"Logged in!"

"The enemy has begun to land on the coast of Wangjiatai in Laoshan Bay, and at least two brigades have already come ashore."

"The 29th Regiment of the 3rd Brigade of Jimo has already picked up the enemy! Confirm, Laoshan has started! Three pieces of news came one after another, like a whirlwind, swept the entire city of Nanjing. Even though the whole country knew that the battle of Qingdao was inevitable, when the news of the Japanese army sending three divisions to attack Shandong spread, it was still inevitable to worry and be nervous.

Song Ziqing in the Ministry of Defense opened the door of the office, and almost no one from the top and bottom of the officers did not take a look, but they were disappointed sooner, from the face of the second-in-command of the military, who was known as Yang Qiu's shadow, they could not see any nervousness and uneasiness, on the contrary, they also laughed and talked with those officers who went to report from time to time.

Isn't he really nervous? That's fake.

In fact, he knew better than anyone how severe the current situation was, since the Battle of Qingdao had begun, whether the Wehrmacht could strongly intervene between Japan and Germany, whether it could hold and consume to the end under the threat of the terrible sea heavy artillery group, so far I am afraid that even Yang Qiu did not know the bottom of his heart. There is another thing that everyone is very worried about, from Qingdao south to the coast of Jiangsu, thousands of miles of coastal defense are almost everywhere full of loopholes, since the Japanese army can land in Longkou and Laoshan, will it continue to land from Jiaonan, Rizhao and Lianyungang?

With the same concern, Zhang Wenjing knocked on the door.

"Wenjing?" Seeing him, Song Ziqing hurriedly got up to greet him, and deliberately looked at the sky and quipped: "You are a rare guest, why do you have time to come to me today?" It's not ~ a meal yet, right?

Unexpectedly, he still had the heart to joke now, and Zhang Wenjing was also amused: "You can still laugh after all the eyebrows are burned." The two have known each other for many years, and they are both henchmen who came out of Hanyang with Yang Qiu, so Song Ziqing has nothing to hide in front of him, and said with a smile: "Do you cry if you don't laugh?" No matter how difficult it is for us people, it is not as difficult as Cai Ye and Vice President, not to mention that in my position, if I don't help, at least I have to stabilize the morale of the army, right? ”

People who don't know the situation outside say that Song Ziqing is a puppet and a lackey, and that it is his existence that allows Yang Qiu to continue to hold military power and implement personal and partisan dictatorship. He never argues with this, Yang Qiu is indeed a partisan dictatorship under the cloak of democracy, but so what? Without a strong government, without an army with absolute control, the king of heaven will not be able to sit in this position when he comes. Therefore, in the past three years, Song Ziqing has taken over almost all the big and small things in the army, from the formation of troops to the distribution of new equipment, the construction of support and logistics bases, etc., and he has not had a day of idleness, even now, although Yang Qiu is in charge of the war and personally sits in Beijing, he is in charge of the deployment of five reserve divisions, logistics supply and tactical changes, etc.

In Zhang Wenjing's eyes, Song Ziqing is definitely the kind of person who works quietly and resentfully, to put it bluntly, he is indeed not the only person in the army who can sit in this position, but he is the best supplement and arm for Yang Qiu. So after pouring a glass of water for himself and him and sitting down, because the door was not closed, he lowered his voice a little: "Ziqing, there have been a lot of noise in the government in the past few days. I'm worried that the Japanese army will continue to move south to Rizhao and Lianyungang, if that's the case," he paused before continuing: "Once the Jiangsu coast is also mobilized and evacuated, it will inevitably affect the entire southeast coast, and some people may have to think about it." ”

Zhang Wenjing is indeed a little nervous, don't look at the fact that the Ministry of Finance has made a lot of money during this time, but the consumption is also extremely huge. The military expenditure alone costs 10,000 yuan a month, and the biggest expenses are ammunition and various combat allowances, plus the purchase of raw materials has also risen sharply, so he, the finance minister, is still living a left-handed life with his right hand in and right hand out. Song Ziqing also knew his difficulties, if he really wanted to evacuate the people along the coast of Jiangsu, it would probably be an astronomical amount of money, and comforted: "From a tactical point of view, it is not impossible for the Japanese army to continue to land in Rizhao and Lianyungang, but I personally speculate that they will not be able to start a war again before Qingdao is taken, but if Qingdao loses, then it cannot be ruled out that the dog jumps over the wall and disturbs the entire coastline north of the Yangtze River." But this matter is not unsolvable, first of all, Japan is now short of troops and domestic economic difficulties, after we implemented the Jianqing Biye tactics in Mukden and Shandong, the Japanese army has basically been unable to obtain supplies on the spot, and now the price of raw materials all over the world has begun to rise because of Europe, and if everything is shipped from home, Japan will not be able to take long, and they arrogantly propose to solve it in three months, in fact, we are also hiding our weakness.

Commander Xiao Anguo has also dispatched four National Guard brigades to reinforce the coast in this direction to patrol the coast day and night, and the 3rd and 104th divisions are also ready to go north at any time to support the coastal areas of Jiangsu. In addition, the vice president is ready to abandon all the defenses of Laizhou, Laiyang and the northeast of Jimo, and use space to attract the main force of the Japanese army here, and cannot move! After Qingdao decides the winner, choose the opportunity to fight a decisive battle. ”

The last sentence made Zhang Wenjing frown, Shandong does not have to be outside the Guan, many people in the Guannai are still barren in the hearts of the Northeast in these years, so the Kuomintang wanted to build a country with the eighteen provinces in the Guannai, and let go of the interests of the Northeast and Mongolia and Xinjiang will not be cared about by many people. However, the Northeast is a large province in Kannai, and I can't help but worry: "Isn't it too risky?" Shandong is not outside the border, and suddenly giving up such a large area of land will definitely attract accusations from the top and bottom! ”

"What about accusations?" Song Ziqing took off his hat and stroked his short hair, and his eyes gradually became cold: "The winner is the king and the loser, this is the unchanging rule for the ages!" If you think about it again, Hanyang has taken a break in the past three years? After Chongqing was built, three shifts were also rushed day and night, why did the commander do this? To fight Beiyang, you need to reserve 3 million artillery shells, and you need to be able to produce one division of equipment per month? Need to spend hundreds of millions on so many heavy guns and machine guns? Rest assured! It took three years for the Commander to get us to where we are today! Do you think he will allow failure? ”

"I firmly believe that this time there will be no failure!" When several staff officers walked in with the documents, Song Ziqing's eyes were bright.

"Boom, boom, boom."

Balls of fireballs rising sharply from the coast of Wangjiatai in Laoshan Bay seemed to respond to the conversation in the Nanjing office, and Shang Anbang from the artillery regiment of the 103rd Division ran back and forth among the 12 gun emplacements

This Wu Zhaolin was raised with one hand during the Wuchang Uprising, and on the night of the uprising, he used 57 mm artillery over the mountain to bombard Zhang Biao's Admiral Yamen, and now he is the deputy brigade commander of the artillery brigade of the 103rd Guard Division and the commander of the 2nd Regiment. Unlike other divisions, the KB Division was the first infantry division to establish an artillery brigade establishment, not because Yang Qiu and the Ministry of Defense took care of this unit that made the greatest contribution in the Northern Expedition, but because they wanted to test whether the large establishment of the artillery brigade met the needs of the troops.

The divisional artillery brigade has a total of 2 regiments and 6 battalions, including a 150 howitzer battalion, a 105 long-range suppression battalion, two 105 howitzer battalions, and two 160 mm heavy mortar battalions, and now he commands a 160 heavy mortar battalion.

The 160 mm mortar is a new type of long-range heavy suppression force that was only equipped with troops in May, and the reason why this large caliber appeared is actually very simple, because after the mass production of mortars, Hanyang and Chongqing have successively studied increasing the caliber to achieve long-range and heavy power of mortars, but there has been no breakthrough in the manufacture of gun barrels and how to carry them in the army, Yang Qiu learned that he immediately handed over the drawings of the Type 56 160 mm mortar, which was in the limelight in the Vietnam War in later generations, to Chongqing for special research.

At the beginning, due to the lack of seamless steel pipe extrusion equipment, Chongqing could only use the old method of forging, resulting in the price of gun barrels that did not need too high requirements could not be suppressed, until the beginning of the year, when the American seamless steel pipe equipment ordered by Tu began to be put into production, Chongqing immediately ordered a batch of special 160 gun barrels, using rubber tires and double horse towing belts, the weight is slightly heavier than the prototype, and the towing capacity is relatively poor, but there is not much problem in the current road and truck constraints. Therefore, at the end of March this year, the 14 models of the 160 heavy mortar, which was named Zhenlei, began to be put into small batch production.

Yang Qiu's reason for supporting the development is simpler, because the suppression level of the 160-mm mortar is equivalent to that of the millimeter howitzer, and the cost is only one-fifth of the Japanese Type 38 150 howitzer and one-seventh of the German SFH13 150-mm howitzer. In addition to the accuracy and the fact that the barrel needs to be flattened for each reload, the continuous speed of opening the connection port can only reach one shot per minute, and the range of up to one meter is nearly 2,000 meters higher than that of the Meiji 38 Type 150. As long as you think that Japan can build five doors by itself with the money to build one door, and the power and range are slightly exceeded, it makes anyone want to stop. What's more, it can also make up for the shortcomings of the current slow manufacturing of 5 howitzers in the country. The only regret is that there is no manufacturing capacity for optical sights in Japan, and only 116 sets of 258 sight parts ordered from Germany before the war have arrived, so they can no longer be replenished.

The armament of the Thunder 14 Type 160 mortar also means that the millimeter mortar will gradually be lowered to the brigade and become the main suppressive firepower of the brigade.

Shang Anbang didn't know at this moment that he commanded and led the artillery battalion to fire the first shot of the Qingdao battle, and the reason why he was panting and running back and forth was because of this mortar, except for him and a few gunners who were familiar with it when they were experimenting in Chongqing, the rest of the artillery had not been used, so they taught while fighting to prevent accidents.

In the No. 3 gun position, which was almost shaded by branches and bales of hay, the mortar barrel was flattened, and after the upper barrel was opened, the two loaders struggled to slowly push a 41-kilogram high-explosive shell to the bottom, while the secondary gunner stuffed the cartridge at the bottom, and only when everything was ready did the artillery connect the barrel and slowly erect it.

"Launch!"

At the sound of the squad leader's command, in the smoke and fire from the muzzle, which was far smaller than the howitzer, the shell drew an arc visible to the naked eye over the ridge and disappeared from view. And when the sea breeze blew away the already thin smoke and the artillerymen broke out of their bunkers, the shells had already smashed on the beach. The power of the PH kilogram cast iron artillery shell is amazing, although the fine sand can play a buffering role, but after the shell explodes, there is still no surviving object within a radius of 30 meters, a Japanese assault boat that has just rushed to the radius of the ship without even shouting more than a dozen Japanese infantry on the belt of the ship was swept over into the water by the shock wave and suffered heavy casualties.

"Haven't you found the enemy's artillery positions yet?"

In the face of the verdant and deep mountains, the staff officers of the escort fleet and Kamio Mitsutomi all shook their heads, and the Japanese gunners on the escort fleet who opened their gun jackets early and waited for orders were even more dumbfounded, the 150 heavy guns actually had no fire and smoke Even if they were hidden in the mountain col, there should be thick smoke in the sky?!

"Balloon, let the Scout Balloon go!" Seeing that the infantry was suppressed on the shore and had no power to fight back, Mitsutomi Kamio was so angry that his face turned pale, but before the balloon was launched, two sparrows and one Haidongqing made all the Japanese officers cover their eyes, (to be continued)