Battle of West Hunan

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of West Hunan began on the 6th of April 1945, just weeks before Germany's surrender in Europe, but on the other side of the world the Second Sino-Japanese War was still raging through its eighth year. Japan launched what would turn out to be its last major offensive of that conflict, driving into the mountains of west Hunan with 80,000 men. What were they after? An airfield sitting 435 kilometres from China's wartime capital, Chongqing. Chinese and American forces were using it to maintain air superiority and stage bombing runs, and the Japanese needed it gone. But the campaign would end very differently from what Tokyo had planned. By the 7th of June, the Japanese were pushed back to where they had started, and China's fortunes in a war that had consumed more than seven years of blood and exhaustion were turning sharply in one direction.

• 2. Japan's Last Gamble

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  Ichiro Banzai commanded the Japanese 20th Army as it assembled across Hunan province in early 1945. His forces included the 34th, 47th, 64th, 68th, and 116th Divisions, plus the 86th Independent Mixed Brigade. Tokyo gave this campaign three interlocking goals. The first was to seize or at least neutralize the Chinese airfield at Zhijiang, where both the U.S. Army Air Forces and the Republic of China Air Force were based. The second was to secure the Hunan-Guangxi and Guangzhou-Hankou railways. The third was to preemptively break up the major Chinese counteroffensive that Japanese intelligence knew was being planned. A successful campaign would have opened a path to attack Sichuan and eventually Chongqing itself. To prepare, Japanese engineers used forced Chinese labor to construct two highways: the Heng-Shao Highway, running northwest from Hengyang to Shaoyang, and the Tan-Shao Highway, running southwest from Xiangtan to the same city. Shaoyang, only 100 kilometres from Zhijiang, was designated the operation's logistics hub. Supplies piled up there through March 1945.

• 3. China's Rebuilt Army

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  On the 4th of February 1945, the first convoy of trucks from the British railhead at Ledo, India, reached Kunming over the newly completed Stilwell Road and the northern section of the Burma Road. That supply link changed the arithmetic of the war. More than 50,000 tonnes of petroleum began arriving in China every month. By April 1945, the Chinese army had enough American equipment to outfit 35 divisions. He Yingqin served as commander-in-chief of the Chinese forces, directing the 4th Front Army and the 10th and 27th Army Groups. Among the units airlifted from Kunming to Zhijiang was the entire New 6th Corps, a formation of veterans from the Burma Expeditionary Force already equipped with American weapons. Chinese forces for the battle totalled 110,000 men organized across 20 divisions. They were supported by roughly 400 aircraft from four Chinese Air Force groups and the USAAF 14th Air Force, giving them a decisive edge in the skies over the Xuefeng Mountains.

• 4. The Turn at Chihchiang

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  Japanese forces moved through the outskirts of Hunan with little initial resistance, but the terrain was working against them. The mountainous ground was well suited to the ambushes and mortar bombardment that Chinese defenders had prepared. On the 14th of April, one day after the general Japanese advance began, Generals Ho and McClure met and agreed on the shape of China's response: concentrate armies to the north and south to strike the enemy's flanks and rear while reinforcing the center around Chihchiang with the veteran New 6th Army. By late April the New 6th Army was concentrating at Chihchiang, even as the 94th Army moved into position to the south and the 100th and 18th Armies moved north. The 74th Army, holding the Chinese center across a fifty-mile front, was slowing the Japanese column with sustained resistance. On the 3rd of May, a Chinese-American staff conference decided to strike a Japanese detachment near Wu-yang, seventy miles southeast of Chihchiang. The 5th Division of the 94th Army attacked on the 5th and the 6th of May and succeeded completely. The 5th and 121st Divisions then repeatedly flanked the Japanese and drove them northward while the 18th and 100th Armies pushed into the Japanese rear.

• 5. Rout and Reckoning

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  With the 94th Army pressing from the south and Chinese forces cutting into their rear, the Japanese were forced into a general retreat. By the 7th of June 1945 they were back at their starting positions. The casualty figures that followed the battle told a story of disagreement and revision. Japan initially claimed only 11,000 casualties, with 5,000 killed. That figure was later revised upward by an additional 15,000 "due to diseases." Eventually Japanese sources admitted to 27,000 casualties in total. Chinese records claimed 36,358 Japanese casualties, including 12,651 killed. The 109th Infantry Regiment of Japan's 116th Division had been gutted: by the 25th of April the 1st Battalion had only 125 troops left, the 2nd Battalion had 246, and the 3rd Battalion 175. Chinese casualties numbered 21,040, including 824 officers, with 7,817 killed and 380 missing. A later Japanese report from the First Demobilization Bureau put Japanese army dead at roughly 15,000 killed and 50,000 wounded, a figure that likely also captured losses on other fronts in Hunan and Guangxi.

• 6. The 51st Division's Stand

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  Among the units that Chinese accounts later singled out was the 51st Division of the 74th Corps. For more than 20 days it held a position east of Longtansi against more than 6,000 Japanese troops, defeating the enemy repeatedly at Fangdong, Hongyan, and Dahuangsha. The division stopped a Japanese attempt to cut off the Yuan River and sweep through the Xuefeng Mountain area. At Fangdong, according to Chinese accounts, the enemy was annihilated in what the Nationalist Government described as an unprecedented result. On the 24th of November 1945, the Nationalist Government formally honored the division by awarding it the Flying Tiger flag. That recognition came months after the wider war had ended, placing the battle in a context where China's final offensive was already rolling across the south, making the stand at the Xuefeng Mountains one of the last major turning points before the guns went quiet.