Chapter 682: The Battle of Pyongyang I

readx; The location of China's crossing of the river was about 35 kilometers southwest of Pyongyang, in the Songlin area, and the 11th Division was originally deployed in this area. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 Because the strategic movement of the Chinese Army before the war was extremely secretive, and the air supremacy over North Korea was also controlled by the Chinese Air Force, the Chinese Army was unable to get the required aerial reconnaissance from the Army Air Force, so that when the Chinese Army launched an official crossing of the river, Kanaya Fan San learned that China had transferred a large number of troops to cross the river in the Songlin area.

At that time, the 11th Division was shrinking from a defensive line more than 10 kilometers wide and concentrating its forces to reinforce the Songlin area, but by the time the troops of the 11th Division arrived one after another, China's Eighth Army had already crossed the river by one division and resolutely blocked the counterattack of the 11th Division. Later, after another division of the Chinese Eighth Army also crossed the river, it was even more impossible to counterattack.

At the same time, the 24th Division, which was deployed as a reserve and 20 kilometers south of Pyongyang, was ordered as the nearest unit to urgently reinforce the Songlin area. Then, since the First Army also expected reinforcements from the army, it had already asked the air force to delay the arrival of reinforcements long before the launch of the river-crossing operation.

In order to buy time for the troops crossing the river, the Air Force concentrated more than 300 combat planes, including nearly 100 F2 and F3 fighters, and the rest were all B4 bombers and B7 dive bombers. On the morning of the 7th, the air force went all out to support the troops crossing the river, and bombed the positions of the Yue army in the south of the Datong River on a large scale.

The infantry units on the march had no choice but to suspend the march for limited air defense operations, and the 24th Division did not begin to march until nightfall, when the main force of the Chinese Eighth Army had already crossed the river and defeated the interception of two wings of the 11th Division.

After nightfall, the 24th Division continued its march, and then at 12 o'clock in the middle of the night it met the 36th Division, the vanguard of the Chinese Eighth Army, and a fierce battle ensued. At this time, the 24th Division of the Chinese Army had lost the best opportunity to counterattack the pine forest.

"At present, relying on the 11th Division and the 24th Division, I am afraid that it will be impossible to counterattack the pine forest! More troops must be drawn to stop the Chinese attack! As the supreme commander of the Pyongyang region and the commander of the Third Army, Kanaya Beomsan is well aware of the disadvantages of the Pyongyang defense line.

At present, the biggest disadvantage of the Korean army is not the inferiority of the infantry units, although the artillery firepower of the Chinese troops is slightly inferior to that of the Chinese troops, the gap is not as big as imagined, and the other light weapons are even more than the radius of the Chinese troops, and the combat effectiveness of the soldiers of the Chinese army is not worse than that of the Chinese, and even slightly better than the Chinese soldiers in some aspects, such as bayonets and individual shooting technology. It is not that the army lacks the strength to confront the Chinese armored forces, although the army has few tanks, but there are more than 200 tanks, and the tank strength of the army in the Korean region is also more than 100, and these tanks are naturally not comparable with the Chinese tank forces, and they have lost more than half of them in the early stage, but the infantry anti-tank guns of the Chinese army are still relatively powerful, and more than 100 Chinese tanks have been destroyed in the early stage of the war.

Therefore, although the equipment and quality of the troops were slightly inferior in some respects, the gap did not widen to the point where they could not be resisted, otherwise the army would not have been able to reach the Anzhou Campaign for more than two months, and it would have even been able to reach a draw at the beginning of the war.

The greatest disadvantage of the Yue army was its numbers, and this numerical disadvantage was even more expanded to an irreplaceable point after the destruction of the First Army.

The army has successively invested about 15 divisions and regiments in Korea, accounting for more than 50 percent of the infantry units of the army, and in addition to infantry, it has also invested nearly 80 percent of its artillery strength and more than 80 percent of its anti-tank forces. So don't look at the infantry that has been put into North Korea only half, but the strength of North Korea has actually accounted for the vast majority of its own army.

After putting in so many troops, during the Anju Campaign, it was said that the total strength of the three armies in Korea was actually about the same as that of China's First Army, but China's First Army could be replenished in a steady stream, although the number of divisions did not increase too much, but China adopted the tactics of rotation, and the front-line troops could be withdrawn after being damaged, so that the divisions that had not lost in the rear could be brought up, so that China's First Army maintained a relatively satisfactory strength from beginning to end.

However, the troops of the Yue army in the DPRK could not get too much replenishment, and the front-line troops could not be withdrawn even if they were disabled, and the war was originally a war of attrition, and the replenishment of the Yue army could not compare with the Chinese troops, so the more this was fought, the greater the disadvantage.

This situation was exacerbated after the destruction of the First Army. It is said that the First Army is the main force of the troops that entered the DPRK, and the strength of more than 100,000 troops accounted for half of the troops that entered the DPRK in the early stage. After the encirclement, only one Eighth Division escaped, and the other troops also escaped only scattered forces, and nearly 100,000 troops were annihilated.

This dealt a great blow to the army.

Although the Third Army of the Pyongyang defense line has also been reinforced by some troops in the rear, and the total strength is still more than 100,000, it is at a great disadvantage compared with the Chinese First Army in the front.

This disadvantage in strength made Kanaya Fanzo's defensive operations almost everywhere, so even if he knew that the Chinese troops had crossed the river in the Songlin area, Kanaya Fanzo would not be able to draw more troops from other fronts.

The battle between the two sides in Pyongyang's defense line was 100 kilometers wide, and in addition to the Eighth Army and the First Panzer Army in the Songlim area, the Chinese troops also had a Sixth Army on the front of Pyongyang and a Seventeenth Army in the northeastern part of Pyongyang. At the same time, the Chinese First Army also had an Eighteenth Army as a front-line reserve, and once a breakthrough was made in the Songlin area, the Eighteenth Army would quickly follow.

In other words, although the Chinese First Army invested heavy troops in the Songlin area to cross the river, it did not reduce the corresponding troops in other areas of the Pyongyang defense line, and said that "the Third Army must also invest corresponding troops to resist, and if all the ancient brains are withdrawn, then not a single Songlin area will be broken through, but the entire Dadong River defense line will collapse."

After looking at the deployment of troops on the entire front, and learning that the 24th and 11th Divisions in the Songlin area were no longer able to counterattack, and that the reconnaissance troops on the front line had learned that the strength of China's cross-river operation was as high as at least one army, and that there were already Chinese tanks on the front line, he did not hesitate any longer, and immediately dispatched the 23rd Division in southern Pyongyang to urgently reinforce the left flank.

After the outbreak of the war, the first batch of the 23rd and 24th Divisions to land in Korea had already been dispatched to the Third Army, and at this time there were only two divisions in the south of Korea, and at least one had to be left to stabilize the rear, and they could not all be sent to Pyongyang.

By the time the Chinese army had raised all the forces it could mobilize to reinforce the Songlin area, the Chinese Eighth Army had largely completed the river-crossing operation, and had already defeated the 11th and 24th divisions in the first wave of attacks.

On February 11, the First Panzer Army captured Huangzhou, 20 kilometers southeast of Songlin, an important stronghold of the Chinese Army behind the Pyongyang defensive line.

Huangzhou, this place name may not be famous, even in the last Sino-Chinese war, few people know, because in the last war, the main force of the army was completely annihilated north of Pyongyang, the Chinese army across Pyongyang, across the Taedong River was not blocked by the formation of the army at all, and after crossing the Taedong River, China's huge forces almost swept the leaves all the way south with the autumn wind, whether it was an important railway station along the line of Pyongyang, North Korea, or Busan, in fact, the army had no way to stop large-scale resistance, And this naturally cannot highlight the important surname of this small place in Huangzhou.

Today, however, Hwangju is the rear of the Pyongyang defense line, as a station along the railway line from Pyongyang to Busan, where a large number of military trains are transported to the front line every day, and in addition, Hwangju is also an extremely important rear base, which directly supplies all the supplies of the Syrian army in the southern part of Pyongyang, including the 11th and 24th divisions, in fact, the 24th Division, which was used as a reserve, was deployed here before.

If the 24th Division is still here, it is not an easy task for the 1st Armored Army to take this place, but after the Chinese troops crossed the river in Songlin, the 11th Division alone could not stop it at all, and after the 24th Division of the Huangzhou Army deployed in the rear urgently reinforced Songlin, it was defeated by the Eighth Army of the Chinese Army.

Under such circumstances, although the army had a part of the retreating strength of the 24th Division in Huangzhou, the total number of troops was less than 10,000, and although Huangzhou was an important logistical base of the army, it was not a large city, and its scale was not even comparable to that of an ordinary county town in China.