Since its establishment in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, the 5th Army and the 74th Army have always been the combination of the two kings of the National Army's frontal battlefield anti-Japanese war, and they are the ace mobile army appointed by Lao Jiang to be subordinate to the Military Commission, and they are also the two armies with the best achievements of the National Army in the Anti-Japanese War.
In history, these two armies also produced many famous generals, the 5th Army had Du Yuming, Zheng Dongguo, Qiu Qingquan, Liao Yaoxiang and Dai Anlan; The 74th Army had famous generals such as Wang Yaowu, Yu Jishi, Shi Zhongcheng, Li Tianxia and Zhang Lingfu.
So, which of the two armies with the same outstanding achievements is the number one main force of the national army in the battlefield of the Anti-Japanese War?
In this issue, Yutian Jun interprets who is the first army of the National Army in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression through three-dimensional analysis......
The 5th Army vs. the 74th Army, who is the top brand of the Anti-Japanese Army
Comparison of equipment: the 5th Army leads
First of all, let's talk about the comparison between the two armies in terms of equipment and equipment.
Coincidentally, these two armies were the first batch of four major attack armies under the Military Commission after 1940, and the other two were the 1st Army of Hu Zongnan's line and Li Yannian's 2nd Army.
So does it mean that the equipment level of the two armies is the same?
Tank troops of the 5th Army
In 1938, when the 74th Army was still a mix of national armaments and German armaments (light weapons), the 5th Army was already the first mechanized army with the first equipment. There are more than 400 cars alone, more than 200 tanks and armored vehicles, and there are also artillery regiments composed of dozens of heavy guns that are the envy of other armies.
In addition to 3 divisions (1 mechanized division, 2 infantry divisions), there are also a large number of military units, taking 1940 as an example, at that time, the military subordinate troops, under the jurisdiction of: 1 motorized regiment, 1 heavy artillery regiment (a mix of Soviet and German heavy artillery), 1 automobile regiment, 1 engineer regiment, and an anti-tank battalion, with a total number of about 50,000 people,
Moreover, among the 3 divisions, Dai Anlan's mechanized 200 division was a cliff-like crushing of the other divisions.
The strength of the entire 5th Army is stronger than an elite division of the Japanese army.
Elite ground 5th army troops
But in comparison, the equipment of the 74th Army is a bit insufficient.
Before the full replacement of Soviet weapons in 1940, the 74th Army was no different from the ordinary national army, and the overall equipment level was the same as that of the 2nd, 8th, 13th, 18th and 54th armies.
Even after the replacement of the Soviet armament, it only increased the number of machine guns and submachine guns at the battalion and regimental level, and in terms of divisional and regimental firepower, the 74th Army, like other national armament units, still only had medium-caliber mortars, and the only good point was that the military units of the 74th Army had anti-tank battalions and heavy artillery regiments (Soviet heavy artillery).
Take the 74th Army of the 2nd-3rd Battle of Changsha in 1941 as an example.
The entire army has 36,000 people, under the jurisdiction of 3 divisions, and the heavy weapons under its jurisdiction are:
The army belongs to the heavy artillery regiment with about 20 Soviet-armed 76-millimeter field guns and 4 114-mm heavy howitzers, and the scale of this artillery regiment is not as large as that of the 5th Army. For 81 or 82 mm medium-caliber mortars, the establishment of each division should be 36 mortars, but in fact there is a serious shortage of mortars, generally only 24-28 mortars, and the total number is only more than 70-80, which is also inferior to the 5th Army.
81 mm mortar, at that time it was the main division of the national army supporting artillery
So after the full refitting of U.S. aid materials in 1945, is the equipment of the 74th Army and the 5th Army the same?
At this time, it was still the best of the 5th Army.
At that time, the 74th Army and the 5th Army were indeed the first batch of American weapons army appointed by Lao Jiang, but the American weapons army was not achieved overnight, at that time, limited by transportation conditions, the reloading of American weapons and equipment was also in order, the first batch must be Stilwell's descendants of the two armies stationed in India, the second batch was the expeditionary force in western Yunnan, and the 5th Army happened to be in Kunming, so the first month near the water, before the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the 5th Army had met the standard configuration of 36 American 75mm mountain guns + of the National Army of the United States12 105-mm U.S. howitzers (at that time the 5th Army had a battalion of German heavy artillery equivalent to this).
Motorized units of the 5th Army
On the other side, the 74th Army was more miserable, because it was in Zhijiang, Hunan, so even when it came to the last battle of the Anti-Japanese War, their American dressing rate was still very low.
The 51st and 57th divisions of the ace have only 2/3 of the U.S. equipment replacement rate, and Zhang Lingfu's 58th division is still a mix of Soviet machinery and national equipment because it has not been redressed.
Therefore, until the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the 5th Army has always been the card of the Guannai National Army in terms of equipment, and even if they suffered heavy losses in Burma, they can still recover quickly.
In terms of equipment evaluation during the Anti-Japanese War, the 5th Army was obviously stronger......
Officers and men of the 5th Army in the test firing of mountain artillery
Comparison of records: The 74th Army has more advantages
Just with equipment, it is still useless to fight a war, such as Hu Zongnan's 1st Army.
So, in the Anti-Japanese War, what was the record of the 74th Army against the 5th Army?
If, in terms of their performance on their respective battlefields, the 5th Army and the 74th Army are actually half a pound and eight taels.
In terms of glorious battles, the 5th Army fought hard for the Japanese ace 5th Division at Kunlun Pass, even if the terrain was not good, Du Yuming still gritted his teeth and annihilated the Japanese ace 21st Brigade.
During the ensuing battle in Burma, the two main divisions played well. Among them, Dai Anlan's 200th division retreated in the face of two Japanese divisions in the Battle of Tonggu, destroying more than 4,000 enemies, and Liao Yaoxiang on the other side also annihilated more than 4,000 enemies at the cost of more than 2,000 people in the Swa River blocking battle.
If it weren't for Du Yuming's defeat at Savage Mountain, the 5th Army could really retreat from Burma.
In December 1939, the Japanese army fought by the 5th Army desperately seppuku (stills)
On the other side, the 74th Army's record is equally outstanding.
During the Battle of Wuhan in 1938, the 74th Army, under the command of Xue Yue, besieged the 106th Division of the lone army, and almost annihilated it in Wanjialing.
In the Battle of Shanggao, the 74th Army severely damaged the 34th Division of the Japanese Army, and after entering World War II, the 74th Army played well in the first three battles of Changsha, making it once the number one enemy of the Japanese 11th Army.
In 1943, the Battle of Changde was to block several times the enemy's attack with a division, thwarting the 11th Army of Hengshan Yong, and in the Battle of Xuefeng Mountain (Battle of Xiangxi) in 1945, the 74th Army took the lead in launching a counterattack, defeating the Japanese ace 116th Division, and won the last major battle against Japan.
Judging from the above point, in fact, in terms of the record against Japan, the 5th Army and the 74th Army are on the same level.
The Soviet 74th Army in the Battle of Xiangxi
But just because the 5th and 74th teams are the same in terms of points per game doesn't mean the total points are the same, just because the statistics in basketball games are the same. 7
The 4th Army was regarded as the main force of the National Army with the most battles in the Anti-Japanese War, while the 5th Army was regarded as a treasure in this regard, and it did not participate in many wars.
Interestingly, when Lao Chiang established the 5th Army and the 74th Army, he wanted him to serve as the captain of the firefighting team in their respective theaters, and also as a strategic counteroffensive unit.
7 Corps of the 74th Fire Captain of the National Army
Because of the different theaters under which they belonged, the 5th Army was mainly in Liangguang and Yunnan, while the 74th Army was in Lianghu, so this also led to the 5th Army being far behind the 74th Army in terms of the number of operations.
In the statistics of the 22 large-scale battles in Guannai of the national army, the 74th Army accounted for 14 times, and the ace 5th Army, even counting its predecessor 200 divisions, only participated in 2 times (the Battle of Lanfeng, the Battle of Guinan), and even if it simply participated in the first expedition to Burma and the counteroffensive in western Yunnan, it was only 4 times, which was more than 2 times less than the 74th Army.
In terms of the records of the two armies, although the quality is very high, and the participants are all big battles, so that the average performance of the two armies is not much different, but in terms of quantity, the 74th Army is much higher than the 5th Army.
Therefore, in the competition in the dimension of combat record, the 74th Army will completely defeat the 5th Army.
Elite 74th Army
Combat qualities: The 74th Army is superior
Combat quality is an important criterion for judging whether a unit is an elite or not.
In the 1939 all-army competition, the 5th Army won the first place in all training subjects and became a model army of the national army at that time. Because the 5th Army was selected from the whole army at that time, it ranked first in the whole army in terms of individual soldier quality, especially the 200 Division and the Honor 1 Division, the former had a high level of education, and the latter were all veterans, and they were composed of veterans who returned from injuries, and everyone had hatred for the Japanese invaders.
This is the feat of the 1st Division of Honor in Kunlun Pass and not retreating and defeating the Nakamura Brigade.
Honorary 1st Division in the Bloody Battle of Kunlun Pass (stills)
The 74th Army, in the Anti-Japanese War, only the 57th Division was counted as one of the first 10 adjustment divisions, and the combat effectiveness of the 51st and 58th Divisions was also acceptable, but it was not an elite base. However, the 74th Army has famous generals such as Yu Jishi, Wang Yaowu, and Li Tianxia, and in battles, the 74th Army can always sum up combat experience, so it is getting stronger and stronger.
In 1940, after being assigned to the four major attack armies, it had its own division (Guizhou). The advantage of the division management area is that there will be no officials in the rear who will arbitrarily pull in the strong men to fill up the numbers, and they can choose their own sources of troops. In the Second Battle of Changsha, the 74th Army was once heavily damaged, but it was able to quickly restore its combat effectiveness; on the one hand, in addition to the small losses of the backbone of Wang Yaowu and other officers, the division area could quickly provide highly qualified reserve soldiers.
Generally speaking, the fighting qualities of the 5th Army were trained, while the 74th Army was fought.
By around 1942, the 74th Army, which had come from behind, could already be compared with the 5th Army in terms of combat quality.
74 Army machine gun group in operation
In the later stages of the Anti-Japanese War, after returning from Burma, the fighting quality of the 5th Army had begun to lag behind that of the 74th Army.
This is mainly reflected in two aspects.
First, Du Yuming's trump card 200 Division that he managed to save was almost lost, Dai Anlan was killed, and a large number of platoon backbones were also buried in Savage Mountain.
Second, after returning from Burma, the establishment of the 5th Army has changed, the troika in the early years, the Honor 1st Division was pulled out to form the 8th Army in 1940, and the new 22nd Division went to India to join the New 1st Army, and then came out to form the New 6th Army. Before the end of the Anti-Japanese War, only the reorganized 200 divisions, as well as the 45th and 96th divisions, remained in the establishment of the 5th Army, and the combat effectiveness of these two divisions could only be regarded as average.
The 5th Army in the later stage of the Anti-Japanese War, although well equipped, had a decline in quality
After the 74th Army joined Shi Zhongcheng's 57th Division in 1938, it has always maintained three fixed divisions of the 51st, 57th and 58th Divisions, known as the 35th Army. 57 of them are called tiger masters. In the middle and late stages of the Anti-Japanese War, 90% were veterans of the 74th Army, and 10% were recruits within one year
Therefore, compared to the 5th Army, which only had 200 divisions at that time, there was only one ace division, and the 74th Army had 3 ace divisions.
Therefore, in terms of combat quality, the 5th Army crushed the 74th Army in the early stage, but in the later period, the quality of the personnel of the 5th Army declined significantly, and it failed to fight on the front line for a long time, and before the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the fighting quality of the 74th Army was stronger than that of the 5th Army.
From the comparison of the above three dimensions, we can clearly draw a conclusion:
In the early stage of the Anti-Japanese War, the well-equipped and well-trained 5th Army played the role of the face of the National Army's Anti-Japanese War.
But after the middle and late stages of the Anti-Japanese War, with the 5th Army returning from Burma and the battle formation for a long time, plus the 74th Army has been at the forefront and the Japanese ace 11th Army is tough, it has also played its own value.
Since then, the 74th Army has overwhelmed the 5th Army and become the new banner of the ace unit of the National Army in the late stage of the Anti-Japanese War......