In the face of Song Yuhang's idea of a joint exercise, Marshall readily agreed, and on the question of whether Song Yuhang's time was too short, Marshall smiled and explained: "Please rest assured, our time will be very relaxed."
"Very loose" Song Yuhang frowned involuntarily, he didn't see a little looseness in the dispatch order issued by the US Pacific Theater Command, and the US military would not be alert to such a large-scale mobilization of the Japanese army The so-called Xiang Zhuang sword dance is intended to Pei Gong, the target of the next strategic attack of the allies must be Iwo Jima, which is equivalent to giving the Japanese army sufficient time to prepare, and the battle of Iwo Jima in history took a full month for the US Marine Division to completely clean up, The proportion of American casualties also reached the highest point in history, and it was this that shook Roosevelt's determination to attack and land on the Japanese mainland.
Marshall put a document printed with classified information in his hand in front of Song Yuhang and said: "The Chinese Expeditionary Force needs to be trained and reorganized, and most of the forces of the Pacific Fleet are cooperating with MacArthur in Bataan at the moment, and to be honest, there are not enough troops to land on Iwo Jima in a short period of time, and this plan and the transfer of the Chinese Expeditionary Force are just to confuse and contain the Japanese Navy." ” Song Yuhang was very angry and helpless at the strategic arrangement of the US military, and if he wanted to put an end to this kind of life under the fence, he could only rely on unremitting efforts to continuously enhance the strategic position of the Chinese Expeditionary Force and China's national status.
Song Yuhang, who had returned from Hawaii, inspected all the trained troops in succession, and since the main forces of the First Mechanized Corps and the Fourth Mechanized Corps were still fighting against the Japanese Indian Dispatch Army in Calcutta, India, the troops trained in the Hawaiian Islands were only supplementary units of the two armies.
As the First Mechanized Army under the establishment of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, it is the undisputed and absolute first in the Expeditionary Force, and its brilliant battles make it the absolute first, but it is a pity that the First Mechanized Army is a mechanized infantry unit dominated by armored troops, and its role in the island landing war is very limited.
For the Second Mechanized Army, the Third Mechanized Army, and the Mountain Infantry Cluster as the main force of the Iwo Jima landing operation, Song Yuhang paid unprecedented attention, and the Mountain Infantry Division, which suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Naba Valley, retained a seed regiment before the war as the basis, and through special recruitment and other means, and gave priority to the selection of soldiers, now that its combat effectiveness has been restored, after the division was promoted to a cluster, the original four regiments of the Mountain Infantry Division were expanded into four brigades.
The two reinforced regiments of each brigade are also equipped with a light 105 howitzer battalion and a 100 mm rocket artillery battalion, which can be described as unprecedentedly powerful in terms of firepower.
Song Yuhang's move was also to make up for the debt to Zhang Tiansheng in the Battle of Naba, which almost completely wiped out Zhang Tiansheng's old team, but Zhang Tiansheng, who was loyal to Song Yuhang, also got a large and brand-new mountain infantry group as he wished.
On Huwa Island, Song Yuhang and Zhang Tiansheng took a small McDonnell Douglas C39 sightseeing plane to inspect the confrontation exercise between the mountain infantry group and the Fifth Light Infantry Division.
The Chinese Expeditionary Force benefited greatly from the full cooperation of the U.S. military, from the first wave of troops in the simulated aerial bombardment, under the cover of the sea fire support formation, the VT4 amphibious armored vehicles followed by the 4 Sherman DD tanks to attack in depth immediately after the beach.
With the concerted efforts of Cui Zhijun, Liang Chao, Qi Baiming, Fang Lin, and others, several sets of plans formulated by Song Yuhang were put into practice one by one, and the operational staff office of the headquarters promptly summed up and revised the various situations and problems that arose during the exercise, and conducted many demonstrations on the revised new plan.
A large amount of drill data is stored as a basis.
After Song Yuhang returned to the headquarters in Hawaii, in the face of Xu Tu'an, Cui Zhijun, Liang Chao, Qi Baiming, Fang Lin, and others, who also had dust and sweat on their faces, Song Yuhang expressed a certain degree of satisfaction with the training progress of the troops and the increasing degree of cooperation of various arms in the exercise, but Song Yuhang knew very well that no unit in the world has become a trump card army by relying on the achievements made in the exercise, and only after experiencing the baptism of blood and fire can the Chinese expeditionary force become truly strong Time flies, as Song Yuhang predicted, because a considerable part of the U.S.
Pacific Fleet's participating forces were supporting the landing operation on Luzon, the launch of the Iwo Jima Battle had to wait for the end of the Luzon Campaign, and the Iwo Jima Campaign, which was originally scheduled to begin in January 1945, was postponed from the planned date of December 20, 1944 to January 9, 1945 because of the slow progress of the Luzon Campaign.
As a result, Nimitz had no choice but to postpone the operation on Iwo Jima until mid-February 1945, and informed Song Yuhang of the news.
The more time to prepare, the more sure Song Yuhang is, during this period of time, Song Yuhang has looked at the geographical information about Iwo Jima, which is located in the south of the Ogasawara Islands, the second largest island of the archipelago, more than 1,200 kilometers and 650 nautical miles from Tokyo in the north, more than 1,100 kilometers and 630 nautical miles from Saipan in the south, and more than 500 kilometers and 290 nautical miles from the Mariana Islands in the southeast.
The island is about 8,000 meters long, about 4,000 meters wide, the shape resembles a ham, the area is about 20 square kilometers, there is an extinct volcano in the south of the island that has not been completely cooled, called Oriba Mountain, the altitude is 160 meters, the eruption of fog all year round, the smell of sulfur permeates the whole island, hence the name.
To the north of Mt.
Oriba, there is a relatively wide and flat highland called the Chubu Highland, and further north, the terrain gradually undulates and there are several peaks, known as the Motosan area, and most of the island is covered with thick volcanic ash.
Song Yuhang remembered that as early as 1944, the Japanese army only used Iwo Jima as an air relay base in the central and southern Pacific Ocean, and only deployed more than 1,500 naval garrisons and 20 aircraft.
After the loss of the Mariana Islands in 1944, the importance of Iwo Jima became more and more obvious, and the Japanese army began to vigorously strengthen its defense forces, sending more than 4,000 army units to the island in late March, and reorganizing the army units on Iwo Jima into the 109th Division in May, with Lieutenant General Awabayashi Nakado as the division commander, and equipped with 120 and 155 mm shore guns, 100 mm anti-aircraft guns and twin 25-mm anti-aircraft guns on the island, and the 27th Air Force of the Navy was also transferred to the island in July.
As of February 1945, the Japanese army on the island about 150,000 troops, about 7,000 navy, a total of about 230,000 people, more than 30 aircraft, under the unified command of Su Lin, the Japanese army in the island's central highlands and Wonsan area each built an airport, called Qiandao Airport and Wonsan Airport respectively, also called the No. 1 airport and the No. 2 airport, and built a third airport north of the No. 2 airport.
Historically, due to the rapid occupation of the Mariana Islands by the US military, the personnel, equipment, and materials originally planned to be transported to the Mariana Islands were diverted to Iwo Jima nearby.
Because the main force of the Japanese navy and air force suffered a devastating blow in the Philippine Campaign, it was no longer able to provide sea and air support for Iwo Jima, and the anti-landing operation on Iwo Jima had to be carried out with almost no naval and air support.
However, the naval garrison still insisted on annihilating the enemy on the beachhead, and finally Su Lin made a compromise plan, focusing on in-depth defense, supplemented by beachhead defense, and the naval garrison building permanent launch points and solid support points along the beach for defense; The main force of the army was concentrated in the area of Oribasan and Wonsan, and the defense in depth was carried out.
Awabayashi was determined to build Iwo Jima into a strong fortress, with Mt.
Oriba as the core position, two airfields as the main defense zone, and a defensive position with permanent launch points and strong support points as the backbone on the east and west beaches suitable for landing.
Most of the artillery positions have also been built semi-underground, and although the firing range has been sacrificed, the survivability under heavy bombardment has been greatly improved, the artillery and communication networks have been well protected, the Oribo Mountain has almost been hollowed out, and there are as many as nine layers of tunnels built in response to the operational characteristics of the US troops; a large number of mines have been planted in the depth of the beach, and machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank guns have formed a dense firepower network; the configuration of all weapons and the targets of fire have been accurately calculated, so that they can not only conceal themselves, but also kill and injure the enemy troops to the greatest extent.
The only drawback is that the tunnel fortifications that were originally planned to be built in the Wonsan area were 28 kilometers long, but due to lack of time, only 70, about 18 kilometers were completed when the US troops attacked, and there was no tunnel connection between Mt.
Oriba and Wonsan.
Historically, Su Lin changed the Japanese army's desperate tactics in the early stage of the war, and stipulated in detail such tactics as close shooting, mobile defense, and ambush, and also strictly prohibited suicide charges, and called on every soldier to kill at least 10 American troops.
However, all this is Iwo Jima in Song Yuhang's memory, and now that history has changed dramatically, it is obviously impossible for the Japanese army to remain unchanged as in history, and the bloody battle on the beachhead on Saipan Island is an excellent example "Everything seems to be starting to get out of control," Song Yuhang muttered to himself: