Reiwa Chemist Yōko Takatsukasa Reincarnation: Saving Japan with Plastic Material

Like Water Seeping Through the Earth

On that day, Hiromichi Takatsukasa visited Kikuzō Ōtani, the principal of the Toyama Military Academy, his classmate from his academy days.

"Hiromichi-kun, what do you want to discuss?"

"Do you know about the machine guns that the British have recently brought into the war against the colonies?"

"The one that can stop the assault of 5.000 African warriors with four of them?"

"Yes, that one. What I would like to discuss with you this time is how to attack the enemy if they have installed a large number of machine guns and defended themselves with entrenched positions."

"Hmm... I see, so, since they have achieved results in the colonies, are you thinking that they will use that in wars between major powers, Hiromichi-kun?"

"Yes."

"That I can agree with... the first thing that comes to mind when trying to defeat it is to destroy the enemy's machine gun positions with artillery fire, but as I would expect, if you thought that would work, you wouldn't have come to me, would you?"

Ōtani exuded a different air now, thinking about this interesting agenda.

"Yes, artillery shells don't always hit the way you want them to. Machine guns are weapons operated by two or three men per gun, so aiming and shooting at a point several kilometers away, which is only large enough to hold that many men, is probably a bit too much for field artillery."

"The other side would know that someone would try to crush them with artillery fire, so there is a strong possibility that they would be very careful in their disguise. If it were a bird, which your eldest son loves, it would be possible to see the battlefield from the sky and detect this, but we can't fly."

In 1901, the world's first plane, Wright Flyer hadn't even yet flown. The only way to conduct aerial reconnaissance was with balloons, which were used by both the Japanese and Russian armies during the Russo-Japanese War.

"And the trenches are also a nuisance. They are dug for protection from bullets, and even if you shoot artillery shells into them, they will not reach the soldiers inside."

"It's a matter of how much wisdom we put into digging those ditches. If the shells were to rain down from directly above, they would be defeated, but if they were fired from a distance, the accuracy of the hit would be a problem. A grenade can put firepower directly into the trench, but a machine gun would be able to wipe soldiers carrying them out before they could get that close."

"So artillery fire is impractical, and assault is out of the question. So how do we do breakthroughs...? Here is a summary of my thoughts."

"...I see. You want me to evaluate the validity of this."

The procedure described there was as follows:

1. Disrupt the enemy's command and control, even if only temporarily, by applying a surprise attack of intense artillery barrage, even if only for a short period of time, against the enemy's first line of defense.

2. While the enemy's first defense line is disorganized and unable to mount an effective counterattack, conduct an infantry assault as broadly as possible. In conjunction with this, in order to avoid friendly fire and prevent reinforcement to the enemy's first line, the artillery will change its target to the enemy's second line.

3. Infantry units assaulting the enemy first line will look for blind spots and thin lines of fire to attack, not for points of reinforcement such as machine gun positions. The troops who have secured a minimum breakthrough will then charge directly into the enemy's second line and attempt to break through using the same techniques as on the first line. The artillery will change targets as necessary to support the infantry in their attempt to break through.

4. Troops that break through the enemy's defensive line and penetrate to the rear will attack enemy command posts and lines to paralyze their functions and isolate the enemy's front line.

5. The isolated enemy front line will be unable to mount an effective counterattack, so they will deploy rear-echelon troops to encircle and destroy the enemy front line that has been cut off by the assault.

Some readers may understand this. It is an infiltration tactic. A diagram of the trench warfare in action was also attached to the letter. Yōko suggested to Hiromichi that he study the tactics now to avoid a horrific assault on modern position, as in the Siege of Port Arthur.

"The current conventional wisdom is that we should throw everything we have into crushing the enemy's reinforcement points while we are in a perfect condition, thereby demoralizing the enemy and causing other fronts to be defeated in a chain reaction, but if we keep pushing the enemy's weak points and just keep breaking through, do you think you will damage the enemy's chain of command and make it impossible for the enemy to mount an organized resistance?"

"Correct."

"The idea itself is certainly not wrong... and probably correct. But this is going to be difficult to implement in the current Imperial Army."

"I think there are many challenges myself."

"But it's worth doing."

Ōtani looked at Hiromichi and smirked. Seeing this, Hiromichi felt reassured.

"Thank you for your assessment. I am glad I consulted you after all. To be honest, I had expected you to dismiss my proposal as unrealistic."

"It is only by making what was unrealistic realistic that it becomes something new. Who do you think I am? The principal of the Toyama Military Academy, remember?"

During this period, before the separation of the Army Infantry School, the Toyama Military Academy was engaged in the study and education of infantry warfare techniques and tactics, and the training of their instructors. In other words, if there was to be a full-scale study of infiltration tactics, the 'tactics of the infantry,' it would be Toyama's job. And apparently, the infiltration tactic proposed by Hiromichi was recognized as an interesting research subject.

"By the way, where did you get the idea for this? Did the Germans have something similar in mind?"

"Err, well something like that..."

He cannot say that "my youngest daughter, who is four years old, came up with the idea," but he fudged it appropriately for the time being.

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I'm unsure if these two really had a connection, but let's assume that they were acquainted in this world.

1/9: Corrected as it was discovered that the period when Ōtani was Chief of Staff of the Imperial Guards Division and the period when Hiromichi was attached to the 3rd Imperial Guard Infantry Regiment did not coincide.

- Toshitsugu Utei