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Text Chapter 345: Bunker trucks run rampant

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    In the early morning of Jinzhou City in October, the sea fog was thin and frost was obvious, and the gradually cold air was filled with the unpleasant smell of explosions and decay.

    The artillery shells pouring down from the Lushan National Defense Force artillery position fifteen kilometers away raged all night. There were craters and explosion debris everywhere in and around the city, and corpses staggered here and there in various grotesque shapes.  A river speedboat ran aground on the Daling River with its belly exposed. A dozen Japanese infantrymen were dismantling the machine guns on it in an attempt to strengthen the city's defenses.

    After staying up all night under the shells, Otani Kikuzo walked out of the room and saw several soldiers cleaning up a war horse that was killed last night. After spending countless money to cultivate the war horse and sacrificed for the country, he had to continue to satisfy the hungry people.  Soldier.  Due to the early preparations of the National Defense Force, they not only evacuated tens of thousands of people near Jinzhou and Linghai, but also burned everything they could eat and drink before leaving, and then retreated to the Lushan and Shishan areas to take advantage of the mountainous terrain to block the attack of the 21st Brigade.  .

    After the Battle of Qingdao started, the Japanese 21st Brigade, which had cut off the Beijing-Fenghuang Railway, moved to the defense. However, supply problems have been bothering Otani Kikuzo from the beginning to the present, especially after the Fourth Division of the National Defense Forces from the Shanhaiguan direction came to support.  The two sides fought dozens of times in the area less than 30 kilometers from the sea, resulting in the destruction of a large amount of food supplied from the sea.  In addition, the large and small Ling Rivers were silted up and ships exceeding 50 tons could not travel, so the 21st Brigade received less and less support.  Especially after the Battle of Qingdao, the Chinese Navy dispatched all five submarines to the waters from Bohai Bay to Incheon to launch an unrestricted stranglehold on Japanese surface ships, resulting in the disappearance of several transport ships that were supposed to arrive.

    With the National Defense Force receiving two submarines again and the serious 914 incident in North Korea, Jinzhou seemed to be forgotten all of a sudden.  Only after Masaki Teruchi of Lushun tried his best to organize various ships to bring back the more than 10,000 defeated soldiers in Longkou who were almost wiped out, did he restart the Jinzhou support plan, but Lushun itself did not have much reserves.  The navy was blocked outside the Bohai Bay again, and supplies were getting less and less.

    The soldiers set up a large pot, chopped up the blood-stained horse meat and threw it into it. Soon a bowl of hot horse broth with no visible shreds of meat was delivered to Otani Kikuzo, although a dead horse was not enough.  Nearly seven thousand soldiers needed it, but the scalding soup still warmed their hearts, which were getting colder and colder.  But just as the soldiers were queuing up to receive the broth, several artillery shells fell without warning. The smoke caused by the fire provoked an attack from four 105 cannons on Lushan. The cooking room was blown away by the explosion almost instantly.  The horse broth also completely turned into slurry.

    Seeing the "deliciousness" in their mouths being destroyed, the Japanese soldiers gritted their teeth in hatred.  But there was nothing they could do against the opponent's long-range artillery. These artillery deployed on the top of a mountain fifteen kilometers away were at a high altitude and below zero.  Taking full advantage of the direct fire advantage of cannons, the 21st Brigade organized death squads many times to try to blow up the artillery positions.  However, several infantry and machine gun artillery positions were deployed condescendingly, causing heavy casualties to the troops and wasting the few remaining reserves.

    No lights!  There can be no flames!  Even when walking around, you have to be wary of your opponent's cold shots at any time. This kind of suffering was something Otani Kikuzo didn't expect before landing. He thought that after landing, he would be able to square off and fight an upright battle like the Russo-Japanese War, but the opponent  Not willing to have direct contact at all.  Except for the fight for Jinzhou in the first few days, which was pretty decent, the rest were almost all exhausting cold shots, or it was just a bad fight of strangulation and exhaustion.

    If there are sufficient troops and strong material support, Otani Kikuzo will not be afraid of this kind of strangulation. Except for one brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division from Shanhaiguan, the National Defense Forces opposite are all old Beiyang troops. Whether they are individual soldiers or squads, their combat effectiveness is far away.  Not as elite as the 21st Brigade, nearly 7,000 troops would not give up even if they were facing 30,000 to 40,000 men head-on. However, the 21st Brigade was trapped in supplies and could not move.

    There is no horse meat soup.  The soldiers could only pick up two hard-bodied nests stuffed with wild vegetables, and then return to their respective trench bunkers carrying rifles with few bullets on their backs.

    After leaving the remaining broth to the wounded soldiers, Kikuzo Otani led the guards to the east position.

    The terrain of Jinzhou City is flat. Except for Lushan Mountain in the northwest, which is occupied by the National Defense Forces, the height difference in the rest of the area is no more than 35 meters. If you want to defend this seemingly empty area, trenches are the best choice for infantry.  Circles of jagged trenches are the most important means of defense carefully constructed by the 21st Brigade. It was it that blocked several violent attacks by the National Defense Forces and blocked enemies several times their size at the foot of Jinzhou City.

    In the trench, a soldier was stuffing bullets into his Type 38 rifle. Before setting off, the bulging ammunition belt was almost empty. There was only one grenade hanging on his waist, even if the division commander walked by.  , the soldier just saluted and continued to fight for his life. The momentum of departure could no longer be seen on the young face, only numbness and a hint of fanatical grayness in his eyes.

    "What a good soldier, prepared even when he knew he was going to die.  "Ohtani Kikuzo understands the eyes like this. Right or wrong, the 21st Brigade and even the entire Fifth Division do have proud capital. Even if the Ninth Brigade was crippled, no one flinched in a sudden attack outside Laiyang.  Passed. His eyes surrendered, a few kilometers away, where was the National Defense Force's nearest attack position to Jinzhou.

    After watching for a while, he began to walk back, preparing to send a telegram to Lushun to ask about the domestic situation. Even those cowardly and capitulating factions wanted to negotiate peace!  We can't watch the entire 21st Brigade starve to death, right?  But just after walking a short distance, there was a sudden shout from behind.

    "General! Look"

    The moment Otani Kikuzo turned his head, dense shells came from the direction of Lushan.  Recently, several factories have concentrated their efforts on manufacturing 160 mm mortars to make up for the shortage of 150 heavy artillery guns. They were also fired from the direction of Houshan River in the west, and their ears were suddenly filled with the sound of explosions.  But his eyes had already ignored the shells, because he saw a black dot suddenly appeared on the distant horizon heading this way along the railway line. As the black dot got closer and closer, the bad feeling suddenly disappeared.  The backbone is full of fear.

    "be prepared!"

    Amid Otani Kikuzo¡¯s shouts, 6 strange, large tractor-like vehicles and 12 Gray Wolf armored vehicles slowly drove towards Jinzhou City.  In the upper shooting fort of the leading vehicle, Xue Yue stamped his feet and shouted to speed up.  It's a pity that even if he screamed his throat out, the fire bunker truck under his feet was still as unhurried as an old ox pulling a cart.

    Not to mention Xue Yue, even Yang Qiu has nothing to do about this, because this is the only tracked combat vehicle currently available in the country, a firepower bunker vehicle modified from an American Type 77 steam tractor.

    When we were initially preparing to introduce it.  Yang Qiu fell in love with this American-made steam-type crawler heavy-duty tractor at a glance, because he found that although its obstacle-crossing performance could not be compared with that of British and French tanks, it was similar to the German behemoth A7V. Since it was steam-propelled, it had strong horsepower and was very suitable.  Modification.

    Of course, a steam tractor cannot be turned into a real tank no matter how much it is modified, but since I was not skilled enough, I didn¡¯t have much choice, so I imported dozens of them at once, 12 of which were used for modification.  The chimney was moved to the back, the long steam locomotive nose was completely wrapped in steel plates, and the cab was designed with a slope.  A shooting fort was built above the cab. The entire shooting fort was almost as big as a car in later generations.  The 4 Maxim heavy machine guns are arranged according to the front 2, 1 on the left and 1 on the left.  There is a small ammunition depot behind the cab, and the entire vehicle body, except the buttocks, is covered with 30 mm thick average steel plates.  The total weight reached a shocking 42 tons!  It is actually 2 tons larger than the German behemoth.

    After the modification, when Yang Qiu took the military officers to visit the test performance, he immediately covered his face.  This thing is simply an ugly and even disgusting monster!  But this monster conquered the officers present. In the end, Yang Qiu simply ignored the matter. It was a temporary emergency product anyway. It would be good to let the technicians and the military go and learn some experiences and lessons.

    Tank?  No one knows this word these days.  So it was called a firepower bunker vehicle.

    The 280-horsepower steam engine made a piercing noise, pushing the 42-ton firepower bunker truck towards the Japanese position at a speed of 5 kilometers per hour. The 12 Gray Wolf armored vehicles behind it used its fang heavy machine guns that were farther away than the Maxim to clean up.  All the obstacles in sight, the Lushan artillery and close-range mortars further away suppressed a few 38-type 75 field guns.

    "what is that?"

    ¡°I saw it in the newspaper, it seemed like a tractor.¡±

    "Tractor? Are the Chinese crazy? Can tractors fight wars?"

    "Shoot, it's getting close."

    In the trench, Japanese soldiers began to panic looking at these behemoths spewing black smoke. Many of them began to blindly fire at the mobile bunker trucks. The few remaining heavy machine guns were also brought in to shoot wildly.  But soon they discovered that everything was in vain!  In addition to shooting a string of sparks on the nose steel plate, it can't stop the opponent at all.

    "It's our turn, pull the whistle! Fire, fire at full speed!"

    Xue Yue, who was hiding behind the steel plate, jumped to his feet. When the steam whistle whimpered, 12 long tongues of flame suddenly shot out from the front of the six behemoths. In an instant, the Japanese trenches were filled with bullets like a rainstorm.  Since the second-story shooting fort is 4 meters above the ground, it is easy to fill the trench with bullets from a high position.  "Big gunsuse big guns!" In a hurry, the Japanese army pushed in two 75mm guns, but they landed in the middle of the bunker truck and failed to stop the opponent's advance. Instead, their position was exposed and they were caught and exploded by the Venomous Fang heavy machine guns and artillery.  rotten.

    Seeing that no matter how hard they hit, the bunker truck could not be destroyed and the trench was less than a kilometer away. The Japanese soldiers, who had always considered themselves invincible and who had been instilled with the spirit of sacrifice and bushido since they were soldiers, panicked. Many people began to retreat in fear.  "Don't panic, they can't get through the trenches! Use grenades to attack."Gu Xijiuzang shouted, and even took the lead in picking up grenades, preparing to wait for the bunker truck to approach and use the parking opportunity to launch a suicide attack.

    Want to use a grenade?  Xue Yue sneered when he saw this, and ordered the machine guns on both wings to turn around and fire, and then asked the infantry hiding behind the bunker truck to protect them.  One or two Japanese soldiers rushed out of the bunker with guns and grenades in their hands. Not to mention whether they could pass through the dense rain of heavy machine gun bullets, even if they were lucky enough to get close, they would be sieved by soldiers who suddenly jumped out from behind with submachine guns.

    The first bunker truck rushed to the trench. When all the Japanese soldiers thought that it would stop and have a chance to kill it, this steel monster seemed not to see the trench and just crossed the trench with force, wide and cold.  The crawler tracks directly passed over the densely packed corpses and headed towards Jinzhou City.

    "Amaterasu!"

    "is this real?"

    Otani Hijiuzang was immediately carried by the guards and fled towards the Daling River. The remaining Japanese soldiers who were still preparing for a desperate attack were also stunned.  All six bunker trucks passed the first trench.  The Luzhai was easily smashed into pieces, the wooden piles were uprooted, and all the obstacles against infantry and cavalry were broken through one by one, leaving only two shocking blood marks and the heavy machine guns still firing wildly.

    Otani Kikuzo¡¯s eyes completely lost their sparkle. Just now he thought that the carefully dug trenches could stop several times the army, but they were overwhelmed by these giant beasts in less than an hour.

    Jinzhou is finished!  The 21st Brigade is also finished!  The entire Fifth Division is finished!.

    (To be continued)

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