The Defense of Hengyang was the final bottom line of Chiang Kai-shek in Hunan after the fall of Changsha. After The siege of Hengyang, Chiang Kai-shek sent a large number of troops to the rescue, and also told Fang Xianjue: "Xi Di is at ease and will die, and Yu Bi will urge the army and air force to help his brother complete an unprecedented cause." The Battle of Hengyang was so fierce that many corpses could not be carried away, and the Japanese prime minister resigned. After carrying it for so long, where did the reinforcements from the periphery go? This matter must be asked of Zhang Lingfu in 1947.
On June 1, 1944, Fang Xianjue entered Hengyang to lay out defenses. Fang Xianjue's 10th Army was not an ordinary unit, it was one of the five major armies that received American weapons and equipment, and it was a unit with the same name as the 74th Army. On June 23, more than 50,000 people from the 68th and 116th divisions under the command of the Japanese invasion of China began to attack Hengyang. However, the US ordnance army is not given in vain. Yokoyama's name has a brave character, but he suffered in front of the 10th Army.
By June 28, the 10th Army was doing nothing, and the Japanese 68th Division was crippled. After several days of fierce fighting, a large number of wing commanders and squadron leaders of the 68th Division were killed, and the entire division was destroyed. Fight like this, the Japanese army can not do it. When did my "Imperial Japanese Army" suffer this loss? Yokoyama couldn't hang on to his face.
After adjusting its strength, the Japanese launched another onslaught on Hengyang on July 11, after adding four heavy artillery groups and two mortar brigades. The attack worked well, and under the excellent command of Isamu Yokoyama, the Japanese lost 8,000 men, killed one squadron leader and eight squadron leaders, and hengyang castle remained untouched. The angry Japanese even used poison gas bombs, but the 10th Army blocked its nose and mouth with wet towels and continued to fight the Japanese.
On July 15, the Japanese took the new street position and used the houses on the other side of the river to assemble and prepare to attack Hengyang. The officers and men of our 10th Army used fire to burn down the houses. Because the six warriors who set the fire could not return to their positions under the blockade of Japanese fire, they were killed with more than fifty Japanese troops. The battles were all fought to this extent, in fact, Fang Xianjue had already completed the defensive deadline given to him by Lao Jiang. However, the gunshots of the reinforcements were only occasionally heard, and they were getting farther and farther away.
Yokoyama was pressured by his superiors and was unable to mobilize two divisions, 58 and 13, to join the battle. The number of troops attacking Hengyang had reached 100,000. Under the incessant attack of aircraft, heavy artillery, and poison gas bombs, it was fought until August 7, and under the personal supervision of Yokoyama, the Japanese army finally used tanks to blast open the hengyang city wall. The battle entered the street battle phase. Since it had been fighting for 46 days, the 10th Army was already quite tired. In order to continue the fighting, Fang Xianjue sent his own special service battalion to defend the Tianzhu Church, a stronghold in the city. Here, a sharpshooter of the Nationalist army headshot Major General Shima Genji, commander of the 57th Brigade. Helplessly, the Japanese army was so powerful that they took the Catholic Church at great cost. The battle was fought in the early morning of the 8th, and after 47 days of bitter fighting, the 10th Army's men and grooms were all used. The 10th Army, with only 17,000 men, surrendered after running out of ammunition and food.
The battle caused 80,000 Japanese casualties. It was the first time that the Japanese army admitted in its war report that there were more casualties than the Chinese army. The following question is, after 47 days of fighting, where are the reinforcements of the National Army? Zhang Lingfu knew this matter best on Meng Lianggu. The preservation of strength of the national army is a stubborn disease, and they all feel that hengyang is also consumed. In addition to the 79th Army struggling to rescue and being killed by its division commanders, the other units blindly avoided the battle. Even the elite 74th Army was stopped by the deputy chief of staff after approaching Hengyang.