Time Slip Reiwa Japan

010 - Soviet-Japanese War - 3

Kuril Islands Front (D-Day)

The first battle to be settled was the Kuril Islands front. As the invasion fleet headed for the Kuril Islands entered Japanese territorial waters, it received a final warning from an MSDF patrol ship. The patrol ship was lightly armed and was the only one besides the fleet. The fleet ignored it with a sneer.

The results were harsh.

As soon as they entered the Japanese territorial waters, they were attacked by airplanes waiting in the air. In total, nearly three orders of magnitude of aircraft attacked, not with anti-ship missiles, which were their true power, but with cheaper air-to-surface missiles and glide-guided bombs. The way they were fired at from far outside the guns of the destroyers and transports they were escorting was nothing short of merciless.

An American officer on board a patrol ship that was attached to the convoy watching the scene wrote in his report, "There was not a shred of romanticism in it, just a rain of iron created by science and rationality that collapsed the Soviet fleet like a natural disaster."

The Soviet fleet of 34 ships of various sizes, including the escort vessels, were all turned to wreck in the Sea of Okhotsk. *1 However, about 10.000 Soviet soldiers who were thrown overboard were saved by the SDF, who had prepared rescue ships, and many of them later moved to the Kuril Islands. *2

. . .

Moscow (D-Day)

Moscow could not get information about the destruction of the invasion fleet to the Kuril Islands on that day.

No wonder.

The annihilation of a large fleet of ships with nearly 50.000 people on board was unprecedented and could not have been foreseen by anyone. Therefore, from the first telegram, they understood that the Japanese air attack was powerful. In a panic, the Soviet air force was diverted to Sakhalin and Korea.

As for the Kuril invasion fleet, there were no aircraft with enough cruising power to accompany the fleet, so the message was sent in Stalin's name to expect the efforts of the fleet's soldiers.

To a fleet that no longer existed.

Moscow's reaction time was not bad at all. It was just that the reality of the situation was that the Japanese were far ahead of them.

. . .

Sakhalin Front (D-Day)

What awaited the Soviet troops who broke through the border was a welcome of land mines, field artillery, anti-surface missiles, and high-speed glide bombs. For every 100 meters of advance, a battalion would disappear – it was like a rain of steel. The command of the Far Eastern Third Army, which had pushed the border one kilometer and lost nearly 30% of its soldiers before making contact with either the SDF or the Karafuto Republican Army, had given up the fight and asked Moscow for a retreat.

The damage was too great to have occurred on the first day of the war, and Moscow allowed the offensive to be suspended. However, even if the offensive was halted, it would still be subject to periodic bombardment, so the troops were dispersed into platoon units and trenches were built to reduce the damage. Already, the offensive on the Sakhalin Front had come to a halt on the first day.

. . .

Korean Front (D-Day)

The Soviet invasion of the Korean Peninsula was going well, but it meant that it was gaining land, not winning battles. This was because the Japanese had evacuated the population on the assumption that the front was too vast for the forces they could deploy, and that they would be able to pull in about 30 kilometers inland to a more easily defensible location.