Episode 26 Hirotake's Trade-offs

After thinking about it, Guangwu even felt that if the Ming army's landing attempt was real, it would be even more serious than the current advance in the south. Although the Ming army was attacking fiercely south of the Huai River, it was still busy annihilating hundreds of thousands of Qing troops in the encirclement, and the offensive momentum to the north had stopped. The strategic offensive seems to have come to an end for the time being.

Now in the second stage of the war, Guangwu planned to wait for work, and did not take advantage of the opportunity of the Ming army to clear Huainan and let the Xuzhou Corps go south to relieve the siege. For the hundreds of thousands of Qing troops who were encircled, Guangwu's judgment was already fragmented, and there was no point in rescuing them at this time, and they could give up.

Guangwu's judgment is still very accurate. Now the advantages of the Ming army are obvious, one is air supremacy, and the other is the ability to maneuver on the ground. To deal with such an army, it is necessary to make full use of its strong points and avoid its weaknesses and give full play to the advantages of the positional defense line. When there is an advantage in troops but no superiority in mobility, we should respond to all changes with the same attitude, we should hold a key place, defend to the death, build a perfect fixed position, and wait for the other side to attack.

Don't make the mistake of the first stage again, take the initiative to attack when you see where the Ming army is, and use two legs to compare the march with the wheels of the Ming army's cars, but before you can go a third of the way, people will surround you again. This was obviously caught in the trap of the Ming army's movement warfare, and in the end it was either eaten by the encirclement, or the troops were bombed for a long time during the march, and finally they were blown up alive and the troops collapsed.

The greatest advantage of the Qing army was that it had strong troops and could withstand heavy losses. Even if the Ming army came twice again, the Qing army still had the advantage in strength. Guangwu decided to sacrifice these Qing troops in exchange for time, during which time the Xuzhou Corps should hurry up to build defensive positions, and use barbed wire, trenches and machine guns to meet the Ming army in a fixed positional battle, and strive for an East Asian version of the "Verdun meat grinder". The Qing Dynasty has troops, and it doesn't matter if one or two million people die with the Ming army. As long as a 1:1 exchange ratio can be achieved, the war will be won. Then we can go south and unify the whole of China.

And according to the experience of the Great War in Europe, with the help of well-established barbed wire and machine-gun positions, there was no exchange ratio of only 1:1.

But now, the Ming army doesn't seem to be a fool, and they have the intention of landing in Shandong, and obviously want to stick a knife in the back of the Xuzhou Corps. It seems that people also want to play to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses.

……

Although it is possible that the Ming army is playing deception here, Guangwu knows that he can't think like this. He wasn't going to take any chances.

Guangwu called the two deputy chiefs of the sticky pole and asked them to urgently investigate the Ming army's transportation of troops to the north by sea. The two deputy ministers received the order to go back and arrange it immediately. Just about to check, I found that a piece of information had been sent below, and it had been pressed there for almost a day.

This information was sent back by a spy lurking at the No. 3 Pier of Ningbo Port in Nanming. He reported that on the night of the 11th, the No. 3 pier of Ningbo Port was tightly sealed to prevent idlers from entering, and a total of four container trains entered the night, with a total of 130 sections. In the port near Pier 3, there are three 10,000-ton cargo ships. At eleven o'clock in the evening, the three ships quietly left the port.

Since the spy was unable to enter Pier 3, it is not known what was happening in the harbor.

The sticky pole immediately reported this information to Guangwu. Guangwu analyzed suspiciously. This is clearly smuggling troops. If it was really intended to attack Shandong, then what the Ming army did was indeed very secretive. If it weren't for the fact that the details of the waterline were exposed, then even the Japanese side would have been hidden. On the other hand, if the Ming army is deceiving, then the acting is too good.

There are several mountains outside the port of Ningbo, one of which is called "Cat Mountain", which is the closest to Pier No. 3. Guangwu asked the sticky pole to order the spy to take the binoculars during the day tomorrow, secretly climb to Cat Mountain, and lurk on the mountain. During the day, observe the situation in the harbor, and then at night to see if they are indeed transporting troops, and how many troops there are.

On the night of the 12th, as it was getting dark, the Japanese reconnaissance planes disengaged from the Ming fleet. However, according to the voyage calculation, in the second half of the night, that is, at three or four o'clock in the morning of the 13th, the Ming fleet should have arrived on the Changshan Islands.

The Japanese side was very enthusiastic, saying that it would continue to send reconnaissance planes to search the Yellow Sea during the day tomorrow to see if it could find the flotilla of the returning Ming army. But Hirotake didn't plan to let Little Japan do everything. He did not intend for the intelligence system of the Great Qing Dynasty to be so dependent on Japan. This will do more harm than good. He also ordered the Air Force to arrange for reconnaissance planes to conduct flight reconnaissance in the Yellow Sea during the day tomorrow to search for the Ming convoy.

During the day on the 13th, five reconnaissance planes took off from Dongying Airport to search the waters of the Yellow Sea between the Shandong Peninsula and the Korean Peninsula, trying to find the returning convoy of the Ming army. Of course, the Ming army's fleet may not necessarily return on the same day, but if it does return on the same day, it will definitely not be able to escape the air search.

At 5:30 p.m. on the 13th, in the Yellow Sea on the north side of the Shandong Peninsula, Ming fighter jets suddenly appeared. These Ming fighters are in groups of two, and there are more than a dozen groups of such twin planes, as if they are specially hunting Qing reconnaissance planes. Within half an hour, two Qing reconnaissance planes were searched for one after another, and then they were shot down without saying a word. The remaining three received a radio alert and were too frightened to stay at sea for longer, so they immediately turned around and flew back to base.

Guangwu was very angry when he received the report. He planned to send fighter jets out to sea to reconnoitre, and at the same time look for Ming fighters to meet him. But he looked out the window at the darkening sky, and finally dispelled the idea. …… The pilots of the Ming army had the ability to land at night, but the pilots of the Qing army did not necessarily have the ability. Now every Daqing plane is very precious, and no senseless sacrifice can be made. It would be too much to lose a few more fighters because of landing problems.

At about eight o'clock in the evening, information from the Japanese side came again. At about 6 o'clock in the evening and almost completely dark, the Japanese pilots discovered three 10,000-ton ships headed south by the Ming army on the Yellow Sea. …… Of course, the pilots still landed at night.

…… Daqing still didn't do it himself. In the end, it was done by the Japanese.

While Guangwu's self-esteem was hurt, he once again sighed that the training level of the Japanese army and the spirit of not being afraid of difficulties and death really made the Qing Dynasty unreachable. Don't talk about the Qing Dynasty, it is Nanming, and it is far inferior to others in this regard.

He had imagined many times that if the Qing Dynasty's huge military strength and war potential, coupled with the quality of the Japanese army, not to mention bulldozing the Southern Ming, might be able to dominate the world, right?

…… Unfortunately, this can only be a pipe dream.

……

Japanese intelligence said that these three Ming army 10,000-ton ships were the three ships in yesterday's fleet. But now there are only these three, there are no other four five-thousand-ton freighters, and there are no warships to escort them.

It is obvious that the three troop carriers of the Ming army have finished transporting troops, and now they are hurrying to return home, and they should be transporting troops again. As for why only these three ships came back, it is also very simple, because the "cargo" of these three ships is the soldiers, and the soldiers disembark quickly. The other four were carrying cargo, and unloading was much slower.

At night, outside the port of Ningbo, the Northern Qing spies lurking on Maoshan held binoculars and observed the No. 3 pier a few hundred meters away by the moonlight. Sure enough, just like last night, the Ming army sealed the dock again and drove into four trucks one after another. This time he saw it more clearly, thousands of Ming soldiers got down from the carriage, and a large field of bright steel helmets under the moonlight got on the three freighters silently. The total number of troops is about 8,000 to 10,000.

Then, the three freighters still did not whistle and quietly left the port.

At noon on the 14th, the sticky pole again received Japanese intelligence. The three 10,000-ton ships were not lined up together, but dozens of nautical miles apart, each heading north. There was also no escort from warships. This time there were no more army officers on the deck. Moreover, this time the waterline of the freighter was very low, as if it was fully loaded with cargo.

Guangwu smiled.

…… The Ming army is really perceptive.