I am an industrial worker during the War of Resistance

Chapter 100 Bloody Battle South of Yinshan (Part 3)

"Baka yarou!" Hearing the screams of wounded soldiers in the camp, Sakai Koji swung his sword fiercely at a small tree in the camp.

However, the small tree, which was barely thicker than a thumb, was not cut down; instead, it clamped Sakai Koji's military sword tightly between its branches.

Sakai Koji tried to pull out the knife, but couldn't. Instead, the knife bent slightly.

Enraged, Sakai Koji shouted, "Men, uproot this tree and burn it!"

"Hey!" Sakai Koji's guards quickly came over, first helping to pull out Sakai Koji's military sword, then uprooting the small tree and burning it.

Sakai Koji, who had gradually calmed down, looked at the faint outline of the Yinshan Mountains in the distance against the night sky.

It knew that it must not let anger cloud its judgment, and it could not act rashly in the face of such a cunning enemy.

Judging from today's battle, its opponent is an extremely intelligent person.

When he has the advantage of terrain, he will definitely make the most of his advantages.

And you must also find your own strengths.

Their advantage lies in having an air force.

These people hiding in the mountains, once they start moving, can't remain undetected forever; they will always leave clues.

With that thought, Sakai Koji turned around and went back into his tent.

"Someone, draft a telegram," Sakai Koji ordered.

"Yes, sir," replied Lieutenant Colonel Inoue Kamejiro, who was following behind Sakai Koji.

To His Excellency Commander-in-Chief Hideki Tojo:
On September 26, 1937, our unit made contact with the enemy in the Yinshan Mountains.

The enemy is extremely cunning and treacherous.

Using landmines and light mortars as offensive weapons, they constantly launch surprise attacks on our army.

However, our soldiers fought bravely, killing more than 800 enemy soldiers and wounding countless others.

The enemy was overwhelmed and could only retreat into the deep mountains with their fallen soldiers.

Although our army won a great victory, the landmines and mortars laid by the enemy also caused damage to our troops.

In the fierce battle, our troops suffered over a hundred casualties and nearly four hundred wounded.

In order to protect the lives of Imperial soldiers, our troops have temporarily withdrawn from Yinshan and are stationed outside the mountains.

The enemy has suffered such a heavy blow today, and their camp must be full of wounded soldiers. They will surely leave obvious traces in their hiding places in the Yin Mountains.

Therefore, I request that Your Excellency Commander send reconnaissance aircraft again tomorrow to conduct aerial reconnaissance of Yinshan. We are sure that we will find something.

If the reconnaissance aircraft discovers the enemy's base, in order to prevent the enemy from escaping, please request the Second Air Group of the Air Force, which has been transferred to Yanggao Airport, to dispatch its fighters and bombers to carry out a fierce bombing of the enemy in the mountains.

While bombing from the air, our troops will also rapidly advance into the mountains to launch a devastating attack on the enemy's headquarters.

Sender: Koji Sakai.

Sakai Koji's adjutant showed absolutely no surprise when his brigade commander announced the almost fantastical number of enemy casualties.

For the Japanese, Sakai Koji was already considered very conservative.

If it were another commander, the number of enemy kills would be at least three thousand.

As for why not a single enemy's body or weapon was brought back...

That can only mean that the war was too intense and there was no time to deal with those things.

After Sakai Koji signed his name on the telegram, Lieutenant Colonel Inoue Kamejiro immediately went to the confidential office to send the message.

Sakai Koji, however, let out a deep sigh.

He knew very well that he had lost this first battle.

However, as long as the war is not over, there is still a chance to turn the tide.

We'll see if the reconnaissance plane can find any trace of the enemy tomorrow.

Yanggao Airport, located less than 50 kilometers from Datong, has now been repaired and is ready for operation.

Fighter jets and bombers from the Second Air Group also transferred to Yanggao Airport yesterday.

In this way, Yanggao Airport is no longer just a place where reconnaissance planes can barely take off and land; now, as long as the reconnaissance planes can detect enemy activity, they can do so.

Within an hour, the fighter jets and bombers that had already been transferred to Yanggao could cross the more than 200-kilometer distance and launch a deadly air strike against the enemy in the Yinshan Mountains.

After receiving Sakai Koji's telegram, Hideki Tojo completely scoffed at Sakai Koji's claim that he had killed more than 800 enemies.

They're all seasoned veterans in the military; who doesn't know the tricks of the trade?

Hideki Tojo believed it was possible that Sakai Koji had eliminated a significant number of enemy troops, but he was absolutely exaggerating the number of Yao.

Although Sakai Koji and Hideki Tojo didn't get along, he wouldn't expose the matter.

Because it doesn't do me any good.

Instead, when reporting to the Kwantung Army Headquarters, it changed the number of enemy troops killed from 800 to 3,000.

The greater the merit of those below, the greater one's own merit will be; Hideki Tojo understood this principle very well.

As for the discrepancy between the archived telegrams?
Who would bother with those things?

Even if someone were to compare the telegrams, they would eventually match them up.

As for sending air force to bomb the Yinshan area, Hideki Tojo believed it was feasible.

After all, it's a continuous mountainous area, and it would be really difficult to penetrate it entirely by infantry.

It's true that it has conflicts with Sakai Koji, but the army in the Yinshan Mountains to the west is a thorn in its side.

If you don't remove it, you'll be the one suffering.

Hideki Tojo then sent a telegram overnight to the Second Air Group, which had already partially entered Yanggao Airport, ordering all fighters and bombers to be ready to take off at any time.

If the reconnaissance aircraft discovers traces of the enemy in the Yinshan area.

Therefore, fighter jets and bombers must seize the opportunity at the first moment and deliver a devastating blow to the enemy.

That night, Regiment Commander Chen and Political Commissar Liu were also discussing whether there were any loopholes in the ambush they had set up for the Japanese air force.

"Old Chen, I think there's no problem with our location."

Here, two mountains enclose a valley, with steep cliffs inside the valley and gentle slopes outside.

The entire valley is eight or nine kilometers long, with five forks and six or seven bends.

The width of the valley varies between fifty and one hundred meters.

The relative height of the two mountain peaks is generally between 300 and 350 meters.

This is a really good, secluded place.

If the enemy discovers this place, they shouldn't doubt that this isn't our headquarters.

The intelligence our comrades from the Special Branch brought back shows that the Japanese Air Force's bomber bombing capabilities are extremely high.

They require that the bombing error during horizontal bombing at an altitude of 3,000 meters must not exceed 30 meters.

However, in this mountainous and complex terrain, maintaining this level of performance would be extremely difficult.

We don't need them to lower their altitude too much. Just lower them to 2,500 meters, plus the height of our ground-level mountains.

The hit rate of our 37mm anti-aircraft guns will be greatly improved.

Another point I made yesterday was about using a small number of anti-aircraft machine guns to lure the enemy. I thought about it again last night and realized it was a bit unnecessary.

This might actually frighten the enemy and prevent us from achieving our objective.

It might be better to use a small number of general-purpose machine guns and rifles instead; that might be more effective.

There's also the matter of setting targets to lure.

Old Chen, what do you think about using dozens of empty horse-drawn carts filled with straw?

If two frightened horses in a valley were pulling a carriage, they would crash into and overturn a hiding place right under the nose of a reconnaissance plane.

Then dozens of horse-drawn carriages, fully loaded, came into view.

Do you think the Japanese will fall for it?

After listening to Political Commissar Liu's words, Regiment Commander Chen thought for a moment and said, "I think the Japanese should be able to fall for it."

One reason is that the terrain here is suitable for concealment, and another is that it is reasonable for the horse to be startled and knock over the hiding place.

Most importantly, we used rifles and light machine guns to retaliate against the Japanese reconnaissance planes, intending to shoot them down.

This should give the Japanese the illusion that we care about this place, and that it should at least be one of our logistical bases.

I think it should be possible.

The question now is how many planes the Japanese will send, and whether we can handle them.

Even if we can't eat too much, it can still serve as a warning to the Japanese, making them more careful next time they want to send planes over and not dare to bomb us at low altitude.

Overall, this is still beneficial to us.

"That's what I'm thinking too. We don't have an air force yet, and the aircraft that are stationed there are only just starting to develop."

"We can only rely on our existing strength to give the enemy a warning for now," Political Commissar Liu said in a deep voice.

The anti-aircraft weapons under Commander Chen's command now total ten 12.7mm heavy machine guns for both anti-aircraft and surface combat in each battalion.

There were also five heavy machine guns for both anti-aircraft and anti-tank purposes in the supply corps.

In addition, there were twelve anti-aircraft machine guns from the regimental anti-aircraft company.

His reinforced regiment had forty-seven 12.7mm heavy anti-aircraft machine guns.

In addition, there were the four 37mm single-barreled anti-aircraft guns in the anti-aircraft gun battery.

Such air defense firepower is considered to be quite dense in a small area.

Although the anti-aircraft machine guns were no match for bombers, the four anti-aircraft guns could still hit bombers below 3,000 meters.

Around noon the next day, the three Japanese reconnaissance planes that had been circling over the Yinshan Mountains for more than two hours were preparing to return to refuel.

Suddenly, an observer in a reconnaissance plane spotted movement in a valley to the left and below the plane.

It quickly signaled to the pilot to fly towards the valley.

When the plane flew over the valley, the observers finally saw it clearly.

Hidden within this winding valley is a base.

At this moment, a two-horse carriage, with the horses startled, began to veer uncontrollably back and forth across the valley.

The shelters made of a lot of wood were all knocked over.

Peeking out from under those hidden sheds were dozens of large horse-drawn carriages, each loaded with tall loads of goods.

This place is clearly an extremely important logistics base.

And the place that could be located alongside such a logistics base is very likely the enemy's command post.

This discovery thrilled the reconnaissance pilots.

It's been several days, but we've finally caught them.

To further confirm the information below, the pilot descended to two thousand meters and then flew rapidly along the valley.

At this moment, the observer noticed that in the valley below, many people were firing rifles and light machine guns at him in the sky.

But I was at an altitude of two thousand meters, so the bullets from those rifles and light machine guns could not possibly reach me.

Even if you lower yourself to a distance of 1,000 meters, they are helpless against these infantry light weapons.

However, in order to report this news back as soon as possible, the Japanese reconnaissance planes did not want to take any risks.

The observer in the back seat immediately sent a telegram to Yanggao Airport, saying that he had discovered an important enemy logistics base, which might also be the enemy's command post, because there were a lot of people and warhorses there.

Yanggao Airport had already received orders that as soon as the reconnaissance planes over Yinshan spotted the target, they could immediately take off and bomb it.

After receiving the message, Yanggao Airport simply reported the intelligence to Datong and took off immediately without waiting for a reply.

Anyway, Datong must have received news of the reconnaissance plane by now.

This takeoff operation involved eight Type 95 fighters escorting seven Type 93 heavy bombers.

The fighter jets were there to defend against attacks from fighter jets flying in from the direction of Taiyuan, which could have ambushed these Type 93 heavy attack aircraft.

The Type 93 bomber (writing "heavy bomber" is too awkward) had a very slow speed of only 220 kilometers per hour. If it encountered fighter jets from Taiyuan, they wouldn't even be able to escape.

However, they are more than sufficient for dealing with armies that lack even anti-aircraft firepower.

At this time, Sakai Koji, who had received the message from the reconnaissance plane, also began to go directly into the mountains, forming a formation in which the main force provided mutual cover.

They split into several groups and began to advance toward the coordinates reported by the reconnaissance aircraft.

Even the tanks and armored vehicles followed them into the mountains. These tanks went wherever they could, doing their best to provide cover for the infantry.

Those field guns couldn't be used effectively in the mountains, so they had to stay at the camp.

This time, Sakai Koji's expedition into the mountains involved a full-scale truck march. The trucks drove as far as they could, and then the infantry disembarked and marched on foot.

After the infantry had marched for nearly half an hour, the tanks and armored vehicles behind them caught up.

The march went very smoothly. The five armies that marched into the mountains did not encounter a single ambush or landmine along the way.

But after traveling more than ten kilometers through the winding mountainous region to the southwest, the tanks and armored vehicles simply couldn't go any further.

Sakai Koji then ordered the tanks to remain stationed in place, while the infantry continued to advance, aiming to get within ten kilometers of the enemy before nightfall.

Because the coordinates provided by the reconnaissance aircraft showed that they only needed to go more than 30 kilometers into the mountains to catch those damned enemies.

Once his bombers have bombed the enemy, if conditions permit, he can march overnight to capture those damned guys.

Just as Sakai Koji and his men had broken free from the tanks, the bombers finally reached the Yinshan region.

The dozen or so planes in the sky, like a dark cloud, rushed straight toward their target.

Looking at the planes flying overhead, Sakai Koji grinned and said, "Alright, you little moles, our game of catching mice can finally be over."

Wait for our arrival.

I will show you what true hell is like.

(End of this chapter)