The Iron-Blooded Army of Beacon Fire

Chapter 471: The Objectives of the Motorized Forces
After learning from Wang Yuanling about the excellent equipment and huge scale of the National Army's most elite Fifth Army, He Wei attached more importance to the upcoming Military Commission review and joint combat exercises.

He Wei's mentality could even be said to be that he could not wait for the review and combat exercises to come immediately, so that the Commando Corps could achieve good rankings or even win the championship, and then the Commando Corps would receive further favor from the top leaders of the Military Commission and further multi-faceted resource allocation and supplementation.

His mentality is actually very dangerous as he is taking too big a step and may easily lead to failure. The large number of reinforcements and expansions that the Assault Corps has just received in many aspects have not yet been digested and organized, but He Wei is thinking about continuing to expand and get more reinforcements. It really seems like he is greedy for more.

He Wei himself knew that his mentality was actually wrong, and if the army underwent multiple, large-scale expansions in a short period of time, it might not be beneficial to the army's combat effectiveness. Once the business was expanded too large in a short period of time, the original combat effectiveness would be diluted.

In fact, He Wei was well aware of the pros and cons. He also knew that he was planning to continue expanding the assault corps because he was jealous of the Fifth Army's excellent equipment. This mentality of strengthening was actually wrong. It was simply too uncomfortable for the assault corps under He Wei to compare its small territory with a special reinforced army.

Moreover, if the Assault Corps is further expanded on its existing basis, not to mention weapons and equipment, just looking at the troop strength, the overall strength of the troops may exceed 10,000 people if the expansion continues. The total strength is almost twice that of when the Assault Corps was first established. Under such a rapid expansion of doubling, He Wei actually cannot even gather enough qualified officers, nor qualified sergeants and qualified recruits.

If the assault corps is really expanded so quickly, the overall combat effectiveness of the troops may actually decrease instead of increase.

But even so, he couldn't help but expect the assault corps to continue to expand, build, and strengthen its soft and hard power in all aspects. This expectation could not be suppressed by reason and basic military knowledge.

He Wei could not hide his excitement when he thought about the assault corps that he personally led and the possibility of expanding to nearly 10,000 people, from the strength of a reinforced infantry company when he first arrived in Jinling, to its expansion into a reinforced battalion before the Defense of Jinling, to the establishment of an assault corps equivalent to a brigade-level strength in Wuhan, to the current situation, and the possibility of expanding to nearly 10,000 people.

And this ever-expanding army will obey his orders, and he will command it in future operations, driving it to fight the enemy on the battlefield. He Wei has an indescribable excitement and a kind of pleasure mixed with strange feelings. That feeling and emotion are really comfortable.

At this point, he finally understood why those military leaders in the National Army were so keen on expanding the power of the troops within their own factions, and even fought to the death for the control of a division, an army, or even an empty number.

Even Colonel He Wei has such a mentality. It is only natural that those military leaders and bigwigs are extremely eager to expand the strength and power of their troops.

Of course, after asking himself, He Wei can be very sure that he is different from those military leaders. Even though there are factors of expanding influence and eager to gain more power in his mentality, the main part is the desire to lead more troops to defeat the Japanese invaders on the battlefield and deal a greater blow to the Japanese invaders.

What those military leaders are keen on and thinking about is probably to gain greater political capital and control more power by expanding their troops.

From this point of view, He Wei is fundamentally different from them.

After repeated consideration and weighing of the pros and cons, He Wei finally made up his mind. He decided to seize the opportunity of the review and joint combat exercise to get a good ranking and strive to win the first place. Regardless of whether the assault corps can benefit or expand as a result, it is necessary to strive for the first place in the review and exercise. After all, soldiers should have the spirit of striving for excellence and competitiveness, and an elite force that can fight should strive to be the first in everything.

And if he could get a good ranking in the review, get further attention and commendation from the Military Commission, and get more resources such as equipment and materials, He Wei no longer wanted to ask the Military Commission to continue expanding the organization of the Assault Corps. On the one hand, the Assault Corps had just completed its expansion, and if he proposed to expand its organization again, the Military Commission might not necessarily agree to it. On the other hand, it was the same reason. The Assault Corps had not even completed its current expansion and had no ability to expand further. Continuing to force the expansion might have a counterproductive effect.

As for continuing to strengthen the weapons and equipment of the troops, there seems to be no need for this. To be honest, the current weapons and equipment of the Assault Corps are unmatched among the army infantry units in the country. Rifles, light machine guns, and heavy machine guns are all imported sophisticated weapons. They are also equipped with German general-purpose machine guns and French-made 60mm mortars that other units do not have. The equipment strength of the artillery units is even stronger. In this case, if the organization of the troops is not expanded, there is actually no need to strengthen the weapons and equipment of the troops, because they are already sophisticated enough and powerful enough for use for the time being.

However, although He Wei did not want to expand the assault corps's troop strength and enhance the sophistication of the troops' weapons and equipment this time, he showed great interest in increasing the assault corps' battlefield mobility and improving the assault corps' battlefield mobility methods.

Speaking of which, this was inspired by the Fifth Army, which made He Wei very jealous.

After Wang Yuanling mentioned the powerful organization and equipment of the Fifth Army, He Wei immediately became very interested in the army, so he looked for Wang Yuanling several times to continue to learn about the army's equipment and organization. Then He Wei learned that in fact, the infantry units of the Fifth Army, that is, its three infantry divisions, used the regular organization of the current infantry divisions of the National Army, but their weapons and equipment were better than those of other troops.

The biggest feature of this army, in addition to being equipped with a large number of tanks, is that it is equipped with a large number of vehicles. For example, the Fifth Army has a motor vehicle regiment directly under it, which is equipped with thousands of military trucks. The other directly affiliated units of the Fifth Army are also equipped with various types of transport trucks and special vehicles such as communication vehicles, armored vehicles, and motorcycles. This enables many units within its structure to achieve motorized marching and transportation with cars as the means of mobility, and use vehicles to perform various services and combat tasks.

According to He Wei's estimation, with the number of vehicles equipped by the Fifth Army, it would be no problem to realize the full motorized transportation and battlefield mobility of an infantry division. The advantages of motorized marching and transportation with vehicles as carriers are self-evident. As long as the road conditions are not particularly complicated or rugged, the marching speed of soldiers who rely on two legs to move and mules and war horses in the army will definitely not exceed that of four-wheeled cars. The advantages brought by high-speed motorized marches on the battlefield are also obvious. Fighting is a matter of every second, and speed is sometimes life.

In addition, cars also have greater advantages in the transportation of ammunition, supplies, and wounded soldiers.

And this is what He Wei wants to seek for the Assault Corps. To put it simply, what He Wei is seeking now is to strengthen the motorized marching capability of the Assault Corps, that is, to add more vehicles to the Assault Corps!

At present, the Assault Corps has been assigned an independent motorized battalion, which has greatly increased the motorized transport capability of the Assault Corps. In wartime, it is sufficient to motorize and mobilize a reinforced infantry battalion of the Assault Corps on the battlefield. He Wei does not expect to get a big profit from this and ask the Military Commission for a large number of vehicles that can motorize and mobilize the entire Assault Corps. That is impossible and unrealistic.

In order for the assault corps to achieve overall motorized mobility after this expansion, based on the current structure of the National Army's motor vehicle units, it would require at least one motor vehicle regiment's worth of vehicles to accomplish this.

After all, not counting the troops directly under the Corps, the three infantry battalions of the Assault Corps are all extra-large infantry battalions with a large organization. Each battalion has more than 1,600 personnel. The artillery battalion is even larger, with three mountain artillery companies and one field artillery company, equipped with a total of 24 artillery pieces of various types. With so many officers and soldiers equipped, even if a regiment's motor vehicle unit was assigned, it might not be able to achieve the entire Corps's organized motorized march. So He Wei didn't even dare to think about this matter, he didn't have such a big appetite.

However, if we can continue to equip the Assault Corps with some cars, motorcycles and other vehicles on the existing basis, and make some of the more special companies directly under the Assault Corps, namely machine gun companies, tank defense gun companies, and search companies, motorized, then the mobility and combat capability of the Assault Corps can be further greatly improved.

Take the machine gun company and the tank defense artillery company for example. If these two companies replace the original mule and horse traction method with motorized traction mobility, the improvement in their mobility and firepower response speed will be significant.

When the machine guns and tank defense guns equipped by these two companies used mules and horses as vehicles, they either disassembled the artillery into parts and carried them on the horses, or directly towed the guns with horses. The marching speed was slow, and it took a long time to switch from the marching state to the combat state. However, if they were towed by cars, their advance speed and reaction speed would be much faster.

With the cars, these two directly affiliated artillery companies can provide fire support to the front-line infantry units more quickly when they need machine gun fire and tank defense artillery fire, which is also of great benefit to the infantry units of the assault corps in wartime.

As for the search company, there is no need to say more. As the name suggests, the nature of the search company is of course to clear the way for reconnaissance and search in front of the main force, to promptly warn the main force, and to detect the movements on the battlefield. A company of this nature has very high requirements for battlefield mobility speed and mobility. Equipping this search company with trucks and motorcycles will of course greatly increase the company's combat effectiveness.

He Wei attached great importance to the construction of the search company. After all, when they were fighting against the Hata Detachment of the Japanese Army, the vanguard of the Hata Detachment was defeated by the fast forward search troops sent by He Wei that used war horses as their means of mobility. Therefore, the marching mobility of the search company is also crucial.

Initially, He Wei wanted to turn this search company into an elite cavalry company, while Wang Yuanling proposed to equip the company with a batch of motorcycles to improve its mobility. After He Wei applied for the supplement, the superiors did supplement the assault corps with a batch of German-made three-wheeled sidecar motorcycles. But now it seems that it would be better to go all the way and fully motorize the company with various motor vehicles.

Therefore, for various considerations, He Wei's expectation for the upcoming Military Commission review and joint combat exercise is to obtain a batch of trucks, motorcycles and other military vehicles from the Military Commission. With these vehicles, the motorized marches of the assault corps' direct search company, machine gun company and tank defense artillery company can be realized. The three important direct companies within the assault corps that have realized the motorized marching method, as well as the 160 trucks assigned to the independent motor vehicle battalion No. 3 of the assault corps will be used to improve the battlefield mobility and overall combat effectiveness of the entire corps.

If He Wei's small goal can be achieved, although it is not enough to realize the motorization of the entire assault corps, it is not an exaggeration to call it "semi-motorization", and the overall combat effectiveness of the assault corps will definitely be greatly improved.

However, although He Wei's goal is very clear, if the Assault Corps really wins the championship and obtains a good ranking in the upcoming review as He Wei wishes, it is actually difficult to say whether the Military Commission will agree to He Wei's request at that time.

After all, for China today, cars are as valuable as various military supplies. At present, China can't build proper military trucks or even military motorcycles except for those shabby charcoal-burning cars. So it is really difficult for him to achieve this goal. Whether it can be realized in the end can only be seen when the time comes.

However, we must go all out and strengthen the combat effectiveness of the troops. After He Wei ordered to increase the intensity of training, the training of the assault corps' combat troops and the five new recruit supplementary battalions of the First Supplementary Soldier Training Department were visibly improved. Outside the assault corps' barracks, the sounds of live-fire gunfire and artillery fire from the assault corps' combat troops who were pulled into the field for various training rang out day after day. Various tactical exercises of attack, retreat, pursuit, encounter, and defense were practiced almost non-stop from morning to night. The daily training duration and intensity of the more than 3,000 new recruits training on the playground in the barracks were gradually increased.

Large amounts of ammunition, funds and sweat were consumed at an extremely fast speed and with extremely high efficiency. Whether it was the officers and soldiers of the Assault Corps or the recruits of the First Supplementary Soldier Training Department, their combat skills and various military techniques had made great progress and greatly improved under this training method that almost ignored costs.

Two months passed in the intense training, and it was soon May.

(End of this chapter)