As a result, 28 tanks in the 26th tank wing of the Japanese army were ready for battle, and another 22 tanks were on standby in the second line. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

It's not that Nishitake is stingy and doesn't send all the chariots to the battlefield, but the route that the chariot troops can attack can only deploy so many chariots, and if more are sent, I'm afraid it will cause congestion and even chaos in the dark night.

Kuribayashi Tadamichi also took great pains for this battle, and when the tank wing began to assemble tanks, he asked the artillery unit to bombard the direction of the Chinese army without a single artillery.

There are many advantages to this, the main one being that the sound of the tank's motor can be masked by the explosion of artillery fire, so as to achieve the suddenness of the start of the battle, especially the suddenness of the tank battle.

Secondly, this bombardment without a single cannon can also affect the rest of the enemy...... Of course, the Chinese troops are all veterans who have been in and out of the battlefield several times, and they will not be greatly affected by the Japanese army because of this.

Thirdly, it was these artillery pieces that could clear mines and obstacles for the subsequent Japanese attack to a certain extent, and at the same time would not reveal the strategic intentions of the Japanese army...... In this way, it is very common to have one cannon without one cannon on the battlefield, and the Chinese and American coalition forces often use this method to interfere with the rest of the Japanese army.

Kuribayashi Tadamichi did guess correctly, Wu Yuhang did not take the Japanese army's move to heart.

At this point, Wu Yuhang was negligent, just imagine, the Japanese army in the last attack would rather sacrifice the lives of soldiers than use artillery fire to clear mines, which shows that the Japanese commanders attach importance to and save ammunition, so how can such a waste of shells without one cannon interfere with the rest of the Chinese army.

At one o'clock in the middle of the night, the sudden dense artillery fire made Wu Yuhang feel bad.

It was clear that the Japanese were about to attack, but the question was...... Wu Yuhang realized that the Japanese attack would not be as simple as the last time, because if it still attacked like the last time, it would be tantamount to death. But Wu Yuhang didn't know what tricks the Japanese army would do.

With doubts, Wu Yuhang left the command headquarters and came to the front line along the communication trench under artillery fire, he wanted to see the Japanese attack.

But to Wu Yuhang's surprise, he couldn't see the situation of the Japanese army, because the Japanese army bombarded with artillery fire and also fired a large number of smoke bombs, which made the vicinity of the beach seem to be shrouded in dense fog, even if the soldiers kept firing flares, but the visibility was still only a few meters away.

An ominous premonition arose spontaneously in Wu Yuhang's heart.

After thinking about it, Wu Yuhang ordered the messenger who was following him: "Request the fleet's artillery support!" ”

"Yes!"

So the shells were full of shells whistling, both Japanese and expeditionary forces, in all directions, the common point is that these shells all hit the vicinity of the location of the second regiment of the expeditionary force, these shells blew up the entire beach into chaos, and even some shells met and exploded in the air, flashing in the night sky like fireworks.

Wu Yuhang's order was of course correct, because at this time the Japanese tanks were slowly advancing towards the defense line of the expeditionary force under the cover of smoke and artillery roar.

If Wu Yuhang had not given this order, it was very likely that these tanks would have inflicted a fatal blow on Wu Yuhang's troops.

However, under the fire of the fleet, the 26 tanks of the 28th tank wing of the Japanese army were blown up in only 13 instants...... This is not to say that the Chinese Navy's naval guns bombed accurately, in fact, the naval guns only blindly fired shells according to the elements set during the day, and could not even be guided by reconnaissance planes at night.

However, these shells still inflicted heavy damage on the Japanese tanks, because the armor of the Japanese tanks was too thin...... The frontal armor of the Type 97 medium tank was only 33mm, and the Type 95 light tank was only 12mm. In comparison, the armor thickness of the same "Sherman" tank reached 76mm.

For the "Sherman" tank, under normal circumstances, howitzers, mortars, etc., if they do not directly hit the tank, they generally do not cause any damage to the tank, and the armor of the "Sherman" tank is enough to withstand the impact of shrapnel. But the Japanese did not use "Sherman", their so-called light tanks, medium tanks and weak units can even penetrate machine guns, let alone shells explode with extremely large amounts of shrapnel.

As a result, thirteen tanks were destroyed under one artillery fire...... To be precise, they are not destroyed, but lose their combat effectiveness or mobility, some of them are damaged by shrapnel and cause casualties to the internal personnel and cannot operate normally, and some of the tank engines or other parts are damaged and cannot move forward.

In fact, it was partly due to the failure of Japanese tanks...... The island was a place of high salt and humidity, and the Japanese industry was not developed at this time, so the tank performance was not very good, so it lay down on the way to attack.

All these factors made it possible for the Japanese to reach the line of defense of the expeditionary force with only fifteen tanks.

Originally, the Japanese tanks were not a big threat to the expeditionary force, as Nishitakeichi said...... The U.S. military has "Sherman" tanks and a large amount of anti-tank equipment, especially the armor of Japanese tanks can even penetrate machine guns, so under normal circumstances, attacking the defense line of the Chinese army is basically looking for death.

However, Kuribayashi Tadamichi skillfully used artillery fire and smoke to hide the attacking tanks...... The main reason is that the Chinese troops did not expect that the Japanese army would have tanks on Iwo Jima, and there are so many tanks, you must know that in the previous battle to seize the island, it was very difficult for the Japanese army to even have some supplies and ammunition, and tanks such as large-tonnage things have become a luxury, and even if there are, there are only a few of them.

To make matters worse, because the flamethrowers were easily used to defeat the Japanese in the last war, the soldiers were still used to using flamethrowers again to defend.

A few minutes later, the artillery fire in the direction of the Japanese suddenly stopped, and the tanks covered the infantry through the smoke and appeared in front of the soldiers of the expeditionary force.

"Tanks, devils have tanks!"

……

As soon as Wu Yuhang heard this cry, he immediately felt that something was wrong, and immediately ordered: "Don't use flamethrowers!" ”

But the order was too late, and seeing that the enemy was close at hand, the Pyro habitually pulled the trigger and spewed fire dragons forward, some of which even sprayed directly on the Japanese tanks, turning them into fireballs.

Japanese tanks could not withstand the flamethrower flames, which caused the tank engine to overheat and break...... This was one of the major flaws of the Japanese tanks, so it was sometimes seen in the Chinese battlefield that the unthinkable...... The Chinese soldiers ran around with wheat straw behind the Japanese tank, and when they caught up, they piled the wheat straw on the engine unit and ignited it to overheat.

But the problem was that after the Japanese tank was sprayed by a flamethrower, it was not immediately damaged and stopped. (To be continued.) )