Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 82: Serious Positional Warfare

By the next morning, the entire Wangjia Village was surrounded by the Japanese devils.

The three infantry battalions of the entire Japanese regiment surrounded Wangjia Village from three directions.

To be honest, since the establishment of the New Second Regiment, we have never fought a serious positional battle! It's either an ambush or a surprise attack, but we have never fought a serious positional battle.

However, although the New Second Regiment had never fought a formal positional battle, Kong Jie had rich experience in positional warfare. Looking at the encirclement situation, Kong Jie naturally made corresponding defenses according to the distribution of the Japanese troops.

Directly deploy the three battalions of the New Second Regiment in three corresponding directions.

Each battalion has just one thousand people, corresponding to the strength of a Japanese battalion. Of course, in a field encounter, this reinforced battalion of one thousand people would definitely not be able to defeat a Japanese battalion. After all, most of the new second regiment were new recruits who had never fought in any battles and had not even fired a few bullets.

But now it is a defensive battle, so it shouldn't be a big problem. After all, one is defending and the other is attacking, so the attacking side will definitely suffer.

That’s right, Kong Jie didn’t like to entrust important tasks to his trusted subordinates like Li Yunlong and Chu Yunfei did.

For example, Chu Yunfei liked to reinforce the first battalion of his trusted subordinate Qian Bojun. The 358th Regiment had only 5,000 people, and Qian Bojun's battalion alone had more than 2,000 people.

Of course, Li Yunlong did the same. He liked to strengthen the first battalion and directly expanded Zhang Dabiao's first battalion to more than 2,000 people.

However, Kong Jie did not do so. Instead, he divided the 3,000 people evenly, with an average of about 1,000 people in each battalion, which was equivalent to the strength of a Japanese battalion.

Of course, equal manpower does not mean equal firepower. You should know that a battalion of the Japanese army has not only more than 800 regular infantrymen, but also an artillery squad, while the New Second Regiment is generally equipped with rifles and machine guns.

As for the infantry artillery, there was not a single one. There was no other way. During this period, Wang Gensheng had been picking on the weak. Most of the time, he attacked the towns where the Japanese devils were stationed. As for the county towns where the Japanese infantry battalions were stationed, he dared not even touch them.

The only thing they could do was to attack the Huting stronghold. However, the Huting stronghold had quite a few light and heavy machine guns, but not a single infantry gun.

So far, the New Second Regiment’s heavy weapons include no other large-caliber artillery except a Type 97 mortar.

It seems that the Japanese are quite strict in adhering to the eight-hour work system. At eight o'clock in the morning, they gave the signal to attack.

The direction of attack was the direction of the third battalion's defense, and the one responsible for the attack was the Omoto Battalion, and the battalion commander was naturally Ichiro Omoto.

Of course, the Japanese's attacks have always been in the form of artillery bombardment followed by infantry charge, but this time it was not like the last attack by Watanabe's battalion, which only had the firepower of two Type 92 infantry guns.

After all, although only a battalion of troops was responsible for the attack this time, it was a regiment of troops that surrounded Wangjia Village. In order to avenge his brother Watanabe Ichiro, Watanabe Dalang directly mobilized the artillery battalion directly under his regiment for fire support.

That's right, unlike the artillery squadrons under the jurisdiction of ordinary regiments, the Watanabe Regiment directly has an artillery battalion under its jurisdiction, so its firepower is much stronger than that of ordinary regiments.

You should know that the artillery battalion directly under this regiment is different from the artillery squad under the infantry battalion. Generally, an artillery squad has two Type 92 infantry guns, but an artillery squadron has two artillery squads and an ammunition squadron, and an artillery battalion has eight Type 92 infantry guns and an ammunition squadron.

Therefore, the number of artillery pieces of the Omoto Battalion responsible for the attack increased five times compared to the number of artillery pieces of the Watanabe Battalion last time, that is, eight pieces of the artillery battalion plus two pieces of the artillery squad directly under the Omoto Battalion, a total of ten Type 92 infantry guns.

boom! boom! boom!
After three rounds of salvos, thirty 70mm Type 92 infantry artillery shells fell into the front trenches outside Wangjia Village.

Only thirty 70mm infantry guns were fired, but there was not a single casualty.

You know, this trench was not dug by Wang Gensheng in a hurry, but was dug a long time ago.

Therefore, Wang Gensheng invested a lot of money in the defensive capabilities of this trench. There is a cat ear hole almost every two meters in the entire trench.

Such a dense number of cat ear holes ensures that the soldiers can quickly hide in the cat ear holes to resist artillery fire.

As for what a cat ear hole is, it is actually very simple. It is just a small anti-artillery hole in the shape of a cat's ear that can avoid artillery fire on the inner wall of the trench.

Because it is inside the trench and it is an anti-artillery hole dug downwards, its anti-artillery performance is very good. Unless the artillery shells fall directly into the hole of the trench cat ear hole, even if they fall into the trench, they will not cause any harm to the soldiers in the cat ear hole.

This kind of anti-artillery measure was used extensively in World War I, World War II and other battlefields. There was no way around it. As the caliber of artillery became larger and mechanization became more common, such anti-artillery and anti-bombing measures naturally became more and more common.

In addition to the cat ear holes, there is a machine gun bunker every five meters. The machine gun bunker is just a machine gun firing port that is only slightly exposed above the ground, and this firing port is flat, so it can prevent being taken away by the Japanese grenade launcher.

You have to know that the Japanese grenade launchers are the nemesis of machine gun positions. Basically, one shot will kill both the people and the machine guns.

So in order to target the Japanese grenade throwers, Wang Gensheng built this machine gun bunker.

The entire machine gun bunker is somewhat similar to a cat ear hole, but the cat ear hole is dug diagonally downward on the inner wall of the trench, while the machine gun bunker is dug upward on the inner wall of the trench. After digging a hole exposed to the ground, a person standing inside can just expose his head.

Then they built a frame with wood at the entrance of the cave, and then covered it with thick bricks, stones and soil, leaving only a flat shooting hole facing forward.

Although this thing cannot prevent direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells, it can still withstand direct hits and explosions from small-caliber grenades like grenade launchers.

Of course, there is a machine gun bunker every five meters, which is naturally too many. You should know that the entire trench surrounding Wangjia Village is ten miles long, and there are at least eight hundred such machine gun bunkers.

But the entire New Second Regiment didn't have so many machine guns, let alone 800 machine guns. The entire New Second Regiment of more than 3,000 people had only 80 light and heavy machine guns. But there was no other way. They didn't know which direction the Japanese would attack from, so they could only dig a large number of machine gun bunkers regardless of the direction.

Anyway, wood, soil and bricks are not valuable. As long as there is enough manpower, you can have as much as you want. And the thing that the New Second Regiment has the most is manpower.

(End of this chapter)