As soon as the three "Sherman" tanks reached the "Old Bald Ridge" battle, the balance of the war immediately tilted towards the side of the Sino-US coalition forces. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

This seems to be somewhat inconsistent with military theory, because everyone knows that the mobility of tanks is very important in battle, and a tank without mobility is equivalent to a battery and can only be beaten passively.

Therefore, pulling tanks up the mountain can be said to be a taboo for soldiers...... The terrain on the mountain ridge is complicated, and it is almost impossible for the tank to move an inch after going up.

But the problem was that Japan no longer had an air force, especially on the island of Peleliu, where the airfields were occupied by the American army and the Japanese forces in other directions did not have an air force that could reinforce the island. At the same time, there is no effective equipment on the ground against the "Sherman" tank. So what if the tank is difficult to move an inch on the mountain? What if it was used as a fort? As long as it is placed at an important point, this battery is a battery that can play a big role, and it is also a battery that the enemy cannot destroy.

What's more, strictly speaking, the "Sherman" tank is not an immobile battery, it can be covered by infantry and with the assistance of engineers, and if necessary, it can use armored bulldozers, and then advance step by step...... Although the speed of this advance was very slow, it was gradually compressing and encroaching on the living space and activity space of the Japanese army.

Therefore, actual combat is often not absolute, it tends to change according to the situation and conditions.

For example, now, as soon as the three tanks drove up the mountain, they provided an excellent hiding place for the Chinese and American allied forces guarding the mountain to confront the Japanese army...... Before that, they could only dig trenches and pile sandbags to advance, which was not only dangerous, but also difficult to continue to advance if they reached a certain distance, because they would face several flanking attacks from the Japanese troops in the tunnels.

However, the huge body of the "Sherman" tank not only blocked the Japanese firepower, but also provided strong fire support for the infantry...... The 76mm tank gun was no joke, especially when it found a Japanese fire point and a tunnel mouth in which direction, it could fire shells at the target almost without hesitation.

First of all, this actually suppressed the firepower of the Japanese army, and even destroyed the Japanese fortifications and tunnel mouths, and more importantly, it gave the Sino-US coalition forces a psychological advantage, in short, they felt safe and that victory was in sight, so they had more passion and morale to fight.

On the other hand, because these three tanks compressed the combat space of the Japanese army, making it almost impossible for Japanese snipers to come out and move, the newly built road became very safe, so six tanks were sent up one after another, two of which were Spitfire tanks.

In the early days, Zhang Chi did not dare to send too many Spitfire tanks, because although the Spitfire tank was easy to use and had a wide killing area, its range was too close and the "ammunition" could not help but ...... A few large canisters of fuel were only enough for it to spray for a few minutes, and then it had to wait for the fuel canisters to be transported to the rear.

Therefore, in the early stage, as a cover for the infantry and providing firepower for the infantry, the "Sherman" tank was still needed.

Originally, Zhang Chi thought that the battle to capture Lao Balling would take another day or two, but he didn't expect that it would end after only half a day...... The Japanese either retreated to the "Five Brothers" mountain in the rear, or they hid in tunnels.

This is in line with the Japanese army's strategy on Peleliuu Island, and Nakagawa Nakasa is actually carrying out Sato's order, that is, not to launch a suicidal attack easily, but to save his life and continue to fight the enemy.

In fact, this is to "preserve strength" and fight a "protracted war" and "guerrilla warfare", so once it loses on the frontal battlefield or encounters an attack like this kind of irresistible attack by the enemy, the Japanese army will not choose to defend desperately.

Although Zhang Chi had known this before, he still felt a little surprised when he encountered it on the real battlefield...... Because the contrast between the performance of the Japanese army before and after is too great.

However, it was good that the Japanese army retreated so quickly, and Zhang Chi immediately issued a few orders:

One: Organize a defense on the "Old Bald Ridge".

Zhang Chi knew what tricks the Japanese were playing, they temporarily retreated in the face of the powerful tank offensive of the Chinese and American coalition forces during the day, and it was very likely that they would fight back at night...... You must know that the tanks at this time basically have no ability to fight at night, and compared with the daytime, it is easier for the Japanese army to blow up the tank in front of the tank in the dark at night.

On the other hand, the reason why the Japanese army left part of its troops in the tunnel and did not withdraw was that it planned to find out of the tunnel at night to "cooperate with the Chinese and US forces."

This is very similar to the tactics of the volunteers, who often abandon their surface positions during the day and enter the tunnels to hold on, and then come out at night to harass or cooperate with the ground forces to recapture their positions...... In the area of the 38th parallel, this kind of battle situation is often staged in which the enemy's position is occupied during the day and the position is recaptured by us at night.

Obviously, at this time, this tactic of the Japanese army was still only a prototype and had not yet formed a system.

This is mainly reflected in two aspects:

First, there are fewer tunnels in the Japanese army's tunnels.

There is a saying called "three holes of cunning rabbits", and this tunnel must also have many exits, otherwise it will be difficult to get out once the enemy is blown up.

Of course, this is most likely due to the lack of time for the Japanese army to prepare, and at the same time the Japanese army feels that it is ...... No matter how many pit openings there are, it is a matter of a few explosive packs for the enemy, and the Americans have more explosive packs, so there is not much point in having more pit openings.

On the surface, this is true, but in reality it is not.

This brings us to another important aspect of tunnel warfare, which is that the mouth of the tunnel can cover each other.

The so-called mutual cover is actually that from this pit mouth you can see another or even several pit openings...... You can see that it basically means that the gun can be hit.

That's what the volunteers did, digging a lot of tunnels and covering each other, and when the Yankees came up to blow up the tunnels with explosives bags and used the dead corners of the tunnels, they didn't know that they would expose their backs in front of another tunnel.

So the guns came and went, and the Yankees were stunned that there was nothing they could do about these many pit mouths, and they couldn't blow up and seal them up, and the volunteers could crawl out of the pit and attack everywhere at night.

At this time, the Japanese army's tunnel mouth was not like this, they rarely could form a tunnel mouth that could cover each other, and occasionally a few were only afraid that they were dug out unintentionally, which was not a big deal for the Sino-US coalition forces with "Sherman" tanks, and it was enough to directly drive the tank up to block the firing range of one of the tunnel mouths.

(To be continued.) )