Heavy artillery build-up
In the second Normenhan conflict, the Japanese army was constrained by the superior artillery and armored forces of the Soviet army, and the gap in armored strength was temporarily unable to make up for it, and the Kwantung Army set its sights on its own artillery. Since the nearest station of the Trans-Siberian Railway to Nomenkhand was Borzia, 700 km away, the Kwantung Army believed that the Red Army could only use one and a half and at most two infantry divisions in the Nomenkhand region. In this way, the self-righteous staff officers of the Kwantung Army believed that by transferring about 35 heavy guns from the reserves of Manchuria or the mainland, they could destroy the artillery attached to the Soviet infantry and thus open the door to victory for the 23rd Division.
As a ** of the Army General Staff Headquarters after the war said, if the real strength of the ** people in Nomenhan was known before the attack, then "even if they were as stubborn as the Kwantung Army, they would never dare to launch such an offensive." What the Japanese did not know was that during the period when Komatsubara decided to stop the night attack and wait for the heavy artillery units (almost 10 days), Zhukov transferred 2 more infantry divisions and greatly strengthened the positions of the Soviet troops on the right bank of the Haraha River, and the basis for the original plan of the Kwantung Army staff no longer existed.
At the time of the outbreak of the Normenhan conflict, the Japanese Army General Staff Headquarters was transferring the heavy artillery of the Japanese mainland to Manchuria as planned, and the outbreak of the Normenhan conflict greatly accelerated the pace of this transfer; although the General Staff Headquarters hoped that the conflict would be controlled and ended as soon as possible, it was also full of hope in the heart that it could teach the Soviets a lesson and save face for the Japanese Imperial Army.
On June 24, the Japanese 3rd Heavy Field Artillery Brigade under the command of Major General Yusaburo Yanyu received an order to mobilize at its base in Chiba Prefecture on the island of Honshu. The Kwantung Army obviously attached great importance to this brigade, and in order to make it possible for this brigade to reach Nomenkhand as soon as possible, it provided additional transport vehicles for the brigade headquarters in Hailar despite the very tight transportation capacity.
The Smoke Brigade includes the 1st Heavy Field Artillery Wing and the 7th Heavy Field Artillery Wing. From March 1939, the 1st Heavy Field Artillery Wing was led by Yoshiichiro Mishima, a 44-year-old who graduated from the 28th class of the Army Noncommissioned Officer School. The 7th Wing was commanded by Takaji Nobuki Daisa. In the entire Japanese Army, the 1st Heavy Artillery Wing was the only fully motorized artillery wing equipped with Type 96 150mm howitzers produced at the Osaka Arsenal. Like her sister the 7th Wing, Mishima's troops were prized by the Japanese and were never willing to be sent to the Chinese battlefield (the brigade commander, Yusaburo Yan, and about 50 percent of the officers and men had fought in Wuhan, China, due to a lack of artillery professionals). The wing has 2 brigades, each with 2 squadrons, each with 4 150mm howitzers, 15 tractors and 7 trucks. The entire wing has a total of 16 howitzers, 100 tractors, 104 trucks, 21 vehicles, 6 three-wheeled motorcycles, 10 observation vehicles and 3 repair vehicles, in addition to its own trains, with about 1,600 personnel. There is also a special person in the wing, the eldest daughter of Emperor Showa, Captain Higashikure Moritsu, the fiancé of Shigeko Terumiya, who served as the commander of the 1st Squadron of the 1st Brigade. The 7th Wing was approximately the same size as the 1st Wing, but was armed with 16 100-mm cannons that entered service in 1932.
On July 6, the Kwantung Army issued an order ordering the Commander of the Kwantung Army's artillery, Major General Uchiyama Eitaro, to command all artillery units assigned to the 23rd Division. These units consisted of three parts: the 3rd Brigade of Major General Yan Yong, who had just arrived from Japan;Artillery units (Ise Takahide's 13th Artillery Wing and Miaogan's 1st Independent Field Artillery Wing) that were already fighting in Nomenhan;and 2 artillery wings collected from the Kwantung Army.
In addition, the Kwantung Army turned over the old bottom from almost every corner of Manchuria: 2 heavy artillery squadrons of the motorized heavy artillery wing led by Yoshio Someya Nakasa from Mudanting Hulin Yaohan ("Maginot in the East") in Heilongjiang Province, with less than 600 people and 4 ** type 150-mm cannons;2 150-mm cannons from the Port Arthur (1 squadron);and the 1st Artillery Reconnaissance Wing, originally stationed in Acheng, Heilongjiang, led by Fukuda Nakasa, with about 550 people, divided into observation, searchlight, acoustic survey squadrons, surveying and mapping, and meteorological detachments.
Eitaro Uchiyama divided the artillery into two groups: the 2nd group of Ise Daisa, including those artillery units that had already participated in the battle;Major General Yanyuzaburo's 1st Cluster concentrated the new heavy artillery units that had just arrived from Manchuria and the mainland, and in the words of Mishima Daisa, it was obviously a bit of a stacked house.
Knowing the situation of the Japanese 3rd Heavy Field Artillery Brigade, we will understand that Japan was really a second-rate player in World War II. In 1934, China ordered 24 heavy guns from Germany (Rheinland Artillery Factory), with a caliber of 150 mm and a barrel length of 32 times (caliber), so the full name is "32 times 150 mm heavy howitzer", with a maximum range of 15 kilometers (42 kg weight), equipped with the first mechanized artillery regiment in Chinese history The 10th Artillery Regiment - (the first regiment commander was General Peng Mengji, who later served as Taiwan's ** chief of staff), this regiment has participated in the battles of Songhu and Taierzhuang. In the process of exporting this batch of heavy artillery from Germany to China, Japan proposed to Nazi Germany**, because they knew that they did not have such a sharp weapon themselves, which may be another reason why they did not send the 3rd Brigade to China.
From mid-July, Japanese artillery began to prepare intensively for the offensive. Every 20 meters, the cannons under the brown camouflage net were neatly arranged on the position, and the thick muzzles of the guns pointed together to the west, which was quite imposing.
An important issue in the use of heavy artillery was the storage of ammunition on the front line, and Yan Yong and Mishima considered preparing ammunition for five bases, specifically 4,800 rounds of 100-mm cannon shells, 900 rounds of 150-mm cannon shells, and 4,000 rounds of 150-mm howitzer shells. Each heavy artillery shell is loaded with 1 wooden box, and one car can only hold 36 boxes of shells at a time, and one car can only run back and forth between Hailar and the front line (a one-way distance of more than 200 kilometers) at most, so that just to satisfy the "appetite" of the artillery, all the cars in Hailar are exhausted in the vast Mongolian wilderness.
The muddy roads in the rainy season made the Japanese automobile soldiers and baggage troops miserable and at a loss.
On the night of 19 July, Yan Yong, after liaising with the Air Force, moved his artillery position forward to the selected firing position. Just when all the troops thought that the 21st would be the Xth (the day of the general attack), it rained on the afternoon of the 19th, and it rained even more on the 20th. Normally, these delicate Japanese heavy artillery units needed 24 hours of good weather before the big operation, so Rear Admiral Ouchi suggested that the 23rd Division postpone the attack by one day, and all the troops began to scramble again.
On July 21, the sky was clear and cloudless. At 5:00 a.m., Yusaburo received a report that the units had entered the positions, and he asked the artillery to be able to increase the hit rate when the offensive had already been postponed for 1 day.
At 5:00 on July 22, the artillery units reported to Yan Yong that they were ready for firing and that the weather looked good, and before 6:00 a.m., when Yan Yong was about to order his units to launch an artillery bombardment, an instruction from Commander Ouchi came that due to the request of the 23rd Division, the attack would be postponed for another day, and according to the weather forecast, there would be rain again on the afternoon of the 22nd, and the various units were simply complaining, because the stacking of a large number of shells was really a troublesome and terrible problem......
In this way, the joint offensive of artillery and infantry of the Japanese Kwantung Army, which was also unprecedented in the history of the Japanese Army, began on July 23, and the appearance of the Angang detachment undoubtedly only emboldened the troops, and they were not far from the day when they returned to Gongzhuling's lair.
A much-anticipated artillery battle
On the morning of July 23, Uchiyama slightly modified the plan and let the field artillery take the lead in order to lure the Soviet artillery to expose their positions. At 6:30, the field artillery opened fire, and the artillery observers were busy correcting various data according to the positions exposed by the Soviet counterattack artillery fire. At 7:30, the heavy artillery fired, and after half an hour of heavy artillery fire, around 8:00, all the artillery, including the Ise's 75-mm field guns, which had limited power, began a chorus. In the thunderous sound of Japanese artillery, the infantry of the Kwantung Army, who were fed up with the cannons of the ** people, couldn't help but start cheering.
The 3rd Brigade of the Yama County Wing was waiting in the trenches for the moment of sortie, and they were also excitedly cheering for the performance of the 150-mm howitzer 500 meters behind them. But it wasn't long before they became frustrated, and when the Soviet artillery began to return fire, it became clear that for every shot fired by the Japanese artillery, the Soviets had to return fire with 3 or 4 shots. Moreover, the firing range of Soviet artillery was much longer than that of Japanese artillery, and even the huge 150-mm howitzer behind it wisely gave up the idea of striking at the positions of Soviet long-range artillery. In fact, the effective range of this cannon, the most powerful and proud of the Japanese, was less than 12,000 meters, while the Soviet army's 122-mm cannon (1931 model) had an effective range of 20,800 meters, and the 152-mm howitzer (1937 model) had an effective range of 16,000 to 17,000 meters.
In this way, after the scheduled 2-hour shelling, the Soviet artillery was not dumb, and the Japanese artillery extended the shelling for another 1 hour under the somewhat whimical order of Uchiyama and Yanyong. The problem is that the Japanese infantry has long been unable to suppress the frenzy of attacking, at 11:00 they launched an attack as planned, but when they attacked the Soviet position, they suddenly rained heavy artillery shells on their heads, at this time, the Soviet artillery on the front line was busy moving their positions, then, these shells can only come from their own artillery brothers......
Staff Officer Shimaguan of the Kwantung Army Headquarters angrily accused the artillery of being foolish and incompetent, and Komatsubara could only silently go to the infantry units on the front line that had been beaten by his heavy artillery in the afternoon to comfort and encourage the troops not to be demoralized by this defeat.
Realizing that the Soviet artillery was far from being wiped out, and at the same time feeling ashamed of the insolence of the infantry, Major General Ouchi ordered all the artillery to take advantage of the cover of night that night and move their positions as far forward as possible in order to provide effective support for the next day's infantry attack. Rear Admiral Ouchi was very kind to Komatsubara this time, but in this way, the artillerymen, who had worked so hard to build a firing position, were again complaining.
At 3:00 a.m. on the 24th, two 150-mm howitzers were transferred to a new position, and a test firing was done to determine the distance, which immediately caused a number of 100-mm cannons of the Soviet army to fire sharply, and the artillerymen were heavy, more than 20 artillery members were killed, and a valuable 150-mm howitzer was also destroyed.
On the morning of the 24th, the Japanese artillery attacked again, but with one difference, this time the ammunition was not as sufficient as the previous day (2 ammunition bases were used the previous day, and only 1 and a half bases were available on this day). And to make matters worse, on this day the Soviet artillery did not show weakness at all and began a large-scale counter-suppression, and for a whole day, the Japanese artillery suffered losses: 3 field guns, 4 mountain guns, 19 anti-tank guns, 5 infantry guns and 2 anti-aircraft guns, in addition to the howitzer lost in the early morning. The Japanese infantry was also knocked out by the artillery of the ** people, 18 heavy machine guns and 44 light machine guns.
Due to the activity of Soviet artillery (in the words of the 72nd Infantry Wing Sakai Daisa, the Soviet shells were like "rain"), the attack of the Japanese infantry still did not make a little progress during the day on the 24th, and Komatsubara, a little anxious, continued to prepare for the next day's attack that night.
Although the Japanese army had two artillery shell bases on the 25th, it still failed to suppress the fierce and much more accurate artillery fire of the Soviet army, and now 70% of the ammunition reserves of the Kwantung Army have been transported to the Nomenhan front, and it will only take one day to exhaust these ammunition, for example, the Ise Wing has only half a base of ammunition stored by the night of the 25th. In addition, since the Soviet artillery was mainly placed on the high ground on the left bank of the Haraha River, the Japanese artillery was in a disadvantageous position, and it was impossible to overwhelm the Soviet army with this existing force.
During the three-day artillery battle from the 23rd to the 25th, the Japanese used 35 heavy artillery pieces as planned, and the Soviet troops had no less than 64 cannons and howitzers plus 12 field guns on the left bank of the Haraha RiverOn the right bank, 20-30 field guns. And this is not counting those Soviet artillery that were not in front of the 1st cluster of Japanese artillery. In this way, the ratio of forces between the two sides is already 1 to 3 (the ratio of the number of shells fired by both sides is also this ratio), and there is no need to consider the superiority of the Soviet army in artillery performance, terrain and logistics, which is no longer a normal ratio of attack and defense.
The Japanese hoped that many of the heavy artillery pieces did not play a role in turning the tide, and Normenhan's Kwantung Army was once again in trouble. On the afternoon of the 25th, an order came from the headquarters of the Kwantung Army in Xinjing that the artillery of the 23rd Division, which was still in full swing, and Uchiyama should immediately stop the attack, strengthen the current fortifications, and stop trying to sweep away the enemy's bridgehead positions on the right bank of the Haraha River. In addition to the reason why the ammunition of the Kwantung Army was already unsustainable, they also clearly realized that there would be no good results if they continued to attack.
There was a small episode in the artillery battle of Normenhan, that is, the Japanese army used an observation balloon unit attached to the artillery, but suffered a very different fate from the Chinese battlefield.
Over the past two years, the Japanese artillery units have been extremely successful in the use of observation balloons on the Chinese battlefield. Due to the squadron's failure to grasp air supremacy, the Japanese army can freely use observation balloons to help artillery units improve the hit rate, and it has produced a huge spiritual deterrent to the Chinese people, which has been reflected in the battles of Songhu and Nanjing.
Due to the naturally unfavorable situation of the Japanese artillery on the battlefield of Nomenhan, in order to help the Japanese artillery in the operation of Nomenhan, the Japanese army also sent a 200-person observation balloon detachment from the mainland (Chiba Prefecture) this time. The balloons used by the Japanese army in Nomenkhan were 17 to 18 meters high and 7 to 8 meters in diameter. The balloon is made of blue silk and can accommodate 2 observers in a gondola.
On July 24, Balloon 101 of the Observation Balloon Unit arrived at the Normenhan front line, and was soon assigned to the Yanyong Heavy Artillery Unit, leaving a smaller spare balloon in Hailar. The Japanese also knew that their opponents this time were different from the usual, so they deliberately arranged anti-aircraft guns at the balloon launch point and arranged fighter planes to protect them in the air.
Balloon No. 101 was raised three times from 7:00 a.m. on July 25, the first two times under the cover of the Air Force, and the balloon stayed at an altitude of 900 meters for about 10 minutes each time. At around 11:00, in order to help the artillerymen who were firing frantically, the balloon was again impatiently raised to an altitude of 1,000 meters, by which time the cover of the Japanese fighters had been removed due to the tense fighting. Suddenly, from the clouds on the west bank of the Haraha River, 3 I-16s rushed in a roar, and all the anti-aircraft fire of the Japanese army was nervously desperate into the air. The I-16 flew a little farther away, and then they swooped down again, passing over the Japanese front line like a demonstration, and at the same time shot a gust of wind at the balloon, the blue "101" was torn to pieces in the flames in an instant, and the 2 observers fell to the ground with the gondola, and all the front-line Japanese soldiers saw this thrilling scene. When the beautiful balloon was raised in the morning, almost all the Japanese soldiers cheered for it, not only because of the balloon's observation value for artillery, but also because the balloon floating high symbolized the Japanese army's dominance in the sky. But just a few hours later, in Komatsubara's words, the I-16 destroyed the Japanese balloons like an "eagle pounced on the sparrows" and showed the Japanese who was the true master of the Normenheim sky.
Since then, the Japanese have continued to use observation balloons on the Normenheim front, but they have become very cautious. On August 9, Hailar's reserve balloon reached the front line, and on August 23 it was again ruthlessly destroyed by the Soviet Air Force, but fortunately the observers saved their lives by parachuting (the Japanese only dared to send one observer at a time at this time). The new balloon "101" (which the Japanese changed to mooring at this time) was blown to pieces by a 152-mm Soviet artillery shell in mid-August.
As one foreign observer noted, the Japanese used the tactics of the "old" First World War to deal with a truly formidable opponent in the Second World War, and the results speak for themselves.
In the sprawling Japanese Army, the promotion and transfer of a small artillery captain should be unobtrusive. However, if the captain and the emperor's eldest daughter were already engaged, would this still be the case?This captain was the 3rd Heavy Field Artillery Brigade of the 1st Heavy Field Artillery Wing, a junior officer who needed a dignified chief of staff of the Kwantung Army to personally explain the battle situation to him.
On July 24, during an air raid, the officer, who commanded a squadron of 150-mm howitzers, was wounded slightly. At this time, the entire Kwantung Army was alarmed, and the 3rd Heavy Field Artillery Brigade brought 200 railway sleepers from Hailar as quickly as possible to strengthen the captain's shelter for healing. The commander of the 1st Heavy Field Artillery Wing, Yoshiichiro Mishima, knew very well that the fate of the captain was his own fate, and he could no longer bear this kind of worrying days, and together with the captain's immediate boss, a Nakasa, he insisted that the prospective horse master be transferred as soon as possible. The machines of the personnel department of the Kwantung Army were running at a rapid pace, and the captain was "normally" transferred to another artillery unit stationed in Acheng, Heilongjiang (near Harbin).
On July 27, the 23rd Division sent the captain from the front to Hailar by plane, telling him to stay in this safe place to "observe and Xi" until he reported to Acheng in August. But the 23rd Division was obviously in a hurry, because on the same day, Commander Kenkichi Ueda of the Kwantung Army and Chief of Staff Masaio Terada also came to the front, and Terada firmly believed that it was inappropriate for the members of the imperial family to leave the front line in such circumstances, so the captain flew back to the front line.
When Higashikure returned to the front, he learned that one of his subordinates had been killed during his absence, and he asked to return to his unit to visit and comfort his companions. Yoshiichiro Mishima angrily "reprimanded" the captain greatly, and the embarrassed captain apologized to Osa very "sincerely" and flew back to Hailar again. This time, everyone was extremely cooperative, because the safety of this horse master was too much at stake.
This is what a Japanese Imperial Army artillery captain experienced after being wounded on the Normenhan front, if it weren't for facing a strong opponent, I'm afraid there wouldn't have been such a big movement!
To be continued