In the First Sino-Japanese War, if the shells are **, will the victory or defeat be rewritten?
The 128th anniversary of the outbreak of the Battle of the Yellow Sea is an important event in modern Chinese history. On September 17, 1894, the Japanese Combined Fleet provoked a fierce naval battle in the Yellow Sea, which ended in the defeat of the Beiyang Naval Division.
This naval battle was not only a duel of military power, but also a collision of different civilizations between China and Japan in the process of modernization. The failure of the Beiyang Naval Division was not only due to the backwardness of military equipment, but also to the psychological predicament of the system and national culture.
Through an in-depth analysis of the factors within the battlefield, we can deeply understand the reasons for China's defeat, so that we can learn lessons, remember history, and look to the future.
On the shores of Yokosuka, where history and modernity meet, young people dance to the melody of jazz music, just like the fashionable men and women of Fuzhou. Beside them, however, stands the Mikasa Memorial Ship Park, a Japanese ship that was honored in the Battle for the Rejuvenation of the Nation.
However, our seekers found a historical fragment that was out of step with the environment - an 11mm Grimm gun from the Beiyang Naval Division's Zhiyuan ship.
Two hundred years ago, the victory or defeat of the Battle of Dadonggou was decided by this small machine gun.
An imitation five-barreled Green gun left on the Weihai Dingyuan Memorial Ship, which is the ancestor of heavy machine guns. This 11-mm Grimm gun was once on the mast of the Zhiyuan ship of the Beiyang Naval Division, and witnessed the largest and fiercest naval battle in the modern history of East Asia - the Sino-Japanese Battle of Dadonggou.
Japan advanced by land and water in the war, and the Chinese Army was unfavorable in Korea, and the main force of the Beiyang Naval Division, under the leadership of Admiral Ding Ruchang, finally fought a decisive battle with Vice Admiral Ito's Japanese Combined Fleet in the area of Dadonggou.
This Grimm cannon is a silent witness to this naval battle.
The starboard main guns of the replica ships of Weihai and Dingyuan were the first guns fired in the Battle of Dadonggou, which was the position of the Dingyuan ship. At about 3:30 p.m., the Chinese fleet was in danger in the waters of Dadonggou, and in the fierce battle, a wounded Chinese battleship raised its battle flag, broke through the formation, and rushed straight to the Japanese fleet - it was the cruiser Zhiyuan of the Beiyang Naval Division, and under the leadership of Deng Shichang's pipe belt, it pounced on the most arrogant Japanese ship Yoshino.
In fact, few people know that the Zhiyuan and the Yoshino are related.
The Zhiyuan, a ship of the Beiyang Naval Division, was built by the British Armstrong shipyard, with Deng Shichang as commander, completed and returned to China in 1887. The total length of the ship is 76 meters, the width is 12 meters, and the draft is 45 meters, with a displacement of 2300 tons, equipped with three 210-mm Krupp guns, a twin in the bow and a single in the stern.
In addition, there were two 150-mm Armstrong secondary guns, eight 57-mm machine guns and six 11-mm rotary machine guns. The hull was armourless, but there was a 2-4 inch thick dome armor above the engine room, hence the name Dome Cruiser.
The Zhiyuan ship is equipped with four boilers, with a total power of 7,500 horsepower, two-shaft propulsion, and a speed of 18 knots, which is the newest and fastest in the Beiyang Fleet.
The Yoshino, the newest high-speed cruiser of the Japanese Combined Fleet, was the flagship of the commander of the 1st Guerrilla Force, Rear Admiral Kozo Tsubii. In the Fourth Expansion Naval Budget of 1891, Japan ordered the ship from the British shipyard Armstrong.
Construction of the Yoshino began in January of the same year, and it was launched on December 20 of the same year, and was completed on September 30, 1893, when the outbreak of the Battle of Daitogou made the ship less than a year old.
The ship has a length of 110 meters, a width of 14 meters, a draft of 5 meters and a displacement of 4150 tons. The armament consisted of 4 150 mm rapid-fire guns and 8 120 mm rapid-fire guns, mounted in 12 single-mount semi-open turrets from the bow and stern decks and on each ear on each side of the tubes.
In addition, it was equipped with 22 47-mm guns and five 14-inch torpedo tubes, and near the waterline, the dome armor was laid throughout the ship, and the dome armor was ** thick 175 inches, the thickness of the part of the slope on both sides inclined to the waterline is 45 inches.
As the world's fastest surface at the time**, the Yoshino was equipped with 12 coal-fired boilers that could provide 23,031 hp of power, two-shaft propulsion, and a staggering 23 knots.
These cold figures stand in stark contrast to the Confucian civilization that China and Japan once embraced, and reflect the urgent need for both countries to catch up with the world. The Yoshino and the Zhiyuan came from the same shipyard, the Armstrong Shipyard in the United Kingdom, but the Yoshino improved and expanded on the basis of the lessons learned from the design of the Zhiyuan, while the Zhiyuan was at a design disadvantage.
Despite this, the battle between the two ships in the naval battle was fierce. Although the Zhiyuan was inferior in tonnage and equipment, it was extremely ferocious when it rushed towards the Yoshino.
According to British officers and soldiers who watched the battle, the Zhiyuan may have fired almost all of its shells, and only the machine guns in the mast were still firing during its final voyage.
Restoring the historical picture of the Zhiyuan ship's impact on the Japanese ** team, diversification has brought prosperity and progress, but also brought some puzzling doubts, such as Deng Shichang's final blow.
Some people believe that Deng Shichang's behavior is a suicide attack based on an overly rigid personality, which is not worthy of praise. However, the real history is far more shocking than our guesses.
Through the study of historical materials, we found that the reason why Deng Shichang launched a decisive charge was related to the formation of the two sides in the naval battle. In 1894, Japan suddenly attacked Chinese troop carriers, and the Sino-Japanese War broke out.
On 17 September, the main force of the Beiyang Fleet escorted the land forces to land in Korea for operations, and engaged in a fierce battle with the Japanese Combined Fleet in the waters of Dadonggou. In order to cover the landing force, the Beiyang Fleet fought fiercely with the Japanese ships, and Deng Shichang, as a member of the Beiyang Fleet, launched a decisive charge.
Therefore, Deng Shichang's behavior is not personal heroism, but a counterattack in despair, a tactical need, and a kind of ambition to die generously.
According to the comparison chart drawn by the Japanese side of the Chinese and Japanese fleets, it can be seen that the strength of the Japanese fleet is relatively balanced, while although the Chinese side has two large ships, the size of the other ships is obviously on the small side.
However, in the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, the formation of the Beiyang Naval Division has always been controversial. Some foreign advisers who participated in the war recalled that due to the timidity of the main general, the Beiyang Naval Division put on a flagship in the ** and dragged it into a crescent-shaped formation, which made the weak ships on both sides be fiercely attacked by the enemy and suffered heavy losses.
However, this is actually a false reminiscence. In the actual battle, the Beiyang Navy Division put on an advanced crescent-shaped horizontal formation, which was also the most advanced and fierce offensive formation in the world at that time, and it was the flagship Dingyuan that rushed to the front!
In 1892, the Japanese Naval Academy already had a pattern of confrontation between the two armies that was almost the same as the Battle of Daitogou, which was presented to Japanese naval officers.
British instructor Ingalls taught the Japanese Navy formation in 1892, and some people questioned the Beiyang Fleet's traitor. In fact, this should start with the idea of establishing the two navies of China and Japan.
The chief instructor of the Beiyang Fleet, Lang Weili, and the chief instructor of the Japanese Naval Academy, Xi Ingalls, were both representatives of the British Navy. Luang Weili was a strict naval officer, and he required Chinese naval officers to master the world's most advanced military tactics.
In the last naval battle before the First Sino-Japanese Naval War, the Austrian Navy defeated the Italian Navy by using a horizontal formation that highlighted the offensive spirit. Ingalls, on the other hand, insisted that the world's most advanced tactics were the ones that the enemy would use in the next war, so he taught the Japanese Navy the credo of knowing the world's most advanced military tactics and then finding a way to crack them.
In real combat, the Japanese fleet took advantage of high-speed performance and dense firepower, specifically targeting the horizontal formation of the previous generation. As soon as the battle began, the Japanese army's tactical thinking yielded fruitful results, and the ships concentrated their firepower to attack the Dingyuan flagship, the lead ship of the Chinese fleet.
Dingyuan was hit by bullets one after another, the mast was blown up, the letter flag system was destroyed, the commander-in-chief Ding Ruchang was wounded, the Chinese fleet lost its unified command, and the formation was in chaos. Subsequently, the Japanese ships passed through the front of the Chinese fleet at high speed, first slammed the second ship Chaoyong and Yangwei, the weakest ships on the right flank of the Beiyang Naval Division, and then completed the outflanking, so that the Beiyang Naval Division fell into a flank attack in the front and rear.
At 15:10, Dingyuan ignited a fire, the smoke made it impossible to aim the main gun, the Japanese ships concentrated their firepower to attack Dingyuan, and the Zhiyuan ship took Deng Shichang to command the ship, highlighting the array and the Japanese army to fight, so as to cover the flagship.
Dingyuan turned the crisis into safety, but Zhiyuan was hit hard. At this time, the ships of the Qing army fell into a situation of fighting on their own, and the situation of the battle began to tilt towards the Japanese side.
When the Zhiyuan ship broke the waves and advanced, and when the whole army was in danger, Deng Shichang led the ship to launch a decisive charge against the Japanese ship Yoshino. Dressed in a British admiral's dress and holding a saber, he stood on the flying bridge and shouted: "My generation has been in the army to defend the country, and I have long put life and death out of the way, and today's things are just death!"
However, although he died, and the navy was victorious, he was so able to serve the country! "In the Battle of Dadonggou, on the four sinking ships, the captains all chose to sink with the ships, which also followed the same tradition.
Deng Shichang's ramming of the Yoshino ship is recorded in Chinese and foreign documents. "
The history of the sinking of the Zhiyuan ship brings tears to our eyes. When the captains of the Beiyang Naval Division decided to rush to the battlefield, they made a decision: to throw all the lifeboats on the ship into the sea to show their determination to sacrifice their lives for the country.
In the Battle of the Yellow Sea drawn by the Japanese army, none of the mid-** ships were seen as lifeboats. This is not only the best expression of courage and determination, but also makes us respect and cherish these heroic naval heroes even more.
Deng Shichang, whose name is Zhengqing, graduated from Fuzhou Shipbuilding School, was an outstanding general of the Beiyang Naval Division, and made many meritorious contributions in the first battle to defend Taiwan in 1874 and the two Korean crises in 1882 and 1884.
His bravery and heroic spirit was inscribed by Emperor Guangxu with the poem "This day is full of tears in the world, and there is a strong navy might", which has become a symbol of the soul of the Chinese navy. But a hundred years later, there are still various doubts about this naval battle.
Some people questioned why the Zhiyuan ship rammed the Yoshino ship, which was faster than him, whether Deng Shichang's bravery was exaggerated, and whether the attack on the Yoshino ship was reckless? There has been much controversy about the reason for his attack, some people think that he has a strong personality and chooses to charge suicidally in the face of desperate situations, and some think that he is too reckless and personal heroic.
However, we must see that Deng Shichang, as an outstanding student of the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Academy and the oldest captain of the Beiyang Naval Division, has a firm will and outstanding military talent, and is the pride of the Chinese people.
Let's revisit this naval battle and understand the real purpose of Deng Shichang's attack.
On the Zhiyuan ship, Deng Shichang was preparing to face the Battle of the Yellow Sea. In 1942, under extremely bad circumstances, for the dignity of the motherland, they stood up and launched a thrilling breakthrough battle with the enemy.
Their heroic spirit and firm determination have made us deeply feel their patriotic fervor and national pride. Their fighting spirit deserves to be remembered forever. ”
Fifty years after the First Sino-Japanese War, the squadron - the cavalry of the Eighth Route Army. On April 29, 1942, Okamura Ninji commanded the Japanese army to launch an unprecedented sweep of the southern Hebei base area.
The headquarters of the Southern Hebei Military Region was surrounded by the Japanese mechanized troops on the banks of the Wei River, and the cavalry regiment of the 129th Division desperately broke through, but was forced to retreat because it was too heavy to fail, and behind the encirclement, the Japanese tank troops had already pounced!
Seeing that they were unable to kill, the cadres of the organs began to shred documents and destroy equipment. Lai Qin, political commissar of the logistics department of the military region, took out a pistol and was about to commit suicide and martyrdom, but was hugged by Guo Yuchun, political commissar of the cavalry regiment.
The political commissar shouted: "Good comrade, give us another chance!" "The remnants of the cavalry regiment were assembled again. In that battle, Guo Yuchun personally acted as the standard-bearer and pounced on the Japanese position with the courage to destroy the whole regiment.
Huang Xiaofeng's "Chinese Cavalry" recorded this singing and weeping battle - "The cadres shouted their names and drew their swords from their waists, the party members shouted and drew their swords, and the ordinary soldiers also shouted and drew their swords."
The cadres of the organs with mounts got on their horses, and the comrades on foot and with their hands followed closely. Fight, this is the last impact of all my might. Fighting, the iron stream of cavalry rushed towards the king's staff like a storm.
From the very beginning of the attack, the cavalry galloped at a sprinting speed, and there was no need to reserve the physical strength for the horses to maneuver in a roundabout, and if they could not rush into the village this time, no one was ready to withdraw to ......On the slope to the right of the village appeared a Japanese machine-gun squad.
The devil's heavy machine gun rang out, and the horses of the Eighth Route Army were knocked down one after another, and the soldiers who fell down rolled a few times, got up, and continued to rush forward with their sabers on their faces covered with blood.
Behind the cavalry regiment were ...... cadres holding pistols and grenadesLike the 129th Division Cavalry Regiment, in the face of the enemy's flank attack, at the moment when the whole army was about to collapse, Deng Shichang was still resolutely implementing the Beiyang Fleet's attempt to break through the enemy's tactical objectives.
The battle flag he raised represents the meaning of "good brother, let's rush again!" "The character of the chief officer determines the character of a unit, the last moment of the Zhiyuan ship This is a fearless collective, the nearby British warship saw that when the Zhiyuan ship rushed to the Japanese fleet, the whole ship was in order, and in the high-speed advance, the white water continued to flow out of the drain on both sides of the battleship, let us know that Deng Shichang's subordinates were still desperately pumping water at the last moment of their lives, trying to ensure the success of the ** impact.
The Pingyuan ship followed, and the Guangbing ship followed......Unfortunately, 1894 was not 1942, and the Zhiyuan ship resolutely charged under the fierce artillery fire of the Japanese First Guerrilla, and finally sank at 3:30 p.m. due to too many bullets.
The story of the Zhiyuan ship is a tragic voyage. Although the ship sank to the bottom of the sea, the machine gun in the mast that was exposed to the water was still silently telling everything about the past.
Back then, Deng Shichang refused to rescue and chose to share the hardship with the battleship. On the other three medium-** ships that were sunk in the naval battle, three Chinese captains who graduated from the Greenwich Naval Academy also chose to sink with the ship, and none of them survived.
These brave soldiers are the pride of our country. But why do we lose? Is it because God doesn't bless you? No, Heaven is fair. It's not that we didn't have a chance to win in the fight, we just didn't take it.
In a fierce naval battle, the Beiyang Naval Division, with its unique tactics, successfully cut off the Japanese formation. In the face of the Hiei's desperate move to cross the formation of the Chinese fleet, the Beiyang Fleet reacted quickly, and responded to the enemy with two iron armor in the center to form a wild goose marching side, while the weak ships were on the right flank, and suffered losses due to the siege of the Japanese First Guerrilla Force.
However, the commander of the Japanese fleet, Ito Yuhiro, was deeply frightened, and in order to avoid the entire fleet being cut into pieces, he was forced to resort to the tactic of gecko tail breaking, ordering the ships to speed up, in effect abandoning the weak ships with slower tail of the fleet.
At 1:14 p.m., from the ** position of the main team of the Combined Fleet, the Beiyang Fleet successfully completed the cutting, and the Japanese ships Hiei, Fuso, Akagi, and Saikyo Maru, which were separated, were fiercely attacked by the Beiyang Fleet and suffered heavy losses.
Hachiro Sakamoto, a heroic captain at the Sasebo Naval Cemetery in Japan. He was shot and killed in the battle of the Akagi ship.
When Hachiro Sakamoto was killed, his brains sprayed out like a map, and in the Sasebo naval cemetery in Japan, a 305-mm main gun shell stood tall and terrified his opponents.
In the Battle of the Yellow Sea on September 17, 1894, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan hit enemy ships many times, causing fire and countless casualties on Hiei and other ships.
The Chinese Navy used the shells of the Dingyuan to attack the Japanese Navy, but the huge shells did not succeed in sinking the enemy ship, but instead lost the opportunity for China to win. Even the 2,900-ton ship led by Qiu Baoren, the fierce general of the Beiyang Naval Division, could not sink the Akagi ship, which was less than 800 tons.
The reason is that the *** power of the reload is too small. A ** left by the Japanese Navy may reveal the reason: a Chinese large-caliber shell hit the Japanese ship Nanisu, and the frustrated Japanese army was able to find the fragments behind the shell** one by one, and spliced together a shell almost as it was!
The counterattack of the Akagi ship made the shells of the Beiyang Naval Division recovered by the Japanese army powerless, and directly seriously damaged the distant ship.
Xie Baozhang, the deputy of Laiyuan, the father of the writer Bingxin, once experienced a tragic naval battle. In his recollection, the guns of the Japanese ships burned on the steel frames, and the whole scene was extremely dangerous.
In order to prevent the fire from spreading to the core of the world, Xie Baozhang decisively ordered the engine room to be closed. All the engineers held their posts in the hot environment until the end of the naval battle, successfully protecting the battered **.
However, the battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the rear of the ship, leaving only the exposed ruins of the steel frame.
In the Battle of Dadonggou, the seriously injured Lai Yuan ship burned out the rear deck, and despite the hit of one shell, the enemy's ** always stood tall. This is why Bingxin wanted to write the story about the Beiyang Sailor many times in his later years, but every time he wrote it in the middle, he couldn't help crying, and finally couldn't finish it.
Perhaps, to solve this mystery, it is necessary to go to Japan to find the building called Joenkan.
Dingyuan Hall"This building in Dazaifu, Fukuoka City, Kyushu, Japan, retains the remains of the Dingyuan ship, and at the same time, it also shows the watertight hatch of the battleship and the confused eyes of Yamaguchi Momoe.
Not only are a large number of relics of the Dingyuan ship preserved here, but also rebuilt from the wreckage of the Dingyuan ship. Walking inside, whether it is the steel parapet, the barnacle-covered promenade, the guardrail made of longboat oars, or the floor and door frame of the **teak deck, as well as the beams of the beams and the bollards of the column heads, the shadow of the Dingyuan ship is everywhere.
The watertight gate of the Beiyang battleship in the Dingyuan Pavilion is said to be the House of Resentful Spirits, and the owner, Ryusuke Ono, once spotted the presence of Chinese sailors here, and later performed sacrifices to present them to the shrine.
Now, walking past the bullet marks on the beams of this battleship and the burned and damaged materials, our thoughts seem to travel back to the battlefield of blood and fire 120 years ago. The gate of the Dingyuan Pavilion is the armor of the Dingyuan ship, and the bullet holes and burnt marks on it reveal the cruelty of history.
From the ablation marks of the Japanese army's high gunpowder on the armor plate of the Beiyang Naval Division, we can see the Japanese Navy's good intentions and scientific and technological innovation. Picric acid explosives, although powerful, were limited by safety concerns around the world, and only the Japanese Navy finally solved the technical difficulties through trial and error and at great cost.
The intensity of picric acid explosives far exceeds that of TNT explosives, which is difficult for black powder to match. In the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, at least part of the Japanese artillery shells used this charge, which was also the top secret of the Japanese army.
Although some people think that the Japanese artillery has a fast rate of fire, our army's heavy artillery is powerful, but in actual combat, although the shells we hit are large, the power of the first is not as good as the small shells of the Japanese army.
This seems to indicate that the technological gap was the decisive factor in the Battle of Dadonggou. The Beiyang Naval Division not only faced a gap in gunpowder, but also the problem of the rate of fire of the artillery.
This is the Jingyuan ship that was riddled with bullets after the Battle of Dadonggou, and the bulwarks in the picture are not fictional, but based on real **. The dense bullet marks on a bulwark make people imagine the crazy blows experienced by the Beiyang Naval Division in the naval battle.
There is no ship that has not been hit by more than 100 rounds in naval battles. These dense impact points revealed one of the advantages of the Japanese army: their shells were very fast, far surpassing those of the Beiyang Naval Division.
It turned out that the Japanese army not only had great gunpowder power, but their artillery was also much more advanced than that of the Qing army. In the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, the Japanese army mainly used rapid-fire guns, while the Beiyang Naval Division used old-fashioned erection guns.
The British Navy Almanac estimated that the Japanese artillery rate of fire was six times that of the Beiyang Naval Division, but the actual amount of ammunition consumed, the gap may have been even greater.
In the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, the Japanese army used the Armstrong 4A 7-inch rapid-fire gun, almost indistinguishable from modern artillery. However, despite this, the shells of the Beiyang Naval Division were still insufficient.
Under the Zhenyuan iron anchor in Okayama, a rusty cannonball was found, which was the last relic of the Beiyang Naval Division Pingyuan in the world. The shell came from the Japanese battleship Saikyo Maru in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, which at the time was the seat of the Japanese Admiralty Shikiri Kayama.
The Pingyuan accurately hit the belly of the Saikyo Maru, but the shell did not **....
One of the shells of the Pingyuan ship hit the Saikyo Maru, but it did not happen**.
This is an old-fashioned shell, modified by the artillery crews of the Beiyang Naval Division, allowing it to be loaded from the breech and used on the ship. Despite the fact that the shell had grown old and bearded, the ordnance engineers decided to rework it in order to cope with the shortage of shells.
Although the hit rate of such shells cannot be guaranteed, the Chinese Navy still does not lack courage in the smoke of the Yellow Sea battlefield, and they throw all the ** that can be used, including such old-fashioned shells, at the enemy.
Although the Beiyang Naval Division performed valiantly in the Battle of Dadonggou, they were unable to continue fighting due to a shortage of ammunition, which eventually led to the Japanese gaining control of the Yellow Sea and China's initiative falling into the hands of the Japanese.
This naval battle was an important turning point for the Chinese Navy, and since then the battle has entered the borders of our country.