At five o'clock in the afternoon, the Red Army launched a general attack on the Hongkou Concession.

The first thing that started was still the accurate sniping of the snipers who were ambushed nearby, killing the Japanese officers who looked like they were outcropping.

After the gunshots rang out, then ground artillery suppression and aerial bombardment began.

In the Japanese Concession, only the area of the Marine Corps Headquarters building was equipped with anti-aircraft weapons such as anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-aircraft guns.

So from the very beginning, this became the object of priority for artillery.

First, several test projectiles were fired to correct the firepower, and after the correction was obtained, more than 100 guns of large and small calibers were bombarded with concentrated fire around the Marine Corps Headquarters building, and the cruiser Pinghai, located on the Huangpu River, also drove six main guns to fire fiercely at the anti-aircraft fire point here.

With a soul-stirring scream, countless cannonballs screeched from the air and smashed into the surface of the Navy Building like meteors. Knowing that the building was covered with steel plates and extremely thick cement, the Red Army used armor-piercing blasting shells when bombarding, and installed trigger delay fuses, which only exploded after the shells drilled into the walls.

The Marine Corps building standing tall in Hongkou was like an unlucky person who had been stabbed countless times in an instant, and countless sparks erupted from his body. The Japanese Consulate in Shanghai, which enjoyed the same treatment as him, was instantly enveloped in countless iron and fire.

The two buildings were treated with cannons and howitzers, and were given preferential treatment by mortars.

On the outskirts of the Hongkou Concession, the Red Army threw in 120-mm mortars that had just recently been delivered from Germany. This is a new weapon that has just been developed this year, and it has not even had time to equip the German Army. The first batch of 40 doors was all sent to China to participate in the actual combat test, and all of them were arranged in Shanghai. The gun is an imitation developed by Hannah after copying the design of the Soviet 120mm mortar in World War II and called it the German military industry (in history, Germany also copied a large number of classic mortars of the Soviets during World War II).

In the design of small and medium-caliber artillery, Germany's excessive pursuit of precision and comprehensiveness was very strict, especially in mortars, to the point of misery.

The mortars designed by Germany during World War II were all complex, bulky, and very rubbish. The German military industry in this plane is still dead in the development of mortars, and the samples developed are all "embarrassing goods" with more water and more water on the surface. Hannah, who couldn't stand this, was so angry that she simply kicked the design away, forcing the military industry to directly copy the mature products of foreign countries. And because the design drawings of this 120-mm mortar are not complicated, she can manually draw rough structural drawings by herself, and then ask the military industry department to develop it on the basis of this idea.

120-mm mortar. It is a trajectory that uses its curved ejection. The bombardment was arranged on the air defense points on the roof of the naval command and consulate buildings. Although the accuracy of the hits was not high, five minutes later, several shells were hit on the roofs of the two buildings after the 40 mortars carried out a dense covering bombardment. The anti-aircraft fire placed on it was gone.

Ten 120-mm mortars were enough to knock it down lightly. But the Japanese were in the construction of the building of the headquarters of the Navy. Built to the standard of a fortress. Embedded with steel plates, the cement in the thickest and most critical parts of the wall was as thick as a meter (this is a historical fact), although in a short time it was subjected to 30 mortars and curved fire, as well as numerous 150 and 105 mm cannons and howitzers. Although his whole body was full of holes, he still stood still under the baptism of artillery fire.

However, although the Japanese Navy Headquarters building was extremely strong, it had a fatal flaw, that is, the relatively thin wall on the side of the Huangpu River. Lin Hantong's perception scan and previous intelligence gathering accurately identified this weakness. The 140-millimeter naval guns on the Pinghai were constantly firing armor-piercing blasting shells from the direction of the river towards the weakest point of his defenses. After half past four, the other three ships led by Li Huamei returned to the Huangpu River and followed him to open heavy fire on the headquarters building.

In contrast, the Japanese consulate in Shanghai, which was just built to ordinary standards, was not so lucky. As the first target, the entire building was almost ploughed from the inside out. When the Japanese built the consulate in Shanghai, the thickness of the walls was only taken into account ordinary light infantry guns, but they did not expect that the Red Army would take 150-mm heavy howitzers for direct fire. Large swaths of the walls collapsed in the bombardment, and the defenders inside the building suffered heavy casualties.

After destroying the few anti-aircraft weapons in the Japanese Concession, they refilled the fuel at Hongqiao Airport, reloaded the bombs, and flew over the Japanese Concession with Hawk fighters to carry out targeted dive bombing of several core defensive buildings in the Japanese Concession. The shrill whistle of the Hawker II's dive-down, mixed with the loud sound of the explosion, terrified the colonial garrisons in the adjacent Public Concession.

Although the Japanese Concession was built very strongly, after all, it was impossible to build every one of them as strong as the naval headquarters building. Historically, the Japanese concession during the Songhui War, which was in one or two. After the Eight Incidents, as a bridgehead for the invasion of South China, large-scale structural reinforcement began. And this didn't happen one or two. In the era of the Eight Incidents, although the Japanese secretly built their fortresses, Cheng Dù was far from being as in that time and space. And 1935 was not 1937, and the Japanese, whose understanding of the war was still stuck in the course of World War I, did not pay enough attention to air defense. Many of the bombs dropped by the dive bombardment pierced the relatively fragile and unreinforced ceilings, and then exploded inside the building, destroying the entire house and burying the Japanese soldiers who were hiding in the basement to escape the air raids.

After this five-minute air raid, 60 Wave 2 planes from the field airfield on the outskirts of Shanghai flew in and dropped a large number of gasoline burning bows at a height almost past the roof, setting fire to almost all the buildings in the Japanese Concession of Shanghai.

After the dual tonal (crab) religion of the Red Imperialist Soviet Union and the Brown Imperialist Germany, today's Red Army is no longer a dumpling in the ravines like foreigners, and although it cannot afford to play Maozi's artillery doctrine and the US imperialist air force to win, it has gathered most of the country's military strength. The small land of "one acre and three points of land" used in the Japanese concession can still bluff the proud and arrogant Orientals and Westerners in the concession.

After 20 minutes of artillery fire and air raid preparations, the entire Hongkou Concession was largely reduced to burning ruins. The few buildings that can still stand are also riddled with holes. The Hongkou Concession, which the Japanese had painstakingly managed for decades, was wiped out in just 20 minutes with the power of human technology.

After the bombardment, the shelling of the rear stopped, but the shelling of the forward positions continued. In front of the battle line, snipers suppressed the opponent's firing points, and the fortress conducted direct fire at close range, and when bombarding the buildings of the Hongkou Concession, the attacking troops of the front line. Even 150-mm heavy guns were pushed to a distance of one to two kilometers from the target. Lower the muzzle of the gun and directly bombard the remaining buildings and firing points with direct aiming and flat fire.

Another type of curved fire weapon used by the Red Army was the 58-mm trench gun, which was imported from France in large quantities by Tongguò Linhan. Although only 58 mm caliber, this trench gun uses the same curvilinear firing method as mortars. But the shells used were extremely ferocious super-caliber 120-mm shells. Not so much mortars. It's better to say that it's a mortar.

The gun was extremely powerful, and the charge of the shells far exceeded that of a 105 mm howitzer and comparable to that of a 150 mm infantry gun. The only drawback is simply that the range is too close. It's only about 300 meters, but in the complex terrain of urban street battles, there is a lot of shelter, and this disadvantage is not a disadvantage. This trench gun was originally designed to deal with the trenches of the Western Front during World War I. At that time, when Lin Han bought from the French, he only offered a price not much higher than buying scrap iron, and the only thing that made him dissatisfied was that the shells of the cannon were extremely expensive, even more expensive than the cannon.

At present, the Red Army's arsenal in Wuhan has been able to produce its own shells for this cannon, but due to technical limitations, the Red Army is filled with weaker ammonium nitrate.

While the 58-mm trench guns on the front line were still firing super-caliber shells, the Red Army soldiers who had entered the forward attack positions, under the cover of the tanks, had poured out of various bunkers and followed the tanks to launch an all-out attack on the concession.

The Red Army did not directly use violent covering bombardment, but drew countless small areas on the map of the Hongkou concession area, and then concentrated artillery fire, concentrating troops and firepower one by one, and solving them one by one.

The attacking troops did not gather and attack without tactics, but assigned targets in advance, divided the areas, and under the cover of tanks, attacked the Hongkou concession area from the west and north at the same time in companies and platoons.

The artillery opened the way in front with a "wall of fire", the tanks assaulted, and the infantry followed the cover, consolidating the position. The Red Army, coming from two directions of attack, soon tore through the outer defense line of the Hongqiao Concession and entered the interior of the Concession.

Attacking at five o'clock, the flames of war burned near the defensive center with the naval headquarters building as the main body, and the perimeter was full of dense buildings, and the defenders, together with armed expatriates and organized civilian auxiliaries, the Japanese had gathered 3,000 men in this small area of less than four square kilometers.

At 6:15 p.m., the Red Army Air Force made another sortie, and the Wave 2 and the Hawker II dropped more than a dozen tons of incendiary petrol bombs in this small area, burning the entire Japanese Concession into a sea of fire. Compared with the TN (crab) T fire bomb, the petrol bomb was inexpensive and simple to manufacture, and it was a weapon strongly recommended by Lin Han to the Red Army. There are many brick and wood buildings here in the Japanese Concession, and the use effect is excellent.

The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder smoke and burnt human flesh, and the Vickers tank rumbled through the steaming and even burning streets. As it approached the corner, the tank slowed down and the turret turned in the corner.

When the sound rang out, it was the Japanese around the corner who were far away from the barricades and the remnants of the ruins firing futile fire at the tanks.

"Onboard!"

At the corner of the street, a Japanese man with a body full of fire powder and a Molotov cocktail in his hand rushed out, but he had just shown his head and was directly swept down by the "domestic MP18 submachine gun" captured by the infantry guarding the wings. The whole person burned into a burning man and fell to the ground, and after a few seconds, the explosives in his hand were detonated, and there was a shocking bang on the ground.

(Note: MP18 at that time in addition to imports, China itself can also make its own, at that time China's Shanghai, Nanjing Gongxian, Hanyang, Guangdong, Shandong and other places of the arsenal produced this submachine gun, but the artillery party strange "make is better than buy" after the so-called "golden decade" toss, to the Anti-Japanese War on the contrary, the manufacturing capacity was greatly reduced)

The MP18s in the hands of the Red Army were all captured on the battlefield, although the arsenals in Hanyang and Nanjing could also produce their own MP18s. However, the manufacturing process was complicated and the material was wasted, and after the occupation of the Red Army, all production of this time-consuming and material-intensive weapon was discontinued, and the existing MP18 was captured by various warlords.

In the street battles of tanks in the Japanese Concession, there were two biggest enemies, one was a small number of 20mm rapid-fire guns arranged in the concession, but most of these rapid-fire guns were destroyed in the front artillery cover. The few that remained, once the fire exposed the position, would soon be destroyed by heavy fire or accompanying infantry in the rear. Another threat is the Japanese "human bomb" that rushed out of hiding with explosives on their backs.

After all, the Japanese stationed in Shanghai were only colonial troops and not regular troops, and they were constrained by many factors. Heavy firepower is minimal. Most of them are rifle-type light weapons.

The Vickers turned the corner of the street unharmed, the gunshots clanging on its body, and there was clearly a machine gun point in the street, and the bullets were constantly bouncing off the tank's armor. The soldiers accompanying the wingers ducked to the other side to avoid the ricocheting.

The king hammer that follows the tank forward. Using the tank as a cover, the probe glanced at the opposite side. shrank back again, then ran to the back of the tank, picked up the plug-in phone microphone and shouted: "The two-story house opposite." The one with a big signboard, the window on the second floor! ”

The tank has a limited viewing angle, especially in urban warfare, where it is often beaten by the opponent for half a day, and the crew of the tank cannot find the exact location of the target to hit him. If the commander is exposed to the turret probe to command, he often becomes the target of the opponent's focus on fire. However, if an external wired communication device is attached to the side of the tank, and the accompanying infantry acts as an eye, and uses it to communicate with the commander, this problem can be well solved.

Tanks are so noisy that it is difficult for people to hear each other, especially in World War II. Therefore, in order to improve the efficiency of communication between the crew, the tank is often equipped with an in-vehicle communication system for mutual communication, and it is even more difficult to communicate with the infantry outside. Germany's No. 2 tank was the first to use this kind of in-vehicle communication system, and the U.S. tank also has the external wired communication device I mentioned above for the communication and cooperation between the tank and the infantry, which is extremely important in urban street fighting.

The Vickers tanks sold by the British to the artillery party did not have this set of communication equipment, and this set of communication equipment was also imported from Germany by Lin Han. For most of the day, when the Red Army confronted the British on the periphery of the concession, all the tanks were making various modifications and additions for urban street fighting. The original six-ton Vickers tank is now patched with all kinds of makeshift steel plates and iron plates embedded in the surface of the body to increase its defensive power. Although the appearance is a little ugly, it works well in actual combat.

In fact, the Vickers tank that took the lead was missing something that was very meaningful for street fighting, that is, the 12.7 mm anti-aircraft machine gun mounted on the tank, but unfortunately neither Germany nor the Soviet Union could provide this weapon. Germany was only now recovering from the influence of the Treaty of Versailles, and the production line of a new 13mm anti-aircraft machine gun for tanks was still in the process of preparation, and the Soviet Degalev anti-aircraft machine gun could not be developed until 1938, and it was also unable to provide it. So now this Vic tank can only be recharged with a Lewis light machine gun, which has been specially modified to raise the gun carriage to raise the elevation angle of the shot. It can be used by the commander's probe when needed or by infantry jumping on the side of the tank.

After receiving the command of the accompanying infantry, the commander of the Vickers tank quickly locked onto the target, and after more than ten seconds, the Vickers tank let out a roar and fired a cannon into the hidden machine gun fire point on the opposite side, directly knocking it out dumb.

After dumbing down that firing point, the Vickers tank did not assault at high speed, but waited for the infantry on both flanks to follow up and clear the buildings on both sides. The houses on both sides of the more than 200-meter-long street may have ambushes hidden in each of them, and the soldiers need to clean them up one by one.

In terms of experience in street fighting, the Red Army that invaded Shanghai was much richer than the Japanese. During the war of the past three years, the Red Army and the Nationalist Government of Nanking fought many urban street battles, and they had a lot of experience in this area. Many of the KPD members of the Red Army who had participated in the November Revolution also had a great deal of experience in street fighting. In the past few years, in the process of the German Communist Party's aid to the CCP, it has also been exchanged with China.

Before the Battle of the Concession, Lin Han and Li Huamei racked their brains, and all kinds of street battles that needed attention, suitable street fighting tactics, and all kinds of brain-opening ideas obtained from later generations were compiled into a book and sent to the upper echelons of the Red Army for reference, and even made a similar military-themed film science and education film in Germany, and then sent it to the Red Army to watch the Red Army soldiers who fought in Shanghai, so as to reduce their casualties in street battles.

As far as individual soldiers are concerned, although the comprehensive quality of the soldiers in the rapidly expanding Red Army has declined, they are all veterans who have experienced the flames of war. In contrast, the Japanese on the other side, only a trained Marine Corps soldier in his early 1,000s, although their personal combat skills were not inferior to the Red Army, their actual combat experience was much worse. In the case that the Red Army did not lose to its opponent in morale, and had a crushing advantage in weapons, plus the pre-war preparations were sufficient. From the beginning of the war, the Japanese concessions in the Hongqiao and Yangpu areas fell into the hands of the Red Army one by one with a desperate "steady speed". (To be continued......)