In 1970, Su Yu was commissioned by Chairman Mao to visit Congo and participate in the activities of the fourth anniversary of the founding of the Congolese National People's Army.
After the end of the event, Su Yu and his party made a short stay in France.
However, instead of going to the social fair in Paris, the "fashion capital", they chose to spend a whole day at the remote Normandy landing site.
Su Yu asked three questions to the French tour guide at that time, but the native tour guide could not answer even one. So what exactly is the problem that Su Yu is mentioning? Why did he stay in a desolate battlefield for so long?
The pivotal battle to turn the tide of World War II was the Normandy landings
June 6, 1944, was a famous day in history. That morning, the Anti-Fascist Allied Forces of World War II (referred to as the Allies) sent a vanguard force from Britain across the English Channel to land in Normandy.
Taking advantage of the lack of German preparations, the Allies captured five beaches, including Yuta and Golden Beach, and established landing fields. After the expansion and consolidation of the landing field, the follow-up troops began to land.
In this way, nearly three million Allied troops rushed to the battlefield like a tide, successively capturing Gonseong, Brettany, advancing all the way to the Seine, and finally taking Paris.
The Normandy landings opened up a second battlefield on the European continent, completely turned the tide of World War II, and since then fascism has begun to decline.
Su Yu, as the first founding general of our country, has commanded countless wars, and naturally has some understanding of the famous battle in the history of the Normandy landing.
However, others who accompanied Su Yu on a tour of the Normandy landing site at that time found:
Su Yu was almost as precious to every aspect of this battle, as if he had personally participated in it.
Moreover, Su Yu not only watched by himself, but also acted as a guide while walking, gushing about it, and even the local tour guide couldn't help but listen to it.
Su Yu detailed the reasons why the Commander-in-Chief of the United States and Britain chose Normandy as a landing field.
The Bay of Seine in Normandy was within the air combat radius of the British Southern Army, and the Navy was also convenient for defense, so the Bay of Seine in Normandy was an excellent landing site.
But the only downside is that the Bay of Seine has no port of supply and the sea is choppy, which is not conducive to the mooring of ships.
Of course, the Allies were preparing to take advantage of this disadvantage and mislead the Germans into thinking that they would not land in the Gulf of Seine, but would choose Calais with a port.
General Patton and General Eisenhower
The Allied strategy of confusing the enemy was successful. The Germans added a large number of troops in Calais, while only a few troops remained in the Gulf of Seine.
Although the Germans had been successfully confused, the disadvantages of the Bay of Seine did exist. So the Allies planned to build an artificial port at the beachhead of Normandy.
Su Yu said this, with his hands behind his back looking at the port ruins, he looked at the huge caisson of the port and fell into meditation.
After a while, he asked the French tour guide three questions:
First of all, why can the huge artificial port float? Second, how large is each cement column used to support the artificial port? Are they all the same size? Finally, since artificial ports can float, how are they fixed?
The local tour guide was overwhelmed by these three sudden questions, and he really couldn't answer them.
Su Yumi just smiled, and then walked along the harbor to the seashore, probing in the muddy water as he walked, and finally found some of the remains of the cement pillars left behind.
Su Yu carefully measured the size of the wreckage, roughly calculated the volume of the complete cement column at that time, and found the answers to those questions one by one.
According to Su Yu's calculations, the Allied man-made ports were made up of steel caissons, each about sixty-one meters long, about seventeen meters wide, and about eighteen meters high, connected by cement piles hitting the seabed.
This is both stable and reduces the impact of the waves. Just in case, the Allies also used shipwrecks and cross steel structures to connect anchors at one end and caissons at the other, further stabilizing the artificial port to the sea. The artificial port built from these structures covers an area of about five square kilometers and spreads out over the sea.
Later, the Allies put 13 battleships, 47 cruisers, 134 destroyers, and a total of 1200 other types of combat ships at sea to suppress and support the beachhead;
A total of 4,126 landing craft, more than 5,000 transport ships to carry out the troop landing and follow-up material transportation. These warships and transport ships continuously delivered "blood" to the vanguard of the Allied forces.
It can be said that the success of the Normandy landing campaign, the artificial port played a pivotal role.
Su Yu's narration attracted the admiration of everyone.
Later, everyone learned
It turned out that su Yu had been unable to let go of the issue of liberating Taiwan in his heart for so many years, and the liberation of Taiwan must be carried out in a landing operation. As a great landing campaign, the Normandy landing has too many places worth learning from Su Yu, which is why he is so concerned about it.
The policy of the liberation of Taiwan by force, which has been shelved
In April 1949, Su Yu led the Third Field Army across the Yangtze River, quickly attacked Nanjing, which was then ruled by the Nationalist government, and then marched south, liberating Hangzhou, Nanchang, and Shanghai.
Shortly after the battle of crossing the river, Chairman Mao appointed Su Yu to make operational preparations for the attack on Taiwan.
After receiving the order, Su Yu immediately began to study it, but because of the heavy responsibility, Su Yu asked the Central Military Commission to entrust this heavy responsibility to Liu Bocheng or Lin Biao to preside over, and he was determined to fully assist them.
In view of Su Yu's superb military ability and rich command experience, Chairman Mao insisted that Su Yu command the operation to attack Taiwan, and the Army side was mainly responsible for the Third Field Army led by Su Yu.
Since then, Su Yu has always paid close attention to the development of the international situation and the trends of Taiwan.
He studied many famous joint naval, land and air operations and learned lessons from them, among which the most studied by Su Yu was the Normandy landing campaign.
In order to fight this battle, our army purchased advanced cruisers from the Soviet Union and received financial assistance from the Soviet Union. In April 1950, the East China Navy had 35,000 non-commissioned officers, and the Air Force had gathered more than 90 fighters on standby, with a total strength of 580,000 troops on land, sea and air.
The Kuomintang government saw that our army's strength was gradually growing, and it urgently recruited troops, and finally the total strength reached 500,000. Both sides waited for orders to fight.
In June 1950, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held the Third Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee in Beijing, at which Chairman Mao once again emphasized the matter of the liberation of Taiwan.
At this meeting, Su Yu reported his operational thinking and meticulous battle plan, and raised three major issues:
The first is how to break through when landing; the second is how to solve the problem when crossing the sea, which requires a large number of ships; and the third is what to do if the enemy counterattacks.
Su Yu learned the lesson of the defeats in Kinmen and Dembhu Island, the Taiwan Strait is wide, and there must be advanced technology, not by force;
What's more, in this campaign, our army has almost exhausted its national strength, and once it fails, there is a risk of being counterattacked by Chiang Kai-shek. Therefore, although the large army had already been assembled, there was no complete certainty, and Su Yu definitely did not dare to go to war.
He was waiting for the best time, but the time had not yet come.
In 1950, the United States sent the Seventh Fleet to taiwan, openly aided Chiang Kai-shek, interfered in China's internal affairs, and prevented our army from liberating Taiwan. Immediately after that, the Korean War broke out, and our army was caught in a dilemma.
Considering that at that time, the naval and air strength of our army was very different from that of the US army, and that it was difficult for national strength to support the two ends of the war, the CPC Central Committee had no choice but to shift its focus to the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
During the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Chairman Mao once wanted to appoint Su Yu to lead troops to Korea to fight, but at that time Su Yu was seriously ill: he was once shot in the head on the battlefield, and three pieces of shrapnel in his brain could not be removed, and he would have a headache from time to time; in addition, after a long period of crawling on the battlefield, Su Yu also suffered from serious gastrointestinal diseases and heart disease.
Three shrapnel pieces in Su Yu's brain
Chairman Mao cherished Su Yu, so he asked him to go to the Soviet Union to see a doctor, recuperate and then come back, so Su Yu did not return to China until the following year.
I will never go home without liberating Taiwan
The Korean War dealt a severe blow to the arrogance of the United States, and Su Yu deeply regretted that he could not personally go to the battlefield to direct the operation. Therefore, after the end of the Korean War, Su Yu devoted all his enthusiasm for serving the motherland to the preparations for the war to liberate Taiwan.
However, later Chairman Mao put forward the policy of peacefully liberating Taiwan, and the various plans that Su Yu had planned for many years to liberate Taiwan by force could only be shelved, and this became something that Su Yu could not abandon in the following decades.
Su Yu (left) Chen Yi (right)
In 1962, it was reported that the Kuomintang, which had been entrenched in Taiwan, was trying to attack the mainland. Upon hearing this news, Su Yu quickly rushed from the sanatorium to the Fuzhou Military Region, learned from the leaders of the military region about the deployment of the front line, and also proposed to personally go to the sea to check the terrain.
He conceived the battle plan while walking along the seashore, and later briefly explained the plan to the leaders of the Fuzhou Military Region. However, chiang kai-shek later abandoned the plan to attack the mainland, and the battle plan planned by Su Yu did not come in handy, and the last opportunity to liberate Taiwan by force was gone.
It is said that su Yu hung a map of Taiwan behind his bedroom door for many years, and he would stand behind the door and stare at the map in thought, and later he could almost memorize this map. However, during Su Yu's lifetime, he never saw the liberation of Taiwan with his own eyes.
Monument to the Battle of Huaihai
In his early years, Su Yu put down his bold words and would never return to his hometown without liberating Taiwan. Therefore, Su Yu did not return to his hometown of Huitong County until his death.
After Su Yu's death, Su Yu's son Su Rongsheng inherited his father's legacy and always contributed his strength to the liberation of all China.