Episode 69 Blitz on Pukou

The Ming army attacked the other side, and for the Qing soldiers who had no fighting spirit, instead of coming to the enemy, a large number of Qing soldiers scattered and fled, and those who did not have time to run threw down their weapons in large numbers and surrendered to the Ming army.

This narrow area, near the northeast, is mainly the dock area and the railway yard area. In the middle is the town of Pukou, where the headquarters and various military and political institutions are located. To the southwest is the barracks of the Qing army, and most of the garrisons in Pukou are in this area. It can be said that as soon as the Ming army attacked, it would face a large number of Qing infantry.

But at this time, the first tank of the Ming army was still slowly driving on the pontoon bridge, and the infantry only crossed less than 1,000 infantry, and nearly 20,000 Qing soldiers had surrendered.

The Ming army that crossed the river did not expect this situation and was not prepared for a while. They also did not have time to collect the prisoners of war, but only let the prisoners go west, not to block the troops who crossed the bridge. Because the rifles put down by the Qing soldiers were piled up into a mountain, a small number of Ming troops were unable to carry them, and it also became a major obstacle to the bridgehead, and the remaining prisoners were ordered not to drop their guns for the time being, but to raise their rifles above their heads, and then go to the designated concentration place and put them down again.

The Qing prisoners were very obedient, although the guns were in their hands, and there were only more than 100 Ming troops and a few machine guns escorted by them, but no one had the idea of resisting, and they all cooperated with the guns and walked to the west. For them, it was a hard-won opportunity to live.

In order to avoid accidental injuries in the air, the Ming army brought a lot of large Ming flags, and unfurled the national flags in the main gathering places to facilitate aircraft identification. But now that the Qing army had many more prisoners of war than the Ming army, it was easy to think that they had surrounded the Ming army and were attacked. The Ming army gave several national flags to Qing prisoners of war and let them spread over the crowd.

The People's Guard has set up a bridgehead in the West Bank, with armband-wearing gendarmes directing traffic, directing infantry, and guiding tanks, armored vehicles, and self-propelled guns to designated locations. Despite the presence of planes from the sky, this was still the time when the Ming army was most vulnerable and vulnerable to counterattacks. But there wasn't much gunfire around, just the noise of soldiers and the roar of engines.

Xiang Xiaoqiang stood on a bunker on the mother island in the heart of the river, holding a telescope and looking at the situation on the west bank.

It has been half an hour since the start of the river crossing. It seems that the Qing army not only did not react and organize a counterattack, but became more and more chaotic. The Qing army had no fighting spirit, and they never imagined that the Ming army would take the initiative to attack.

Now that the bridgehead is firmly established, it is allowing them to speed up the bridge. As long as the People's Guards have all crossed the river and five more motorized infantry regiments have passed to meet the minimum strength, they can march inland, bypass the Laoshan Mountain Range, and outflank the other end in the northwest.

How to use mechanized and motorized corps is now being explored all over the world. Not only in the overall application, but also in many specific problems, there is no ready-made experience. For example, how a tank should pass through a pontoon bridge. Guderian advocated that one tank should drive completely across the pontoon bridge before the next tank could go up again. Although Xiang Xiaoqiang is Guderian's "disciple", he seems that this is too slow. In this case, you can't get past two hours with just one machine step group.

Obviously, the dogma cannot be copied at this time. Guderian's tank work is a summary of actual combat experience, but it must also be divided into specific situations, especially not to fall into that kind of German rigidity. At the very least, most of Europe's rivers are not as wide as the Yangtze River.

Xiang Xiaoqiang saw that the bridgehead position was getting bigger and bigger, and it was very stable, and the fighters were hovering overhead, and the possibility of being attacked by the Qing army was very small, so he decisively ordered three tanks to be on the pontoon bridge at the same time.

The speed suddenly tripled, and by six o'clock one regiment of the People's Guard, three regiments of motorized infantry, and five motorized regiments of friendly forces had arrived.

According to the predetermined plan, the People's Guard left half of the tanks to support the southwestern end of the operation, and then one mechanized infantry regiment and eight motorized infantry regiments interspersed to the northwest, bypassing the Laoshan mountain range and outflanking them to the northeast. The trucks behind kept driving down the pontoon bridge and quickly formed a formation. In this way, the follow-up motorized infantry regiments followed up one by one, and on the dirt road behind the Laoshan Mountain Range, an uninterrupted queue of military vehicles was formed, which kept driving to the northeast end.

The Qing army in Pukou was basically paralyzed, the Ming army outflanked the troops behind the mountain and marched quickly, passing several Qing heavy artillery positions along the way, and found that they had been blown up like a scrap car yard, a small number of Qing soldiers saw it from a distance, and they scattered and fled, and there was no need for the Ming army to get off the car to fight.

It didn't take long for the stretches of the Laoshan Mountains to come to an end.

The first tank track ran over the rails of the Jinpu Railway and turned southeast. In the south, black smoke was seen in the sky, which indicated that it had reached the northeast end of the narrow strip, and to the south was the railway yard area and dock area.

At half past six, Xiang Xiaoqiang received a signal that the outflanking troops had arrived at the predetermined position, and the northeast end was also strangled to death.

Xiang Xiaoqiang stood on the big pillbox in Zimuzhou, looked at the military vehicle queue at his feet, and the infantry running forward on both sides, and then looked at the black smoke billowing from Pukou on the other side, knowing that the "New Year's greetings" operation on the first day of the new year had been more than half successful.

"How far have we been?"

He asked, looking down.

Li Gensheng, who was standing under the big pillbox, asked the staff officer next to him, and then replied:

"In addition to our People's Guard, 15 motorized infantry regiments have passed."

The temporary headquarters is located on Zimu Island, in this big bunker at the foot of Xiang Xiaoqiang. There was already a group of fortifications of the Ming army on Zimu Island, and before the last battle in the southern suburbs, the Qing army took advantage of the fog to break through here. Now the sub-mother continent has just been recaptured, and the fortifications are empty and charred. Now the largest one, the original command fortification, has been cleared as a headquarters.

Xiang Xiaoqiang jumped down from the bunker and asked Li Gensheng:

"How? It's not a big problem to start now, right? ”

李根生 says:

"Don't worry, my lord, it's going much smoother than we imagined, and it's completely ready to start."

Xiang Xiaoqiang nodded and said:

"Alright, give the order, start attacking."

At the sound of an order, the Ming troops at both ends of the narrow strip began to advance inward.

……

The Qing army repaired for several hours at night, but the effect was too limited, and now many places are burning, there are corpses and wounded everywhere, officers cannot find soldiers, soldiers cannot find officers, and there are a large number of escapes. Soldiers from different armies and divisions mingled, some covering their wounds and howling, some vomiting, some discussing escape, and some looking for food.

Now, except for the three Eight Banner Divisions, which are a little better and have been restored to the regimental level, the rest of the Han army is still a mass of scattered sand, and the largest units that can be commanded are platoons and companies. In the previous hours, Emperor Guangwu ordered the Eight Banners Division to supervise the battle, capture soldiers from different regiments, divisions, and even different armies together, temporarily form combat units, and continue to attack the east bank.

However, in the early hours of the morning, the Ming army's counterattack suddenly became fierce, and almost 10,000 artillery pieces were fired on the east coast, and planes also flew into the sky, and they began to continue yesterday's air raids. Emperor Guangwu felt that at this time, the sky was bright, and it was natural for the Ming army to send planes to the sky to fight, and the effect of artillery bombardment during the day was much better.

However, a large number of routs began to retreat from the south, and many reports were received from Zimuzhou, indicating that the army had seized the pontoon bridge.

At the beginning, Emperor Guangwu and the generals of the Qing army preliminarily judged that this was a self-defense attack by the Ming army to "defend Nanjing". They wanted to get further details, such as the strength, equipment, number, etc. of the Ming army, but the withdrawn rout either contradicted each other, or did not know anything, and did not even fight the Ming army, so they followed a rush back.

The Pukou General Headquarters of the Qing Army could not obtain any useful information, and all it could do was to organize the army to stabilize the defensive line, block this "small force of Ming troops", and mobilize fighters from several nearby airfields to participate in the battle, and shoot down the Ming dive bombers in the sky.

But soon, three kilometers northeast of Pukou Town, a large number of Ming troops, as well as tanks and armored vehicles, were reported in the dock area and the station area, and the defenders were quickly defeated.

Emperor Guangwu and his generals looked at each other, and they all realized one problem: the Ming army was no longer "self-defense".

……

The two attack surfaces of the Ming army, northeast and southwest, each with dozens of tanks as the vanguard, followed by armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery and infantry, steadily advancing towards the middle of Pukou.

There was almost no fighting, and there was occasional sporadic resistance, which was also crushed by the absolute superior firepower of the Ming army. The Qing soldiers rushed to surrender, even those who originally planned to resist did not hesitate to surrender when they saw the roaring tanks, the strange screaming machine guns, and the black hole muzzles of the Ming army.

On the dirt road, in the middle is the advancing Ming army convoy, and on both sides are the Qing army prisoners who are going in the opposite direction. The trucks parked on the side of the road were mounted with machine guns and horns, constantly broadcasting:

"Try to stay on both sides of the road...... Don't block the road...... They all took their guns and threw them in the designated place...... Regardless of the Manchu or Han Dynasty, the Ming army will guarantee your safety, let you eat hot meals, and treat your wounds...... You don't have to die for the Qing court, you can live......"

Listening to the words on the loudspeaker, the Qing prisoners became more and more stable in their hearts, and they all felt that surrender was still the right choice. There was a long queue of prisoners of war, all with guns in hand, but the ranks were surprisingly stable. This is also a wonder in the history of warfare.

Zimuzhou and Yanziji, the Ming army's boat bridge troops are building bridges at a rapid pace. Because neither reinforcements nor retreat, at the moment three pontoon bridges are not enough. Moreover, there are nearly 100,000 prisoners on the other side, and now they are crowded in several places, and they need to be transported as soon as possible, otherwise if something happens, the consequences will be unimaginable.

The swallow rock pontoon frame is slower. Because the river here is wider, about a kilometer. It's much faster on the Mother Continent. A sub-mother continent divides the river into two streams, each only a few hundred meters wide, which can not only be erected at the same time, but also much less difficult to erect. It is much faster to erect two pontoons 600 meters wide than to erect one pontoon bridge 1,000 meters wide.

Now there are two more on the side of Zimuzhou, plus the three of the original Qing army frame, there are already five. Now three were used to increase the Ming army's troops to the west bank, and two were used to transport prisoners to the east bank. For a time, this section of the Yangtze River in Zimuzhou was "busy", and it was as busy as the rush hour.

The troops that had already crossed the river were divided into two parts, one part continued to increase troops in the direction of the main attack, and the other part launched a cordon to the southwest. There were two major threats to the Ming army attacking Pukou, one was the Qing army, 50 kilometers to the east, attacking Zhenjiang; In the other direction, 30 kilometers to the southwest, the Qing army attacking Ma'anshan. The distance to the east is far, and it will not be possible to come in a day anyway, and the threat is not great. However, if the southwest direction is forced to march, Pukou can be reached in the afternoon at the earliest.

In the plan set by Xiang Xiaoqiang and the commander-in-chief, the battle of Pukou will not end so soon, at least one day. Therefore, he deployed a large number of friendly forces 5 to 10 kilometers away on the southwest flank. Li Guoliang's reconnaissance planes were also sent to the sky in large numbers to reconnoiter within 100 kilometers of the east, west, and north directions of Pukou to observe the movements of the Qing army.

Xiang Xiaoqiang sat in the fortifications of Jiang Xinzhou, studying the battle situation with Li Gensheng and the commanders of the five group armies, and constantly received reports from the planes radio. Within a radius of several hundred square kilometers, the Qing army's every move was well understood.

These commanders found that Xiang Xiaoqiang liked to use radio to command troops, and a large row of radios was placed in the fortifications, including walkie-talkies and transceivers. More than a dozen signal soldiers sat in front, each wearing a headset, receiving and transmitting various orders and reports. Some of the signal soldiers were talking to the front line, writing them down on paper, and then turned around and handed them to Xiang Xiaoqiang.

Xiang Xiaoqiang took it, analyzed and judged it with a few people, and then quickly made a decision, and then sent out the command by radio.

These commanders could not help but sigh that the radio equipment of the People's Guard Corps was too strong, and besides, it was too easy to use radio to command troops. It's much faster than traditional heralds and flags.

"But to Lord Xiang," Fang Dongcheng, commander of the 9th Army, wondered, "It's too unsafe for us to use a lot of plain language and clear code to command the front line...... Isn't this clearly heard by the Qing army? ”

Feng Lingcai, commander of the 16th Group Army, took it and said with a smile:

"Lord Fang is too worried, there is a way to be a soldier and a nobleman, and he knows how to command the troops, what if the Qing army hears it? The key is not whether the Qing army hears or not, but whether the Qing army reacts or not. If every order we encrypt and decrypt, the entire speed will be dragged down, and it may give the Qing army a chance. …… In the past, we only knew that Lord Xiang's troops had many tanks and good weapons, but today we know that it is not only these tanks and submachine guns that are really powerful, but also these radios, as well as Lord Xiang's command art! ”

Although Xiang Xiaoqiang knew that Feng Ling was a sycophant, he was still quite comfortable being photographed. Especially Xiang Xiaoqiang saw that he was not only a sycophant, but also really had some skills. Although these words are flattery, each sentence is to the point, and it is where Xiang Xiaoqiang is ahead of his contemporaries.

At eleven o'clock at noon, the Ming army at both ends advanced to the periphery of Pukou Town, and it was estimated that the remaining Qing army was only tens of thousands, but the resistance was fierce, and the Qing army began to resist desperately with buildings and streets as if there was a posture of co-existence with Pukou. The Ming army was struggling to advance inward.

It is no wonder that the captives that have been captured are almost all Han troops, and according to intelligence, there should be two or three more Eight Banner Divisions in Pukou. Now probably the last tens of thousands of people are. They had fought and retreated in the previous battle, did not join the surrendering army, and now they all retreated into the town and began to resist desperately. - Moreover, Emperor Guangwu should still be in Pukou Town.

……

It's a good day. The sun was out in the morning, and it was nice. The fog that lasted for many days completely dissipated on the Chinese New Year's Eve, and the sun came out on the first day of the new year. It is in response to the saying: there is a new atmosphere in the new year.

However, in the southeast sky of Nanjing, a few small black dots faintly appeared in the dazzling sun. By the time people noticed, these small black dots had quickly grown in size, turning into eight fighter jets, lined up in a "four-four" formation. Eight more were drilled out of the air. And then there were eight more......

It was not until more than thirty of them "drilled" from the sun that the anti-aircraft guns on the ground in Nanjing began to bombard, and the sky was soon covered with black clouds.

But these dozens of fighters ignored the anti-aircraft guns and swooped down on the dive bombers over Pukou directly from a height. Before the Ming army group could react, two "Ospreys" were already dragging black smoke to the ground.