The western suburbs of Ningbo, Zhapu Township, the front line headquarters of the Ningbo Campaign of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army

Listening to the rumbling sound of artillery in the distance, and looking at the raging fire that almost stained the sky, almost all the leaders of the Red Army present were dejected, and their faces were as black as the bottom of a pot -- such a passive situation of being beaten on one side was really too embarrassing.

“…… Both divisions on the front line were blown apart, and the artillery positions were simply ploughed by the strong ships and guns of the foreigners...... This battle is really unfought! Mao Zetan, the former commander of the Independent Division of the Red Army and the current commander of the corps, stretched out his hand to take off his military hat and threw it on the conference table, scratching his head in worry, and almost pulling off his hair in a hurry, but in the end he could only sigh helplessly.

Not long ago, he led an independent division and a group of guerrillas from northwest Fujian to Hangzhou, Zhejiang, where he joined forces with the Xunhuaizhou Division.

Immediately, in accordance with the telegram sent by the Central Bureau from Guizhou, relying on the ordnance and ammunition provided by the Shanghai side, the independent division of the Red Army was expanded into the 12th Army Corps of the Red Fifth Front Army.

Mao Zetan, who had just been promoted to the commander of the corps and had a bunch of new equipment, was gearing up to fight a beautiful battle in Ningbo, so that Fang Zhimin, Su Yu, Xun Huaizhou, Le Shaohua, and other people of the Red Tenth Legion, as well as the "Comintern Column" from the future Shijie, could see that his younger brother did not climb up by nepotism, but had real skills......

Who knew that it was not easy to beat the remnants of Yu Jishi's defeated generals, and the imperialist masters of the people actually came to the rescue! And as soon as you start it, it's such a thunderous and Tarzan overwhelming. So that the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, which has not yet departed from the true nature of the mud legs, cannot even think of a feasible countermeasure!

In response to such a situation, Chen Yi, director of the Central Government Office of the Chinese Soviet Republic, who rushed from the Central Soviet Region. and the second supreme leader of the Central Committee after Chen Duxiu, Qu Qiubai, Minister of Education of the Chinese Soviet Republic, and others also felt very depressed, after all, no one wanted to see that they had just arrived in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang war zones, and they made a black start...... This achievement is really humiliating, and it is not conducive to future work -- they captured the magic capital of Shanghai in triumphant songs, and beat the four powers of Britain, France, the United States, and Japan to the ground; And you can't even gnaw on a single Ningbo. When the time comes, how can you still have the face to parachute in the past to become a leader, and what will the comrades over there think of you defeated generals?

But they also have to admit that Mao Zetan was right just now. Under the overwhelming bombardment, the battle of Ningbo was indeed untenable.

Although as anti-imperialist and patriotic revolutionary pioneers, these people used to often say that the foreigners' strong ships and cannons were very powerful, but what was the extent of their power? But there is no very intuitive and vivid understanding. And at this moment on the battlefield of Ningbo. They gave themselves a real experience of the "punishment of imperialism" - and as a result, the entire regiment was almost beaten to pieces.

-- That's three 10,000-ton battleships, a bunch of cruisers and destroyers of thousands of tons, more than 30 huge cannons, and hundreds of "small cannons"! It is the so-called "small cannon" on the warship, and it is also a real heavy artillery on land, and it can be regarded as a treasure of the town army in the Chinese army! And the main guns of those battleships are even more incredible, each barrel is more than 20 meters long, and a person can drill into the barrel of the gun! A cannonball hit, centered on the point of impact. Within half a football field, there are no chickens and dogs! With just a few shells, a village can be razed to the ground!

In the face of such firepower. Even the reinforced concrete coastal defense fortresses may not be able to withstand it, let alone the trenches and anti-artillery pits of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.

Add to that the maximum range of the main guns of these battleships over thirty kilometers...... The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army trapped on the shore, even though it had just acquired a batch of rocket artillery and field artillery that it thought was of good power, was completely helpless against these steel monsters floating on the sea beyond their field of vision.

I have to admit that this kind of situation of not fighting back just after being beaten is really unbearable and desperate.

Chen Yi, who was inspecting the front line at that time and failed to dodge in time, personally felt how shaky the artillery bombardment of the American battleships was, and compared with it, the artillery fire of the Kuomintang army was almost like setting off fireworks -- almost in a moment, his eardrums were almost bursting, his internal organs were all pulled together, and the strings of shells were as dense as machine guns, burning all over the ground, reflecting the sky red, and the shells exploded around him, and the mud raised by the air wave almost buried him. He had never felt so close to death, every second was so hard, like a lonely boat in a stormy sea, like a chicken under a downpour...... At that moment, Chen Yi really thought that his luck had come to an end.

By the time the U.S. Navy's shelling stopped temporarily, Chen Yi had already been buried in the void, and he was groggy and almost dead. Thanks to a brave Red Army rescue team, they rushed to take advantage of the interval between the shelling and desperately dug him out, so that Chen Yi would not die in Huangquan.

As for the guards and cadres who followed Chen Yi to inspect the past, a considerable number of them were already corpses at this time, others were blown to the ground, and some of them fled somewhere and could not be found for a while--thus making him almost a bare-bones commander.

For the overall situation, what is even more fatal is that with the arrival of American reinforcements, the morale of the remnants of the Kuomintang defenders, which was originally on the verge of collapse, has also been raised. In particular, after a small US Marine Corps successfully landed at Beilun Port in the early morning under the cover of overwhelming artillery fire, the Kuomintang defenders in Ningbo even had the courage to take the initiative to break through the encirclement, tear through the blockade line of the Red Army, which had been bombarded by naval artillery, and rushed to Beilun Port to join the US troops. The planned offensive of the Red Army on the remaining strongholds was interrupted and found in a dilemma.

“…… The Fifth Front Command in Shanghai had just sent a contact, and according to the enemy fleet wireless telegram they had intercepted, the Americans had dispatched three battleships and two aircraft carriers this time. It's all tens of thousands of tons of big guys. There were also many cruisers, destroyers, and gunboats, almost every one of which was much larger than the gunboats of the great powers that crossed the Yangtze River, enough to wreak havoc in any port city in China! ”

Qu Qiubai, who had been guarding the command headquarters, took a big puff of cigarette. Then he extinguished the cigarette butt and said with a wry smile to the others, "...... The Yankees actually dispatched so many warships to bombard Ningbo in one go, and they really looked up to us. At the moment, the enemy fleet is only firing artillery on the shore, and after dawn, I am afraid that there will be planes coming to bomb it. Next. The American Army will also come ashore, and it is not known how many troops they have...... If the Japanese, the French and the British followed, then we really don't know what to do. ”

Speaking of which. Qu Qiubai couldn't help but sigh deeply, "...... Comrade Mao Zetan was quite right when he said just now, and the battle in Ningbo really cannot be fought. We can no longer stay on the beach and be shelled, we must temporarily retreat. to avoid the enemy's edge. Try to preserve the living liliang of the Red Army. It should be clear to everyone that the enemy that can threaten us, the nascent red regime, is not only the handful of remnants of the defeated army in Ningbo! ”

When it came to this critical issue, the people present who were still a little unwilling finally had to lament and chose to give up.

Indeed, although the Red Army soldiers were never afraid of sacrifice, now is not a good time to fight US imperialism to the end.

On the one hand. Although the courage of the Red Army fighters who had just been reorganized from the guerrilla units was commendable, they were not yet well adapted to regular combat. Discipline and quality were relatively poor, and firepower could not be compared with that of the great powers--not that the traversers were reluctant to provide heavy equipment, but the transportation conditions of this era were too poor, the transportation liliang was limited, and the ammunition could easily not be supplied--in the face of this brutal contest between steel and gunpowder, no victory could be won without blood.

On the other hand, although the Red Army had almost succeeded in reddening the whole province of Zhejiang, the localities were still very unstable, not only were bandits and bandits lurking everywhere, but there were also remnants of some counter-revolutionary armed forces such as the landlords' regimental training that had not yet had time to be suppressed, and I don't know how many remnants of the Kuomintang reactionaries were wandering around -- do not forget that Zhejiang was Chiang Kai-shek's hometown and one of the places where the Kuomintang liliang was deepest!

Although these enemies were temporarily defeated by the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army with violence, they were by no means willing to admit defeat, but instead entrenched themselves on one side, lingering on their own side, ready to move at any moment, waiting for the opportunity to launch another counterattack. So the red regime in Zhejiang is still very fragile. If the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army had suffered excessive losses on the battlefield in Ningbo, and Liliang had suddenly suffered heavy losses, then the rear would definitely have been in flames at the first time!

“…… In this case, I propose to abandon the objective of this operation and retreat to the inland areas where the naval guns are out of reach to build fortifications and organize defensive battles. ”

Mao Zetan stretched out his hand and knocked on the table hatefully, as if he was lamenting this victory that left at the moment of Zuihou, "...... Yankees, this battle is not over yet! I don't believe it, when you leave the turtle shell on the sea, you will still be as majestic as you are now! ”

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On the other hand, when the Red Army troops on the Ningbo front were still ignorant of the enemy from the Eastern Sea, as if they were seeing flowers in a fog, the Red Fifth Front Army Headquarters and traversers in Shanghai had successfully deciphered the coded telegrams of the fleets of various countries with the help of a century's Jishu advantage, and combined with the information collected from open channels, they pieced together the approximate lineup of the multinational intervention forces:

French intervention fleet: Brittany, battleships Provence.

British intervention fleet: the battleships Malaya, the battleship Rodney, the battlecruiser Hood.

U.S. intervention fleet: USS Pennsylvania, USS Oklahoma, USS Nevada, USS Lexington, USS Saratoga aircraft carriers.

As can be seen from the above list, the U.S. intervention fleet served as the absolute main force in this operation -- both to show off the United States' strong maritime military prowess and to compete with the British Empire, the former dominant, and to declare that military hegemony in the Pacific Rim has begun to shift.

In addition to the above-mentioned capital ships, this joint intervention fleet also has more than 100 auxiliary ships of various types, such as cruisers, destroyers, demining boats, seaplane carriers, and hospital ships, as well as about 30 cargo ships and passenger ships carrying marine forces, with a total tonnage of more than 1 million tons!

Next, as the two belligerent countries that make up the number. The Dutch sent a light cruiser "Java" from the Indonesian colonies, and the Portuguese sent a 600-ton gunboat from Macao—the former following the British fleet, the latter with the American fleet.

zuihou。 The American battleship Arizona, which was a step late for various reasons, has just arrived in Manila with a small independent fleet.

-- It seems that out of extreme contempt for the backward coastal defense strength of old China, the imperialist powers' military intervention in China is completely open. Not only did the basic lineup, warship models, and names of commanders at all levels appear on the front pages of many newspapers and radio stations, but when the five-nation intervention fleet set off from anchor in Manila, an extremely grand farewell ceremony was held with singing and dancing. And the Red Fifth Front Army and the traversers who were far away in Shanghai. This is also clear through the various radio intelligence intercepted.

But the problem is, according to the news program. This large multinational fleet would first go to the Japanese military port of Sasebo to join the Japanese fleet and replenish fuel and provisions, and then turn around and head to Shanghai to interfere with the Red Revolution in China. There should be quite a bit of buffer time. Who knew that the U.S. fleet would change its ...... As a result, the newly formed 12th Army Corps of the Red Army on the Ningbo Front was taken by surprise.

-- By the standards of this era. The whole shijie imperialist shili joint punishment is not something that can be easily carried over!

“…… With the entry of the American fleet into the fray, half of our Ningbo battlefield has collapsed. Comrade Chen Yi was almost blown up by a battleship, 16 field guns were destroyed, and more than 2,000 troops were directly lost...... Although Commander Mao Zetan gave the order to retreat in the early hours of the morning, many units were unable to receive orders in time due to the serious disruption of the communication and command system of the 12th Army Corps after withstanding the shelling of the American fleet......

In the headquarters of the Red Fifth Front Army in Pudong, Shanghai. Fang Zhimin pinched a small wooden stick and explained the current battle situation to a military map. “…… Therefore, after dawn, the troops stranded on the beach were bombed and strafed by the US naval aviation, and were completely scattered. The main force of the Red Twelfth Army retreating from the Ningbo battlefield was bombed several times because the hedgehogs were concentrated on several roads and the target was too obvious.

Although our army successively shot down more than 20 US planes with individual missiles and antiaircraft machine guns, more than half of the remaining heavy equipment was destroyed; next, an arms train running on the Hangzhou-Ningbo Railway was also blown up by US planes, which paralyzed our army's railway transportation for a time and caused certain difficulties in the logistical supply of the 12th Army Corps of the Red Army. What was even more unfavorable was that about 20,000 former Kuomintang Central Army, which was originally stationed in Fuzhou, reached a compromise with Chen Jitang's Cantonese army that occupied Fujian, took the initiative to abandon Fuzhou, and arrived at Ningbo Port by sea under the cover of the American fleet.

This new force that joined the battlefield greatly strengthened the strength of the enemy's commander-in-chief Yu Jishi, so that after relying on the fire support of the US army and successfully holding Ningbo, he was able to take the initiative to go out of the city immediately, and launched a counterattack by biting the tail of the Red Twelfth Army. On the contrary, due to the successive counter-revolutionary uprisings in the newly occupied areas such as Jinhua, Lishui, Xiangshan, and Wenzhou, the combat strength of our workers' and peasants' Red Army was stretched thin and suffered setbacks everywhere.

Fortunately, Comrade Zhou Jianping led the 24th Red Division from northern Guangdong, which promptly filled the gap in the strength of our army in southern Zhejiang, and eliminated several of the most rampant counterrevolutionary local armed forces, which barely stopped the deterioration of the situation, but as long as a decisive victory was not won on the frontal battlefield, the situation in the rear still did not allow for optimism -- after all, our party's mass base in Zhejiang was too weak and far from being able to compare with Jiangxi and Hunan!

Next, after the evacuation of Ningbo, Comrade Mao Zetan tried to organize his troops and fought a battle with Yu Ji in Hemudu, but the morale of the Kuomintang army, which had been replenished by a large number of people, was booming, and Comrade Mao Zetan only gathered less than 5,000 people, and there were still a number of landlord regiments behind him to practice sneak attacks, so after more than ten hours of hard fighting, our army was forced to continue to retreat, and the Hemudu resistance battle failed again, and the entire battlefield in eastern Zhejiang has shown a collapse trend.

In order to save the crisis on the battlefield in eastern Zhejiang, I have asked Xun Huaizhou to lead the 10th Army Corps, which had just been replenished and reorganized, to cross the Qiantang River from Hangzhou to the south, and move towards Shaoxing and Shangyu, waiting for an opportunity to collect the remnants of the Red 12th Army Corps, and at the same time resolutely repel Yu Jishi's further counterattack...... But there is a problem here -- once the 10th Army Corps in Hangzhou advances eastward, then the entire northern shore of Hangzhou Bay, from Hangzhou to Shanghai, will become empty! The few remaining small troops could not resist the forced landing of the European and American powers.

Therefore, if the European and American imperialist powers had committed a force of 20,000 to 30,000 men to land on the northern shore of Hangzhou Bay and cut off land communications between Zhejiang and Shanghai, then a seriously understaffed Red Thirteenth Army Corps on the Shanghai side, even with the advanced armaments of the future Shijie, would probably not be enough to reopen the lines of communication -- in case such a situation I would have to abandon Suzhou and gather all my forces on the northern front to fight a decisive battle against the enemy, while the Kuomintang army and the invading Japanese army on the western front would not be able to deal with it. They can only be put into Shanghai to fight...... In that case, we'll lose a lot! I really don't want this kind of hellish situation......" Fang Zhimin said with some melancholy.

“…… This one...... I think you can rest assured that the forces that the European and American powers can throw into the Chinese battlefield at one time are very limited. ”

Wang Qiu stared down at the map thoughtfully, and replied casually, "...... Britain and France today are no longer Britain and France before World War I. And the United States today is not the United States after World War II...... If they really have the ability to squander tens of thousands of troops at will to attack a rebel force of another country tens of thousands of kilometers away from the mainland, why should they still recruit the Japanese as thugs? (To be continued......)

PS: Ask for tickets at the end of the month