The plan was formulated in 1942 and originally planned to be implemented in the spring of 1943, in order to implement the plan, according to the calculation of Shinichi Tanaka, chief of operations of the Japanese General Staff Headquarters: The Chinese dispatch army in the Guannei Battlefield of China needed to increase the strength of 360,000 troops to attack and maintain the occupied areas, of which 210,000 could be drawn from the Kwantung Army, 30,000 from the domestic garrison, 60,000 from the Pacific Theater, and 230,000 new recruits.
★ Operational attempt: The main force of the Chinese dispatch army from Xi'an and the first unit from the Wuhan area launched an attack in two ways, defeated the main force of the Central Army, entered Sichuan, and captured Chengdu and Chongqing.
★ Units used: [In 1942, the Japanese army had 37 divisions in the Guannei Battlefield in China]
1. Offensive forces: Fifth Front (1st, 7th, 28th Army): 10 divisions and 2 brigades
11th Army: 5 divisions in total
3rd Aviation Division.
The 1st Army attacked Xi'an along the south of the Wei River and the 7th Army north of the Wei River, and after the victory, the garrison attacked the Guangyuan area in northern Sichuan. The 28th Army attacked from Kaifeng in Henan to the mouth of the Laohe River, then along the Han River west to the Ankang region and to Daxian in northeastern Sichuan. The 11th Army advanced westward from Yichang, Hubei, along the banks of the Yangtze River, and occupied the Wanxian area in eastern Sichuan Province. When the four armies reached their respective target areas, they formed a frontal offensive posture against Chengdu and Chongqing in northern Sichuan, northeastern Sichuan, and eastern Sichuan, and then rested and reorganized in the above-mentioned areas for about a month to make preparations for future operations.
2. Containment and vigilance units: a total of 15 divisions and 1 brigade
The North China Front (12th and 18th Armies, Mongolian Army), the Central China Front (9th and 13th Armies), the South China Front (23rd Army) and the Directly Subordinate Units of the Chinese Dispatch Army.
★ While ensuring the areas now occupied, we should contain the enemy in the direction we wanted, so as to facilitate the attack of the attacking forces on Sichuan.
The North China Front (12th and 18th Armies, Garrison Mongolian Army) had 5 divisions and 1 brigade. Attack in the direction of Zhengzhou to contain the enemy army and facilitate the attack on Sichuan.
The Central China Front (9th and 13th Armies) consisted of 9 divisions. The 9th Army attacked in the direction of Laohekou to facilitate the operation of the troops attacking Sichuan. The 13th Army is on its current mission.
The South China Front (23rd Army) consisted of 1 division. Perform the current task.
★ The nationalist countermeasures were: to strengthen the defense of the Yellow River and the defense of southern Shaanxi in the Hu Zongnan 8th Theater in Xi'an; to strengthen the garrison of the area east of the Wudang Mountains in the 5th Theater of Operations of Li Zongren at the mouth of the Laohe River in Hubei Province, and to control the main roads into Sichuan and Shaanxi; and to strengthen the defense of the Yangtze River and the key areas on the north and south banks of the Yangtze River and its key areas on the north and south sides of the Enshi Chen Cheng in Hubei Province, so as to hold the gateway to eastern Sichuan.
★★ 【Cancellation of the Japanese No. 5 Combat Plan】:
When the Japanese army planned a large-scale attack on Sichuan and other places in China's rear area in the spring of 1943, a new situation of extreme disadvantage to the Japanese army appeared in the Pacific Theater.
On May 7, the Japanese Navy's 4th Fleet was counterattacked by the Pacific Fleet under the command of Admiral Nimitz of the United States Army, and the aircraft carrier Xiangfeng sank under the attack of a total of 93 American bombers.
At the Battle of Midway in June, four carriers of the Japanese Combined Fleet were sunk. The Japanese Army's 17th Army (2nd and 38th Divisions) had about 40,000 Japanese troops on Guadalcanal (50,000 invested and the navy took back more than 10,000 people), but due to combat and starvation, almost all of the army was destroyed.
Commander of the Combined Fleet of the Japanese Navy, Sanben Fifty-Six
Based on the situation in the Pacific, the base camp of the Japanese army believes that if the Battle of solomon Islands is really lost, it will spread to the war readiness against the Soviet Union in the northeast of our country, and a certain number of troops can be transferred to the Pacific region in the northeast and the Kannai battlefield of our country. On December 10, the enemy chief of staff, Sugiyama Moto, played the role of Emperor Hirohito for this purpose and was approved, and on the same day, the Japanese headquarters issued instructions to the Chinese dispatch army to suspend Operation No. 5.
On December 18, Lieutenant General Tsukada, commander of the Japanese 11th Army, was found and shot down by the air defense unit of the 3rd Battalion of the 412th Regiment of the 138th Division of the 48th Army when he was flying by a transport plane back to Hankou from Nanjing through Taihu County. After the plane was shot, the local garrison found the bodies of Tsukada and eight other officers at the crash site, and seized a copy of the "Japanese Central China Combat Plan" (i.e., "Operation Plan No. 5") and a "List of Commanders of the Units of the Central China Dispatch Army and the List of Unit Locations". The commander of the 11th Army was taken over by Isamu Yokoyama (after breaking Xue Yue's Heavenly Furnace Tactics)
Isamu Yokoyama
★ The origin of the Japanese Army's Fifth Battle Plan:
In 1941, the Japanese base camp began to brew a large-scale offensive campaign on the frontal battlefield of China, crushing the Nationalist government by force or forcing it to surrender.
The Japanese North China Front proposed the Xi'an Campaign, and in June or September 1942, "attacked the vicinity of Xi'an to eliminate Hu Zongnan's Eighth Theater army, and then destroyed the Chinese Communist base area in Yan'an." The capture of Xi'an could cut off the Kuomintang regime's northwestern communication line and deal a heavy blow to the Kuomintang regime.
The General Headquarters of the Japanese Chinese Dispatch Army put forward the concept of "Changsha Changde Operation", believing that if it wanted to attack the Chongqing Nationalist Government, it would be better to launch an attack on Changsha and Changde, seize this barn area, and crush the Kuomintang Army of the Sixth and Ninth Theaters.
After the ideas of the "Xi'an Operation" and the "Changsha Changde Operation" were reported to the base camp, Sugiyama yuan and his staff officers repeatedly demonstrated and studied, holding that in order to end the Sino-Japanese War at an early date, it was impossible to achieve the goal of carrying out the "Xi'an Operation" or the "Changsha and Changde Operation" alone, and it was necessary to launch a large-scale campaign with the goal of capturing Chongqing and Chengdu, and that the "Xi'an Operation" and the "Changsha and Changde Operations" could be part of this campaign.
The upper echelons of the Japanese base camp believe that if they can capture Chongqing and the rear of Sichuan, which is accompanied by the Nationalist government, it is bound to affect India and the whole of West Asia, and promote the opening up of the Indian Ocean and cooperate with the German and Italian armies, and there is a possibility of changing the overall war situation. Therefore, the overthrow of the National Government in Chongqing was the only way to promote the complete conquest of Asia.
On July 9, the base camp finally made up its mind to implement the plan in the spring of 1943.
The Japanese invasion of China
However, in order to launch this combat plan, in addition to a large number of troops in China's Guannei, it is also necessary to invest a huge amount of materials, mainly 100,000 tons of ships, 50,000 tons of steel, and 50,000 tons of gasoline. The Japanese Navy opposed the huge amount of materials and the Kwantung Army opposed the need for the Kwantung Army to draw troops south.
★On August 26, Chief of Staff Sugiyama held a staff meeting of the headquarters of the Chinese Dispatch Army, and the dispatch army criticized the "Operation No. 5" issue. Their main opinions are:
1. Question whether the purpose of the "Operation No. 5" of the base camp is to annihilate the enemy army or to occupy Chongqing;
2. If it is to annihilate the enemy army, the eleventh army, the main field force of the dispatched army, does not have to enter Sichuan, go deep into Chongqing, where the terrain is extremely dangerous and complex, and seek fighters near Wuhan, because most of Chiang Kai-shek's main forces are concentrated on both sides of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River
3. The Eleventh Army in the Wuhan area, with 8 divisions and 1 mixed brigade, confronted the main chinese army forces of about 100 divisions in the fifth theater north of the Yangtze River, the sixth theater in the west, and the ninth theater in the south, and was completely surrounded.
Both Sugiyama and Hideki Tojo believed that the only way to achieve the final victory in the Great East Asian War was to first defeat China and withdraw from the water network in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, otherwise the victory in the Pacific Ocean would be equal to zero.
On September 3, Moto Sugiyama, chief of staff of the Japanese army, put the "Operation No. 5" plan to the emperor. The Emperor expressed great interest in this plan. On September 4, Sugiyama officially issued the "Operation No. 5" plan to the Chinese Dispatch Command, and after receiving the order, the China Dispatch Army Command began to prepare for the launch of the "No. 5 Operation" from all aspects.
Due to successive defeats in the Pacific Theater, on November 7, the War Department secretly contacted the commander of the Chinese dispatch army and decided to suspend Operation No. 5.
In order to implement the plan, 15 divisions and 2 brigades were required to attack, 15 divisions and 1 brigade were responsible for containing the enemy in front of them and maintaining the forward occupation area (in 1942, the Japanese army had 37 divisions and regiments in the Guannei Battlefield in China), and another 360,000 new troops needed to be drawn and recruited to replenish the Chinese dispatch army. Its scale will exceed that of any previous battle (the largest battle before it was 300,000 troops, including 9 divisions and 2 brigades and regiments participating in the Battle of Wuhan in 1938, and the other 5 divisions and regiments were guarding and replenishing frontline troops in the rear)
Its direct participation in the battle of the divisions and regiments as high as 15, although the strength and combat effectiveness of the divisions at this time is not as good as during the Battle of Wuhan (5 of the 9 participating divisions in the Battle of Wuhan, that is, the later known as the Class A division), its combat effectiveness is still not low. A total of 1.1 million troops including 117 divisions of the Wuhan Nationalist Army were still defeated in the face of 9 japanese divisions and regiments, with more than 400,000 casualties. The plan was to attack as many as 15 divisions and regiments, and several other divisions were contained. Even if the terrain in and around Sichuan is complex in the rear area, the Japanese troops need to fight in complex terrain such as plains and mountains and have difficulty in supplying them (there are too many troops participating in the battle, the demand for ammunition and logistical supplies is large, and there are too many natural dangers and complicated roads to enter Sichuan), and they also have to cross the Yellow River, Weishui, Hanshui, Yangtze River, Jialing River, Fujiang River, Qianjiang River and other wide rivers, and whether the Nationalist government can hold it is also unknown.