Chapter 498: Battle Escalation (Asking for Subscriptions, Asking for Monthly Passes, Asking for Various !! ）

The North China Front Headquarters did not have a detailed plan for how to deal with the attack of Chen Feng's troops, on the one hand, because Chen Feng's headquarters attacked this time relatively suddenly, which caught the Japanese army by surprise; On the other hand, it was because of the telegram sent from Japan that they were strictly forbidden to engage in a large-scale conflict with Chen Feng's subordinates, so as to prevent the war on the Chinese battlefield from affecting the Japanese army's plan to move south.

When Lieutenant General Kimura Hyotaro, commander of the 32nd Division of the Japanese Army stationed in southern Hebei, reported the battle report from the front to the headquarters of the North China Front, Tada Jun on the one hand ordered the nearby Japanese troops to form a mixed 6th Brigade to urgently go south to reinforce Handan, and on the other hand, ordered the 32nd Division to block Chen Feng's southward movement.

Tada Jun also highly recognized Lieutenant General Okabe Naosaburo's analysis, so he ordered the 12th Army of the North China Front to pay special attention to the actions of the Tubalu to avoid being attacked by the Tubalu. At the same time, he sent the analysis of Lieutenant General Naosaburo Gangbe to the headquarters of the 12th Army of the Japanese Army, and asked them to draw up their own operational plans according to the actual situation and do everything possible to inflict heavy damage on the Tubalu.

Although Gangbu Naosaburo analyzed it very reasonably in many aspects, he didn't know that the reason why Chen Feng only sent one infantry division south was not because of the assistance of the second and first theaters, but mainly because of his trust in the troops under his command, and he believed that this alone was enough to sweep through southern Hebei.

This is not because Chen Feng is arrogant, but because he understands the troops under his command and the establishment of various units of the Japanese army. An integrated division of the Eighth Theater of Operations has more than 30,000 men, plus an armored division, an artillery brigade, and a fighter brigade to cooperate with the operation. The total strength is nearly 50,000.

As far as Chen Feng knows, the Japanese army stationed in southern Hebei has only one field division and one mixed brigade, and there are only more than 22,000 gendarmerie troops. Although there are still more than 20,000 puppet troops, in Chen Feng's opinion, the three puppet army divisions are not as strong as the three reinforced battalions under his command, so they are only converted into half of the Japanese army divisions, which means that the Japanese army stationed in southern Hebei is only 2 field divisions.

Chen Feng is well aware of the Japanese army's division and regimental establishment, and the Japanese army's divisions and regiments are the smallest strategic establishment of the Japanese army in foreign operations, and at the same time, it is also the largest tactical establishment. At the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the Japanese army had 17 permanent divisions and regiments that were the standing army of the Japanese army. The so-called permanent divisions are four-unit divisions. That is, the division has two brigades, two infantry wings under the brigade, three infantry brigades, four infantry squadrons, one machine gun squadron (eight heavy machine guns), and one brigade artillery squad (two 70mm infantry guns).

A Japanese division would have four infantry wings, an artillery wing, a baggage wing, an engineer wing, a cavalry wing, and other units. The total strength is more than 28,000 people. It is equipped with more than 16,000 long and short guns, 280 light and heavy machine guns, 36 medium-caliber artillery pieces, and 40 mortars. Such a division was the most elite field division of the Japanese army. Its combat effectiveness is also extremely strong.

At the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, the vast majority of Japanese divisions attacking China were like this, such as the 3rd Division attacking Shanghai, the 5th Division attacking North China, the 6th Division attacking Central China, and the 10th Division! Arguably. At the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, the Japanese army defeated the 1.9 million troops of 200 divisions of the Nationalist Government with only 17 permanent divisions and less than 250,000 troops.

However, with the expansion of the scale of the war, the Japanese army felt that its forces were stretched thin, so it reorganized two new permanent divisions and regiments, the 13th and 18th divisions, and a number of ad hoc divisions and regiments. The so-called special divisions refer to the units composed of reservists of permanent divisions and regiments, and their numbers are 100 before the numbers of permanent divisions and wings.

After that, due to the attrition of the operation, and at the same time, the Japanese army felt that the movement of the divisions and regiments of the four-company system was inconvenient, so they came up with two kinds of formations: the three-unit division and the independent mixed brigade. The three-unit division is composed of one infantry regiment under the division, three infantry wings under the infantry regiment, three infantry brigades and one infantry artillery squadron (four infantry guns). The infantry brigade had no artillery squads, the artillery wing consisted of 24 mountain guns or field artillery, the cavalry wing was changed to a search wing, and other logistical units such as baggage and engineering units were also greatly reduced, with an establishment of 12,800 men. The independent mixed brigade has five infantry brigades and an artillery team, a communications team, an engineer team, and a baggage team, with a total number of about 5,000 people. The infantry brigade has three infantry squadrons and one machine gun squadron (four heavy machine guns), and the artillery brigade has one mountain artillery squadron and two field artillery squadrons. Both units are primarily used for garrison purposes, but also have a small field capability.

After more than three years of war, the Japanese army's consumption of both material and soldier consumption was extremely huge, so the vast majority of the Japanese divisions and regiments on the Chinese battlefield are small divisions of three units. It is precisely because of this understanding that Chen Feng will attack southern Hebei with an infantry division and an armored division equipped with two artillery brigades, don't look at the Japanese army that attacked southern Hebei with less divisional numbers than the Japanese army, but the soldiers and firepower are not inferior to the little devils at all, plus the aviation of the North China Front has not recovered since it was defeated by the Northern Air Force last time.

The most important thing is that Chen Feng believes that it is impossible for the Japanese to produce fighters with more advanced performance than the Jian-5 and Jian-6 fighters in a short period of time, and in this case, the North China Front will lose air supremacy. As a later generation of officers, Chen Feng knew the importance of air supremacy, and if he lost air supremacy, the ground troops were a live target, and the firepower and soldiers of the ground troops were far less than Chen Feng's troops, so Chen Feng judged that the Japanese army was not the opponent of Xu Fufu and others at all.

Chen Feng's judgment is not wrong at all, since Xu Fufu's headquarters launched an offensive on November 5, Xu Fufu has divided his more than 50,000 troops into three, the first route is under his personal command, under the jurisdiction of one infantry brigade, an artillery brigade, and an armored regiment. This army attacked south along the Shimen Road, passing through Yuanshi County, Zanhuang County, Gaoyi County along the way, and then went straight to Xingtai Handan.

The second route was commanded by Hu Tiesheng, under the command of an infantry brigade and an armored regiment, and the army went out of Shimen to Zhaoxian and Ningjin, and then the troops went straight to the palace.

The third road is commanded by Liu Li, under the jurisdiction of an infantry brigade, an artillery brigade and an armored regiment, the direction of the army's attack is out of Shimen all the way to the east, along the way through Jinzhou, Xinjishi, Luanzhou, the front of the soldiers pointed directly at Hengshui, Wuqiang.

Because the speed of Chen Feng's attack was very fast, and he launched attacks in the east, south and southeast directions at the same time, he caught the Japanese army by surprise. Lieutenant General Kimura Hyotaro, the supreme commander of the Japanese army in southern Hebei, always thought that Chen Feng's troops would go all the way south out of Shimen, so the focus of their defense was also due south, so they were caught off guard by Chen Feng's troops.

In just one day, Chen Feng's troops captured Yuanshi County, Zhao County, and Zanhuang County, where the Japanese army was stationed, and the troops pointed directly at Gaoyi County, the northern gateway of Xingtai. The Japanese infantry brigade stationed in Yuanshi County only lasted less than three hours before more than half of the casualties had to withdraw from the battle, as for the Japanese infantry squadron stationed in Zhao County, it fled without firing a shot, and the defenders of Zanhuang County were still a little backbone, an infantry brigade plus a puppet infantry brigade were stunned to block an infantry brigade and an artillery brigade under Xu Fufu's department outside Zanhuang County for 9 hours, and the combat effectiveness was really good.

However, due to the delay in the arrival of reinforcements, the Japanese commander Iijima Shosa was extremely depressed and had to retreat after holding out for 9 hours.

At ten o'clock in the morning of November 6, the First Route Army under the command of Xu Fufu came to Gaoyi City, but before Xu Fufu's headquarters arrived, more than 10,000 people of the 32nd Division of the Japanese Army and more than 8,000 puppet troops had been stationed in Gaoyi, and the two sides faced off in Gaoyi County, and the war was about to break out.

In Hengshui, Liu Li also encountered a strong enemy, the Japanese mixed into the sixth brigade in Liu Li arrived in Hengshui before the arrival of Hengshui, the two sides around the Hengshui periphery of the position launched a fierce battle, the battle of southern Hebei finally skipped the stage of mutual temptation, began to fully escalate. (To be continued......)