Chapter 72, Melbourne Winter (Part 2)
A few hours later, the town of Broadford in the northern suburbs of Melbourne ushered in the dawn of a new day amid smoke and tremors.
The once deafening shouts of killing, the sound of gunfire and explosions gradually faded away, and only the blazing fire still reflected half of the sky red.
The town of Broadford, which was already dilapidated, was now completely razed to the ground by cannon fodder. The stars and stripes representing the US military and the blue Southern Cross flag representing the Commonwealth of Australia fell quietly to the ground amidst the smoke and flames. Instead, there is the eye-catching Japanese sun flag...
The few Allied prisoners of war were put on trucks and transported away with their heads hanging down, while the victorious Japanese army began to clean up the battlefield. A young Japanese soldier kicked away the scattered limbs and broken arms, walked around the burning wreckage of enemy cars and artillery, carried a rifle with a bayonet, and searched for surviving enemy soldiers and trophies that could be recovered. . All around him was a devastated neighborhood. Not to mention that there is not a complete building in sight, even the soil here has been turned over dozens of times by various artillery shells. The huge craters left on the ground are particularly shocking.
——Due to the recent acquisition of a large number of field artillery, tanks, machine guns and ammunition from the "homeland", the Australian Japanese army, which has been suffering from insufficient long-range firepower and difficulty in ammunition supply, can finally rain down bullets on the enemy. , smashed and flattened everything in the way!
Generally speaking, cleaning the battlefield is a very troublesome task, especially in a place that has been baptized by shells. There is almost no intact corpse, not much intact equipment, and broken limbs everywhere. There were scraps of metal everywhere, and almost nothing of value could be found. If there are undead enemies hiding in the pile of corpses or wreckage, there will be various dangers such as being shot in the dark... He noticed the gold ring on the hand of the corpse of an Australian officer not far away, and couldn't help but get greedy. He got up and was about to move up to touch the corpse, but his foot slipped and he was about to fall into a crater.
Fortunately, just when he almost fell to the ground, he was caught by a strong arm. The soldier looked back gratefully and found an officer wearing a helmet and a pistol on his waist. He was wearing a military coat without any markings. At first glance, he didn't know his rank.
"...Be careful next time, pay attention to your surroundings when walking." The officer scolded, then turned and left.
"...Yes, thank you, sir!" The young Japanese soldier quickly saluted, unaware that he had just passed by a general.
At the same time, a group of Land Attack 1 bombers with the Rising Sun military emblem painted on their wings roared past their heads and flew to the south where Melbourne is located.
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Ten minutes later, Lieutenant General Tsuji Masanobu, the new commander of the 152nd Division, who was covered with dust and dirt, completed his inspection of the Broadford Town battlefield and returned to his headquarters in a relaxed mood. On the map table in the headquarters tent, the staff officers had already marked the progress of each unit.
From the map, four thick arrows have launched a centripetal attack on the Allied forces in Melbourne from four directions: southeast, northwest, and southeast.
On the northern front, the 152nd Division under his command had just captured the town of Broadford, and was only about fifty kilometers away from the center of Melbourne.
On the eastern front, the commander-in-chief of the Australian Japanese Army, General Yamashita Tobumi, personally commanded five divisions. He also captured Rex Enkelens, a transportation town sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, a few hours ago, and successfully poured into the east of Melbourne. plain - from there to the city of Melbourne, the Allies were no longer in danger.
On the western front, the 2nd Marine Division, which was originally stationed in Perth, in cooperation with the 5th Tank Brigade and a special infantry brigade, was still slowly advancing along the coastal road in southeastern Australia. A mine had just been struck. Kinnard Point seemed a little sullen, but at least it contained the enemy's fresh force.
On the southern route, the Japanese Navy's advance fleet has also circled to the southernmost part of the Australian continent and successfully broke into Bass Strait, blocking Melbourne's last sea route to the outside world and cutting off the connection between Melbourne and Tasmania. transportation between.
But within this airtight encirclement, the Allied forces only had 35,000 US troops, 5,000 New Zealand troops and the last 80,000 Australian soldiers, at most 200 aircraft, plus the few remaining old-fashioned warships of the Australian Federation, and all of them were The organization is incomplete and extremely exhausted - it is obvious that under the Japanese army's land and sea attack from all directions, the more than 100,000 Allied troops now trapped in Melbourne have completely become a turtle in the urn, and their destruction seems to be imminent.
——In this offensive against Melbourne, the Japanese army's offensive tactics were extremely simple and rough. They used overwhelming long-range artillery fire to violently bombard, and then let the infantry attack under the cover of tanks. If the attack is frustrated, the infantry will be withdrawn and the next wave of artillery bombardment will continue... It is equivalent to replacing the cavalry with tanks in the classic trilogy of "artillery bombardment - cavalry assault - infantry occupation" during the Napoleonic Wars.
At the same time, the Japanese army continued to send aircraft to bomb the rear of the Allied front lines, destroy bridges and roads, and interfere with the mobilization and reinforcement of Allied reserve forces.
Although this tactic is very simple, it is difficult for the Allied forces to respond effectively - taking advantage of the ideological confusion caused by the nuclear explosion in Tokyo and the collapse of the old Japanese Empire, the Allied forces in Melbourne launched a vigorous campaign a few months ago A major counterattack, although they suffered heavy losses immediately under the walls of Canberra. However, the Allies still expanded their control area to about 100,000 square kilometers (equivalent to a Zhejiang Province) and recovered almost half of Victoria.
——It is gratifying for the Allies to be able to repel the Japanese army and regain a large area of land. However, without any new troops to join, and instead some of the troops have to be transferred to other battlefields, the Australian Allied Forces control The sudden expansion of the area means a sudden elongation of the front line and a sharp decrease in troop density. It is equivalent to changing from a clenched fist to an open palm, and the ability to resist blows is naturally greatly weakened. Not to mention that as the front moved forward, the Allied forces had to leave the strong fortifications they had built for two years and expose them to the unobstructed wilderness... As a result, the Australian Allied forces, who had failed in their counterattack, had not had time to restart. After building a line of defense, the Japanese troops who successfully recovered their health turned around and attacked menacingly.
On the other side, although the strength of the Japanese army in Australia has not increased much, the logistics have been greatly enriched. All kinds of artillery, machine guns, ammunition, tanks, trucks, airplanes, and grain are all being transported to Sydney, Brisbane and other ports controlled by the Japanese army did not know where the base camp obtained so many arms and supplies. The Japanese soldiers on the front line were eating canned "Yamato-boiled" beef every day, and they were almost vomiting.
This was even more obvious in the actual battle. In the outpost battle to attack Broadford Town last night alone, the 152nd Division under Lieutenant General Tsuji Masanobu used more than 200 troops. Each of the heavy artillery fired an average of at least 500 shells, which was a luxury that had never been imagined in the past... On the eastern and western fronts where there were more attacking troops, the Japanese army invested more long-range firepower than the northern ones. The line is much more powerful.
Faced with such an overwhelming and earth-shattering saturation bombardment, the Allied forces, which were severely weakened and had no time to build permanent fortifications, were naturally defeated. In addition, the Japanese army still has control of the sea and air on the battlefield. The fierce attack along the way is naturally overwhelming and invincible.
However, this easy situation of sweeping thousands of armies like a tornado is coming to an end: as the commander of the Northern Front, Tsuji Masanobu is very clear that the town of Broadford under his feet is only fifty kilometers away from the city of Melbourne. But it’s not easy to complete this journey - with Broad Different from the laxly defended and crudely fortified outposts like Ford Town, as long as they advance a few steps further, the attacking Japanese army will run into the "American and British devils" who have worked hard for several years to defend the core position of Melbourne's urban area. That was the time when Japanese soldiers like myself were truly tested.
In the repeated tug-of-war over the past few years, at the cost of countless corpses, the Allied forces have gradually built a tight defense line of more than 200 kilometers in the suburbs of Melbourne, relying on hills and rivers, including minefields. , barbed wire, anti-tank trenches, reinforced concrete bunkers and underground tunnels extending in all directions, equipped with countless machine guns and artillery. It looks like the trenches on the Western Front of World War I and the fortifications of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.
Prior to this, General Yamashita Fengfumi and Marshal MacArthur had been competing around this line of defense for two years. They had come up with various tricks, but the Japanese army had never been able to break through this line of defense and enter the city of Melbourne. And if they were to attack head-on without hesitation, the loss of troops would probably be too much to bear.
Therefore, when the vulnerable fat and marshmallows on the periphery are digested, the Japanese army will once again gnaw on this familiar hard bone.
And even now, Tsuji Masanobu can't think of any clever plan that can easily win - the Japanese army and the Allied forces have been fighting on this battlefield for too long, and they know both this land and their respective enemies well. There are too many, and the little tricks are just making people laugh.
"...In the end, we can only rely on force to overcome skill, and rely on artillery fire and human lives to fight?" After studying the map again, Tsuji Masanobu shook his head helplessly, and then called a staff officer on duty, "... Where are the imitation German missiles aided by the Soviets shipped to now? ”
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PS: The world is really busy these days. Terrorist attacks in Germany and France are taking turns every day, grabbing headlines, and slit-throat bombings and shootings are taking turns. Even Japan was unwilling to be left alone and revealed a murderer. As for the terrorist attack at Somalia's international airport that killed 12 people, it received no attention at all.
Then the U.S. Democratic Party held the most failed convention since World War II. From beginning to end, they were booing Hillary and exposing scandals. Some people even carried coffins to protest Hillary. The speakers supporting Hillary are all illegal immigrants, gays, blacks, and disabled people. They seem to be mostly abnormal human beings. The funniest thing is that President O'Hei's wife Michelle supported Hillary, and then a child said that Michelle was the best first lady he had ever seen - the problem is that she was only seven years old... Taiwan also During the ideological purge, some critics scolded President Ma for eight years, and scolded Xiao Cai for less than a month before his website was blocked.