In early May 1944, the vanguard of the Japanese army began to attack Longmen, and the defense of Luoyang officially began. In order to capture the important city of Luoyang in Henan at an early date, Okamura Ningci not only sent all the troops of the 12th Army, but also transferred divisions and regiments from North China and Central China, so that the strength of the troops participating in the battle reached more than 50,000. It can be said that the Japanese army has made a lot of money this time, and has a great momentum of making full contributions to the first battle.
The Japanese army is heavily attacked, and the situation of the Chinese army can be described as not optimistic. At that time, it was Wu Tinglin, the commander of the 15th Army, who was holding Luoyang. As the commander of the Luoyang garrison, he had only three divisions at his disposal, namely the 64th and 65th Divisions of the 15th Army, a local army in Henan that was very disgraceful and was reorganized from bandits. There was also a 94th Division of the 14th Army from Sichuan, which was a poorly equipped Sichuan Army.
According to the deployment of the Ministry of National Defense, the original plan was to defend Luoyang according to the strength of 12 regiments. However, the plan could not keep up with the changes, and the Japanese army made rapid progress, and there was no time for detailed troop mobilization. At present, the strength of the three divisions is only 7 regiments, and the total number is only 18,000, and the attack of 50,000 Japanese troops is extremely thin.
The number of people is pitifully small, and the weapons and equipment are almost the same as the earth. Most of the equipment of the Chinese army is light weapons, anti-tank weapons are very few, on the contrary, the Japanese army, with more than 100 various artillery pieces, more than 400 armored fighting vehicles came to attack the city, obviously to fight a rich war.
According to the previous routine, the Japanese army was well equipped and the quality of its soldiers was high, and it often fought less and more, and the Chinese army was still defeated and retreated. Now that the troops and equipment are superior, it should not be a problem to take Luoyang. However, after the start of the battle, the tenacity of the Luoyang defenders surprised the Japanese army.
The 15th Army defending the city was a local unit, and most of the officers and men were Western Henan. Although this army was recruited by bandits, it did not want to see its hometown lost, so its enthusiasm for defending the country was very high. Luo Luo, a veteran named Luo who had participated in the defense of Luoyang in those years, said that to defend Luoyang is to defend his hometown, and to protect Luoyang can protect his father and fellow villagers, so everyone is determined to kill the enemy.
On May 7, the Japanese army captured The Dragon Gate. After Luoyang lost its natural barrier, it was immediately in danger. In order to prevent the enemy from crossing the river, the defenders blew up the zhongzheng bridge and the Linsen bridge, two bridges leading to Luoyang, but the effect was not great. On the 9th, the 69th Division of the First Army of the Japanese Army in Shanxi crossed the Yellow River and advanced from the west to Luoyang. The main force of the Japanese 12th Army continued to advance south and west of Luoyang. With the loss of positions in the periphery, Luoyang was surrounded by an isolated city.
In order to fight a good defensive battle, the military commander Wu Tinglin divided the position into three defensive areas. The 94th Division of the Sichuan Army guarded the city, the 64th Division guarded the Western Gong, and the 65th Division guarded the Qiuling Mountains, and each defense area was stepping up preparations for fortifications as needed.
With a fierce artillery attack, the Japanese began to attack. The Chinese defenders engaged in fierce positional warfare with the enemy. In the offensive and defensive battles between the two sides, the battle of Shijiatun was the most intense, and in the two days from the 17th to the 19th, the enemy and us fought for Shijiatun five times. At the most dangerous time, the Japanese sent more than 5,000 people to attack, while the Chinese defenders returned fire with grenades, and at the end of the fight, the grenades ran out, and the soldiers carried out white-knife battles with bayonets.
In the Battle of Luoyang, the Chinese army showed a very high morale. At the Shangqing Palace position, Han Kunsheng, commander of the 2nd Company of the 194th Regiment, captured a Japanese adjutant and was besieged and robbed by a large number of Japanese troops. Seeing that he could not break through, he immediately stabbed the adjutant to death, and then fought with all his strength, and finally died heroically. The deputy company commander saw the company commander die under the enemy's bayonet, picked up 8 grenades, roared into the enemy group, and with a loud noise, he died with the enemy.
Seeing the heavy casualties in various positions, Liu Maoen, commander-in-chief of the 14th Army, suggested that the Ministry of National Defense should withdraw the 15th Army from Luoyang. The 15th Army was the main force of the 14th Army, and he did not want the main force to be completely annihilated. However, in the afternoon of the same day, the Luoyang garrison received an airdrop order from Chiang Kai-shek, telling the officers and men to stand firm and wait for help, and not to easily break through. In order to cheer up the defenders, Chiang Kai-shek dispatched the Sino-US joint air force to provide air support, but the support of the air force was limited and had little impact on the war situation.
While the defenders were fighting a white-hot battle with the determination to die, the Japanese troops on the opposite side rarely proposed an armistice and demanded negotiations. It turned out that the Japanese commander Hidetaro Uchiyama saw that the battle was too fierce and the defenders were too tenacious. He did not want to lose any more troops to attack the city, and planned to "peacefully" settle Luoyang.
The Japanese army airdropped a letter of persuasion, which first praised the Chinese defenders for their bravery in battle, and then told the defenders that Luoyang was a dead city, and there were no reinforcements outside, and finally made it clear that Luoyang was a place that the Japanese army would win, and sooner or later it would be fought down, and it was better to have friendly negotiations instead of killing and injuring each other.
The Chinese army responded to the "good intentions" sent by the Japanese army, and the last few shells were fired at the Japanese headquarters, as a sign of the determination of the Chinese troops to be in the city.
Seeing that the surrender was fruitless, on the 23rd, the Japanese army mobilized more than 30 aircraft and more than 100 cannons to carry out aerial bombardment, and 400 tanks and 30,000 infantry were divided into 6 roads to launch a general attack on Luoyang City. In the afternoon, the city walls could not withstand long bombardments, the northeast and northwest corners were breached at the same time, and the defenders engaged in fierce street battles when they ran out of ammunition.
On the 24th, as more and more Japanese troops poured in, the whole city entered a state of melee. The officers and men of the garrison used the houses to fight the enemy hard, and fought with them street by street, and the enemy had to pay a huge price for each high ground occupied. After a day of fierce fighting, the Chinese defenders suffered more than 3,000 casualties and killed more than 8,000 enemy casualties.
That night, seeing that the city was broken and there was no hope of holding out, the 15th Army ordered all the troops to break through on their own and assemble outside Luoyang. A few people stood out of the siege, and Luoyang, which had been held for 20 days, fell.
According to post-war statistics, only 316 officers and 1,795 soldiers of the original 18,000 defenders successfully broke through, and 16,000 died for the country. However, the results of the defense of Luoyang are also very brilliant, in the entire defense war, the Chinese defenders killed and wounded more than 20,000 enemy troops, greatly beyond the imagination of the enemy and me, you know, the end of the battle, the Japanese army always with small casualties to get the greatest results, and this time in the Luoyang defense war planted a heel.