On September 10, 1934, with the surrender of the defenders of Huangshi and the "uprising" of the defenders of Nanchang, the territory controlled by the Nanjing Nationalist Government in Jiangxi Province was now only a small area around Jiujiang down the Yangtze River. South of the Yangtze River, the closest area to Jiujiang is the military town of Anqing. Chen Cheng stationed heavy troops here.

Jiujiang originally had five divisions and 30,000 people, but the composition of the five divisions was complicated, and they were all subordinates of the former chairman He Yingqin, and they were not very well received by the current chairman of the Song Committee. When the Red Army launched a "squeezing offensive" against Jiujiang in August, Song Ziwen was forced by the pressure of the Yangtze River channel being cut off, so Hanyang, Hankou and Anqing each transferred three divisions to assist in the defense.

The three divisions on the left flank were placed between Jiujiang and Huangshi, under the overall command of Gu Zhutong, and the three divisions on the right flank were one division each commanded by Yu Jishi, Xue Yue, and Sun Yuanliang, and cooperated with the original five divisions of the Ninth Army to be responsible for the connection between Jiujiang and Anqing, and the commander-in-chief was Liu Zhi. In terms of troops, from Jiujiang to Anqing, there is a total of eight divisions of the main force, not counting the defenders of Anqing, an important town on the Yangtze River.

This arrangement seems to be understandable, but the biggest problem of the army of the Nanjing Nationalist Government is that mountainism is rampant, and it is always extremely bad to cooperate with each other in warfare. This is a problem that has not been solved by any plane. And in this plane that was distorted by the traverser Lin Hanyan, Song Ziwen's leadership of the Nanjing Nationalist Government was even worse in controlling these division commanders, army commanders, and commanders. Nominally, Song Ziwen reached an alliance with the Huangpu, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang factions led by Chen Cheng, Gu Zhutong, and Liu Zhi, but in fact this alliance was dense. Due to its lack of prestige, it is far less powerful than Chang Kaishen's control over these powerful factions in the Chang Kaishen era.

It was also because of this understanding that after 1933, with the support of the British, American, and German governments, Song Ziwen began to train the new army, and when he reorganized his armament, he made up his mind to train his own "Song Army" from the very beginning. In the past year and a half, he himself has set up three so-called "tax police regiments" in one go, called regiments, but in fact they are assigned at the level of "divisions." It's just that these three best-equipped divisions are regarded by him as the lifeblood of the nest and put them to watch over the family, and none of them have been sent. The troops on the front line are all Gu Zhutong, Liu Zhi, and Chen Cheng.

The 11-month divisions along the Yangtze River are ostensibly horns of each other. Close ties. It seems unbreakable, but it is actually a sieve full of holes. These 11 divisions were nominally under the command of Gu Zhutong, Liu Zhi, and Chen Cheng, but in fact, each of the 11 divisions had their own ideas, and it was impossible for their immediate superiors to command them as commanding them.

When the two families went to full-scale war in September. In Jiangxi. Even if you don't count the defenders of Nanchang. The total strength of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing was as high as 120,000 at this time. If you add the army from Anqing, Anhui, it is more than 160,000 people.

As for the Red Army, because part of the main force was transferred to Hunan and Hubei to encircle and annihilate He Jian and Gu Zhu's troops on the front line of Wuchang. Before 11 September, the main force of the Red Army in the whole of Jiangxi was only 110,000. In fact, we are at a disadvantage in terms of quantity.

But the Reds are fighting in a single fist, and their opponents are just a mess.

In September, when the Red Army in Hunan besieged Changsha and kicked off the tide of the autumn offensive, Jiangxi also acted simultaneously. On the one hand, more than 10,000 people from two divisions were used to monitor and besiege more than 20,000 Nanchang defenders who numbered more than them. The remaining main force went straight to Jiujiang.

In the battlefield environment of northern Jiangxi, there is a terrain that neither side can ignore, that is, the huge and narrow Poyang Lake. The vast lake and the Ganjiang River separated the enemy army in Jiangxi into two parts. Not counting the defenders of Nanchang, the artillery army had about four and a half divisions west of the Ganjiang River, six and a half divisions in Jiangxi east of the Ganjiang River, and three of Chen Cheng's divisions in Anqing, which was close by.

On the surface, the party army on this side of Jiujiang is strong in the east and weak in the west, but among the four and a half divisions on the western front, there are three divisions transferred from Hanyang to the artillery party lineage, and in the past two years, a large number of German weapons have been reequipped, the weapons are good, the military pay is sufficient, the training is sufficient, the combat effectiveness is strong, and the cooperation between them is also good. Since 1933, Jiujiang has faced the threat of "red bandits", in order to protect the safety of Jiujiang, the Nanjing Nationalist Government has built a large number of fortresses and bunkers here, known as the Oriental Verdun, which is not easy to attack.

In contrast, the situation on the Eastern Front was much simpler. Of the six and a half divisions in Jiangxi, three and a half were miscellaneous divisions left behind by "Granny He", with poor equipment and poor combat effectiveness. The remaining three divisions are Yu Jishi's 88th Division, Xue Yue's 12th Division, and Chang Kaishen's lineage, the First Guard Division.

After Chang Kaishen's death, the first guard division was put under the command of Song Ziwen, and the treatment was the same. The only problem is that the current commander of this division is named Sun Yuanliang, and later generations will give him the nickname "General Fei" and "General Long Legs", a "cattle man" who was trapped in Nanjing during the Nanjing Massacre, hid in a brothel and escaped the butcher's knife of the Japanese and could safely escape from the dead city.

The best thing is that due to the distrust of the combat power of the miscellaneous divisions left behind by the three "Granny He", the three most powerful descendants used a formation method to disperse the three semi-miscellaneous divisions and sandwich them in the middle.

Li Runshi of the Jiangxi Red Army, after receiving military reports and information from the front and the underground party, decisively transferred 20,000 people from three divisions of the 40,000 Red Army who had previously feinted to attack Jiujiang to support the eastern front through Poyang Lake. After two years of squeezing, the Red Army had already taken control of most of the waters of Poyang Lake, and together with the ships aided by Lin Han and the war captures, it even had an armed mobile fleet.

Having received support from the Western Front, the Red Army east of the Gan River launched a fierce attack on 3 September.

The first objective, to concentrate forces, was to storm the town of Yangxi on the border between Jiangxi and Anhui, where the defenders were the 96th Division, the ragtag division between the 1st Division under the long-legged general Sun Yuanliang and Xue Yue's 12th Division.

In only half a day, the Red Army broke the 96th Division head-on, causing its entire division to be routed and most of it captured. A small part collapsed.

When the Red Army assaulted the 96th Division, the Xue Yue Division on the left flank of the division came to the aid with all its might, but was blocked by the Red Army that was fighting to the aid three kilometers away from Yangxi and could not advance an inch.

In the early morning of 4 September, after the Red Army had eaten the 96th Division, it also completely surrounded Xue Yue's troops, which had come to help. Two days later, Xue Yue's 12th Division was completely annihilated. Division commander Xue Yue was captured. On the day of 6 September, the Red Army completely annihilated the He Jian Division in Hunan Province and successfully blitzed Hankou in Hanyang, and learned that Xue Yue's Department had just been completely annihilated. Sun Yuanliang once again exerted his natural "escape skills". before the Red Army turned back to encircle and annihilate him. He led his troops to run 40 kilometers overnight and completely got rid of the pursuit of the Red Army. As for the countless people who lost people, guns, and ammunition in the process, that's a story for later.

As for the Eighteenth Army of Chen Cheng's division defending Anqing. Although the total strength there was as high as more than 30,000 people, by the end of the entire Jiangxi Campaign, the Eighteenth Army was simply a soy sauce onlooker, and it was always "strong" that Anqing Lei could not move, and the only contribution was to receive a large number of defeated troops from Sun Yuanliang's army.

Xue Yue's troops were completely wiped out, Sun Yuanliang fled, and the remaining Yu Jishi and the other two miscellaneous divisions were greatly shocked and began the "race" to the Yangtze River and Jiujiang on September 8.

However, the Jiujiang ferry port west of the Ganjiang River, the only way they had to go to Jiujiang, was forcibly seized by a detachment of more than 20,000 Red Army troops sent by the previous feint attack on Jiujiang on September 6, cutting off their way back to Jiujiang. The Jiujiang defenders, who were close at hand, obviously had stronger troops than the Red Army, and they were stunned to stick behind the ready-made pillboxes in Jiujiang as a shrinking turtle, and they refused to go out of the city to recapture the Ganjiang ferry.

The Red Army, which had advantages on the eastern, western, and southern fronts, had no intention of fighting, and Yu Jishi's only way to retreat was the Yangtze River on the northern front, so he could only escape to the north bank of the Yangtze River by guò ferry.

In the end, these three and a half divisions were surrounded by the Red Army's Hukou County at the junction of the Ganjiang River and the Yangtze River. There are also some ferries on the Yangtze River in this area of Jiujiang, and a few warships of the Yangtze River Fleet of the old-fashioned grandfather class. Although the Nationalist Government of Nanjing used means to transfer large disembarkation ships to rush troops across the river, how could this ferry capability be able to withdraw the 50,000 defeated troops before the 90,000 troops of the Red Army in pursuit were completely annihilated?

Without Chang Kaishen, the mountain-to-mountain army of the Nanjing Nationalist Government and the shortcomings of the warlords were undoubtedly evident in this campaign. Although Yu Jishi's 88th Division is known as the ace division, at this threshold of escaping, who of the two semi-miscellaneous divisions around him will bird him? In order to compete for the opportunity to escape and get on the ship, under the pressure of the Red Army soldiers, the two sides repeatedly broke out in fire. They killed each other, and there were countless casualties.

As for such a thing as breaking off and desperately blocking the advance of the Red Army, no one in the few divisions who just wanted to grab the ship and escape was willing to do it with all their hearts.

On 9 September, in order to rescue the three and a half divisions, the Nanjing Nationalist Government also transferred the warships of the Yangtze River Fleet, which had been assisting in the defense of Jiujiang, to the Yangtze River in Hukou County to bombard the pursuing Red Army.

During the day on 9 September, because the artillery of the Red Army's pursuing unit had not yet arrived, the artillery ships of the Yangtze River were arrogant for a long time, but due to the limited transportation capacity, they withdrew more than 2,000 people during the whole day.

On the night of 9 September, the Red Army artillery arrived and began to suppress the shelling of the pier ferry, and the shells of the light infantry guns continued to fall on the ferry, forcing the ferry not to dare to dock lightly. As for ordinary sailing and wooden boats, even if they were not shelled, it would have been extremely dangerous to cross the Yangtze River at night. Today's artillery party is not the People's Liberation Army in 1949, how can it have the courage to organize fishing boats to ferry people at night, so only more than 1,000 people fled to the other side of the Yangtze River that night.

On 10 September, after dawn, taking advantage of the cover of night, the Red Army also set up artillery positions for field artillery on both sides of the encirclement. The good days of the artillery party and the Yangtze River fleet are over.

At this time, on the Yangtze River on the bank of Hukou County, the gunboats shelled by the Red Army were four ships. The greatest threat was the shallow-water gunboat Forever Slow, which was built at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai and completed in 1929, with one 6-inch main gun and one 4.7-inch gun. The most famous is the flagship Nakayama, which has a 105-mm main gun on which is no small few. In addition, there are two shallow-water gunboats named Yisheng and Yongsheng, both of which are less than 300 tons, and their main firepower is a 76.2 mm gun at the bow and a 57 mm gun at the stern, both of which are more than 20 years old.

Today, the Red Army is no longer the dirt buns of 1931, except for the captured light infantry guns. There are also dozens of 76.2 mm field guns assisted by the Soviet Union, which are not afraid of the fire of those grandfather-level river gunboats, plus the capture of the previous battle, the Red Army arranged 60 Soviet-made 76.2 guns on the Yangtze River and the old warships of the artillery party to shoot at each other.

In the artillery battle on 10 September, the artillery that posed the greatest threat to the Intra-Intra River Fleet happened to be the naval gun on the Carlisle, which Lin Han salvaged from the sea, which was originally a high-speed gun for the navy. Equipped with the relevant anti-ship shells, these shells played a very important role in this battle.

The shallow water gunboat Yongsui was the most powerful with its six-inch main gun, and the Red Army regarded it as the greatest threat. Yongsui came forward on the river. All 76.2 mm field guns with a range and angle of fire allowed were fired intensively. Just the first salvo. More than 20 water columns were raised near the Yongsui, and more than five shells were directly hit.

In line with the principle that it is better to cut off one of its fingers than to injure its ten fingers, a total of 35 76.2-mm field guns fired at the Yongsui, and within a minute, the Yongsui burst into flames. More than 20 shots were made. The main gun was damaged. The captain of the ship was killed on the spot, and the crew also suffered heavy casualties, and was forced to turn the bow of the ship and sail towards the north bank of the Yangtze River.

In the process, the Red Army was unforgiving. The British-made three-inch naval gun that Lin Han fished up from the bottom of the sea was the one that posed the greatest threat to the ship among all the artillery guns of the Red Army at the scene, and the special shells for the ship entered the power room of the Yongsui with one shot, causing it to lose power and become a floating boat floating on the Yangtze River, and finally drifted downstream, stranded on a shoal on the south bank of the Yangtze River dozens of kilometers away, and was finally captured by the Red Army.

As for the "famous ships" and "Zhongshan ships" later, seeing that the situation was not good, they fired a few shots at the Red Army artillery positions indiscriminately, and then sailed towards the north bank of the Yangtze River. Because the Soviet-made 76.2 mm field guns were all howitzers, and the most powerful British naval guns were chasing the Yongsui at that time, so the Zhongshan was only hit by seven shells, and the surface facilities on the ship were stricter, but the hull was not in serious trouble, and fled to the north bank of the Yangtze River.

As for the remaining two ships, the Yisheng and Yongsheng, these two "grandfather" ships, which are more than 20 years old, have small tonnage, weak firepower, a speed of only 10 knots, almost no armor, and they are slow to withdraw when they see the situation is not good. When the Red Army concentrated its fire on these two ships, it was a complete tragedy for both ships.

The Yisheng was hit by nearly 20 shells in one minute, and sank into the Yangtze River with too much water, and only seven of the 30 crew members on board survived. The Yongsheng was even worse luck, as it was hit by the British naval guns on the Red Army's side and detonated the ammunition depot, and sank into the river as a blow in two, and none of the crew survived.

The artillery battle on 10 September ended in a great victory for the Red Army.

Without the support of the Yangtze River Fleet, the morale of the three and a half divisions trapped here in Hukou County was even more demoralized. With little effort, the Red Army seized the commanding heights on both sides of the lake, Shizhong Mountain and Tuanpo Mountain, at noon on 11 September, and then mounted artillery up the hill to bombard the defenders at the crossing from a high place.

At this time, the artillery army, three and a half divisions of 30,000 people, had been compressed by the Red Army, a narrow strip of less than five kilometers long, and less than two kilometers wide at its widest point. The only way to survive was a few small ferries that were sneaking around at night, but there was no one on the river willing to brave the fire to pull them.

On the afternoon of 11 September, the Red Army concentrated more than 130 mortars on two hills and carried out intermittent artillery bombardment of the enemy troops on the Yangtze River beach in the encirclement. The Red Army used the method of concentrated artillery fire, in which 130 mortars fired at the same time, firing six rounds of nearly 1,000 shells in one minute.

After the end of the shelling, the Red Army shouted from the front, and the artillery party, which had eaten thousands of shells in a short time, was already terrified. Soon the front-line troops began to surrender in large numbers, including Yu Jishi's 88th Division.

The 88th Division under Yu Jishi, one of the earliest German divisions of the artillery party, was originally an elite division, and it was not so grassy, and it took the initiative to surrender after receiving a thousand shells. But he's terrible, he's mixed up with a very poor motley master. When these miscellaneous cards with worse fighting will could not withstand the shelling of the Red Army and shouted, "Sir, stop firing the artillery, we surrender", under the influence of this, under the herd effect, the last bit of resistance was also dragged away.

And Yu Jishi, the commander of the 88th Division, knew that the general trend had gone long after the Yangtze River Fleet was driven out by the Red Army. After Shi Zhongshan was lost, he had no intention of resisting, so he took a small ferry early, leaving his subordinates to risk crossing the river and fleeing for his life.

The elite 88th Division of the Nanjing Nationalist Government, which had 14,000 men before the war, had been trained by German instructors for more than a year. As a result, this ace division, except for the 2,000 men who fled by boat on September 9 and fled to the north bank of the Yangtze River, the rest were all taken prisoner by the Red Army.

After the Battle of Hukou County, the Red Army on the eastern front of the Ganjiang River returned to the western front, and the Red Army from Hunan besieged the remnants of the artillery party in Jiujiang.

The commander-in-chief of the defenders of Jiujiang was Liu Zhi, who had already realized that something was wrong when the Red Army besieged the Eastern Front army led by the 88th Division at Hukou.

From 10 September, he seized a large number of ships that were supposed to be transferred to the 88th Division for "self-rescue." From 10 September onwards, he continued to withdraw his troops from the Yangtze River. It took two days for the Red Army to encircle and annihilate the remnants of the enemy east of the Gan River, which gave him time to evacuate his troops in large numbers.

On 12 September, when the Red Army from Hunan pressed over from Huangshi and joined forces with the Red Army from Jiangxi at Jiujiang, the defenders of Jiujiang had already been withdrawn by him to the north of the Yangtze River overnight with three divisions. Then, relying on the "Oriental Verdun" defense line painstakingly managed by the artillery party in the past two years, Liu Zhi's remnants of the army left in Jiujiang resisted the Red Army for a day before it collapsed.

By the end of the battle, about 30,000 defenders of Jiujiang had fled to the north bank of the Yangtze River by guò ferry, while the remaining 10,000 people had increased their ammunition, all of which became trophies of the Red Army, which was the only imperfect part of the Red Army's autumn offensive. (To be continued......)

PS: China's plot will probably write one or two more chapters to explain the interference of foreign forces, and the handling of the gannet incident will end here for the time being.