During World War II, how big was the gap in combat effectiveness between the Japanese army's A division and B division?
More than 80 years ago, a war broke out around the world, affecting many countries, and China was among them, which is known as the Second World War.
In this war, Japan, as a resource-poor island country, instead of thinking of developing the economy well and benefiting the people, instead of vainly trying to plunder the resources of other countries and strengthen itself, it has brought heavy disasters to the chinese and even Asian people, but looking back at history, we should not only remember hatred, but also reflect on why Japan could have such a strong strength at that time, but our country did not even have the ability to protect itself.
In World War II, Japan was a "newcomer" compared to Western countries, but it was such a "newcomer" that possessed extremely strong military strength. As a "rising star", it can be said that It is a miracle that Japan can raise its military strength to the forefront of the world in a short period of time. Therefore, today we will analyze the difference between the First Division and the B Division in the Japanese Army to explore the reason why the Strength of the Japanese Army was so strong in the early days of World War II.
First, the emergence of the "division and regiment" establishment
During World War II, divisions were the basic units for the use of combat strength in the Japanese army. However, this establishment did not exist from the beginning. In 1867, Emperor Hyomyō died suddenly, and his son Munehito succeeded him to the throne. At that time, in the late stages of Japan's "Fall of the Curtain Movement", With the support of lower samurai, Muhito took back power from the Tokugawa shogunate as soon as he ascended the throne. In 1868, Mutsuhito changed his name to Meiji and renamed Edo to Tokyo, where he began to govern. Under the command of Emperor Meiji, a modern government was soon established.
After the establishment of the new government, the first problem to be faced was that the emperor did not have an army in his hands and could not deter the local feudal towns. Therefore, in 1871, the Meiji government withdrew some of the military power from the local clan generals and formed the first central army directly under the emperor in modern Japanese history, the Japanese Emperor's Janissaries. Subsequently, in August of that year, the Meiji government established four towns in Tokyo, Osaka, Kumamoto, and Sendai, and "abolished the prefectures, disbanded the local standing army, and changed it to a unified national military system", with the four towns under the command of the national army.
In 1873, the Meiji government again carried out military reform, adding Nagoya and Hiroshima to the original four town platforms, which were responsible for the six military districts of the country, which was the predecessor of the later Japanese Army Division. In 1886, the Meiji government reformed the military system again, this time under the auspices of Katsura Taro, vice minister of the Army Province, and Kawakami Keiro, deputy chief of staff.
At the suggestion of these two men, in 1888, the Meiji government abolished the rokushindai, which had originally been tinged with local security, and on its basis, six divisions were formed, replacing the role of the original rokushindai and responsible for guarding the localities. In addition, in this reform, the Janissaries directly under the Emperor of Japan were also reorganized into the Guards Division. This reform led to the meiji government's complete acquisition of military power, and the unification of the military system throughout the country was realized. However, when the division was first formed, due to the shortage of military resources required, the size of the division and regiment could not be expanded, and it could only maintain the original size of the town.
According to the 1890 army quota order, at that time, a Japanese division had two infantry brigades, a cavalry brigade, an artillery company, an engineer brigade, and a heavy army brigade, with a total strength of about 92,000 people, and the total number of six divisions and regiments in the country was only more than 60,000 people. In this way, this reform did not make much sense, but the reason why the Meiji government wanted to reorganize the town into a division was to use it as a strategic unit for foreign conquest. Katsura Taro, who was in charge of the reform of the military system, made it clear afterwards that it was at this time that the foundation for Japan's subsequent continental operations was laid.
Soon after this military reform, Japan launched a war of foreign aggression, and finally defeated the Qing Dynasty in the Sino-Japanese War, forcing the Qing government to sign the "Sino-Japanese Treaty" and obtaining rich resources for the development of the army. In the ensuing period, the Japanese government used the qing government's reparations to continuously expand the original six divisions, and by the time of defeat in 1945, the Japanese army had formed a total of 173 divisions. In the process of expanding the division, there was also a division within it.
2. The First Division regiment --- elite division of the Japanese army
As mentioned above, at the end of the 19th century, there were only seven divisions in the whole of Japan, but with the development of Japan's military strength and the need for external expansion, the number of Japanese troops expanded rapidly, and the level of combat effectiveness between divisions and divisions also produced a huge gap. In order to facilitate the deployment of operations, the Japanese army divided the divisions into four categories: A, B, C, and D, of which the A division was the most special type of division in the Japanese army, because it was the standing division of the Japanese army before World War II.
After the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, Japan began a new round of military reorganization plans. In 1896, Japan expanded the original seven divisions to thirteen. In 1903, the Russo-Japanese War broke out, and the Japanese army temporarily added four divisions to the original thirteen divisions to deal with the powerful Russian army. After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, in order to prevent Russia from making a comeback, Japan not only maintained the four additional divisions and regiments during the war, but also added four more divisions and regiments to improve the reality of insufficient troops, at this time, the total strength of the Japanese army had reached 21 divisions.
However, after the end of World War I, Japan found that the quality of its troops and the level of equipment could not be compared with those of the world's first-class countries, and the reason was that Japan's existing national strength was unable to support such a large army. In order to increase the strength of the army, the Japanese government once again carried out military reforms, reducing four divisions in one fell swoop. After this reform, the Japanese army left only 17 standing divisions, and maintained this establishment until 1938, and these 17 standing divisions are what we call the First Division.
The division adopts the uncommon four-four organization, which includes infantry brigades, cavalry companies, engineer companies, field artillery companies, heavy artillery companies, and some non-combat units, such as health teams, communication teams, field hospitals, etc., with a total strength of about 25,000 people, and has nearly 10,000 horses and countless sophisticated weapons.
Among the 17 divisions of the First Class, there were both the Guards Division and the 1st to 6th Divisions that had existed since the founding of the Japanese Army, the 7th to 12th Divisions that participated in the Russo-Japanese War, and the 14th, 16th, 19th, and 20th Divisions that participated in the First World War. These divisions and regiments are all elder-level divisions in the Japanese army, and their combat effectiveness is very outstanding. During World War II, the First Division served as the main force in Japan's foreign war.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the strength of the First Division far exceeded that of the Chinese army. In the Battle of Songhu, the Nationalist government in Nanjing gathered the most elite troops in the country and fought against the Japanese army in Shanghai. The outcome of this battle must be very clear to everyone, the Chinese army was defeated miserably, fled all the way to Nanjing, and finally failed to defend Nanjing. In this battle, the Chinese side invested 800,000 people, while the Japanese army only invested 8 first-class divisions, totaling less than 200,000 people.
800,000 Chinese troops fought against 200,000 Japanese troops, and the final result was a crushing defeat. According to the strength of a type of division regiment is about 25,000 people, if the Chinese army wants to defeat a type A division, it must have at least 150,000 troops. Moreover, throughout World War II, the Japanese armor division was almost never annihilated. Even on the eve of the end of World War II, the Japanese Third Division won the Xianggui Battle, and 600,000 Chinese athletes were killed.
At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, these first-class divisions were rampant on Chinese soil, and the Sixth Division defeated the Nanjing defenders and created the Nanjing Massacre, and the ghosts of hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians are still wandering over the city of Nanjing. In addition, in the late stage of World War II, the Japanese government sent most of the armor divisions to the Pacific Theater, which made the US army suffer a lot. Therefore, the strength of the first division was enough to be comparable to the armies of advanced european and American countries at that time. Since the First Division is so powerful, what about the B Division?
3. A simplified version of the First Division
After the beginning of the all-out war of aggression against China, in order to expand the scale of the war, Japan set up a number of special divisions on the basis of the original 17 standing divisions, of which from August 1937 to June 1938, 10 new special divisions and regiments of the 13th, 18th, 101st, 104th, and 106th were put into the Chinese battlefield. In order to distinguish these post-special divisions from the First Division, the Japanese base camp collectively referred to them as the B Division.
The formation time of the B division was much later than that of the A division, and at the beginning of its establishment, the B division did not follow the four or four formations of the A division, but reduced the number of infantry and cavalry, adopted three or three formations, and the corresponding total strength also dropped from 25,000 to about 20,000. This was because at that time, There was no longer enough youth strength and equipment in Japan to arm another 10 divisions and regiments, and the method of reducing the number of units could only be adopted.
Therefore, from the very beginning, the B division regiment was inferior to the A division regiment, which was not only reflected in the number of personnel, but also in the degree of equipment, and the weapons of the B division regiment were much worse than those of the A division. For example, a type A division regiment will generally be equipped with 300 light machine guns, 300 grenadiers, 100 heavy machine guns, 25 infantry guns, 16 rapid-fire guns, 16 mountain guns, and 12 howitzers, while the B division regiment in addition to the light machine guns and the A division regiment are equipped with the same, the other heavy weapons are either only half of the A division regiment, or simply no configuration.
Although it is said that the B division is inferior to the A division in terms of the number of soldiers and the level of equipment, the soldiers of the B division are basically the reserve soldiers of the A division or the veterans who retired from the A division, and the combat experience is not much inferior to that of the A division, and the combat ability is still quite good. Moreover, compared with the A division, the B division only reduces the number of infantry and cavalry, and its own military structure is still very complete, and it is still the basic strategic unit of the Japanese army in foreign operations, and it can undertake the combat task of a region alone.
However, between the B divisions, there is also a difference in combat effectiveness. For example, the Japanese 18th Division, as a veteran division that fought in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, was abolished after the end of World War I and was re-formed in 1938. Logically, the 18th Division can be counted as a class A division, but after the new formation, it was classified as a type B division.
After the establishment of this division, it was thrown into the Battle of Songhu, and it was precisely because of the landing of this division in Hangzhou that the total collapse of the Nationalist defense line led to the defeat of the Nationalist army in Nanjing. In the mid-to-late period of World War II, the division was transferred to Malaysia. Under Yamashita's leadership, the 18th Division swept through Malaysia, and even MacArthur suffered losses under his command, and hundreds of thousands of troops were beaten to pieces.
The performance of the 18th Division on the battlefield was comparable to that of the Japanese Army's Type A Division, but it was not as strong as all the DivisionS. For example, the Japanese 106th Division, a team formed by retired soldiers of the Sixth Division, performed extremely poorly on the Chinese battlefield. In the Battle of Wanjialing, the 106th Division, together with the 101st Division, was almost annihilated by the Nationalist army.
Therefore, among the Japanese army, the difference between the two divisions and regiments is still quite large. First of all, the establishment of the A-type division was earlier than that of the B-type division; secondly, the A-type division regiment adopted a four-four-four-division, while the B-type division regiment adopted a three-three-three-division; second, the A-type division and regiment were better than the B-type division in terms of the number of personnel, the number of equipment, and the quality of soldiers; finally, the overall combat strength of the A-type division was stronger than that of the B-type division.
Text/Leyu
Reference: History of the Japanese Army, Ikuta
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