The clueless Japanese army assembled on the ground and prepared to support the periphery, while a large number of Burmese military families huddled together to flee, because the Burmese government had been propagating that the Chinese army was corrupt in discipline, the worst of which was Chu Tingchang's troops, and the Chu family's army was the most brutal under the one-eyed dragon Zhou Youfu. Of course, in fact, Zhou Youfu's troops have decent military discipline in the entire army stationed in India, and he is not a one-eyed dragon.

The crowds on both sides went in opposite directions, all blocked on the road and couldn't move, * falling overwhelmingly. Half of the city was in ruins. Naturally, the American planes were headed for the Japanese and artillery positions, and the only warning they received before taking off was to avoid the ancient wooden temples of the Gongbang era, and there was no mention of civilians, although American intelligence officials knew that there were a large number of new civilians here.

These Burmese people from Lower Burma had come here with their families in high spirits after the Japanese occupation of the area nine months ago, and they did not expect that their new homes would be destroyed so soon.

The commander of the Sekigahara Division, who was hiding in Taunggyi, heard that the situation in the fortress was not good. He told Sakagaki that this place could be defended for 15 days, of course, it was an ambush, and according to his actual estimates, it was not a big problem to hold for a month, and the enemy had to shed his skin, so it seemed that it would be difficult to defend it for three days. The biggest bombing he had ever witnessed was the bombing of Wuhan at the end of April 1938. At that time, in the name of celebrating the Tianchang Festival, the main bomber units of Central China were concentrated and carried out indiscriminate bombing of the area where the Hanyang Arsenal was located for three consecutive days, dropping about 260 tons* in three days, which was regarded as strategic bombing for the Japanese Army Aviation. But this morning, when he was crouching at the Taunggyi headquarters, he counted more than 80 B17 bombers flying overhead and heading for Leigku, which was conservatively estimated to drop 450 tons*. And this is not counting the low-altitude bombs of the B14 bombers of the 25 air force that took off from Yunnan. He reckoned that one of the wings there would be overwhelmed.

Sure enough, the telegrams in front flew like snowflakes, some asked for support, some reported casualties, and some asked for instructions on broken jade, and Lieutenant General Sekihara knew that his troops were not so keen on "broken jade", which was actually a tactful expression that he couldn't stand it.

He had no reserves left to support them, and an enemy army to the north was advancing so fast that it was about to cut him off from Mandalay. Commander Sakagaki just blindly asked for a dead defense, he felt that he could deal with the 74th Army in a few days, and then turn back to clean up Chu Tingchang, but Sekihara Roku had fought with the 74th Army in Jiangxi, and knew that this army was known for defense and was not so easy to gnaw down. After the 77 Incident, Sakagaki won a series of battles in North China, which was actually based on the fact that the Chinese army in the north had more miscellaneous cards, and the real elite of the national army at that time were actually in the Songhu area.

He could only continue to send telegrams to Sakagaki, telling him that the situation was critical, that the fort might change hands within 48 hours, and that the flanks were even more dangerous, and that the Chinese army, which had just been identified as the 203rd Division, was advancing rapidly, and that the unit was also under the command of Chu Tingchang. This Chu Pavilion Chief is definitely not to be underestimated.

Zhou Youfu doesn't have 48 hours of time, and the deadline given to him by Chu Tingchang is noon tomorrow, and there are still 20 hours left when the game is full. The indiscriminate bombing by the Americans during the day doomed the Japanese army to exhaust its morale. At night it was his turn to make another sortie of armored artillery vehicles.

Today, he no longer concealed himself, and drove all three trains out, using train artillery of various calibers to shoot at targets near and far, while the infantry occupied both sides of the railway, constantly firing flares, illuminating the Japanese positions as if it were daylight. Having lost a large number of heavy weapons, it was difficult for the Japanese army to form an effective counterattack against the armored train. Moreover, since the entire system had been destroyed after the three forts in the east of the fort were knocked out in turn yesterday, the outer firing boundary of the rest of the pillbox group could no longer reach the enemy armored train behind the flank.

These trains passed directly through the city under the strong cover of the infantry, and all the Japanese outlying pillboxes were ineffective, and the gunners on the trains began to attack the rear of these pillboxes with 75mm mountain guns. The Japanese hurriedly dragged the anti-aircraft guns out of the pillboxes, and even if they barely fell through the muzzle, these 37 or 47 mm anti-aircraft guns could hardly hurt the trains with hundreds of tons of sand and logs as additional armor. These additional loads made the diesel locomotive unable to push at all, and Zhou Youfu could only use an older steam locomotive to keep the train moving at almost the same speed as walking.

Whenever an enemy position is exposed, the huge 320-mm trebuchet quickly throws a 300-kilogram warhead at the target, and if it is a surface position, the soil thrown up by the explosion of such a yield ammunition is enough to bury the soldiers in the trenches alive. For solid targets, it can directly shock the top of the tower and detonate the internal ammunition.

In the early hours of the morning, the 202nd Division advanced into the vicinity of the enemy's headquarters. The enemy infantry put up a stubborn resistance on the huge ruins left behind by the day's bombardment. They looked for flares on both sides, watched a steam-spitting behemoth in front of them, slowly approached, and hid behind a pile of rubble. The soldiers of the Osaka Division knew that it was the besieging demon again. It's a pity that all the weapons on the position didn't work against this demon. It's right under your nose, slowly preparing to bury you.

Zhou Youfu hummed a little tune, watching the actions of his demolition troops through the artillery team mirror outside the city, where the Japanese counterattacked, he would soon receive a few giant shells. During the day, half of the city was destroyed by 550 tons* dropped by American bombers, and now Zhou Youfu's artillery trucks are dropping ammunition at a rate of 2 tons per minute, destroying these ruins a second time. His only restriction was to ask the gunners not to hit the temple, because then he was afraid of retribution.

By daybreak, 10 of the 16 Japanese forts had been destroyed, and the remaining six were almost ineffective. The underground passages that extended in all directions were all destroyed by the accurately dropped shells because of the British prisoners of war pointing out the location.

Wing Captain Ito was buried alive in an underground field hospital, and his fate is unknown. The resistance of the Osaka Division's inherent organization in the fortress no longer exists. All 16 heavy artillery pieces deployed here by the unit were destroyed. There were only a fraction of more than 40 anti-aircraft guns left, and a total of 7,000 soldiers (including the Burmese army) still had more than 4,000 people left, and the Burmese army began to flee after the first shell smashed through the northeast corner fort and caused the explosion of the ammunition depot. More died under Japanese machine guns than under the fire of the 202nd Division.

Sakagaki in Mandalay realized that the situation was not good, and the fortification was lost in two days, and sure enough, the 4th Division was far worse than the 5th Division in terms of combat will, and I did not hear that the front-line officers committed suicide with hatred, and there were many people who escaped.

The 203rd Division, which had been inserted from the north, disappeared from view again after a flash of shock, and the 2nd Brigade and the retreating troops of the temporary shadow of Zhenzhao finally gained a firm foothold and began to establish a defensive line, not yet knowing the enemy's current position.

In the list of enemy systems of the Sakagaki General Staff, there is no such thing as the 203rd Division at all, and this unit belongs to the reserve force of the enemy's training base, and the intelligence of the southern organ shows that the unit is still on paper, with only 60 people in the headquarters and a company of warehouse baggage management troops, a transportation company and a communications company, a total of only more than 600 people, and Chu Tingchang reported 2,000 people in order to eat empty salaries. How did you pull out a force that could fight?

In fact, the deeper they went into the territory of the Chinese in northern Burma, the more inaccurate the intelligence of the southern organs became, and it was difficult for their plainclothes teams to penetrate north of Jingdong, and a large number of Burmese spies were found out and hanged on the side of the road. Therefore, Suzuki can only rely on the mainland intelligence department to get some information from the military command department in Chongqing. As a traverser, Chu Tingchang is well aware of the enemy's espionage ability and weakness. Of course, he later found out that Xiong Xianghui was definitely a talent in falsifying information, and the report he made out not only deceived Chongqing, but also deceived the Japanese spies lurking there. The Japanese were accustomed to the corruption and empty salaries of the Chinese army, to the fact that the actual number of opponents against the enemy was less than the number of establishments, and they had not yet encountered those who concealed their strength.

Huang Tianyang won the first battle, and while waiting for the 204th Division to assemble, he led his people to reconnoiter near the first line of defense established by the enemy. He found that the enemy did not come much, and they were constantly transporting troops back and forth in trucks in the rear, but the enemy trucks seemed to be very few, and even though Mandalay was close to here and the road was clear, the interval between the arrival of motor troops was long. His men approached and observed the trucks used by the enemy, all of which belonged to the 12th Corps Station Automobile Squadron. A military station with only 70 to 80 trucks in a troop squad was close to what he had observed. In other words, a round trip of 170 kilometers can only pull a brigade over, not including heavy weapons. Huang Dashao will inevitably think: Why does such a poor country dare to start a world war?

Nine hundred trucks behind him were constantly going back and forth between Jingdong and here, the highway was endless, and the gendarmes were busy directing traffic at narrow intersections, barely seeing the idle sections, and two regiments of the 204th Division and artillery units were brought in overnight. The distance is far more tortuous and farther than that of the Japanese.

It seemed that the Japanese could not be comfortably constructed and slowly transported their troops, so he planned to launch a frontal attack after nightfall and break through the enemy's line in one fell swoop. He is frivolous, but he is not stupid, and he knows very well that the side with more equipment* in night battles has the advantage. The morale of his troops was high, but the training was insufficient, and it was obvious that he would suffer more than shooting with the old devil from 200 meters, so it was better to rush to the front and fight. In addition to charging head-on and fighting the Japanese, he seems to be lacking in other tactics, but the times make heroes, and now Chu Tingchang needs such a reckless man to rampage.

The Japanese reconnaissance unit found only a small number of Chinese troops circling in the mountains, and estimated that the enemy's large force was still far away.

After nightfall, the front-line commander Segawa Nakasa was a little careless, he felt that the night battle was the Japanese army's world, and all the allied forces were naturally afraid of fighting with the Japanese army at night, so Segawa transferred two-thirds of the defensive troops to the rear to build a second line of defense, so that the manpower distribution was more reasonable and the progress was in time. If it weren't for the difficulty of transporting troops, he wouldn't be such a chicken thief.

Most of the Japanese army commanders came from poor and remote areas, and they all had the innate endowment of being careful and good at squeezing manpower and material resources. When they encounter an opponent who is more stretched thin in terms of manpower and materials, they can take this refinement advantage to the extreme. But unfortunately, Huang Dashao opposite today is an outlier, he doesn't like to be careful with his calculations, and he doesn't like to drag mud and water.