles that blocked the view. The scattered white phosphorus powder was ignited, and the rapidly expanding sparks burned whatever they saw. Shrubs, houses, and even rocks, from a distance, look like an extinct volcano on an island erupting again, as if a layer of flowing dark red "magma" is flowing on the surface.

"This, this" Zhang Shuisheng, who was about to go down the rope ladder, saw this scene, opened his mouth wide in shock, and Jing Qilun, who was filming next to Lala: "Little Japan should die, right?" Both of them are well-known military reporters in China. This time, thanks to a lot of connections, I was able to convince the Ministry of Defense to participate in the landing operation.

"Impossible." An assault squad leader walked by. Putting the automatic rifle on his back, he held a cigarette in his mouth, reflexively pulled the rope ladder and continued: "This kind of terrain firepower cannot be achieved without dead ends, and the Japanese are like rats, thieves and thieves, and they are very good at digging holes. At the beginning of the year, we had a surprise attack on a squadron in Angkor Wat in the Khmer Angkor Wat. The artillery planes bombarded harder than that. I thought that people were dead, but what about rushing forward? Even the deputy battalion commander was sacrificed. ”

"Oh? Can you tell us about it? ”。

"Okay, but you have to hurry, you're about to go."

When preparing for shelling. Thousands of soldiers, from the transport ship, climbed along the rope ladder to the landing craft waiting below, without a moment. Hundreds of small and medium-sized general-purpose landing craft are gathered on the sea. The tank landing ships in front also opened their bow hatches one after another, releasing more than 100 "Sea Serpent" amphibious tanks and "Otter" amphibious personnel carriers. Putting Kume Island landing. There are four divisions in total, of which the 2nd Marine Division will be responsible for the first round of landings.

The current commander of the 2nd Marine Division is Zhang Liansheng, who staged an "armored flying battle" on the Mekong River last year. That success not only made him all the way to the rank of division commander, but also became the number one amphibious armored tactician in the Marine Corps. Therefore, after the expedition of the 1st Division to the South Pacific, the General Staff entrusted him with the most severe task of seizing the beach.

After more than a year of war training and testing, the five marine divisions have now been readjusted. Taking the Second Division as an example, it has three amphibious armored battalions and four marine regiments, each of which has 36 "Sea Serpent" amphibious tanks. This tank is similar to the famous PT-76 tank, with a 70 mm rifled gun, plus the division's armored reconnaissance battalion troops, etc., the division has a total of 122 tanks, 318 "otter" amphibious armored vehicles (DUKW) and 725 other vehicles. Each marine regiment has 4 battalions, plus the division's armored reconnaissance battalion, engineer battalion, artillery battalion, air defense battalion, reinforced heavy artillery company, etc., with a total number of 20,147 people, basically mechanized.

However, mechanization is not very helpful in Kumejima, because most of the coast here is a cliff with a drop of tens of meters, and there are many caves in the cliffs, which are easy to defend and difficult to attack. Only the port of Kanejo in the southwest and the two-kilometer-long beach of Ifu in the west were suitable for landing, but these two places were the focus of the Japanese defense, and many concrete triangles and obstacles were deployed, so it was impossible to put in too many troops at one time. Therefore, Zhang Liansheng divided the troops into four groups, and the first batch of landings included 2 amphibious armored battalions and 6 infantry battalions, and they went ashore from the estuary and Yifu Beach at the same time.

As two gunboats converted from the H-7 began to hover over Kume Island, three red flares were quickly raised. Zhang Liansheng and Jing Qilun stood in the medium-sized general-purpose landing craft, followed by the first batch of 3,700 Marine assault soldiers, and under the protection of more than a dozen destroyers and "Sea Serpent" amphibious tanks, they rushed to the west of Yifu Beach...... (To be continued......)