In yesterday's attack on Hengyang, the 90th Division also launched several attacks on the Japanese positions outside the West Gate, but under the desperate attack of the Japanese army, it did not make a breakthrough, and lost several combat vehicles in the first attack. There are many reasons for this, but it still has a lot to do with the mentality of the 272nd Brigade when it attacked. At least one point, the fact that the direction of the West Gate is not the main direction of attack is an important reason affecting the mentality of the officers and men.

In the first attack, Zhao Fei was trained for the loss of chariots, which also made the troops a little constrained in the attack, and the Japanese positions were not captured in the later attacks, but they did not lose anything. But today, Wang Haitao personally went to the forward position of the 90th Division to watch the battle, which immediately made a fundamental change in the 90th Division. Today's main attack task was still handed over to the 272nd Brigade, and the troops that took the lead were replaced by the 547th Regiment.

The direction of the west gate of Hengyang City is also the direction of the Japanese army's key defense, not only the largest number of troops are arranged, but also the troops guarding the front line are the elite third infantry wing of the third division. In yesterday's attack by the Chinese troops, the 3rd Infantry Wing desperately resisted the attack of the Chinese troops, and although it was not easy to block the attack of the Chinese troops, the 3rd Infantry Wing also lost more than half of it, and today it had to be replaced by the 64th Infantry Wing to go to the front-line position.

At the beginning of today's attack, under the influence of Wang Haitao's tactical thinking of putting firepower first, the 90th Division gave the Japanese army a taste of what it was like to be covered by artillery fire. The division belonged to the 85 howitzer and artillery regiments, the two artillery battalions of the Japanese 240 heavy * artillery battalion, the 130 heavy cannon regiment, and even the heavy mortar battalion of the 547th regiment.

As soon as the shelling came to an end, the 547th Regiment, which had been preparing for a long time, launched an attack on the Japanese position. This time, Du Haifeng sent out all three infantry battalions, and he had the momentum of taking the Japanese position in one breath. In front of the 547th Regiment, it was still ten tanks that were responsible for covering the infantry attack. Of the ten tanks, four Cheetah heavy tanks were lined up in the middle, and three light tanks on each side were lined up in turn.

The Japanese troops on the position had just experienced repeated bombardment by more than 100 heavy artillery, and had suffered heavy casualties. Under the shouting and scolding of the officers, the remaining Japanese soldiers stumbled into combat positions, raised their guns and shot forward.

With the shield and cover of the tank car, the bullets fired by the Japanese army are not very dangerous to the infantry, and only the grenades and bullets thrown by the grenadiers can cause casualties after passing the tank and falling among the soldiers, but there are very few grenades and bullets that can accurately fall into the fighters after crossing the tank, but these grenadiers will attract the return fire of the vehicle-mounted artillery and the vehicle-mounted heavy machine gun.

Seeing that the tanks were getting closer and closer to the front-line positions of the Japanese army, the Japanese troops were impatient, and they used a large number of dead soldiers as they did yesterday, strapped explosives and medicine packs to rush towards the tanks. But today, the 547th Regiment will not make the same mistake as yesterday, and the soldiers who followed behind the tank truck held the automatic weapons in their hands and swept at these dead soldiers who rushed up, and there was not a single one in a hundred dead soldiers who could get close to the tank car.

Soon, under the cover of the tanks, the 547th Regiment rushed to the first-line positions of the Japanese army, and the tanks rushed to the second-line positions of the Japanese army for a short time before stopping, and the fighters who followed behind them could only stop in the same way. It turned out that between the first and second line positions, the Japanese dug an anti-tank trench overnight, and this anti-tank trench was dug so that the tank vehicles had to stop advancing.

The tanks were parked by the anti-tank trenches and monitored the second-line positions of the Japanese army more than 100 meters away, while the 547th Regiment and the 546th Regiment that had come up with reinforcements immediately cleaned up the remnants of the Japanese troops on the first-line positions. There were not many remnants of Japanese troops on the front-line positions, probably only more than 200 people. This point of the Japanese army was besieged by the combined efforts of the two regiments, and it did not take long to wipe out all of them.

Wang Haitao, who was in the forward observation post, was also very satisfied with the attack of the 90th Division, and a smile appeared on his face, which also made Tang Yikuan, who had always been careful, breathe a sigh of relief. After clearing the remnants of the Japanese troops on the position, the 547th Regiment was preparing to launch an attack on the second line of defense of the Japanese army, when the roar of Japanese planes was heard in the air.

Suddenly, the sound of airplanes from the sky attracted everyone's eyes to the air, and the Japanese soldiers in Hengyang City broke out into a burst of cheers. Tang Yikuan, who was standing next to Wang Haitao, said to Wang Haitao: "Commander, the little Japanese plane is coming, do you want to hide it first?" Wang Haitao stood there without moving, and said calmly: "No, the little Japanese * can't fall on my head yet." ”

Although Wang Haitao had a calm expression on his face, he was still a little nervous in his heart, he was not worried about his own safety, but worried about the losses of his troops. Before attacking Hengyang, he had issued an order to the whole army to prepare for the Japanese air attack, but yesterday the Japanese army did not send planes to help the battle, and Wang Haitao was afraid that his subordinates would relax their vigilance.

As a matter of fact, Wang Haitao's worries have gone too far, and the troops have suffered losses many times under the bombing of Japanese planes, and they have already treated air defense as a key point, especially heavy weapons units such as heavy artillery brigades and armored brigades, and they have treated air defense as the most important thing. The artillery regiments of the heavy artillery brigade not only set up their positions separately in battalion units, but also camouflaged each heavy artillery piece.

Now, as soon as the Japanese planes appeared, all the heavy artillery stopped shelling and quickly camouflaged, and at the same time, all the anti-aircraft weapons on the positions were in full array, and even the heavy machine guns were replaced with anti-aircraft firing tripods, aiming their guns at the air. Before the Japanese planes reached the battlefield above, the Chinese side was fully prepared for anti-aircraft shooting.

Yesterday, the Japanese army's flight regiments all went to support the 13th Army, but did not come to Hengyang City. Lieutenant General Mitsuo Yamamoto, commander of the 3rd Division of the Japanese Army in Hengyang City, sent a telegram to Lieutenant General Isamu Yokoyama overnight, requesting that fighters be sent to support. Therefore, today, the Japanese flying regiment sent two flying squadrons with a total of 72 planes to Hengyang City, of which 10 fighters from one squadron escorted the escort and the other 62 were medium bombers.

Soon the Japanese planes appeared in the field of vision, and more than 70 planes were in the air. Over Hengyang City, the Japanese planes were divided into three groups and pressed in three directions: south, west, and north. Perhaps for fear of throwing * into Hengyang City or their own positions by mistake, the Japanese planes rushed towards the Chinese positions far away from Hengyang City.

In the south, west, and north directions, there were at least a dozen planes rushing southward, while the west had the most, with 30 planes, and the north also had 20 planes. The anti-aircraft units on the positions were very well prepared, and when a group of three Japanese planes began to dive down, heavy machine guns, antiaircraft machine guns, and antiaircraft guns opened fire on the ground at the same time, forming several tight firepower nets.

Among them, the most powerful firepower is even those 37 mm caliber twin anti-aircraft guns, these anti-aircraft guns are anti-aircraft weapons after decades, not to mention the current level of Japanese aircraft. In front of the dense network of firepower on the ground, the planes that swooped down from the Japanese army were hit one after another, either falling headlong from the air, or barely flying away with black smoke after being shots, and a few of them exploded into a ball of fireball directly in the air.

The Japanese planes lost more than a dozen planes just by starting the dive bombing, which made the planes that had not yet dived down behind not dare to dive at all, and could only circle at high altitude. Heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft machine guns are not capable of dealing with these planes hovering at an altitude of more than 1,000 meters, and only anti-aircraft guns can pose a threat, but the flexibility of high-altitude aircraft has greatly increased, and it is not so easy for a small number of anti-aircraft guns to hit the planes again.

The Japanese planes circled in the air for a while, and when they saw that there was no chance of diving down, they threw all the aerial bombs and bombs they were carrying from high altitudes. The accuracy of dropping bombs and bombs from high altitudes is not high, but the hundreds of bombs and bombs are dropped, and the technology of the Japanese air force is not bad, one-third of the bombs and bombs thrown on the Chinese positions are still one-third.

Dozens of aviation bombs and bombs exploded on the position, which also brought a lot of losses to Wang Haitao's troops, and the heavy artillery regiment was more or less destroyed by artillery, the most serious being the 85 grenade and artillery regiment, and the * thrown down by the plane happened to be thrown on a bunch of shell boxes, causing the shells to be detonated, and this explosion directly destroyed the six guns of the second battalion, and dozens of officers and men were also killed and wounded.

The Japanese planes began to return after throwing all the * they carried, and the Chinese positions also began to rescue the wounded and clean up the scene. Because of the bombing by Japanese planes, the attack in all three directions was stopped, and it was not until the rear position had almost cleared the scene that the attack began again. The 211st Division at the north gate made the fastest progress, and under the cover of the 152nd heavy howitzer and artillery regiment, it launched an attack on the wall of the north gate of Hengyang City.

Here in the 90th Division, Tang Yikuan once again ordered an artillery bombardment of the Japanese positions outside the city, and the 85th Howitzer and Artillery Regiment also vented their anger just due to the bombing of the Japanese planes on the shelling of the Japanese positions. The loss of the first line of defense outside the west gate of the Japanese army also caused the 64th Infantry Wing to lose two infantry brigades, and only half of the wing's strength was deployed on the second line of defense at this time.

Before the Chinese army launched another attack, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Wing, Inoue Kojiro Osa, said to the commander of the 64th Infantry Wing, Haruo Ozawa: "Ozawa-kun, the artillery fire of the Shina people is extremely fierce, and now the first line of positions has been lost, and the soldiers of our two wings are arranged in such a small position, and they will suffer heavy losses under the artillery fire of the Chinese people. ”

Haruo Ozawa nodded and said, "What Inoue-kun said is very correct, so I will ask Inoue-kun to lead the third wing to move towards the city wall, and I will lead the sixty-fourth wing to hold the position outside the city." Inoue Kojiro nodded and said, "Yo Xi, then the position outside the city will be entrusted to Ozawa-kun, and I will support Ozawa-kun with heavy firepower on the city wall." ”