1937: No Red Dawn
The war was going very well for the Qing-Japanese Alliance. While forces of both nations ran rampant through China's heartland, the dispirited defenders shattered whenever battle was met in the North. In the province of Yinchuan for instance...the Qing forces were outnumbered three-to-one...and lost only 271 men to nearly 900 on the side of the ROC/PRC coalition. If battles continued at this ratio, the Manchukuo Army would be able to win the war, despite being far smaller and having a far smaller manpower pool. The situation was similar for the larger Japanese forces, as the Kwantung Army rampaged through coastal China.
Not to say that the Chinese forces didn't make attempts to break the deadlock, or at least slow down their enemy's advances.
Three militia formations in the province of Xifeng found this out the hard way. The remaining forces in the last Communist stronghold made a direct frontal assault on the Qing forces, who were running low on supplies. The defenders had a brilliant leader, who had distinguished himself in defensive engagements...but the fact remained that they were running out of bullets to fire. No amount of skilled leadership or better equipment would matter if the units ran out of supplies and morale, both of which were a real possibility.
So the forces surrounding the aforementioned stronghold launched their own assault, to relieve the pressure on the Xifeng forces.
While that assault would serve its purpose and allow Kilobi to retreat to friendly(ish) Shanxi to resupply and reorganize, it was a disaster for the attackers. Xianyang was second only to Yan'an in defenses as far as Red territory went, and it showed in the fierce defense presented to the attacking Qing forces. Quite unlike most battles in this war, the Manchukuo Imperial Army came out of the engagement in far worse shape than the defenders. Over two thousand Manchurian men were lost, while the PRC/ROC defenders lost only a little more than a hundred.
It was a reminder that militia were not fit for assaulting mountain fortresses.
Luckily, the ill-fated assault did serve to distract the Chinese forces, allowing the single cavalry division in the Qing military to rampage through Xibei San Ma. Now under the veteran command of General Semenov, the cavalry pushed behind the Ma lines, penetrating all the way to their capital of Golmund while Japanese cavalry followed close behind. Unfortunately, the Ma were not foolish enough to leave their capital undefended...six garrison divisions were holding in fortified defensive positions. Semenov, thus, ordered a halt to the advance and awaited slower moving reinforcements, before an assault could be made on the heavily defended Ma capital.
Nonetheless, the fact that the north was so weakly defended should have been odd. While the Ma were regarded as the weakest of the warlords (leaving aside little Shanxi), there should have been more forces in position. Semenov, brilliant logistics master that he was, should not have been able to take a single cavalry unit so far into the Muslim Clique, not alone.
A quick communication with Kwantung command would reveal why the north was so thinly defended.
The Japanese had managed to take the Republic's capital of Nanjing. The fortified town had not been able to hold against the masses of men and material the Japanese were throwing into that section of the line, and was now well behind the front line, as the Chinese threw more and more men in front of the enemy's advance. Even Shanghai was at risk of falling to the unstoppable juggernaut that was the Kwantung Army.
It certainly explained why, sans the Communist fortress, the north was so undermanned. The Chinese were collapsing in the south, and needed the forces they could spare down there...leaving the Ma to their fate, but hopefully rallying enough to push the Japanese and Qing back into Manchuria.
Of course, the plan didn't work.
Shanghai fell within a week, forcing the Chinese Navy out of its docks, lest it fall into Japanese hands. The main battlegroup of the Manchukuo Navy had been raiding supply convoys along the coast for some time before this, and managed to catch the many cruisers of the Republican fleet as they left port. Both navies in this engagement were made up of old, obsolete warships. The problem for the Qing fleet, was simply numbers. While the three old battleships 'loaned' to them by the Japanese were more powerful than any ships the Chinese had, quantity has a quality all its own.
The Qing forces were outnumbered two to one, and not even battleships and heavy cruisers could tilt that kind of numbers in their favor. The Beijing and Satsuma were both hit hard in the opening stages of the battle, and forced to pull back to effect repairs. The remaining two battleships and one cruiser heavily damaged two of their lighter Chinese counterparts, but that was two out of a dozen ships. Admiral Ramilcheff made the decision to fall back and regroup, as the destroyer squadron escorting the big-gun warships covered them with a volley of torpedoes and a smokescreen.
A valiant move, but one that lead to the complete destruction of the squadron. The Manchukou Imperial Navy's first engagement was a wash...they had lost a squadron of destroyers, but in exchange, the Republican Navy lost a destroyer group of their own, a group of transports, and two light cruisers. While Admiral Ramilcheff could have moved to reengage the damaged enemy, the Qing fleet moved back to Manchuria. Satsuma was listing heavily, and the Beijing required Aki to tow it along as fires burned on its deck.
It would be some time before the navy was ready to sortie again, and thus, it would serve no further purpose in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
This was because even the Communist Fortress could not hold forever. With the fall of Xianyang, the Communist government collapsed. Mao and his forces were subsumed into the Republic's command net, as their territory was returned to Pu-Yi. Two of the Chinese factions were down, and the Ma were not far behind. The war was going very well indeed.
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