Double-Cut During the War of Resistance: My Wife Came from 1937

After the Battle of Pingxingguan, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army captured forty or fifty light and heavy machine guns from the Japanese army.

At present, their entire Eighth Route Army has 136 heavy machine guns and 435 light machine guns, which is no less than before the war.

Among them, their 129th Division possessed only 29 heavy machine guns and 93 light machine guns.

Xia Weiwei brought back 251 light machine guns, which is almost three times the number of their 129th Division.

In addition, those general-purpose machine guns can also be considered heavy machine guns.

Based on this calculation, the total number of heavy machine guns is 175, which is more than six times the number of heavy machine guns in their division.

Even the entire Eighth Route Army's heavy machine guns couldn't compare to this number.

Deputy Division Commander Xu burst into excited laughter: "Hahaha, with so many more light and heavy machine guns, the strength of our anti-Japanese armed forces will be greatly enhanced; it's like adding wings to a tiger!"

In the past, the Central Committee provided their division with the weakest equipment. Now that Xia Weiwei is in their 129th Division, she should be able to be allocated more machine guns, right?

Moreover, among the heavy machine guns this time, there are also 8 12.7mm anti-aircraft heavy machine guns.

This large-caliber machine gun can not only defend against air raids and shoot down airplanes, but also penetrate Japanese tanks, and even be used against bunkers, pillboxes, and other defensive fortifications and shelters.

With these large-caliber machine guns, if those Japanese planes dared to harass them at low altitudes again, they could shoot them down directly.

And those automatic rifles, although they consume a lot of ammunition, can be extremely effective in assault operations, sweeping through enemy positions at close range.

They also seized some Bergman MP18/MP28 machine guns, also known as hand-held submachine guns, from the Kuomintang.

Because of the limited number of these firearms and ammunition, they were only issued to assault teams, guard companies, and commanders' guards.

Back when they were still part of the Red Army, the entire assault team that seized the Luding Bridge was equipped with firearms.

With those automatic rifles, they can form more commando teams.

After the two leaders calmed down, Xia Weiwei continued, "Besides these guns, Hongwei also bought a batch of mortars!"

"A mortar?"

Upon hearing this, Division Commander Liu abruptly stood up and hurriedly asked, "Comrade Hongwei... he bought artillery? Wasn't it said that artillery was hard to buy?"

"Yes, it's really hard to buy proper artillery; all we can get are mortars!"

Xia Weiwei nodded in agreement.

"So mortars aren't considered proper artillery?"

Hearing these words, Commander Liu and Deputy Commander Xu were both amused and saddened.

The combined artillery and mortars of the Eighth Route Army were no match for a single Japanese regiment.

For example, the 120th Division has two mortar companies, with a total of only 6 mortars.

In the future world, mortars are no longer considered proper artillery.

"Comrade Xia!"

Division Commander Liu inquired, "How many mortars did you manage to acquire this time?"

In his view, if they could add a few dozen more mortars, it would greatly enhance their strength.

If there were hundreds of such institutions, we would be incredibly wealthy.

Given the preciousness of the "artillery", the two leaders dared not think too much about it.

"This time, we purchased 375 60mm mortar replicas."

Xia Weiwei read aloud: "There are 33 original 82mm mortars and 102 copy 82mm mortars."

"The remaining nine are all 120mm heavy mortars."

"In total, there are 519 mortars!"

Dead!

The room fell into a deathly silence!

Both Commander Liu and Deputy Commander Xu stared wide-eyed, their faces filled with disbelief.

After a long pause, Commander Liu swallowed hard and asked, "Xia...Xia, how many artillery pieces did you manage to acquire?"

「首长，60毫米迫击炮375门，82毫米迫击炮135门，还有120毫米的重型迫击炮9门！」

Xia Weiwei repeated herself: "There are a total of 519 mortars!"

Holy crap!

Upon hearing this enormous number again, Deputy Division Commander Xu couldn't help but swear.

These are 519 mortars, not 519 rifles.

At the beginning of the Eighth Route Army, the entire army had only 20 artillery pieces, including 16 mortars.

Later, in the ditch, they found four 75mm mountain guns abandoned by the defeated Jin-Sui Army. In the Battle of Pingxingguan, they also captured one 70mm infantry gun from the Japanese army.

All these cannons combined amount to only 25.

Keep in mind that this is the total number of artillery pieces possessed by the entire army.

The 519 mortars were more than twenty times the number possessed by the entire Eighth Route Army.

Compared to their 129th Division, that's 86.5 times.

If allocated, each of their main divisions could be given 173 mortars.

"Comrade Xia!"

Commander Liu exclaimed with immense excitement, "You and Comrade Hongwei are truly great heroes of our Eighth Route Army!"

Currently, the Kuomintang's direct-line Central Army German-equipped divisions have 12 75mm Krupp mountain guns in a single division's artillery battalion, and a total of 36 82mm mortars in the division's infantry regiment's mortar company and infantry battalion's mortar platoon.

In other words, there are 48 standard artillery pieces with a caliber of 50 mm or larger.

Miscellaneous armies like the Sichuan Army and the Northwest Army did not have divisional mountain guns; they only had 10-20 mortars or some homemade cannons.

A complete Japanese Class A division had 36 75mm field guns or 36 70mm mountain guns in its directly subordinate artillery regiment.

Each infantry regiment consists of: a regimental artillery company with 4 Type 92 70mm infantry guns and a rapid-fire gun company with 4 37mm anti-tank guns.

The four regiments had a total of 16 Type 92 infantry guns and 16 37mm anti-tank guns.

In addition, there were 48 50mm grenade launchers, bringing the total number of firearms in the entire division to 116.

The artillery firepower of a single Japanese Class A division was equivalent to that of three Kuomintang direct-line German-equipped divisions.

If their division could be allocated more than 170 mortars.

In terms of sheer numbers, it could even surpass a single Class A division of the Japanese army.

In particular, the 120mm heavy mortar has a destructive force exceeding that of the 75mm Krupp mountain gun, and can also deal with earthen fortresses and small to medium-sized brick and stone bunkers.

The only drawback is that it cannot fire horizontally and cannot directly attack armored targets. When encountering Japanese Type 94 and Type 95 tanks, it can only destroy the tracks and observation ports.

However, the two commanders would probably directly incorporate such "heavy artillery" into the Eighth Route Army's artillery regiment.

The 75mm mountain guns that had been used before were all taken away by the Eighth Route Army headquarters.

What should be left for their three main divisions are 60mm and 82mm mortars.