Moreover, in many battles such as the Canal Campaign, which was carried out shortly before the Battle of the Central Plains, the 15th Group Army also made great gains, especially in the battle that defeated the Japanese First Mecha Army, countless tanks and armored vehicles were captured, and if you count all those that were repaired later (including assembling with salvaged parts), the total number exceeded 600

So many new tanks and armored vehicles were not only enough to make up for the losses of the armored cavalry division and the new 38th division's armored battalion, but even to build a regular armored division. However, after consulting Ma Zhongying and Sun Liren, Hu Weidong gave the tanks and armored vehicles that could not be used by the armored cavalry division and the new 38th division (Note 1) to the "Luoyang Armored Forces School", which was recently split off from the Luoyang branch of Kang Da.

It turned out that the previous expansion of the armored cavalry division had almost exhausted the students of the school, and even if an armored division was formed now, it would not be possible to find qualified officers and soldiers.

In addition, Hu Weidong also took into account that after the fiasco in the Central Plains General Battle, the Japanese army had basically lost the ability to attack on a large scale at the strategic level, so the opportunity for the Red Party army to fight a mobile war in the future would inevitably be greatly reduced, and the proportion of attacking a fortified position would rise sharply, and in addition, with the continuous compression of the Japanese-occupied area, the Japanese army's air superiority would gradually recover to a certain extent, which would be even more unfavorable to the play of China's armored forces, so even if another armored division was formed, it would not have a decisive impact on the overall situation of the war. There is an armored cavalry division, which is actually barely enough, and the armored cavalry has more advantages in terms of terrain and climate adaptability than the conventional armored divisions with medium tanks as the main force, and the fuel consumption and failure rate are lower. In the 15th Group Army, the next river network areas to be captured in Jihua will be very suitable

But just when Hu Weidong was full of ambition, a telegram suddenly made him angry, he did not expect that the Red Party's military strength had already surpassed that of Lao Chiang's Central Army. The military headquarters of the New Fourth Army is completely different from history, but the tragedy is still unavoidable, but the location and details are different, and the historical "Southern Anhui Incident" has become the "Southern Jiangxi Incident" in this time and space

At the end of 1938. Taking advantage of the opportunity of the two main forces of the New Fourth Army (the first team and the fourth detachment) to stay away from the Fujian-Jiangxi border area in order to cooperate with the friendly forces in Jiangbei, and at the same time the Japanese army also retreated to the east of Hefei and no longer posed a threat to Wuhan for the time being, Lao Chiang drew 300,000 elite soldiers from the more than 800,000 main forces of the national army that were originally prepared to defend against the Japanese attack on Wuhan, on the pretext of preventing the Japanese army from attacking the tungsten refining base. The Fujian-Jiangxi border area, which had already shrunk a lot when the Red Army was reorganized, was suddenly approaching, and at this time, there were only more than 10,000 regular troops in the Fujian-Jiangxi border area, including the military headquarters of the New Fourth Army.

However, in this extremely dangerous situation, Xiang Ying, the deputy commander who held the actual leadership of the New Fourth Army, had long been disillusioned with the Chongqing government because he was deeply influenced by Wang Ming, and he did not realize the seriousness of the problem at all. As a result, as soon as they entered the barracks, they were seized, and the 300,000 national troops seized the opportunity of Xiang Ying's carelessness to immediately launch a full-scale attack. The New Fourth Army in the Fujian-Jiangxi border region is outnumbered, and Xiang Ying has never been known for his military talents, and now he has lost the lead, how can he resist?

The results took less than a few days. More than 9,000 people in the military headquarters of the New Fourth Army died in the middle, and less than one-third broke out of the encirclement, while Xiang Ying was killed by traitors in the chaos of the army, and soon many counties in the Fujian-Jiangxi border region were occupied by the national army, and tens of thousands of party members, cadres and revolutionary masses were arrested and killed, but Lao Jiang "sued the wicked first", slandered the New Fourth Army as a "rebel" and canceled its name, and for a time the whole country was in an uproar, and the history called the "Southern Jiangxi Incident"

After Hu Weidong learned the news from the telegram, the first thought that came to his mind was, "Is Lao Jiang in the water?" You don't have to be in such a hurry to find death, right? As the most important general of the Red Party, he knew that if it were not for the Japanese army's full-scale invasion of China, the Red Party would have been able to compete in the world with military liliang as early as the Red Army's reorganization, and the current people's army is undoubtedly more powerful, with more than one million field troops alone, and more than 2 million if you count the local troops, and the number of basic militia and guerrillas in the base areas behind enemy lines is also more than one million. However, the "government army" in Chongqing, which was generally undertrained and could not even guarantee food for its soldiers, was much stronger, not to mention the vast difference between the two parties in terms of their ability to organize and mobilize. In fact, the Red Party had agreed to formally accept the leadership of Lao Chiang, entirely out of the consideration of unanimous resistance to Japan, and in addition, it did not want to lose points politically because it was the first to sabotage the "anti-Japanese national united front."

In this case, Lao Jiang took the lead, didn't he know the huge gap in the strength of the two parties? This is obviously impossible, in fact, with a series of brilliant achievements of the 15th Group Army and the Eighth Route Army since the Anti-Japanese War, it is enough to make any person with a normal IQ understand how powerful the military liliang of the Red Party is, Lao Jiang can climb to his current position, more or less has two brushes, naturally he will not be so stupid, Hu Weidong thought about it, and finally figured out Lao Jiang's thoughts, "If he is really bent on opposing the red, then sooner or later he will have to fight, in this case, it is better to fight late than early, Even if we can't fight now, it's better to fight again than when our army becomes stronger in the future."

And Hu Weidong thought about it carefully, and suddenly became more and more frightened, the reason why he now felt that Lao Chiang was looking for death was because the two major group armies of the Red Party suddenly launched a general attack on the enemy in Kaifeng and Xuzhou in advance due to overseas factors, and because of the surrender of Okamura Ningji and the chain reaction caused by it, the two major group armies did not pay too much price to solve all the four or five hundred thousand Japanese troops in a short period of time. Therefore, when Lao Jiang suddenly attacked, the Red Party happened to vacate millions of field elites waiting there

Note 1: Soon after the victory of the Huaibei Campaign, the armored battalion of the new 38th Division was expanded into an armored regiment, although the number is still not comparable with the armored cavalry division, but because the armored regiment of the new 38th Division is equipped with medium tanks, if the armored cluster assault tactics are used, because the armored cavalry division has now replaced those medium tanks temporarily added before the Huaibei war with more flexible light tanks, it is not as powerful as the armored regiment of the new 38th Division (to be continued). )