7.86 Burning Chariot I

The appearance of the Japanese medium tank made the battle in front of the Beiluo position even more brutal. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 The 2nd Battalion, which had just been reinforced, was also not equipped with anti-tank weapons, and it was difficult for them to deal with these Iron King Eight brought by Igarashi Shaosa.

The 2nd battalion commander naturally did not want to be defeated in front of this pile of iron lumps, and he noticed that when the Japanese tanks came up, the Japanese infantry in the preface of the Beiluo position began to take the initiative to retreat, trying to get out of the battle! The commander of the 2nd battalion immediately saw that the devil infantry was making room for their tanks.

The Japanese infantry must not be allowed to get out of the battle easily! With these human shields in the way, the threat posed by the devil chariot can be smaller! After making up his mind, the commander of the 2nd battalion immediately shouted at the top of his voice!

"Bite the devil infantry! Entangled with them! So the chariot of the devil will not work......! ”

Light tanks under 10 tons, medium tanks from 10 to 20 tons, and heavy general cargo oxcarts above 20 tons, which are the usual scales for the Japanese army to divide the class of tanks. And by Western standards, tanks under 20 tons are considered light vehicles. As a result, the main combat vehicles of the Japanese army were actually light tanks. It is clearly at a disadvantage in a comprehensive comparison with European and American vehicles.

The caliber of the artillery is small, the armor is weak, the tonnage is low, the speed is slow, the stroke is short, etc. This large number of shortcomings directly led to the low firepower, protection and persistence of Japanese tanks in real combat. In addition, there is a significant gap between Japan and Western countries in terms of suspension devices, power generation and transmission devices, hydraulic and pneumatic devices, fastness of mechanical parts, radio communications, and optical equipment.

European and American military figures were very disdainful of Japanese tanks, believing that "Japanese tanks were all outdated in design, only equivalent to the level of World War I" and that "the technical quality of Japanese tanks was very inferior, and they did not have heavy tanks for impact." Very mundane by European standards".

As we all know, the protection of Japanese tanks is very weak, let's take the bean chariot as an example, the side armor of this Type 95 light tank can be easily penetrated by any gun that uses armor-piercing shells! Frontal armor could not stop the Maxim heavy machine gun, which used heavy ammunition.

Feng. The officers of the German Advisory Corps under Ritchie had more than once shown their contempt for Japanese tanks in front of the officers and men of the 25th group! In the eyes of these Germans, the Japanese tank was nothing but fast in all aspects!

However, these are just the evaluations made by Westerners on the basis of their country's advanced industry, and on the Chinese battlefield, the Japanese chariot is invincible and majestic!

Although the quality of the armor of the Japanese tanks was very poor and the conditions for crew observation were not good, when it came to infantry lacking anti-armor means, these Japanese-made iron bumps were even more advantageous than the advanced combat vehicles used by Western countries.

The design of Japanese tanks largely adopted the design ideas of the French Renault tank, and most Japanese tanks were originally designed to serve as anti-infantry missions and trench breakers. The two machine guns were arranged in front and behind (the turret machine gun was the rear machine gun, and the course machine gun was the front machine gun), and there were few blind spots in firepower, and it was difficult for even the officers and men of the 188th Division to sneak up on the engine of the Devil tank from behind.

Cluster grenades have become the only reliance for the officers and men of the 188th Division at the moment. The officers and men of the 25th Army were more or less trained in anti-tanks, even the 188th Division, which had just joined the 25th Army. The heavy machine guns and mortars on the positions in Nakbei began to fire at the infantry protecting the devil's chariots, and the grenades on the officers and soldiers were quickly concentrated and then delivered to the temporarily organized commandos!

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Even within the Japanese army, not everyone had a favorable opinion of Japanese-made tanks. For example, the infantry commander Igarashi Shosa, who accompanied the chariot attack, had little confidence in the defensive capabilities of the bean chariot.

The steel plate of more than ten millimeters feels very weak when you knock it by hand! In the previous battle at the front of the Luobei position, Igarashi Shaoza, who was hiding in the bean chariot, listened to the sound of raindrops of bullets hitting the steel plate of the chariot, and his heart kept going up and down.

So this time Igarashi Shaozo chose a more sturdy tank for himself, the Type 89 medium tank, with a total combat weight of 12.7 tons. Not only is the thickness of the armor much thicker than that of the Bean Chariot, but even the 57 mm Chariot gun on the turret is significantly thicker than the barrel of the Chariot Gun used by the Bean Chariot!

Sitting in the eight-nine type chariot, Igarashi Shaoza finally found a little peace of mind!

The commander of these new Type 89 medium chariots was Kyono Shaosa, and Kyono Shaosa also took over the rest of the bean chariots on the battlefield. With an officer of the same rank as the infantry in command, the Japanese charioteers became angry. The charioteers in the Type 89 chariot that Igarashi Shaozo is riding in now treat him with a significantly less "friendly" attitude than the charioteers in the bean chariot before.

"Mr. Shaozo! You blocked the position of the machine gun shooter! The Chinese army will definitely send out the Demoman, we need machine guns to be in combat condition at all times! ”

The commander of the chariot in Type 89 once again began to provoke Igarashi Shaoza. This made Igarashi Shaozo feel very unhappy!

Although the 89-type medium chariot is called a medium-sized chariot, the space inside it is not spacious, and with the addition of Igarashi Shaozo, a supernumerary personnel, the four-person chariot now looks very crowded inside. Igarashi Shaosa's feet are stepping on the driver's shoulders at this moment! With such a small space, where can Igarashi Shaozo go? The commander clearly wanted Igarashi Shaozo to operate the machine gun, but he deliberately used such an obscure statement!

"It doesn't have to be so much trouble! Machine guns, I'll still use them! ”

"That's for the best! Your Excellency! You'd better keep your eyes open! ”

Igarashi Shaozo deliberately spoke loudly, although there was also a reason why the chariot engine was too noisy, but the more important reason was that Igarashi Shaozo wanted to take the opportunity to vent his dissatisfaction! However, since the charioteers and infantry belonged to two different systems, the commander of the Type 89 chariot completely ignored the anger of Igarashi Shaoza, the infantry commander, and just said lightly, and then continued to observe the front of the chariot.

In front of the right side of the chariot that Igarashi Shaoza was riding in was the command vehicle that Kyorino Shaoza was riding, and all the chariot commanders were watching every move of this command vehicle. Since none of the Japanese tanks were equipped with radios, the previous communication of the tanks could only rely on shouting, lights and flags.

When he found that the Chinese army had begun to clear the infantry near the tank with firepower, he quickly ordered the gunner to open the top cover of the turret and use the flag to inform the surrounding Japanese tanks to keep in formation and pay attention to covering each other.

Usually after cutting off the connection between the chariot and the infantry, Chinese soldiers with explosives in their arms appear in droves!

At that time, the machine gun loaded on the tank became the biggest support of the tank!

The sky was full of flying shrapnel and bullets, and the gunner, of course, was not stupid enough to poke his body out, and after opening the roof of the turret, the gunner stretched out the signal flag, and then began to play the flag skillfully, and he was very fast, and in less than a minute he had begun to repeat it a third time. When the third flag signal was issued, the surrounding Japanese tanks began to move closer to the command vehicle, forming a circle to enclose the command vehicle in the middle.

Kyono Shaosa looked at the gunner who slipped down from the top of the turret, and his heart was mixed!

Compared to the Western powers, the Japanese Army showed a noticeable lag in a number of areas. Among them, the gap between the charioteers is especially prominent!

Chariots are the steel of movement, and in order to make an advanced chariot, you need a lot of steel!

Although Japan was the most developed country in Asia at that time and one of the world powers, its industrial level was still far lower than that of the European and American powers. In 1937, for example, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Japan accounted for 38%, 10%, 11%, 5%, and 4% of the world's industrial production, respectively, with Japan ranking last.

Steel is the most important raw material for the manufacture of tanks, and steel production is the best measure of the level of the country's steel industry. The amount of steel available in the chariot industry is subject to the total amount of steel produced by the country. Before the war, Japan's steel production could no longer meet the needs of its munitions industry and machine system. The demand of the manufacturing industry has to rely on imports. Between 1931 and 1934, Japan imported a total of 227,500 tons of steel products. After the outbreak of the war, as the scale of the military industry continued to expand, Japan felt that steel production was seriously insufficient, and "had to rely on collecting scrap iron from all over the country, even depriving the inhabitants of some metal utensils, demolishing iron fences in gardens and private estates, and replacing the metal pillars of the tram road with wooden posts."

The lack of steel has made it difficult for its chariot manufacturing industry to make great achievements. It was not until 1926 that Japan began to prototype its own combat vehicles. Because it started too late, in terms of overall performance, the Japanese tank lagged behind the Soviets, the United States, Britain, and Germany by a whole era, and could only compete with Italy.

Not only can the Japanese tank industry only produce inferior and very small numbers of tanks, but the strategy used by the Japanese tank troops is also very backward!

After the Russo-Japanese War, the combat level of the Japanese Army gradually showed a tendency to stagnate, and the resulting backwardness became increasingly obvious in the 30s. On the one hand, this is because Japan lacks actual combat experience in World War I and is unable to deeply understand the requirements of new technologies and weapons for the change of the pattern of warfare. As General Kanaya Beomzo, who was chief of staff of the Army in the early 30s, said: "Because the empire did not actually participate in the war in Europe, it was a shame that the equipment of this new type of military equipment was outdated." ”

On the other hand, because the Japanese army has been fighting against their weaker enemy for more than 20 years, and because the opponent's military quality and technical level are very inferior, the Japanese army is able to win the victory with slightly better material equipment and excellent individual skills. As a result, the Japanese army developed a sense of pride, thought that it was invincible, and slowed down the process of modernization.

In addition, Japan, as an island nation, focused more on developing its navy, for which huge sums of money were expended, but Japan's limited financial resources and weak basic technological forces did not allow to maintain a strong army and navy at the same time. From 1918 to 1931, for example, the Navy's budget was consistently higher than that of the Army, and in some years it was even twice that of the Army. As a result, the construction of the army had to be seriously affected.

In the 20s and 30s, there was a strong voluntarist tendency in the Japanese Army's operational guiding ideology, that is, it exaggerated the role of human physical and mental strength in warfare, and was obsessed with using soldiers' close combat and white-knuckle combat to defeat the opponent, but at the same time, it ignored the updating of military technology and the guarantee of combat readiness materials, deliberately belittled the weapon factor, tried to make up for the material deficiency with spiritual strength, and replaced scientific guidance with the spirit of bushido. The spirit of bushido caused the Japanese army to despise material things, and even denied the scientificity and rationality of things with the omnipotence of the "Yamato soul".

At present, the guiding ideology of the Japanese armed forces is actually still at the level before 1914 -- it was an era when the main reliance on manpower and weapons did not occupy a very important position in the use of troops.

It would be incorrect to say that Japan was completely blind to the trend of the times in the chariot arms, and in 1918, just after the end of the First World War, Japan hastily purchased chariots from Europe. The Japanese have always been willing to learn from the new things in the West, and their victories in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 owe it to this attitude. This time, however, it was limited to formal imitation, and no serious and practical research was conducted. The Japanese military department has this view: "There is a huge gap between Europe, the United States, and Japan both geographically and psychologically, and the Asian battlefield may not be able to adapt to the large-scale use of combat vehicles." In addition, since a war of aggression that costs little and easy has always yielded great results, there is no need for Japan to spend a huge amount of military expenditure on the new branch of the fighting vehicle when the country's financial resources are seriously constrained.

This is the result of psychological laxity due to the lack of external pressure from a strong enemy. However, as a result, Japan has been sluggish in the construction of combat vehicle units and lacks a positive and enterprising spirit.

In the meantime, although there were also people in the Japanese Army who foresaw the huge potential of the charioteers and tried to make a difference, after all, the impact was limited, and they quickly disappeared into oblivion amid the shouts of "bayonet advance determines the outcome of the war".

In addition, the fact that the Japanese charioteers have not performed well on the Chinese battlefield is also one of the main reasons why this new branch of troops has not been taken seriously!

In 1931, during the "918" incident, the Japanese tank unit participated in the battle near Harbin within the formation of the 14th Division. This was the first actual combat of a Japanese tank, and since it was not met with stubborn resistance, it was difficult to make a realistic assessment of its battlefield value. However, the severe cold climate in Northeast China exposed the weakness of the poor cold resistance of Japanese tanks, and the engine cold fluid and gun retraction engine fluid were easy to freeze, and many parts were brittle and damaged due to low temperature.

In 1932, during the "128" incident, Japanese tank units were again sent to Shanghai. Actual combat showed that Japanese tanks were not good at fighting in the south of the Yangtze River and in the streets of the city, which were densely covered with small rivers.

After the "77" incident, the mechanized units of the Japanese army fighting in China rarely took decisive and resolute actions, and they only used combat vehicles to cooperate with the infantry and dared to serve as the "assistants" of the infantry.

Even so, the Japanese tank exposed a number of technical Achilles' heels, such as:

1. Susceptible to weather. When the flat ground is flooded due to continuous rainfall, it is necessary to find high ground to park the vehicle for several days.

2. Poor river crossing skills. In southern China, the river network was vertical and horizontal, and frequent rainfall caused the river to be wide and deep, and on the Songhu battlefield, due to problems in the construction of bridges by engineers and drivers, several combat vehicles fell into the water and sank.

3. The quality of the engine is not satisfactory. The road is muddy and difficult to drive, and it is necessary to use the high speed of the engine to obtain more power, but this is easy to produce problems such as high fuel consumption, high engine temperature, and frequent failures.

4. Poor logistical support. Equipment, ammunition, and fuel were accompanied by difficulties, and the chariots often stopped to wait for supplies, which greatly affected the speed of advance.

Moreover, the basic tactical movements of the Japanese tank units are also very rigid, with fixed and limited goals for progress, and the concept of roundabout and flank attacks is rigidly stared. The lengthy column was attached to a narrow line of replenishment, and in the event of a failure of one tank, it was likely to endanger the movement of the whole group.

Although the Japanese army has carried out centralized reorganization of tank units and has achieved certain results, it has been unable to achieve a high degree of mobility and powerful assault power mainly because of the poor performance of its own tanks and the lack of decisive weapons for conducting modern warfare.

All this is a shame in Kyino Shaosa!

The performance of the Japanese tank units on the Chinese battlefield is still so embarrassing! And what should the Reich do to confront the Soviet Army in the Far East? As far as Kyono Shaosa knows, the tank units of the Soviets have formed a powerful fighting force! In the face of such a torrent of steel, will the army divisions of the Kwantung Army be as helpless as those Chinese soldiers on the other side?

Japan needs more advanced tanks! Japan needs more tanks!

This Type 89 medium tank used by Kyono Shaoza is still the first generation of Japanese tanks! It's already too far behind! Although the other two types of Type 95 light tanks and Type 97 medium tanks were made in 1935 and 1937 respectively, they are the latest types of tanks, but they are still quite different from the tanks equipped by Western countries!

The quality and quantity of combat vehicles belong to the category of "hardware", and by comparing the data, Japan's position among the great powers can be seen at a glance. With the exception of Italy, the Great Powers had an overwhelming advantage over Japan in terms of the number of tanks. Britain had 6.1 times as many tanks as Japan, while the United States and the Soviet Union had 20 times as many tanks. Thinking of the fact that the Japanese army is fighting in the vast Chinese mainland, with the pitiful output of Japan's domestic tank factories, it will be overstretched in the event of a long-term war!

"Your Excellency Shaozuo! The demomen of the Chinese army rushed up! Vehicles are organizing fire blockades! But there was something unusual about car four! ”

The driver's shout pulled Kyono back from his reverie, and it was a dangerous act to wander on the battlefield. Coming back to his senses, Kyono first patted the driver's shoulder with his hand to express his gratitude, then opened an observation window on the side and began to look for the location of car No. 4.

It only took a few seconds for Kyono Shaoza to notice the No. 4 chariot, not that Kyono Shaoza's eyes were good, but that the abnormality of the No. 4 chariot was too conspicuous!

In the face of the onslaught of the Chinese army, all the Japanese tanks were frantically tilting their bullets, while the machine gun of the No. 4 tank was obviously a little intermittent! If it's not the machine gun, it's the shooter!

"Chariot No. 4...... Isn't that a chariot with Igarashi Shaosa? I think I've found the cause of the anomaly in the number four tank! Driver! Rush to the side of Chariot Four! The machine gunner of the fourth tank is a 'temporary worker'! We have to protect them! ”

"Yes!"

The driver pressed the accelerator hard, and the 89-type chariot roared to the left front...... (To be continued, if you want to know what will happen next, please log in to the www.qidian.com, more chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!) (To be continued.) )