PS: Thank you for the reward from the book friend "Viscount Guo Wen", and continue to ask for recommendation votes ^_^

In addition, the logistical supply of a large army for long-distance operations is a shijie problem, and 250,000 people is already the limit of what the Japanese army can bear. However, although the number of people was smaller than expected by Hu Weidong and other major generals of the Red Party, the strength of the 11th Army should definitely not be underestimated because of the devil's excellent generals. However, the fact that more than 500,000 troops remained in Xuzhou still somewhat increased the difficulty for the 15 th Group Army to complete its task

According to the instructions of the central authorities, the Central Plains Battle was first of all to achieve decisive results on the Western Front, which was relatively more certain, and for this reason, the North China Air Corps was also required to be transferred to the Western Front to assist in the war, and even as early as the Lanfeng Campaign, they had already taken the lead in participating in the battle, and this was also the first time since the establishment of the North China Air Corps that it had cooperated with the Kuomintang army.

Hu Weidong's suggestion was that the Red Party's air force, which regarded it as a treasure, make an exception to fight with the Nationalist Army, and he had three obvious reasons: First, the Central Plains Bureau had already carried out a long period of "military movement" work against Shang Zhen's troops, and it was very promising that this force would be pulled over in the near future, and it would be a pity to sit back and watch them be wiped out by the devils; Second, this can create the image of the red party as a single-minded party that does not care about past suspicions, and is politically advantageous; Third, even with the support of the Red Party Air Force, the hundreds of thousands of Nationalist troops stationed on the Lanfeng defense line still have no possibility of defeating the Japanese army's westward group, so there is no need to worry about this effort but making a wedding dress for the Kuomintang, and it must be the Red Party's troops who will complete the fatal blow to the Japanese army's westward group.

But to be honest, the fundamental reason why Hu Weidong put forward this suggestion was actually that he was worried that the national army would be defeated too quickly, and that it would blow up the Yellow River embankment at the mouth of the garden as it did in history. In the next one or two decades, how much harm and direct and indirect economic losses were caused to the people in the Yellow Flood Area? And how much money and manpower was spent on the management of the Yellow Flood Area after liberation?

Historically, although Shang Zhen's 20th Group Army was well equipped during the Anti-Japanese War (probably equivalent to the average level of the Central Army), its combat effectiveness was as bad as that of the Northeast Army, but in this time and space, the group army not only had more troops and more weapons and equipment because Shang Zhen made a lot of money by doing business with the Central Plains border area. Moreover, because of the Red Party's fruitful work in "military movement," it has a number of secret party members as middle- and low-ranking officers and combat backbones, and the combat effectiveness of the officers and men of the group has been enhanced to a certain extent.

But even so. Because the 20 th Group Army had basically never fought a major battle since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the psychological endurance of officers and men was generally poor, and the Red Party did not dare to openly establish a party organization in the 20 th Group Army, and there was still a big gap between the organization and cohesion of the troops and the genuine Red Party units. Outcome. Under the impact of a chariot division barely cobbled together by the Japanese Central China Dispatch Army, the more than 100,000 national troops on the Lanfeng defense line could not support it for long, if it were not for the timely response of the Eighth Route Army. Nine times out of ten, it was another massacre, and the North China Air Corps, which had high hopes, encountered an unexpected situation in this battle and failed to play the role of an armored nemesis, which was also an important reason why the Lanfeng National Army was quickly defeated by the Japanese army

Not long ago, the countless tanks of the First Japanese Mecha Army were "scooped" by the cannons of Chinese and Soviet planes, and the Japanese tank designers realized the necessity of strengthening the top protection, but the design and manufacture of the new combat vehicles took time and could not immediately meet the needs of the battlefield, and the Japanese army, which had lost air supremacy and even artillery superiority, urgently needed the support of armored troops. In desperation, a co-captain of a Japanese tank wing came up with a solution that didn't seem clever. That is, riveting one or more layers of additional steel plates on weak parts such as the top cover of the tank to strengthen protection. This will undoubtedly affect the performance of the tank (Note 1), but this person believes that China does not have enough armor to fight a tank battle with Japan, and that Japanese tanks only need to deal with Chinese infantry, so poor performance is not a big problem. Anyway, no matter how bad it is, it can drive faster than the Chinese infantry

It was precisely such an emergency change that caused the efficiency of the anti-tank operations of the North China Air Corps to plummet, and the machine guns could not pose a threat to the tanks, so they could only rely on aerial bombs and rockets. However, the former is constrained by the fact that the North China Air Corps still lacks excellent bomber pilots and fighter pilots (fighters can carry small and medium-sized bombs weighing tens of kilograms, and it may be difficult to bomb warships and permanent fortifications, but it is enough to deal with tanks. It is even more rare to have experience in carrying out bombing missions against the enemy, and the number of bombers in the North China Air Corps is also significantly small; As for the latter, the hit rate of rockets is always not high, not to mention aviation rockets

What's even worse is that the pilots of the North China Air Corps only discovered the problem after fighting for a while, and in order to find out what was going on, several brave fighter pilots even ventured to fly to an ultra-low altitude to observe, and only then did they understand the problem, and they sacrificed three people for this. So the plane of the North China Air Corps hurriedly flew back to replace the rocket launcher, which took two or three hours, and when it returned to the battlefield, the Lanfeng defense line of the national army had been broken through by devils

Fortunately, the Eighth Route Army arrived in Zhengzhou in time to block the only remaining tank division of the devil, and with the air support of the North China Air Corps, it gave full play to the role of the massive anti-tank rocket launchers that have now been equipped to the squad level, and finally smashed the attack of the first tank division of the Japanese army, and this also means that the Japanese armored troops that broke into the depth of the 500,000 troops of the Eighth Route Army are encircled, and the results are obvious, and it is not only this tank division that has been successfully encircled and annihilated. Two mechanized (motorized) divisions of the Japanese army, which followed quickly, were also buried together. But in order to annihilate the more than 70,000 Japanese troops, the Eighth Route Army paid far greater casualties than expected, with a reduction of more than 100,000 troops

Moreover, in this battle, the Japanese tank division almost completely chiseled through the thick momentum formed by the 500,000 troops of the Eighth Route Army, and according to the recollections of witnesses, as long as the Japanese tanks at that time could break through to the west for another 3 kilometers, the tide of the battle was in danger of being reversed

Note 1: The cost of World War II armored vehicles is generally only one-third to one-half of that of tanks of the same period, and there is no turret structure, so the threat of machine guns hitting the top is far less than that of tanks, so there is no need to particularly strengthen protection, besides, even if it is the main armor, armored vehicles are generally not much thick (to be continued). )