On the afternoon of November 25, 1943, Sun Lianzhong, commander of the Sixth Theater, rushed to defend Yu Chengwan in Changde: "The 10th Army of the Ninth Theater is already on the road, and it will reach Deshan on the 26th!"! By this day, the 57th Division of the 74th Army "Tiger Ben", which belonged to the Sixth Theater, had been fighting bloodily in Changde City for seven days and nights, facing the crazy siege of two Japanese divisions, the 57th Division suffered heavy casualties and a dangerous situation. Receiving Sun Lianzhong's telegram, Yu Chengwan did not show much excitement, he was very clear:
For the reinforcements to arrive at this matter the next day, it is generally good to listen to it, and it must not be taken seriously.
However, this time, Yu Chengwan did feel a little wronged by the commander of the 10th Army, Fang Xianjue, on the issue of sending reinforcements across the theater, Xue Yue was indeed not active before, and each swept the snow in front of the door, which was a stinky problem of the Nationalist army for many years. Therefore, the reinforcements sent by the Ninth Theater Li Yutang Corps (provisional formation, with Li Yutang, deputy commander-in-chief of the 27th Group Army, as the commander, unified command of the 10th Army and the 99th Army and other units of six divisions), did not move resolutely at the beginning of the reinforcement, and on November 24, the Li Corps was ordered to move from the direction of Changsha, facing the obstruction of a Japanese division, and still could not approach the outskirts of Changde as late as November 29.
It was also on this day that the old Chiang Kai-shek, who was far away in Cairo, sent an urgent telegram in a panic, strictly ordering the Sixth and Ninth Theaters to lift the siege of Changde on November 30, otherwise the chief officials at all levels would be strictly punished. At 10 o'clock that night, Li Yutang and Fang Xianjue both received a "dictation from the commander of the theater" from the headquarters of the war zone, and the two men found that the situation was a bit serious, so the 10th Army marched at a rapid march speed and rushed to Changde first. The Huangpu generals were all clear in their hearts, Xu Yongchang, the minister of military orders, was not terrible, and the commander of the theater was not a big problem, but old Chiang's dictation was not a joke.
Unfortunately, the "Tiger Boy" Xue Yue made a mistake, a fatal mistake that could affect the outcome of the Battle of Changde and the future Battle of Hengyang.
(Sun Lianzhong)
First, the 10th Army suffered heavy losses in the reinforcement of Changde.
At that time, the 10th Army, known as the "Taishan Army", had three divisions under its command, namely the Zhou Qingxiang Division of the 3rd Division, the Zhu Yue Division of the 190th Division, and the Sun Mingjin Division of the 10th Preparatory Division. In December 1941, before the Third Battle of Changsha, the commander was Li Yutang of the Huangpu Phase I, and Fang Xianjue was only the commander of the preparatory 10th Division. At the beginning of 1942, the 10th Army struggled to hold changsha to win a great victory, and after the war, Li Yutang was promoted to deputy commander-in-chief of the group army, Fang Xianjue was directly promoted to acting commander because of his excellent performance, and the post of commander of the pre-10th division was taken over by deputy division commander Sun Mingjin.
In November 1943, when the Battle of Changde broke out, Fang Xianjue was transformed into a regular commander for just one year, which was slightly short. General Fang Xianjue graduated from the Huangpu Iii, while Zhu Yue and Zhou Qingxiang were both Huangpu IV students, only one term apart, and during Li Yutang's tenure as military commander, all three of them were division commanders of the same rank, and now suddenly Fang Xianjue was promoted to military commander, except for the pre-10th Division's division commander Sun Mingjin (Huangpu Phase VI) who listened to greetings, the other two division commanders were actually not so convinced.
Theoretically, the 10th Army was facing the enemy on the front line, and how the troops should enter the battle should be Fang Xianjue's complete decision, and the old commander Li Yutang would not interfere arbitrarily.
(Zhou Qingxiang, 3rd Division)
Unexpectedly, xue Yue, commander of the theater, directly intervened, and he crossed Li Yutang and Fang Xianjue to directly stipulate the marching route for the three divisions of the 10th Army, resulting in the dispersion of the army's troops and the failure to form an attack fist. On November 30, the reconnaissance planes of the Japanese 3rd Flying Division first spotted the marching column of the Pre-10th Division, and the Japanese misjudged the division as the main force in rescuing Changde, so they gathered two companies of the 3rd Division and one of the 40th Division 's regiment (Toda Detachment) to carry out ambush and encirclement.
Objectively looking at the War of Resistance Against Japan, elite units such as the Pre-10th Division were still able to defend the city, but there was still a big gap with the Japanese army in the field battle, and from the tragic situation of the chief officers at all levels, when it was known that the division had actually suffered a devastating blow, the troops basically collapsed. When the Japanese reinforcements surrounded the 10th Division with the main force, Zhou Qingxiang's 3rd Division took advantage of the gap but unexpectedly approached the outskirts of Changde City, but unfortunately failed to contact the 57th Division troops in time on the Yuan River, mistakenly believing that Yu Chengwan had completely destroyed the division, and was found by the Japanese siege troops and besieged.
Fang Xianjue, seeing the defeat of the 10th Division and the danger of the 3rd Division, immediately ordered the 190th Division to change its marching route and go to the rescue of the 3rd Division, but Zhu Yue moved out of Xue Yue's order and refused to obey, and the two men quarreled. Therefore, Fang Xianjue could only go to Xue Yue to question him, which made the commander very unhappy, and after the war, on the grounds of unfavorable combat, he reported to the Military Commission to "remove Fang Xianjue from his post and retain him." Although Zhou Qingxiang later led his troops to break out desperately, the 3rd Division was also a lot of damage, so the Battle of Changde brought three evil consequences to the 10th Army:
1. The 10th Division was basically destroyed, the casualties of the 3rd Division reached more than one-third, the 10th Army with more than 30,000 casualties was nearly half, and the overall battle losses exceeded 15,000 people.
2. Fang Xianjue was dissatisfied with Zhu Yue, dissatisfied with the 190th Division, and even more dissatisfied with Xue Yue, and several aspects of the relationship between the fight appeared shadows.
3. Wang Yaowu of the 74th Army thought that Fang Xianjue had not done his best, and sat and watched his main force, the 57th Division, suffer casualties, and felt uncomfortable.
(Sacrificial Pre-10th Division Sun Mingjin)
Second, Hengyang was originally the "place of decisive battle" chosen by the Chongqing Military Commission.
On the frontal battlefield of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in view of the "sharp and dense" field attack capability of the Japanese army, all units of the Nationalist army adopted the principle of "retreating and fighting decisive battles" in large-scale battles, that is, first resisting step by step, then gradually retreating, consuming the Japanese army's grain and ammunition and sharpness, and finally choosing to carry out a decisive encirclement and annihilation battle at a suitable location. The key to this style of play is the choice of the location of the decisive battle, which is related to the success or failure of the entire campaign, and it is impossible to be too far ahead and too far back.
As early as the Chongqing Military Commission discovered the basic intention of the Japanese army's "Operation No. 1" (known on the Chinese side as the Battle of Yuxianggui, and the battle in the Henan section had already begun in April), in the face of the menacing momentum of the 11th Army of Hengshan Yong, Xu Yongchang, director of the Military Order of the Central Military Commission, and Bai Chongxi, deputy chief of staff, both proposed to "retreat to hengyang for a decisive battle", that is, the ninth theater should take the initiative to abandon Changsha and concentrate its main forces in the Hengyang area, relying on the Hengshan Mountains, plus the support of the troops of the third and fourth theaters, and break the Japanese under hengyang city.
From the perspective of military expertise, Bai Chongxi and Xu Yongchang's proposal was undoubtedly correct, because the Japanese Kou had attacked the troops this time, and the troops in the Ninth Theater alone could not cope with it no matter what, not to mention that the devils were not stupid, and Yokoyama Yong had also studied Xue Yue's "Heavenly Furnace Tactics" very thoroughly.
Unfortunately, Xue Yue vetoed this proposal, and he was reluctant to retreat to Hengyang to give the "Gui clan a look at the gate"; second, there were some light enemies, believing that the Japanese army's offensive strength was also the scale of the first three battles of Changsha, so he insisted on continuing to use the "Heavenly Furnace Tactics" to meet the enemy in northern Hunan and around Changsha, and then to "Changsha Victory". This time, however, Yokoyama's 11th Army actually dispatched eight divisions plus five independent brigades, which far exceeded the size of the previous three battles of Changsha.
In order to crack Xue Yue's tactics, Yokoyama Yong deployed several of the strongest divisions of the Japanese army on both flanks, so that after finishing the blockade and preparing to turn into the mountains on both sides of the standby, the Nationalist troops collided head-on with the elite of the Japanese army, and were broken by each one, so Changsha became an isolated city, the 4th Army only held for 48 hours before failing, Xue Yue led the broken troops of the Ninth Theater to retreat to Xiangdong, and the "Heavenly Furnace Tactics" did not work.
The goal of the Japanese army was to penetrate deep into guangxi, so after occupying Changsha, it did not stop, and the troops pointed directly at Hengyang, leaving Fang Xianjue with too little time to prepare for the battle.
(Zhang Deneng, 4th Army)
Lieutenant General Zhang Deneng, commander of the 4th Army, was later killed by the Department of Military Justice Executive Directorate, but killing people could not change the embarrassment of the war situation: the main force of the Ninth Theater had been de facto defeated, and the elite 4th Army almost ceased to exist, and without thorough reorganization, it was unable to carry out the battle of the large corps in a short period of time. The 10th Army, which was ordered to guard Hengyang, instantly became a lone army trapped in a dangerous city, and there were not many soldiers to fight around Hengyang.
In fact, under such circumstances, it is no longer realistic to continue to carry out the so-called "decisive battle" in Hengyang, the main force of the Ninth Theater has been broken, and there is not much living force in the entire Hunan battlefield. However, old Chiang Kai-shek did not see it this way, and he believed that as long as the 10th Army held Hengyang, it could send reinforcements from three directions, including Xiangdong, Xiangxi, and Guangxi, and should cooperate with the outside to defeat the Japanese army.
Xue Yue's resistance to Japan was meritorious, but his own shortcomings were also obvious, at least in the Battle of Changheng, his campaign command was really unsatisfactory, and it was also doomed that in the future, it was Wang Yaowu, the commander of the Four Fronts Army, who would go to Changsha to be surrendered to Japan, and he could only succumb to Nanchang, because after the defeat of this battle, he was marginalized.
Third, the biggest difficulty in Fang Xianjue's defense of the city was actually the lack of troops.
After the battle of Changde, although Fang Xianjue was punished, there was no new commander (similar to the situation in which Li Yutang was removed from his post at the Second Battle of Changsha), when the 10th Army was transferred to the Hengshan area, while garrisoning and replenishing new soldiers, and as a result, only five months later, the Battle of Changheng broke out. On May 29, 1944, Chiang Kai-shek personally called Fang Xianjue of Hengyang and reappointed him as the commander of the 10th Army, ordering him to lead his troops to defend Hengyang.
That is to say, after the Battle of Changde, the 10th Army had not yet fully recovered its vitality, and it hurriedly threw itself into the defense of Hengyang, and the exact time when Fang Xianjue led the 10th Army to enter Hengyang City was June 1, 1944, and three weeks later, on the afternoon of June 23, the vanguard of the Japanese army had arrived on the outskirts of Hengyang City, so the fierce Hengyang Defense Battle began. If Changsha in the north could hold out for a while longer, the replenishment of the 10th Army and the preparation of Fang Xianjue would be much calmer, but unfortunately history did not have ifs.
(Commanders of the 10th Army)
Due to the short replenishment time, the entire strength of the 10th Army was only restored to more than 16,000 people, and its battle sequence was as follows: Military Commander Fang Xianjue, Chief of Staff Sun Mingyu. It has jurisdiction over Zhou Qingxiang's 3rd Division, Rong Youluo's 190th Division, and Ge Xiancai's 10th Division, with a total of three divisions and nine regiments. Because of Changde's previous reasons, Fang Xianjue did not treat the 190th Division very well, and after arriving in Hengyang, he adjusted the strength of the three divisions to which he belonged, designating the 190th Division as a "rear transfer division", and the whole division only retained cadres above the squad level to wait for the acceptance of new recruits, while the original soldiers were all allocated to the 3rd Division and the Pre-10th Division.
Therefore, when the defense of Hengyang began, the 190th Division had only more than 1,200 men, removing the troops directly under the army, and the other two divisions each had about 7,000 troops, and as for the number of defenders of more than 17,600 people, it was to include a regiment of the Temporary 54th Division assigned to the command of the 10th Army, as well as a small number of artillery of the 74th Army, the 46th Army and the 48th Division. According to the statistics of the Military Affairs Office of the 10th Army, there were more than 17,600 officers and men in Hengyang City before the Japanese army besieged the city, of which more than 14,000 were combat soldiers, and Fang Xianjue relied on 17,600 people to hold hengyang City for 47 days!
Therefore, the defense of Hengyang is very much related to the Battle of Changde, if Fang Xianjue's 10th Army is in a full state, since it can be defended for 47 days with 17,600 people, then with more than 30,000 people can hold out for at least half a month, the ending is different.
(10th Military Foresight)
Old Jiang had a dream, he knew the danger of the hengyang war situation, and he also knew that Fang Xianjue's strength was insufficient, but he did not dare to give up Hengyang easily, because the great defeat on the Henan battlefield and the rumors of the Americans trying to "change horses" made him want to save some face on the battlefield in Hunan. Under such a psychological influence, on the night of June 21, 1944, Lao Jiang called Fang Xianjue again and ordered: "I hope that your 10th Army will stick to Hengyang for two weeks, but the longer the hold, the better, and try to consume the enemy as much as possible."
Fang Xianjue said that he would fight the enemy to the death and would be able to persist until the reinforcements arrived, and old Chiang Kai-shek was very happy, and said three very good in a row: "Very good, very good, very good, I will draw a combat artillery battalion from the kunming 48th Division to you, and the artillery units of the 74th Army and the 46th Army will also be equipped with you. Indeed, the Chinese side of the Third Battle of Changsha had the initiative to stick to the successful battle example, so that Old Chiang had reason to believe that as long as the city did not break the reinforcements, this time in Hengyang another great victory.
Under the internal focus and external difficulties, the Battle of Hengyang is actually knowing that it cannot be done, and the most common sentence in the circle of friends of the old Jiang Fa in 1944 is: I am too difficult.
IV. Overview of the Battlefield Situation During the Siege relief of Hengyang.
The "No. 1 Operation" launched by the Japanese army was an unprecedented scale of retrospective combat operations, and the devils drew considerable forces from the mainland and the Kwantung Army into the battlefield of Yuxianggui, of which the divisions and regiments involved in the Battle of Changheng were numbered and strength as follows: 20,241 men of the 3rd Division, 20,402 of the 13th Division, 18,358 of the 27th Division, 11,858 of the 34th Division, 14,113 of the 40th Division, 12,020 of the 58th Division, 11,757 of the 68th Division, and 18,344 of the 116th Division. Together with several independent brigades and subordinate heavy logistics units, the total strength of the 11th Army reached more than 280,000 people, including more than 250,000 combat troops.
This meant that after capturing Changsha and moving south to Hengyang, Yokoyama could not only use two complete divisions (the 68th Division and the 116th Division) to attack the city, but also have sufficient troops to block and reinforce. In the first stage of the defense of Hengyang, Hengshan Yong even wanted to lure the remnants of Xue Yue to the area east of Hengyang to be completely annihilated, which shows the great appetite of the Japanese army.
On the other hand, Lao Jiang assigned and encouraged Fang Xianjue and his defending troops, and the next step was to collect and arrange "decisive battle troops", so what were the three groups of reinforcements sent by Lao Jiang?
The first group: the main force of the Ninth Theater of Operations, which came to the aid from the southeast of Hunan Province, was under the unified command of Xue Yue.
There were the 26th Army, the 58th Army and the 72nd Army belonging to Wang Lingji's 30th Army, the 20th Army and the 44th Army of Yang Sen's 27th Army, the 37th Army and the provisional 2nd Army belonging to Ou Zhen, deputy commander-in-chief of the 27th Group Army. This reinforcement sounds quite intimidating, there are two groups of seven armies, but in fact, these troops have been seriously damaged in the previous operations in northern Hunan Province, for example, when the Yang Sen Group Army later retreated into Guizhou, the two armies together only had 17,000 people, so the actual strength of this reinforcement was only about 80,000 people.
In order to deal with the reinforcements in eastern Hunan Province, the Japanese army dispatched the 13th Division regiment and the 27th Division regiment with strong combat effectiveness, and under the resistance and counterattack of more than 40,000 Japanese troops, Xue Yue's reinforcements could not get close to Hengyang, and even the existing positions could not be maintained, until the city of Hengyang fell, and this reinforcement did not break through the line of Liling and Guantian. To say the effect, that is, it did contain the two main divisions of the Japanese army, but for the siege of Hengyang, Xue Yue was already powerless.
(26th Army Ding Zhipan)
Second Group: The 62nd and 79th Armies approaching Hengyang from the northwest and southwest.
The two armies were located west of the Xiang River at that time, which was the closest to Hengyang, and the 62nd Army of Huang Tao, which had been urgently transferred from the Seventh Theater of Yu Hanmou, had rushed to the southwestern outskirts of Hengyang, but was inexplicably transferred away by the Central Military Commission and retreated to Qiyang, 70 kilometers away from Hengyang. The explanation given by Lin Wei, the director of the attendant office, was: "Between the 62nd Army and the Hengyang defenders, it is necessary to leave a sufficient distance so that the Japanese army can calmly surround Hengyang, and when the encirclement is complete, the 62nd Army will attack Hengyang from Qiyang, and together with other reinforcements, it should cooperate with the defenders and then defeat the Japanese army... "Cloud cloud.
Such a deployment can only be described in eight words:
Wishful thinking, wishful thinking
！ Once the Japanese had completed the battle cut, it would be difficult for the 62nd Army to come back. Throughout the battle, Lao Jiang repeatedly urged the 62nd Army to attack the northeast to relieve the siege of Hengyang, and even ordered Li Yutang, deputy commander-in-chief of the 27th Group Army, to personally sit in the 62nd Army to supervise the battle, and the 62nd Army of the Guangdong Department was also a force, once advancing to the vicinity of Hengyang West Railway Station, but the Japanese 40th Division responsible for blocking in this direction was also a bunch of old birds.
The 234th Wing, the main force of the 40th Division, finally withstood the breakthrough of the 62nd Army at the railway station, and the two sides fought for 48 hours. At this time, the Japanese drew a company reinforcement from the 68th Division of the siege force, and the 62nd Army was finally forced to retreat due to heavy casualties, and the siege was defeated. The 79th Army of Wang Jiaben, located northwest of Hengyang, faced the first ace of the Japanese army, the 3rd Division, although the 79th Army struggled to advance to the line of Jiwo Mountain in the northwest suburbs of Hengyang, it was finally hindered by the weakness of the situation (the death of Wang Jiaben was after the fall of Hengyang).
Although reinforcements in this direction were working hard, their strength was really insufficient, and it was obviously very difficult for two second-rate armies with combat effectiveness to break through the resistance line of one and a half divisions of the Japanese army.
(79th Army Wang Jiaben)
Fifth, only Wang Yaowu's corps really has the ability to make real breakthroughs.
In addition to the three main forces of the 74th Army, the 73rd Army, and the 100th Army under its command, the 99th Army was also temporarily assigned to the command of Wang Yaowu, and the above-mentioned units were collectively called "Wang Yaowu Corps". As we all know, the three corps of Wang Yaowu's group army are relatively capable of fighting, especially the 74th Army is the trump card of the elite, and the above four armies have not participated in the war before, and the structure is completely fully loaded, which is the strongest of the three reinforcements.
When the Battle of Changheng broke out, Wang Yaowu's group army headquarters was stationed in Taoyuan County, western Hunan Province, while the main force of the 74th Army was placed in the Changde area, and during the time when the Japanese army frantically attacked Changsha and then rushed south to Hengyang, the 74th Army was delayed in staying in Changde, and Wang Yaowu's wait-and-see attitude towards the battle situation was very obvious. After receiving the order of the Military Commission to rush to the aid of Hengyang, the assembly of the corps was also relatively slow.
Among the three reinforcements, although Wang Yaowu's corps was the strongest, it was the farthest away from the Hengyang battlefield, and once the action was slow, the consequences were very fatal, as to whether Lao Wang had preconceptions and deliberately acted, we dare not say anything.
(Pre-10 Ge Xiancai)
In order to deal with Wang Yaowu, the Japanese chief Hengshan Yong sent most of the 34th Division regiment (a detachment ben Hengyang) and a part of the 3rd Division, on the whole, the combat effectiveness was not weak, but the strength was not much, and it was 20,000 people. If Wang Yaowu's action was active and rapid, and the four armies were all firing at full force, it would have been the most promising way to break through the Japanese resistance line, at least, it would have made Yokoyama unable to increase its troops to Hengyang (such as the 58th Division regiment guarding Changsha), thus giving Fang Xianjue a few more days to create fighters.
However, Wang Yaowu had two problems in command, one was that the various units were assembled and dragged their feet, and the other was that only two armies were launched to carry out a front-line attack, while the other two armies followed behind as reserves, neither launching in the whole line nor carrying out flanking attacks and detours, and the superiority in strength was not brought into play at all (Wang Yaowu's corps was not less than 90,000 guns, and the 74th Army alone had 40,000 people), which enabled the Japanese army to concentrate its forces to hold the point to block the attack, and the tenacity of the devil's defense was well known.
Until July 28, 1944, of the four armies under wang yaowu's corps, only Li Tianxia's 100th army broke through to the first line of Shetian Bridge and Xinqiao (
Southeastern Shaodong County
It was still 100 kilometers away from Hengyang, while the other armies were still far behind, and at this time, Fang Xianjue had basically reached the point of exhaustion.
(Japanese siege)
Ding Zhipan, commander of the 26th Army, commented after the war: "The main reason is that his military quality is not enough, he came out of Huangpu, his promotion was too fast, and he became a high official at once." The implication is that Lao Wang's command ability of the large corps is not good. Is this really the case? Unfortunately, it is true that an important graduation certificate is missing from the resume of Whampoa III Lao Wang: the Army University. In other words, whether it is the determination, courage or will to resist Japan, the famous anti-Japanese general Wang Yaowu is not lacking, but from the brigade commander of the supplementary 1st Brigade to the commander-in-chief of the group army, he only took less than ten years, the tactical level is OK, and the strategic ability is not successful.
Due to Wang Yaowu's shortcomings in command, the corps did not play its due role in the decisive battle, neither attacking Hengyang City on time, nor playing the role of containing a large number of Japanese troops, and bearing unshirkable responsibility for the defeat of the Battle of Hengyang.
(Wang Yaowu)
Sixth, the transcendent command of the "micro-exercise master" is also purely chaotic.
Until the end of July 1944, there was another very bad situation, that is, the telegrams sent by Chongqing to Fang Xianjue and the commanders of various reinforcements were repeatedly deciphered by the japanese 11th Army's communication team, and the weakness of the Nationalist army in battlefield communications was undoubtedly exposed. In this way, Yokoyama Candyasa can fully understand the deployment and movement of the Chinese army, adjust the proportion and deployment of siege and reinforcement forces in a targeted manner, and give full play to the limited number of troops, as if one side is playing blind chess, while the other side is a full-scale chess, and this battle is difficult to fight.
Harutaka Sasaki, staff officer of the 236th Wing of the 40th Division of the Japanese Army, once wrote in his memoirs: "The battle between the strategy and the siege began, depending on which one took the first step, the telegram on the key points of the siege formulated by President Chiang Kai-shek (this is already a book published after the Liberation War) was deciphered, and the content was very detailed, specific to the direction and objective of the division's attack, we can see how desperately to supervise the battle."
However, from another point of view, the old Chiang Kai-shek's transcendent command and random maneuvering also gave the Japanese the opportunity to grasp the overall campaign plan, thus making the war situation extremely passive.
The Japanese army launched three general offensives against Hengyang City, and in the interval between each general offensive, the troops were adjusted, and the three-way reinforcement action of the Nationalist army could not be coordinated at all, I gasped when you attacked, and you rested when I attacked, so that the Japanese army had the opportunity to flexibly use its troops, and by the beginning of the third general offensive, Yokoyama Yong concentrated most of the four divisions and regiments for the siege, which showed how bad the three-way reinforcements outside the city were. In desperation, Chongqing added Peng Bisheng's 2nd Assault Corps and combat vehicle troops in the direction of Guangxi to reinforce, and in the early morning of August 8, 1944, this mixed reinforcement force broke into the area 8 kilometers outside Hengyang City.
However, everything was too late, and on this day, Fang Xianjue's 10th Army laid down its weapons, and the desperate defense of Hengyang came to an end, leaving eternal regrets in the history of the War of Resistance Against Japan.