Koshizawa Daisa's fast wing captured most of the port at dawn. Osa himself, followed by the third landing force, went ashore. Originally, I was worried that it would be a bad battle, but I didn't expect that after the naval guns joined, the enemy quickly retreated. The navy was afraid to invest in the first place, so that his first attack force suffered heavy losses, which made Dazuo angry. However, the port facilities were finally taken over in a more or less entirety. The enemy seems to have made preparations for sabotage, but their * is insufficient, many places have laid lines, but they are not installed *, it seems that God bless the 6th Division. When they landed in Brisbane, the situation was not so good, when the defense of the US-Australian coalition forces was not only two coastal fortified artillery positions corresponding to the north and south, but also the US and Australian army artillery groups hiding in depth. After the forced landing, the enemy had already destroyed all the port facilities and could not unload heavy weapons, and the Australian army launched several more sneak attacks during the night. In retaliation, the Japanese Navy's battleships and heavy cruisers launched an artillery bombardment of the city of Brisbane. The 6th Division then carried out a massacre of the city's inhabitants. MacArthur, who had declared himself before the war that he would never take half a step back from Brisbane, fled overnight before the siege.

Just after the Japanese occupied the port of Bangkok, the large landing aircraft carrier Kumano Maru landed at the port of Samut Song, 60 kilometers west of Bangkok. It turned out to be a spare tire for the port of Bangkok, in case the port was damaged and it was impossible to send heavy weapons to the shore. Of course, there is another layer of strategic significance, the port of Samusong is located at the root of the Malay Peninsula, and a bridgehead is established here, which can quickly advance westward and cut off the three divisions of Tao Mingzhang's division that are intercepting Sakagaki on the peninsula.

According to Sakagaki's plan, his 8th Division would carry out a decisive outflanking of Tao Mingzhang here, so that the disadvantage of the entire Malay Peninsula would be reversed. However, due to the limitation of vehicles, the main force of his 8th Division is still in Singapore. Landing here, these were two squadrons below the divisional regiment. Of course, due to Huang Tianyang's negligence, there is almost no fortification here.

If Sakagaki's plan is completely realized, he will stage a big battle in Thailand that will bloom on all sides, and in terms of troops, it will be 6 absolute main forces, the top 10 divisions (2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 10th) and 5 mixed brigades, against the 8 to 10 divisions of Chu Tingchang, calculating the strength, the Japanese army still has a considerable advantage.

Of course, the real strength of Chu Tingchang has always been a mystery, not only the omnipotent southern organs can't figure it out, in fact, even the allies and Chongqing, and even the Chu army, few people can figure out Chu Tingchang's number and strength. After Chief Chu had Xiong Xianghui, the deputy military commander, to help him, only the two of them could figure out these numbers.

In addition to the general division, the Chu army was in the rear, and a large number of "supplementary battalions" with no number and an unknown number were formed; a large number of "machine-step composite battalions" directly under the military department, with chaotic numbers; "engineering infantry battalions" for storming cities and pillbox areas; The "Picket Corps", which functions similarly to the gendarmerie, also includes the "Tank Training Corps" and the "Independent Infantry Brigade". and "armored assault groups", which are not permanent.

Stilwell sent a lot of people down to investigate the size of Chu Tingchang's army and the chaotic establishment, of course, he knew very well that the establishment was messy and was to deal with him. Therefore, the people in the US military staff even guessed the information every time, and the information was different. Only when Chu Tingchang stretched out his hand to ask the Americans for weapons, or dispatched railway capacity, could one side of its true strength be glimpsed.

The upper limit of the strength of the Chu army obtained by Stilwell's staff is 200,000, which is guessed by the size of the soldiers it may recruit, but the self-proclaimed size of the Chu army is only 110,000, which is obviously only the lower limit, according to the calculation of the military salary issued by the Allied forces, his troops are about 110,000 people in 9 divisions, but the number is obviously small. One of the biggest problems is how to pay the surplus if he is hiding the surplus army. Just letting Zhou Youfu smuggle should not be enough to make up for such a large sum of money.

And the light weapons that Chu Tingchang stretched out his hand to ask the Americans for can roughly equip 250,000 people, and even if you consider the losses in the war, there should be a lot left. In addition, his second-line troops, often using British and Japanese equipment. The Japanese weapons captured on the battlefield and the looted British arsenal are also another mystery.

In any case, Sakagaki planned this operation according to the scale of 120,000 people in Chuting. If the battlefield is close to the sea, and the naval artillery can compensate for part of the lack of heavy weapons, then there will be no big problems. Sakagaki was not worried that the enemy would avoid the coastal zone and engage himself inland. Because the railway connecting the north and the south passes through Bangkok. And Bangkok, within range of naval artillery.

When the people in Bangkok were panicking, He Bisheng's synthetic brigade was unloading in Bangkok, and this brigade was supposed to go up to support the attack of the 200th Division, but it received a telegram last night and got off in Bangkok.

He Bisheng met with Huang Tianyang. Told that the situation was serious, Commander Chu actually asked to abandon the port. After all, he had fought the Battle of Calcutta and knew that this was a necessary measure to avoid the enemy's naval fire. But during the meeting, enemy shells fell into the city of Bangkok. Japanese naval reconnaissance planes, which took off from Malay, began to indicate targets for the fleet. Huang Tianyang originally thought that the Japanese destroyer's artillery fire could not reach here, but judging from the sound of the explosion, it was definitely not the fire of the light cruiser or the destroyer, and it was obvious that the enemy had dispatched quite powerful units.

The shells were fired from eight 410-mm main guns and nine 140-mm secondary guns on one side of the battleship Nagato. He Bever's synthetic brigade has only 12 Priest self-propelled guns, which is clearly no match. But he and Huang Tianyang both knew the importance of Bangkok, once the enemy recaptured Bangkok, it would mean that the men and horses in the three directions would be cut off, except for the east-west railway, which could not be connected, and the most dangerous thing was Tao Mingzhang on the peninsula, because his troops had no way to retreat.

The two of them then decided to take advantage of the Japanese troops ashore to complete a surprise attack, not to drive the enemy into the sea, but to inflict heavy damage on the enemy and delay the time. But a telegram from Chief Chu then arrived, asking Ho Bisheng's troops to quickly unload their trucks and take all the fuel with them, and then head north and withdraw from Bangkok.

The two could only follow the order, and the 203rd Division, together with the picket corps and He Bisheng's independent mechanized infantry brigade, retreated north, where to wait for further orders.

The vanguard of the 6th Division entered the city and found that the city was littered with colorful sheds, floats thrown in the streets, and the ground was covered with firecracker debris, as if a celebration had just been held. It seems that the enemy was really deceived by Lord Sakagaki and was taken by surprise. There was no resistance in the city, and the troops easily approached the area one street from the palace. It looks like the enemy is fleeing.

The commander of the Kanda Shozhong Division, without waiting for the follow-up troops and heavy weapons to be unloaded, immediately ordered the troops to advance. Naval artillery fire continued to fire and cover the advance of the army. This is a rare scene of close coordination between the army and navy. At two o'clock in the afternoon, the troops had already conquered the railway station, and at three o'clock, the troops had advanced to the point of 2 kilometers north of the railway, and established a defense, and Lieutenant General Kanda personally came to the railway station to celebrate the victory.

Kanda led a group of officers to stand in front of the huge stop sign at the Bangkok train station, and Japanese reporters flocked to take photos and movies. In the background, in addition to the station sign, there is also a stopped train.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I want to remind you of the significance of this moment." Lieutenant General Kanda Masa said proudly, "Chu Tingchang's big blood vessel was cut off by me. ”

Sawan, 150 kilometers from Bangkok, has just been established as the headquarters of Chief Chu. He is studying the map with Xiong Xianghui, and now the situation in the entire Southeast Asia, the two sides are entangled with each other and messed up. Before the First Sino-Japanese War, several main divisions of the Japanese Army appeared around, trying to retake Thailand in one fell swoop and beat themselves back to Burma.

"The enemy's pre-war strategic deception was well done, and 419 was also deceived." Chu Tingchang said.

"The enemy is stubbornly fighting, not only is the force scattered, but even his own rear is gone."

"The Japanese like to carry out the battle on their backs and make desperate bets. They relied on more troops than we did. They thought that we had only three divisions that could fight, and that there were six young divisions that were not sufficiently trained and poorly armed. Therefore, they invested six elite main divisions and five mixed brigades, thinking that they could press us in terms of strength and quality. This calculation is also quite shrewd. ”

"It looks like you can only play your hole cards." Xiong Xianghui said.

"It's a bit early, but it's almost impossible to hide, so let's show it."

"If this happens, not only Chongqing will be shocked, but I'm afraid Stilwell will also be shocked. Recently, Chongqing has been tasked with investigating the scale of the expansion of the Fifth Army, and I will inevitably be responsible for not investigating it when the time comes. ”

"In a hurry, President Roosevelt made it clear that I would accompany the old man to Cairo next month and explain to them when the time came. As long as you swear absolute loyalty to Lao Jiang and emphasize that the troops are still surnamed Jiang, you should be able to fool the past. On the side of the Americans, as long as they can win the war, their weapons will never break. ”

In the city of Bangkok, the Japanese army began to search for the former headquarters of Chu Tingchang's troops, and Huang Tianyang retreated in a hurry, and many things were destroyed in time and were obtained by the Japanese army.

Lieutenant General Kanda, who was full of ambition, personally checked some of the drawings of the armament and engineering construction left by the enemy, and when he saw it, he couldn't help but gasp.

The enemy's highway grade division is actually subdivided into ten levels. These ten levels correspond to the passing capacity and average speed of different mechanized equipment. Before the war, he had inspected the European military, and the German army, which was famous for its mechanized warfare, did much better than the Japanese army in subdividing the highways below the expressway, but there were no highways in Asia, and there were few decent four-lane roads outside of Japan. However, the staff of Chief Chu Ting was able to clearly distinguish between mud and gravel roads, mud and gravel roads with high roadbeds and good drainage, tamped dirt roads and roads that were prone to water accumulation, which was obviously not the rigor and vision that the army of an agricultural country should have. Before their troops moved, they also attached far more importance to meteorological intelligence than the Japanese army. Obviously, Chu's staff also had to give full consideration to the damage to the roads caused by the tracked vehicles in the rain, as well as the negative impact on the follow-up of the motorized troops.