Just as Luo Yue was commanding the army and attacking Lushun, the battle was also going on fiercely on the front line of the Liaohe River.

The 2nd Army of the People's Army launched an attack on the Japanese Liaohe defense line on May 12, and successfully broke through the Liaohe defense line in the early morning of May 13, capturing Liaozhong, but it was also caught in an unfavorable situation of being attacked by the Japanese army on both sides. In order to break this unfavorable situation and consolidate the People's Army's foothold on the east bank of the Liaohe River, Qiu Yahui, the commander of the 2nd Army, decided to attack the Japanese Shaling Fort position immediately.

After Qiu Yahui's combat plan was approved by the Qingdao command team, he immediately began to arrange the troops to attack Shaling Fort. The 2nd Army will dispatch the 2nd Division, the 9th Division and two reserve regiments, a total of 32,000 troops to attack Shaling Fort. The 8th Division is stationed in Liaozhong, and the 17th Division is still stationed on the west bank of the Liaohe River to prevent the Japanese attack.

On May 15, the People's Army divided into two groups, and the 9th Division and the 1st Reserve Regiment marched along the Liaohe River-Shuangtaizi River, and the 7th Division and the 2nd Reserve Regiment marched along the outer Liaohe River, forming a force of restraint against Shahe Fort.

In fact, when the People's Army planned to attack Shahebao, the Japanese army was also planning to attack the People's Army in Liaozhong in two directions. On the night of May 14, the 11th Division stationed in Shaling Fort received an order from the Liaoyang Manchurian Army Command, ordering the 11th Division to send troops to assist the army of Ping'an Fort and attack the People's Army in Liaozhong. Therefore, the 11th Division of the Japanese army launched an attack early in the morning of May 15 and marched towards Liaozhong along the Liaohe-Shuangtaizi River line.

Liaozhong and Shaling Fort were about 55 kilometers apart, so at 10 a.m., the front army of the Japanese 11th Division and the front army of the People's Army marched along the Liaohe-Shuangtaizi River and fought near Jiafang Town.

This was indeed an encounter, so both sides were caught off guard. However, after about 30 minutes of fire exchange, the Japanese army voluntarily retreated and retreated to Huangshatuo Town. At 11 o'clock, the Japanese army gave up Huangshatuo Town and retreated to Shaling Fort. It turned out that the Japanese scouts discovered another route of the People's Army advancing along the Liaohe River outside. Only then did they realize that the People's Army dispatched a large army to attack the 11th Division of Shaling Fort.

Under such circumstances, Lieutenant General Takaya Mitsuharu, the commander of the 11th Division, decided to withdraw from Shaling Fort to defend, because Japan had been stationed in Shaling Fort for more than two months and built relatively complete fortifications. Moreover, the People's Army dispatched a large army to attack Shaling Fort, then the defense forces of Liaozhong would be empty. At this time, the Japanese army had dispatched a large army to attack Liaozhong from the direction of Ping'an Fort. Therefore, as long as the 11th Division defended Shaling Fort for 3 or 5 days, the attacking People's Army would inevitably withdraw its troops to return to the Liaozhong. At this time, the 11th Division took the opportunity to launch a counterattack, and it was expected to win in one battle.

At 2 pm, the 11th Division retreated to Shaling Fort. Tsuya Mitsuru immediately generated power to the Liaoyang Manchurian Army Command to explain his tactical plan. At 3:40, the 11th Division received a call from the Liaoyang Manchurian Army Command, agreeing with Tsuya Mitsuru's combat plan, and required Tsuya Mitsuru to guard Shaling Fort for more than 3 days, and to try its best to delay the People's Army and gain time for the attack on the Ping'an Fort.

The Japanese army arranged three frontier positions on the Shaling Fort defense line, namely Tangshulinjie, Fujia Town, and Xinglongtai, which were all arranged along the Liao River. Among them, Xinglongtai was located in the west and was not the direction of the People's Army's attack. Therefore, the areas where the Japanese army focused on defending were Tangshulinzi and Fujia Town, so Toya Guangshu sent the 10th Brigade to guard these two positions.

However, there is no completed position along the outer Liaohe River, and in a hurry, it is impossible to arrange a complete position, so the Shaling Fort position can only rely on the Shaling Fort position to resist the attack of the People's Army. The Shaling Fort position is mainly composed of several positions around Madaokou, Xizhangkou, Botaizi, Jiutaizi Village, Fuzhuangkou, etc., and is guarded by the 22nd Brigade.

At 4 pm on May 15, both armies of the People's Army approached Shaling Fort. However, the People's Army did not rush to attack, but arranged positions, established headquarters, and observed the enemy's troops' deployment, battlefield, etc., while waiting for the subsequent artillery troops to arrive.

At 8 pm, the artillery troops also arrived at the front line. During this period, the Japanese army launched two tentative attacks, but the People's Army was well harsh and the Japanese army did not take any advantage. After defeating the Japanese attack, the People's Army arranged artillery positions, set up observation points, dispatched troops, made point combat plans, etc., and was busy until after 12 o'clock in the night before basically coming to an end.

Of course, while testing the People's Army, Japan also seized the last night to strengthen the position and fortifications and enhance its own defense.

At 7 a.m. on May 16, the People's Army launched an attack on the Japanese positions at the same time.

The 2nd Division, which was responsible for directly attacking Shaling Fort, first launched artillery regiments to launch artillery on the Japanese position. Yesterday, the People's Army had already used drones to understand the position and arrangement of the Japanese position and calculate accurate data, 18 155mm artillery fired together and launched accurate artillery bombardment on each Japanese position. On another front, the self-propelled artillery troops also opened fire on the west bank of the Liao River, bombing the Japanese Tangshulinzi position.

The accuracy of the landing points of the shells on both fronts shocked the Japanese army. Moreover, based on the observations of the Japanese artillery and the results of the reconnaissance of the scouts, it was determined that the People's Army's artillery positions were at least 15 kilometers away, and this distance had exceeded all the artillery ranges of the Japanese 11th Division. Of course, even if the Japanese army had artillery of such a long-range range, it was useless, because the Japanese army could not effectively observe the landing points of the shells, nor could they transmit the observed landing points back to the artillery army.

After the fall of Liaozhong, some Japanese soldiers fled to Shaling Fort and told Tooya Mitsuru that the People's Army's use of artillery was quite strong, not only for far-range shooting, but also for a very high accuracy. There were also a group of large-caliber, long-range artillery, and it was suspected that it might have moved naval naval guns to the land.

But Takaya Mitsuharu is quite suspicious of this statement, because it fundamentally subverts Takaya Mitsuharu's understanding of artillery tactics in this era. Therefore, Takaya Mitsuharu believes that this was a defeated soldier who deliberately exaggerated the enemy's combat effectiveness in order to reduce his guilt, so he did not take it seriously. But from the current situation, the defeated soldier's statement is actually true.

But now Tsuya Mitsuharu is helpless because his artillery could not hit others at all, so he could only do something in a hurry. Tsuya Mitsuharu also risked to send a small group of artillery close to the People's Army's position, and then fired artillery to strike the People's Army's artillery positions. However, before the Japanese army completed the preparations for the artillery, they were discovered by drones and guided the People's Army's artillery to strike. As a result, after several rounds of artillery attacks, the Japanese artillery was left without anything.

The People's Army's artillery lasted for more than half an hour. 18 155mm guns fired thousands of shells, and two 200mm guns also fired more than 120 shells. The positions hit by artillery suffered considerable losses. The positions on both sides together suffered more than 1,000 casualties. Many of the fortifications and fire points on the positions were destroyed.

However, it is obvious that the Japanese army cannot be completely defeated by artillery alone, and to occupy the Japanese position, it still needs to be attacked by ground troops. Therefore, after the artillery was stopped, the People's Army immediately launched an attack on the Japanese position.

Although the Japanese position was hit hard by the People's Army artillery, the position was not completely destroyed and still had considerable defense. Therefore, after the People's Army's artillery was over, the Japanese soldiers hiding in the trenches avoiding the artillery also showed up, re-distributed the position to defend, and tried their best to restore the destroyed firepower points to block the People's Army's attack.

It should be said that at this time, the battle has truly entered the stage of full development.

But the Japanese soldiers guarding the positions soon discovered that the attack mode of the People's Army was very different from that of the Russian army. Although the People's Army seemed to have a large number of people invested in the attack, almost everywhere, the distance between the soldiers was obviously much larger than that of the Russian army, so they were more scattered. In addition, the attack of the People's Army seemed to be chaotic, and not all soldiers charged forward, but some rushed forward, while others looked for bunkers to hide during the attack and fired at the Japanese defense line, but it seemed that they were not rushing around indiscriminately.

The army offensive tactics of this era also have strong traces of the line tactics era. They basically use dense formations when attacking, and commanders also require soldiers to work together, rush to the enemy's positions at the fastest speed, and then engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. At most, before attacking, use artillery to strike the enemy's positions to weaken the defense of the enemy's positions. However, this tactic is extremely beneficial to the defense side. Even if it is attacked by the enemy's artillery fire, as long as it can quickly arrange a complete defense line after the artillery attack, and a few machine guns form fire points, it can cause huge damage to the attack side. Therefore, it is quite difficult to break the enemy's positions from the front. Most offensive battles adopt frontal restraint and flanking detour tactics. If you encounter a battlefield environment where it is impossible to conduct a roundabout attack, you must pay a heavy price.

In the Russo-Japanese War, both Japan and Russia basically adopted this set of tactics, but for most of the time, the Japanese army was attacking, and the Russian army was defending. Therefore, if the casualties on the battlefield were counted, the Japanese army would be far higher than the Russian army.

But when facing the attack of the People's Army, it is completely different from the same thing when fighting. In the past battles with the Russian army, Maxim machine guns were definitely battlefield harvesters. With just one wave of fire, the enemy would fall to the ground in rows like cutting crops. If there is a fortress, it would be even more terrible. The attacking party often had to pay the price of hundreds of people to knock down a fortress.
Chapter completed!