The day after the bombing ended, the 1st Marine Division could not wait to start the landing. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Rupertus did conduct a meticulous reconnaissance and careful planning of the island of Peleliuu before the attack...... This is rare for the US military, which is generally believed to be able to take the target in less than a week.

Rupertus even denied three offensive plans......

The first plan was to land on the southeastern coast, which was ostensibly the most suitable direction for the attack, since the reef was narrower and the landing force was less likely to run aground in the shallows, which would facilitate the delivery of supplies and equipment by landing craft such as the Higgins.

However, Rupertus believed that such an obvious landing direction would definitely be considered by the Japanese army, so it was likely that this was the key defensive direction of the Japanese army, which meant that the defense here might be the tightest, so he vetoed it without much thought.

Rupertus was also proved right, and the Japanese built a large number of bunkers and coral cave bunkers in this direction.

The second plan of attack was to attack from the southern end.

However, because not far from the coastline was a dense mangrove swamp, and there was only a narrow dry strip in the middle for the American army to advance, which was very conducive to the Japanese defense, so this direction was also denied.

The third direction is the northwest coast. The problem here is that there is a vantage point 300 yards from the beach, and if this vantage point is not captured, then the beachhead will be exposed to Japanese fire......

Many US generals disagree with this point, because they think that the US military has full air supremacy, and it is not difficult to seize the commanding heights, and the Japanese army is only afraid that there will not be much artillery left under the bombing of the US army, just like the Japanese army on the Mariana Islands, so it will not pose much of a threat to the US army.

But Rupertes also vetoed the plan.

It can also be seen that Rupertus is still very wise, and his rich combat experience also makes him cautious about the war in front of him...... Ruperste, who was the deputy commander of the 1st Marine Division at the time of the Battle of Guadalcanal, was well aware of how difficult the Japanese were.

Eventually, the U.S. military decided to land from the west.

Because if the landing from the west is successful, then there is a Japanese airfield not far away, Rupertus took it for granted that the Japanese airfield is in use, so there should not be too many fortifications there, and the terrain is also very flat and spacious, which is very suitable for the deployment of the American army's mechanized troops.

On the other hand, Ruperst also thought of the Battle of Guadalcanal at that time...... The performance of the Chinese troops is very impressive, in that battle, the Chinese troops took the airport with lightning speed, and then launched a defense with the airport as the center, and the Japanese army had to defend against the defense in order to regain control of the airport, abandoning their defensive positions and attacking the defensive circle of the American army. Defense is also the strong point of the U.S. military, which has a large number of automatic weapons, warships, and warplanes.

Ruperst's tactical idea was a bit of a copy of the Battle of Kuah, and he planned to use the defense of the airfield to inflict a large number of casualties on the Japanese army, and then it would be much easier to win.

It's just that what he didn't expect was ...... The airport on the island of Peleliuu is completely different from the airport on the island of Kuah.

For the Japanese army at that time, the airfield on Kuah Island meant driving the US troops into the sea, and even meant using fighter planes to drive the US Navy out of the combat radius.

And the airfield on Peleliuu Island was just a showmanship for the Japanese army, or it could also be said to be a bait...... The Japanese army no longer had many planes that could take off to fight the Americans, and from the very beginning the Japanese knew that the airfield would definitely be bombed by the Americans, and the airfield on Peleliuu Island would not be usable at all in wartime.

As a result, the Japanese dug one anti-tank trench after another around the airfield...... The reason why they had to dig "one after another" was because they feared that these anti-tank trenches would be blown flat in the bombardment of the American army.

It is worth mentioning that this was proposed by Major General Kenjiro Murai, a staff officer of the Japanese army stationed on the island of Peleliu.

There's something confusing here...... The commander of Peleliuu Island is Nakagawa Prefecture's male Osa, and Japan does not talk about the army, even ordinary people attach great importance to seniority, but in Peleliuu Island, there is a situation in which Osa commands a major general, that is, a major general is a staff officer, which even the US military was surprised after the war.

In this battle, the U.S. military used underwater frogmen for the first time to blast the reef of the beach.

On the one hand, this is to facilitate the landing of the landing force, and on the other hand, it is to facilitate the warships to sail into the coastal waters to provide fire cover for the landing force...... This method of warfare began in the Battle of the Marianas, because of the full control of air supremacy and the complete suppression of Japanese artillery, so American warships could carry out close fire on Japanese coastal fortifications.

At 5:30 a.m., the U.S. warships sailed to a position just over 1,000 meters away from the beach and bombed the shore indiscriminately. So he ordered the landing force to land.

However, it backfired, and as soon as the US landing vehicles and landing craft approached the beach, a dense artillery fire was heard from the direction of the Japanese troops, and then shells exploded in the US landing vehicles and landing craft groups...... Columns of water rose up on the sea in an instant, and the landing craft and landing vehicles were blown up and shook on the sea like leaves, and the unfortunate shells soon became a ball of fire, and the US troops on them were blown up everywhere, and some landing craft were blown up and turned over, and the sea was soon covered with dead bodies and wounded people struggling to call for help.

"Damn it!" Rupertus scolded: "Where did the Japanese get their ****** shells from?!" ”

Rupertus certainly couldn't imagine that the Japanese were hiding these guns in caves, which made them easy to avoid American bombing.

What Rupertus imagined was that the landing battle might not have been as easy as he thought.

Rupertus was right, because despite the fire suppression by American warplanes and warships, Japanese shells rained down...... The artillery fortifications in the cave were difficult to destroy by American warships and warplanes, especially when the island was still full of smoke.

On the other hand, the smoke rising from the Japanese firing points and the burning amphibious landing vehicles that blew up the beach, mixed with the smoke and smoke from the US artillery fire, made the entire beach appear blurred, and the subsequent waves of US attack echelons could not see the beachhead at all, and could not even distinguish whether it was their own people or the enemy.

At this time, the Japanese army launched an attack.

(To be continued.) )