Rise From Eight Hundred

Don’t think that the 150mm and 240mm large-caliber howitzers of the Japanese heavy artillery brigade can create a large pit with a diameter of several meters with one shot, and the killing radius is astonishing as 50 meters.

It almost means that an area the size of two basketball courts is within its destruction and killing range with one shell.

But that does not mean that there is no safe place in Songjiang City, which covers an area of ​​more than 2.4 square kilometers.

A Japanese heavy artillery brigade has a total of 30 150mm howitzers, 20 240mm howitzers, and 10 305mm howitzers. A round of saturation attack, that is, throwing 60 shells, even if one shell can kill 5,000 square meters, the area covered by artillery fire and air waves will never exceed one-eighth of the total area of ​​Songjiang City, which is more than 2 million square meters.

This is not to say that the Japanese heavy artillery brigade is not powerful enough, but that, relatively speaking, Songjiang City, which is not small to begin with, still has a way to survive due to its sufficient depth.

If it was the American cowboys in Wusheng Mountain more than a decade later, with hundreds of cannons and dozens of planes bombing, Songjiang City would have been completely destroyed.

For example, the 67th Army machine gunner in the machine gun fortifications who saw the Japanese "big balloon", although the constant rumbling of the cannons around him had made him lose his hearing with cotton in his ears, his eyesight was still good.

Through the thick smoke, he saw the strange thing with a big head and a long tail flying in the air.

As a machine gunner in the air defense battalion, Mo Songzi had seen this thing many times on the battlefield in North China. The Japanese often used it to observe the opponent's position and guide artillery bombardment.

North China was originally flat, and the Japanese often had a clear view of the enemy's positions with this thing, but because the distance was too far, the farthest could even reach ten kilometers. Even if the Chinese army had this kind of Oerlikon machine gun with an air combat range of 2,500 meters, it could not threaten this large balloon that was far beyond the range.

Anyway, Mo Songzi had fired two bullets at this thing on the front line, but it was useless. The only threat to the large balloon was the plane.

But in the sky of North China, there had been Chinese fighter planes? It was okay to dream.

But now, the large balloon was actually in a place where he could see it with his naked eyes. Was he asking for death?

"Get up, get up, all of you get up, there is work to do. Quick, quick!" Mo Songzi looked at his subordinates who were huddled in the corner holding their heads, and kicked them one by one.

Shouting was just a subconscious behavior. His own ears could not hear any other sound except buzzing.

The fear on the soldiers' faces had not disappeared, but this did not prevent them from working under the urging of the sergeant squad leader. Some of them wiped the dust off the machine gun with cloth, some moved the bullet plate, and some looked at the sky pointed by Mo Songzi through the special gun sight. They took advantage of the moment when the smoke was blown away by the wind to find the big balloon still floating in the sky, and kept reporting the position to Mo Songzi who had already taken the shooting position.

Mo Songzi used the crank to constantly adjust the muzzle, and locked the big balloon with a vertical height of 100 meters at a straight-line distance of 1,500 meters with the sight on the barrel.

That happened to be the limit of the firing angle of the machine gun in the fortification.

Tang Dao, who designed the machine gun fortification, had never thought of using the machine gun for air defense. It was mainly used to shoot at infantry. Mo Songzi just instinctively enlarged the shooting hole a little, but he didn't expect it to be used.

A city that was constantly shaking due to the bombing of Japanese heavy artillery, a machine gun fortification that was in danger and could be blown up at any time, a group of Chinese soldiers who were dominated by fear but still trembling to operate the machine gun, holding a dusty machine gun, aiming at the country balloon in the sky.

However, the Japanese observation airship or manned balloon is really not a country balloon. For this thing that looks extremely country in the future, Japan has invested heavily in research since the mid-nineteenth century.

Japan's use of balloons for military purposes can be traced back to the civil war in the Meiji period. During the Southwest War, the government army was besieged in Kumamoto Castle by Saigo Takamori's troops and cut off contact with the outside world. Finally, a balloon developed by the University of Engineering in the city was used to transmit intelligence back to Kyoto.

After that, the Japanese Navy began to develop balloons and successfully developed them in mid-April 1877. However, during the test flight, it was found that the balloon was still not very stable and its safety was not guaranteed. Later, the unconvinced Japanese Army also developed a balloon independently, but the test results showed that the army's country balloons were not much better than the navy's horse land, so it was still unsuccessful.

More than a decade later, Japan, which was used to taking things for granted, decided that it would no longer invest in research and development, but would buy them.

A complete set of balloon equipment was imported from France at a huge cost, but the unlucky Japanese child was not so lucky. When it was transported back to the country through the Indian Ocean, the rubber coating on the surface of the balloon deteriorated and melted due to high temperature and humidity, and the air tightness was difficult to guarantee. It still failed in the test flight the following year.

It was not until 1903 that a "Yamada" balloon made by a civilian played a good role in participating in the army exercise and was quickly promoted.

To put it bluntly, the rustic balloon in Mo Songzi's eyes was really developed by a rustic.

However, even this rustic thing is still rare on the battlefields of China and Japan, and can even be said to be high-tech and sophisticated in terms of technology, and it is of great help to the Japanese army in terms of its function.

For the army of this era, battlefield reconnaissance is nothing more than two ways: reconnaissance by scouts on land and reconnaissance by reconnaissance aircraft in the sky.

But the Japanese used this thing called a tethered balloon, which was even better than the other two.

Tethered balloons have several advantages over airplanes: First, they can hover in the air and observe targets 360 degrees. Through observation instruments, they can detect targets up to 10 kilometers away, while it is difficult for airplanes that pass by to observe clearly;

Second, the balloon is connected to a telephone line, which can transmit information to the front at any time, but airplanes at that time could not do this.

Third, balloons are not affected by time and can be launched at night;

Fourth, balloons are silent when they are launched, and they are not easy to be detected.

The Japanese relied on this to accurately guide artillery, causing great casualties to Chinese soldiers on the battlefield in North China, especially in the Battle of Nanjing a month later, which fully demonstrated its advantages.

The main reason is that the Chinese Air Force has been completely lost, and the Japanese army can even raise large balloons 10 kilometers away, and anti-aircraft guns can only stare at them.

However, it is not easy to raise this kind of balloon. The mooring vehicle alone weighs 5 tons, and there are more than 10 mooring ropes. When it is launched, it is necessary to first unfold the heavy airbag and then fill it with hydrogen. This requires more than 40 soldiers to operate, and it also requires a flat road and a wide space.

Therefore, when the weather is bad, even if the artillery in Songjiang City makes the Japanese army cry for their parents, the Japanese did not make this thing to let their artillery retaliate until the heavy artillery brigade arrived. As the most powerful boss under Songjiang City, the commander of the 6th Division, Gu Shoufu, felt that the opportunity had come.

But he didn't expect that the heavy artillery brigade was too powerful, and the smoke it stirred up covered Songjiang City tightly. The balloons with special observation instruments could not see the specific situation in the city. Gu Shoufu was furious and asked the balloon troops to approach from more than 2,000 meters to 1,000 meters, but the commander of the balloon troops was not a fool. He quietly stayed 1,500 meters away and stopped moving forward.

It's not that he was afraid of the machine guns of the Chinese who were being tortured, but he was afraid of his own artillery.

The heavy artillery brigade was on the north bank of the Huangpu River, and the balloon was in the general direction of the artillery shells. Although there was no precedent for the balloon being hit by its own shells, what if it happened?

Besides, it was so close to the city wall, what if the Chinese who were not dead fired a burst of heavy machine guns at this side?

The commander of the Japanese balloon unit was definitely smart enough. After considering many contingencies, he chose to suspend the big balloon in the wilderness 1,500 meters away from Songjiang City.

The closer the distance, the clearer it is.

Unfortunately, it was also a few points closer to death.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Mo Songzi, a sergeant shooter of the 643rd Regiment of the 67th Army, fired.

In order to ensure the hit rate, Mo Songzi emptied twenty magazines in one breath, immediately replaced them with new magazines and continued to fire, and then replaced them again and fired again!

Mo Songzi didn't think too much about it. He chose to fire at the air at this time and spent a full 60 rounds of artillery shells. In fact, he mainly wanted to fight against the huge fear of being blown up to the sky at any time.

Without experiencing this kind of battle, no one can understand the fear that the soldiers tried their best to suppress in their hearts.

The previous 105 howitzers and 75 mountain guns were okay. You know, as long as they didn't hit the fortifications, the chance of saving your life was more than 95%.

But now the 150 and 240 howitzers, as long as they hit the target, can penetrate the concrete walls over one meter high. The solid fortifications and the people inside the fortifications were directly blown to pieces and buried alive.

In the entire Songjiang City, except for the air-raid shelters, which made people feel a little safe, the rest of the places were all gambling on luck and how many names of gods they knew.

It was almost the same fear as the death row prisoners kneeling at the edge of the execution ground waiting to be guillotined.

People and guns could be blown away at any time, so what's the point of saving a ball! It's better to pick them up and play "ball".

Mo Songzi actually had such a mentality.

A small sergeant actually quietly changed the course of a war.

If Tani Hisao hadn't been too anxious, if the heavy artillery brigade hadn't fired too quickly and waited for the observation balloon to take off first, if the balloon was a little further away

Any of these ifs would have caused great damage to the artillery positions in Songjiang City.

But there are no ifs.

The observation balloon violated the regulations and reached an area 1,500 meters away from the enemy. A Chinese machine gun sergeant shooter refused to be afraid and fired!

One of the two observation balloons owned by the 10th Army was shot into a sieve by a 20mm machine gun in the air.

Expensive observation instruments and soldiers fell from a height of 100 meters and smashed into parts.

The other one had already broken down and had not been repaired in time.

The legendary roof leaks and it rains all night, which is what the 10th Army is talking about.

From this moment on, the 10th Army lost its sharpest "eyes", which could not be compensated by the aviation force.