In order to reduce the losses of the troops crossing the river, in addition to the 72 152mm heavy guns of the heavy artillery brigade, the enemy headquarters before the battle of crossing the river also concentrated more than 200 122mm howitzers and more than 500 105mm light howitzers to provide fire support for them. After pulling out these nails, the troops crossing the river were able to calmly disembark and reorganize, and launched an attack on Nanjing, the national capital that had fallen for more than a year, at the lowest level of the regimental level, after all, no matter how weak the Japanese army was, it was much stronger than the national army in 1949, when the general trend was gone, so Hu Weidong's arrangements before leaving could not help but be a little cautious.

However, Hu Weidong did not know that at this time, not only was the main force of the Japanese Central China Dispatch Army annihilated by the 15th Group Army and the Eighth Route Army together, but also because the pressure of the war in the northeast was too great, the Japanese base camp headquarters had no time to increase troops in the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou area, but also transferred some elite troops to fill in other pits, so now there is only one field division left in the defenders in Nanjing, plus two garrisons and the military police and Japanese police in the city, there are less than 50,000 in total, and the defenders of Nanjing are already the largest among the three cities of Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, that is to say, it is impossible for the devils in Nanjing to get reinforcements in a short time

Originally, even the 40,000 or 50,000 devils in Nanjing would have been able to hold the Yangtze River moat with the cooperation of the naval fleet, but now that the large warships have been evacuated and the few medium-sized ships left have sunk or fled, it would be tantamount to a fool's dream to expect them to block the elite selected by the 15 th Group Army, which is the most powerful in China and even in the whole of Asia. Su Yu, who had always been good at continuous operations, on the one hand, arranged for the captured large and medium-sized ships to go to Jiangbei to pick up the heavy equipment and follow-up troops as soon as possible, and on the other hand, he asked the vanguard troops attacking Nanjing to display the style of fighting continuously without fear of fatigue, seize the great opportunity of the large warships of the Japanese Navy to stay away, and advance eastward with all their might at the speed of a rapid march. Take back Shanghai, the Oriental Pearl, as soon as possible!

Before the battle of crossing the Yangtze River, due to the lack of troops and the enemy's too strong strength, the remnants of the Japanese Central China Dispatch Army were forced to concentrate heavy troops on the south bank of the Yangtze River. This means that once the Yangtze River defense line is opened, there will be a flat river behind. Although they were already quite tired, the commanders and fighters of the 15 th Group Army, whose morale was high, were still invincible, and it took less than a week to reach the outskirts of Shanghai. And at the beginning of 1939. Japan's control over Shanghai was still very limited, not to mention the concessions of the Western powers, and even the underworld gangs were more or less armed. When the elite of the 15th Group Army reached the outskirts of Shanghai, all kinds of armed forces in the city either revolted and responded out of patriotism, or were instigated by the underground party, or wanted to make meritorious service to atone for their crimes, or simply wanted to beat the water dogs.

Under the internal and external attacks, the headquarters of the 15 th Group Army, which had thought that it might take at least a month, to successfully recover Shanghai in less than 10 days, which made the whole country cheer with joy, and after destroying the enemies in Nanjing and Shanghai, there was very little left of the Japanese Central China Dispatch Army, which once numbered one million people. When the 15th Group Army was killed under the city of Hangzhou, some of the devils in the city had already found an excuse to escape from the sea by boat, and the rest of them could not resist for a few days.

The successful conquest of Hangzhou marked the successful completion of the battle of crossing the river in a broad sense. During this period, the 15 th Group Army annihilated more than 110,000 Japanese troops, including more than 70,000 captured Japanese troops, while the 15 th Group Army itself suffered less than 30,000 casualties. Due to its lack of preparation for the rapid defeat of the Japanese army, the New Fourth Army, as the head of the land, had only caught a little bit of soup, and the number of enemies annihilated was only more than 10,000, and not a single major city had been occupied. Fortunately, Hu Weidong had expected this, and sent a report to the central government before the battle began, although the theme was coastal defense and urban management, but by the way, he also raised issues such as the division of territory after the war, and these were clearly approved by the central government, and it was enough to do so after the war

Hu Weidong pointed out in his report that only the air force and heavy artillery could compete with Japan's powerful navy, and that no matter how many troops were piled up on land, they could not hold the coastal cities. Although the Red Party has now increased the number of combat aircraft it has to more than 1,000 through procurement from the Soviet Union, compared with Japan, this is only two months of its production, and with the addition of new fighters of the Japanese Army Aviation to active service, the performance has also begun to fall behind, there is a generation gap in the weapon platform itself, no matter how much it is improved, it is useless, and before the J-1 of the Luoyang Aircraft Factory is finalized and mass-produced, the comparison between the advantages and disadvantages of the performance of the fighters of the two sides is difficult to reverse.

At the same time, since the arrival of the first batch of Soviet aircraft, the North China Air Corps has expanded several times in just a few months, although because Hu Weidong has always attached great importance to the construction of aviation schools, and overseas Chinese young people with a certain flight foundation continue to return to China to vote, so the number of pilots is still barely enough, but the quality of personnel has inevitably declined a lot, after all, it was at least 5, or even 10 people, but now it is 1 out of 2 people, think about it, you know that it is far behind. Although the number of heavy artillery on our side has been many times higher than before the Anti-Japanese War, it is not enough in terms of quantity or power to compete with the naval fleet. Therefore, after comprehensive consideration, Hu Weidong believed that at least in the first half of 1939, China could only carry out key defense in the coastal areas, of which the Qingdao naval base must be guaranteed, and the limited defense Liliang was only enough to ensure the security of one large city or two or three medium-sized cities, and considering that few medium-sized cities in China had large regular airports, they could only choose the former, so only Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Nanjing, which were cities along the river that could be directly threatened by large Japanese warships, could be selected. Hu Weidong's suggestion was to concentrate on Liliang to defend Shanghai, so that the mouth of the Yangtze River could be blocked by the way, and the safety of the elite areas of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River outside Shanghai, such as southern Jiangsu and Nanjing, would not be like this. Besides, even if this factor is not taken into account, the value of Shanghai itself alone is far from being comparable to that of Hangzhou (to be continued). )