Battle of Mudanjiang

Background

At Yalta in February 1945 Stalin promised to enter the war against Japan within three months of Germany's defeat. Through the summer the Red Army moved armies east along the Trans-Siberian Railway; Krylov's 5th Army came from Königsberg in East Prussia. The Soviet Union denounced its neutrality pact with Japan in April and declared war on 8 August. The Japanese had not expected an attack before September.

Marshal Vasilevsky's plan was a giant pincer to trap the Kwantung Army before it could fall back. In the east, Marshal Meretskov's 1st Far Eastern Front was to strike its main blow with two armies towards Mudanjiang, then press on to Jilin, Changchun and Harbin and cut Manchuria off from Korea. Mudanjiang mattered because the main road and railway from the Soviet border at Suifenhe ran through it, every Japanese withdrawal from the eastern frontier had to pass it, and it held the headquarters of the First Area Army, with the 5th Army's headquarters at Yehe across the river.

The Kwantung Army of 1945 was a shell of the force of 1941: its best divisions and much of its equipment had gone to the Pacific and China, and new divisions were raised from reservists. In May and June it adopted a delaying strategy: hold the border fortifications with platoons and battalions, fight on successive lines in depth, and finally withdraw to a redoubt around Tonghua. The 5th Army's lines were the border fortified region, the hills west of Muling, and a main line of resistance on the Laoyeling mountains east of Mudanjiang, still being dug in August. Its divisional commanders were away at a war game at Yehe when the attack came.

The armies

The Soviet 5th Army was a veteran of the European war and was lavishly reinforced for a breakthrough battle: four rifle corps, five tank brigades and six heavy self-propelled regiments with 152 mm guns, and 2,945 guns and mortars. Each leading rifle division formed an advanced battalion and assault groups of sappers with explosives and flamethrowers to take bunkers one by one; tank brigades with a self-propelled regiment and mounted infantry acted as forward detachments once through. Beloborodov's 1st Red Banner Army, to the north, had to cut its own road through forested hills, so its strength was in its tank brigades.

The Japanese 5th Army under Shimizu had three infantry divisions, the 124th on the Suifenhe front, the 126th and the 135th, with heavy artillery, including a regiment of 240 mm howitzers that had to be blown up on the first day for want of tractors, but almost no armour. Its anti-tank weapons were outclassed: Japanese accounts describe shells bouncing off T-34s that crews calmly repaired under fire. Doctrine trained each man to 'kill ten enemy' and to attack tanks at close quarters; in practice that meant suicide squads, the smertniki of Soviet accounts, running at tanks with satchel charges and mines. The border fortifications were formidable: 295 concrete pillboxes and 69 armoured turrets in the four centres of resistance facing the 5th Army.

The battle

Breakthrough at the border, 9–11 August. At 01:00 on 9 August the advanced battalions of both armies crossed the border in darkness and heavy rain, after six hours of downpour. Krylov had cancelled the planned artillery preparation and air strikes, judging surprise worth more than partial destruction of positions he could not locate precisely. The infantry moved in silence, some companies linked hand in hand, and took many positions before the Japanese could man them. Strongpoint Camel held out until a ten-minute bombardment and an assault at 07:00; at Sharp, Captain Shcherbakov's company surrounded the strongpoint by 03:15 and took half of it by 05:00 with explosives and flamethrowers. Main forces moved at 08:30. By nightfall the 5th Army was 16–22 km deep on a 35 km front; second-echelon troops spent three days burning out bunkers that fought to the last man. By the 11th Soviet forces were across the Muling river, 80 km into Manchuria, objectives planned for the eighth day. This is the opening of CDB90's Mutankiang engagement (516, 9–17 August).

The distant approaches, 12–14 August. In the north, the 1st Red Banner Army's 257th Tank Brigade lost heavily forcing a covering battalion at Zixingtun on 12 August, then raced to Xiandong and on to Hualin, where the Japanese blew the railway bridge over the Mudan river in its face on the 13th. Suicide squads with mines charged the tanks again and again, and the brigade was down to seven tanks that night. At 20:10 it caught General Hitomi's 135th Division arriving by train and destroyed it; Hitomi escaped. In the east, the 5th Army's 76th Tank Brigade drove down the Muling–Mudanjiang road on the 12th into the 124th Division, which counter-attacked with artillery and armoured trains. Krylov reinforced it and broke through the Sasaki detachment at Taimagou and Colonel Kobayashi's cadets at Modaoshi, who were destroyed by noon on the 13th. On the 14th Soviet rocket and artillery fire took Mount Shozu, the 124th Division's command hill, killing the commanders of its heavy artillery. The division dissolved into raiding parties in the forest.

The city, 14–16 August. On the 14th the 144th and 63rd Rifle Divisions took Hill 371 and Sidaoling hill east of the city; the Japanese claimed sixteen tanks. On the 15th an eight-hour bombardment knocked out all but one of the 126th Division's 24 guns, but five men of a transport unit, each carrying a 15 kg charge, destroyed five tanks at its headquarters. That afternoon Meretskov ordered the 5th Army to bypass the city to the south. North of the city the 22nd Rifle Division crossed the Mudan without its heavy weapons. The Emperor's surrender broadcast was heard that day, but fighting went on. At noon Shimizu, with Kita's authority, ordered a withdrawal to Hengtaohezi; two units never got the order. At 07:00 on 16 August the final assault overran Major Takikawa's battalion. All three bridges were down; the 22nd Division entered from the north-west at 09:00, and infantry crossed in fishing boats and on rafts. The rearguard left by 13:00. South of Yehe the 278th Infantry Regiment, cut off, burned its colours and made a last charge.

Aftermath

In four days of fighting on the approaches and at the city three Japanese divisions were pushed back 150–180 km. Mudanjiang fell on the eighth day of the offensive, ten days ahead of the Soviet timetable. Japanese estimates put the 5th Army's losses at 20,000 of 60,000, with 5,000 more in other First Area Army units; Soviet claims of 40,000 Japanese dead were higher. The Japanese claimed 7,000–10,000 Soviet casualties, and the battle probably accounts for a large share of the 1st Far Eastern Front's 21,069 casualties in the campaign.

Glantz's verdict is mixed. The Soviet advance was so fast that the Japanese never manned their planned main line and had to fight in fragments, leaving detachments that the Soviets mangled and bypassed. But speed also bled the spearheads: at Hualin on 13–14 August only a reinforced tank brigade was available, and by the time Beloborodov could mass on the 16th the main Japanese force had gone. The 5th Army reached Hengtaohezi with about half its combat effectiveness. The ceasefire ended the campaign before the Soviets could exploit; the 1st Red Banner Army reached Harbin on 20 August. Glantz calls Mudanjiang one of the few set-piece battles of the campaign, which Soviet writers have long studied as a textbook offensive.

Wargaming it

Mudanjiang offers three distinct games. The border breakthrough of 9 August is a company or battalion fight at night in pouring rain: Soviet assault groups with sappers, satchel charges and flamethrowers against concrete pillboxes and armoured turrets, with the attacker choosing whether to fire a bombardment that gives away surprise. Rules that model command confusion and limited visibility suit it.

The approach marches of 12–14 August suit battalion or regiment scale on a single road: a Soviet tank brigade with mounted infantry and heavy self-propelled guns, roads washed out by rain, blown bridges, mines, and Japanese suicide squads rising from foxholes beside the column. Hualin is a good small scenario: a depleted tank brigade, a blown bridge, and a troop train arriving at dusk.

The city battle of 14–16 August is a division-level problem, a day per turn: two Soviet armies converging from north and east on a river line with three bridges, a Japanese defender who must decide when to withdraw, and orders that may not reach every unit. The Laoyeling hills and the Mudan river are the key terrain; Soviet artillery is overwhelming, Japanese anti-tank power slight.

What ifs: Krylov firing his four-hour preparation; the Japanese manning the Laoyeling line in time; the 1st Red Banner Army arriving in strength on the 14th; no surrender broadcast on the 15th.

Maps and pictures