After receiving the battle report from the front, the commander of the 6th Division of Sekigahara realized that his situation was very bad, the enemy had moved to his flank, and the troops were very strong. He originally thought that a brigade holding the dangerous mountain north of Ruiniang would be able to block the enemy's sneak attack, because Sakagaki's headquarters expected that the enemy's vanguard would come with at most one regiment, and the judgment was based on the fact that the enemy did not have so many available troops and not so many trucks.

But now a brigade was broken up in an instant, the fate of the commander was unknown, and the remaining half of the men were rapidly retreating, and they could not establish a defensive line, which showed the fierceness of the enemy.

The commander of the Sekigahara Division inevitably had to re-evaluate the situation. Zhou Youfu is storming the important town west of the Salween River - Leigu, which is a strong city defense is worry-free, but the enemy uses armored trains to easily seize the iron bridge over the river, which is indeed too cheap for them. Now it will take a lot of troops to hold the fortification, and this army from the north will be behind you, and it will be troublesome then. However, since the Allied counterattack in northern Burma, the defense of the fort has begun to take shape under the strict supervision of Kimura, and now is a good opportunity to use this fortress to kill and injure a large number of enemies, how can it be easily abandoned?

Obviously, everything stemmed from the mistake of Shangfeng, the Burmese front judged that the enemy from the north was only 2,000 people, which had been proved wrong, and the chief of staff of the western Datiao on the northern Thai side strictly ordered not to blow up the railway bridge, which gave Zhou Youfu a great advantage.

Sekigahara finds himself caught in the middle, and the situation becomes difficult. In military principle, it is difficult to defend the Shan Plateau without blowing up the bridges along the railway. However, the base camp has not yet recovered from the events in Tokyo, and although the command systems of Myanmar and Thailand have been merged, the military command system has become a mess. Sakagaki has a set of Sakagaki, and the Thai side has plans there. In this way, it will be difficult for him to do it, for the time being, he can only let Ying Zuo Zhenzhao to block the enemy in the north, he still needs to concentrate on dealing with Zhou Youfu's attack here, this is the last mountainous area in Shan State, the enemy's tanks have not played a role, if they break through, it will be the plains of Burma.

Zhou Youfu is studying how to gnaw down this hard bone. It is a land of troops from all sides, and once it is conquered, the next step can be to threaten Mandalay. In order to support this attack, Chu Tingchang sent several Japanese armored trains that had just been captured to make up for the problem that tanks could not deploy in the mountainous terrain.

The Japanese army had been secretly preparing these trains in Vietnam, and as soon as the railway between Thailand and Burma was completed, these trains were assembled in Chiang Mai and waited to go north, but they were intercepted by Chu Tingchang, who was suddenly killed. One of the trains was equipped with a 320 mm mortar, which was a siege weapon.

After Zhou Youfu cut out the enemy's communication cables and telephone lines, the enemy's radio communications began to increase. This allowed Qin Xiaosu to intercept a large number of enemy communications, and his efficiency was at least fifteen thousand times that of Ma Qiang. Chief Chu asked Ma Qiang to quickly learn the business, so as not to prevent Qin Xiaosu from leaving at any time.

Among the communications of the Thai Front intercepted by Qin Xiaosu, the most important thing was that the Japanese troops stationed along the railway were strictly ordered not to destroy any railway facilities. It is not difficult to see how absurd the miscalculation of the situation of the Japanese is. At first, Chu Tingchang and Zhou Youfu didn't believe that there was such a good thing, and when attacking the bridge near Ye Fengsong, Lao Zhou didn't dare to attack the bridge directly, because he was worried that the enemy would detonate * and blow up the bridge. So they sent troops to cross the river from the downstream to outflank the enemy guarding the bridge, but these outflanking actions were expected by the Japanese army, and they had already arranged minefields along the river, causing heavy losses in the attack. The only gain was the discovery of a concentration camp where the Japanese prisoners of war were held, and the rescue of a thousand scrawny British prisoners of war.

However, after conquering the Mae Hong Son Bridge, it was found that there was actually no * on the bridge. The same is true of the confession obtained from the interrogation of the prisoners of war, 1 day ago the Japanese army in Burma did send sappers and*, and had already begun* installation, but then received an order from the Thai Front, and the sappers dismantled * and retreated.

Seeing through the enemy's orders, he is in chaos. At this moment, Chu Ting grew bold. He ordered Zhou Youfu to directly use the armored train stacked with a large number of sandbags as the vanguard to capture the Leikaw Bridge. The frontal Euro 30 mm steel plates of these trains, plus 1.5 m thick sandbags, completely resisted the attack of any Japanese anti-aircraft artillery. The fire of the 75-mm mountain guns on top of it was enough to destroy the enemy pillboxes at the bridgehead. Taking advantage of the enemy's restrained defense, Zhou Youfu slowly advanced for 2 days, and then suddenly exerted his strength and quickly broke through to the city of Legoku, and the Japanese army had no other good way except to dismantle part of the railroad tracks.

As usual, the local hill tribes took the initiative to support the Allied counterattack. The information they provided showed that the fortifications were very strong, and that the garrison was no longer the second-line Japanese army, but about 2,000 men of the main 4th Division, as well as 5,000 Burmese troops and about 10,000 Burmese soldiers. The city defense consisted of 16 main pillboxes and a large number of machine-gun bunkers.

Zhou Youfu's offensive momentum seemed destined to be blocked by Jiancheng. This border city was once the starting point of the Burmese army's attack on Thailand in the 16th century and the Thai invasion of Myanmar in the 17th century.

After the Japanese army took control of this place, they drove thousands of prisoners of war to build this place, and this time it was really impregnable.

It was at this place that Nishiohjo and Itagaki Seishiro finally came together with their opinions, both hoping to rely on this fortified city to stop/kill the Chinese army.

But Chu Tingchang sent Zhou Youfu an engineering weapon - a special armored train equipped with 75 mm mountain guns and 320 mm mortar guns. This gun was modified by the Japanese army when they were in Chiang Mai with surplus supplies.

Before the 5th Army captured Chiang Mai, the huge shells fired by this train once disrupted Tao Mingzhang's attack, because the launch was hidden, Tao Mingzhang could not find the cannon under his nose, and later called American planes to find and destroy it. When Chief Chu learned about it, he hurriedly sent someone to repair the cannon and found all the ammunition to transport it to the front.

Of course, Lao Zhou felt that this cannon was actually a waste, because the range was only 1.2 kilometers, which was closer than the 60 mortar. To attack, it is necessary to bring the entire train within the range of enemy defensive fire. Even if you hide behind a hill, the steam from the train boiler will reveal itself, and it will inevitably attract the enemy's curling fire. And the 300-kilogram shell looks babbling, but a salvo from his 105 howitzer battalion projected far more than this thing.

However, Chu Tingchang could not agree with Zhou Youfu's opinion, and he obtained information through British prisoners of war who participated in the construction of the city defense that the enemy's defense was designed according to the standard of the 105 howitzer. The finesse of the Japanese lies in the fact that they have made adequate, but not wasteful, preparations for the foreseen offensive firepower. If the 105 artillery group is used to attack, it is obviously within the calculation of the Japanese army, which can be described as twice the result with half the effort. But this cannon should have been expected by the enemy. According to British prisoners of war, the sixteen arc-shaped forts of the Japanese army, which were the main support points, were very strong in frontage, and the only weak points were the rear and the dome. Of course, in order to prevent low-altitude bombs from hitting the top directly, they deployed a large number of anti-aircraft guns around these pillboxes, thinking that this was foolproof. And this cannon has become a unique advantage to knock on these hard walnuts, the difficulty is how to send such a large train to the enemy's nose, of course, according to Tao Mingzhang, this cannon is quite hidden when shooting.

Chu Tingchang persuaded Zhou Youfu to use this train cannon by studying a set of offensive strategies, and he asked Lao Zhou to repair the railway during the day, and strictly limit the use of this cannon at night. During the attack, the rest of the artillery positions fired together, masking the movement of the steam wagons and the sound of artillery fire. And with each shot, the gun emplacements had to be moved. Of course, because of the locomotive, this is not difficult.

Before nightfall, the commander of the Sekigahara Division, who was hiding in Taunggyi, had a premonition that something was wrong, because his eyelids kept jumping, which indicated that something strange might be happening. The last time my eyelids jumped was in Mandalay more than a month ago, but at night Chu Tingchang's tank suddenly appeared and attacked his pontoon.

As a precaution, he strengthened a brigade to the fortification. In addition, he contacted the Sakagaki headquarters and asked Kagesa's 2nd Brigade to hurry up and fill his empty flanks.

After nightfall, Zhou Youfu's 105 and 75 running groups took the lead in attacking the outlying strongholds, and sure enough, as the British said, the effect was not good, and the enemy's support points were created against the firepower of these divisions.

However, taking advantage of the sound of the cannon, the mortar train quietly dispatched, the mortar itself was not heavy, but after strengthening the body defense with a large number of sandbags, the output of a thousand kilowatts of the steam locomotive to drag it was already very reluctant.

The train roared and moved slowly, at a speed of 10 kilometers per hour, behind a wooded field, where it could hide from the enemy's forward reconnaissance.

The shells were hoisted with a crane in tow, and Zhou Youfu's people were not skilled and in a hurry, and it took about 10 minutes to load one round.

The 105 artillery positions in the rear, shelling again, the Japanese positions in front instantly fell into a sea of fire, of course, the enemy's losses were limited, and this shelling, just to prevent them from hearing sounds.

With a loud bang, the shell flew out of the muzzle of the stubby mortar cannon. The muzzle flame was much smaller than expected. With the help of the moonlight, the nearby soldiers could even see a black shadow being thrown into the air, and the muzzle velocity of this cannon was only about 100 meters per second, almost like a stone thrower.

The velocity of the shell quickly decayed, reaching the top of the parabola, and then falling headlong. Maybe it's because of the short range, or maybe it's because the warhead is heavy, but in short, it's not bad.

About a small group of Japanese troops in the fort were resting, and as veterans of several years of fighting, they patiently waited for a possible charge after the enemy shelling stopped, and they deployed 9 heavy machine guns around it, a 20 millimeter anti-aircraft gun that could fire flat. There were also 2 machine guns and a battle defense gun in the pillbox, which was enough firepower for the enemy to drink a pot, and of course, after a day of shelling, they were confident enough about the fort to be strong. At this moment, a soldier with a bayonet put a line behind a row of lines on the wall, which indicated that their pillbox had been hit four times by the enemy* and as many as twenty times by direct artillery.