Chapter XIV: The Third Sino-Japanese War Part Two
PLA is now on the defensive in Manchuria. At least until more reinforcements arrive.
Jinan is taken on 25th October, meaning some troops can be rerouted north. Overall the defense of the Shandong Peninsula is now quite light, with Japanese having a lot of their HQs trapped here.
Despite having the numerical advantage, militias cannot eliminate Japanese in the vicinity of Ningbo. We need to starve them out. Just to remind you; I have the tech that halves the width of MIL/GAR
This is a typical battle from Manchuria. These aren’t the weak KMT binary infantry anymore. Japanese infantry is either triangular, square, or binary with support divisions attached to them! Moreover, some of the militias are fresh, unexperienced recruits rather than veterans who fought the KMT for a good amount of years.
Battle of Kuancheng ended on 28th October and despite the reinforcement, Japanese divisions proved to be too much for our militias.
The Manchurian front on 3rd November. Reinforcements are slowly arriving, while units on the front are performing a slow fighting retreat whenever and wherever possible.
Three Japanese divisions are taken prisoner in Xinghua, near the coast north of Nanjing. This frees up six additional divisions to be sent north. Meanwhile, the fight in Hong Kong begins.
On 7th November, reports came in from Shanghai that a large landing party is coming from the sea. Divisions from recently Xinghua are rushed in to deter the invasion, together with a few divisions stationing near the Japanese pocket in Xiangshan.
Obviously, such a strong landing wouldn’t be fended off even by half a dozen militias. PLA must not allow the marines to liberate their comrades in Xiangshan!
It came to Chinese as a great shock that Japanese could afford to land in such a force in Shanghai, as they thought Japanese marines would be engaged in the Pacific rather. The opposite was true however. Japanese were clearly dominating the USA, having not captured just Hawaiian Islands from the US possessions in Pacific.
On 14th November, Qingdao was liberated and it seemed the Japanese presence in Shandong would soon be a thing of the past.
This is the current situation, on 15th November. Hong Kong was liberated, together with the capture of three more Japanese divisions and Hainan was left unguarded completely. Third Sino-Japanese war still had an unknown victor at this time.