Recently, as the Chinese medical team in Italy has gained endless gratitude and praise for the motherland, Sino-Italian friendship has also attracted more and more attention from the world, and today I will take advantage of this hot spot to talk to you about a period of neglected "Sino-Italian cooperation" during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
For a long time, everyone's military impression of Italy has not been very good, mainly due to the "five scum" of the Italian army in World War II.
However, everything has other different aspects and details that deserve attention, which are worth savoring today's people, and only in this way can we learn to fully understand the historical truth in depth.
After the First World War, Italy and Germany, the two former powers, also tasted the humiliation of human flesh, domestic nationalism and even fascist forces rose, and the Italian strongman Mussolini took the lead in creating the world's first fascist regime.
Before fascism fully revealed its vicious face, this force still won the "goodwill and yearning" of many countries and nationalities in the world who are struggling to find the road to independence and prosperity with its "strength, strength, and efficiency", and China is one of them.
At that time, Chiang Kai-shek greatly admired Mussolini, so the first object of study of the Republic of China government at that time was the Mussolini regime. To this end, Chiang Kai-shek also continuously sent envoys to Italy to "learn from the scriptures," and later established various fascist institutions in the country, the predecessor of the military command, the "Blue Clothing Society," which was one of the fruits.
Although the Italian army made a lot of foreign appearances in World War II, the Italian fascists who pursued the expansion of armaments still established a strong military industry, so Italian weapons were the first to be purchased by China.
As early as the warlord melee, Zhang Zuolin had bought a lot of Italian weapons, down to rifles, machine guns, up to Italian tanks. Zhang Zuolin mainly bought the small and exquisite Italian Fiat 3000 light tank, although it looks like an adult version of the "bumper car", but it can still scare many backward warlords.
Chiang Kai-shek bought more comprehensively, not only a batch of CV35 light tanks that were also "small and exquisite", but also the most scarce fighter in the Republic of China: the Italian biplane CR32 fighter.
In addition to weapons, Italy once opened a "Sino-Italian joint venture" aircraft manufacturing plant and air force training school in Luoyang. However, the Italians are too loose and unreliable by nature, the quality of the aircraft produced is very poor, and the cadet technology is extremely low, so the flight accidents are continuous, so that Chennault, who came to China at the same time to find opportunities, could not see it anymore, and ridiculed Italy for not "helping" the Chinese Air Force, but "destroying" the Chinese Air Force.
The government of the Republic of China, seeing that it was indeed not a problem, stopped the aircraft factory and the flight school, and instead followed Chennault's advice and recruited pilots from the United States with high salaries.
Although the Italian aircraft and tanks were not welcome, the Italian infantry weapons saved them a little face, the most outstanding of which was the famous "Italian gun".
As soon as the "Italian cannon" is mentioned, Chinese will emit a "knowing" laugh, and in the famous anti-war drama "Bright Sword", Li Yunlong shouted urgently in order to attack the Japanese army's peaceful city: "You fucking Italian cannon!" "It left too much of an impression on the audience.
In fact, "Italian cannon" is really not the screenwriter of "Bright Sword" out of nothing, in the war of resistance, China really had a batch of very magical Italian artillery, and achieved very impressive results.
In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Republic of China government had purchased several kinds of artillery from Italy, including the Italian 20 mm anti-aircraft cannon with a high rate of fire, which had shot down many Japanese aircraft. Of course, the most in line with the characteristics of the "Italian gun" in Li Yunlong's mouth is the Italian M1935 anti-aircraft gun, which has the dual functions of fighting tanks and destroying fortifications.
This artillery is actually very famous as early as the First World War, is a 47 mm flat-fire gun of the Austro-Hungarian army, bunkers, tanks are very good, so after the First World War Italy obtained its production line, this artillery became Italy's proprietary artillery.
With the rapid development of European tank technology, this anti-tank-based artillery can play a smaller and smaller role in Europe, but in China, it can still fight all over the world, when all types of tanks of the Japanese Kou (including the so-called "heavy tanks") are inferior to this gun, and one cannon can penetrate! Therefore, the Republic of China government bought a batch and gave priority to elite troops, such as the 58th Division of the 23rd Army.
During the Wuhan Conference in 1938, the 58th Division was stationed on the Wusha Gate River in Anhui Province, and the Japanese army not only sent aircraft to bomb, but also several Japanese gunboats also drove to the river to bombard the Chinese defenders. The Chinese army suffered heavy casualties, at this time, an exciting scene appeared: two seriously wounded soldiers, facing the gunboats of the Japanese Kou, actually pulled out a small M1935 anti-aircraft gun, constantly operating guns to fight back, and forced this small cannon to hit the tank, injuring several Japanese gunboats!
These two ordinary Chinese artillerymen also won the famous "Blue Sky and White Sun Medal". In fact, this credit should also be counted on the Italian gun.