According to the original deployment of troops, after the three major battles, the PLA planned to wipe out the remnants of the national army in the Taiwan Strait, but due to the strong intervention of the United States in the Korean War, they also spent the same effort to drag down the nascent red regime, so that the liberation of Taiwan could only be postponed for the time being.
Chiang Kai-shek has been frightened since he retreated to the island, and after seeing that the United States "backed" him, he became more and more emboldened, and also sent a fierce general Hu Lian to launch an island battle, and the battle of Nanri Island had a close relationship with Hu Lian.
A little-known battle
In fact, Hu Lian should not have appeared on the battlefield, but later because of his appearance, the PLA not only lost in Kinmen, but also caused losses on Nanri Island.
In the final stages of the Huaihai Campaign in 1949, Hu Lian was almost taken prisoner, but he got into a tank and fled in the direction of the PLA attack, and finally arrived in Nanjing unnoticed.
Chiang Kai-shek attached great importance to Hu Lian, so he pushed Hu Lian to the front line command, and in the Battle of Kinmen, he relied on a trick to "create something out of nothing" to surround thousands of PLA officers and soldiers who landed on the island, leaving a blood debt.
And soon after, it was him again on Nanri Island.
There is an island called Nanri Island in the southeast sea of Putian County, which is only 7.5 kilometers away from the mainland land, there are more than 17,000 villagers on the island, and the terrain of the whole island is flat and elongated, from the strategic location, it is the gateway and important barrier of the mainland.
Under the successive attacks and harassment of the national army, Nanri Island naturally became an important target.
At that time, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was mainly tasked with relying on the existing terrain to hold the first line of coastal defense, delay the enemy's offensive as much as possible, and wait for inland troops to come to the island for reinforcements to defeat the enemy.
On the basis of US military assistance, the Nationalist Army tried in vain to directly concentrate superior forces to attack Nanri Island and destroy the island's defense facilities, and also seized the opportunity to probe the reality of the troops along the coast of Fujian, so as to echo the operations of the "United Nations Army" on the Korean Peninsula.
In this way, a big war began against this background.
On October 8, 1952, Hu Lian, the "Commander of the Kinmen Defense," who had escaped from the Huaihai battlefield in the past, arranged for several spies to disguise themselves as fishermen and arrive on a fishing boat to Nanri Island.
After reconnaissance, they found out that the PLA on the island had only one reinforced company.
After analyzing the information, Hu Lian thought that this was a good opportunity for a sneak attack, so he reported the relevant situation to Chiang Kai-shek.
After Chiang Kai-shek's approval, Hu Lian soon began to act, and at about 7 o'clock in the morning of October 11, he commanded more than 9,000 Kuomintang soldiers to set off from Kinmen Island in 10 large and small ships, and suddenly launched an attack on Nanri Island under the cover of eight air force planes.
The officers and men defending the island still resisted in such a sudden situation, but because the coastal defense force was indeed too weak, the Kuomintang army succeeded in seizing the beach, and a large number of troops went to Nanri Island.
Taking advantage of the large number of people and the fierce firepower, the Kuomintang troops immediately launched an attack, but the firepower of the PLA on Nanri Island was not fierce and still could not support it.
After a long and difficult battle, the PLA was forced to retreat, but most of the people on the battlefield had already been killed, and a small number of prisoners had been captured, and the situation was not optimistic.
The fighters scattered around the island were quickly gathered and continued to defend their positions.
However, due to the superiority of firepower of the Kuomintang army, most of the positions were broken through by them, and they were quickly suppressed to the Jianshan position.
Most of the PLA on Jianshan spilled blood on the battlefield, and only a few were wounded and captured, so the Western Peninsula was occupied by the 75th Division of the Kuomintang Army.
The battle lasted four days, and by October 15, the Kuomintang army had successfully defeated the PLA defenders and captured 800 people, including local cadres on the island.
Because the Kuomintang's surprise attack came too suddenly, the People's Liberation Army also hurriedly mobilized 10,000 troops to the island to reinforce, but because the weapons carried were not sufficient, and the number was not as large as the national army, the follow-up landing troops and the Kuomintang army were still very difficult.
After two days of fierce fighting, these landing troops were broken by the national army.
Due to the stubbornness of the PLA, the national army lost nearly 1,000 troops, while the number of PLA casualties and prisoners also increased to 13,000.
Those three days also became a nightmare for the islanders, captured soldiers, and cadres, almost all the grassroots regimes were destroyed by the national army, and the national army dragged them one by one to identify the grassroots backbone hidden among the people, according to Hu Lian's instructions: recognize one, arrest one.
After three days passed, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) once again mobilized heavy troops to fight for Nanri Island, and Lianjiang, Putian, Xiamen, and other places entered a state of emergency combat readiness, and the army encircled Nanri Island.
Hu Lian knew that if he continued to fight, his army would definitely fall into a helpless predicament, and besides, a small island suddenly increased by nearly 10,000 people, and food was a problem, so he immediately ordered his subordinates: avoid the battle with the People's Liberation Army and retreat quickly.
In this way, the national army took more than 800 prisoners, including wounded PLA cadres, cadres of the grassroots government on Nanri Island, and some villagers.
Hu Lian would be very happy, and he also took these people as "trophies" and sent them from Kinmen through Kaohsiung to Taipei to find Chiang Kai-shek to ask for merit and rewards.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) that arrived later quickly recaptured Nanri Island, but Nanri Island was already devastated.
It can be said that this was the second major defeat after the Battle of Kinmen, and this defeat was difficult for the officers and men of the 28th Army of the People's Liberation Army to accept.
The Fuzhou Military Region sounded the alarm, and they conscientiously summed up the lessons, rethought the issue of coastal garrison, and formulated a new strategic plan.
After Eisenhower came to power, he wanted to play the "Taiwan" card and once again encouraged Chiang Kai-shek to launch an offensive against the coastal areas of the mainland.
Because he has dealt with the Communist Party all his life, and he thoroughly understands the strength of the PLA after the three major battles, he can still launch some small-scale sneak attacks, but if he wants to attack on a large scale, he naturally does not have the strength, so he has been watching the development of the situation in the first few months of 1953.
After the successive battles at Kinmen and Nanri Island, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has also continued to sum up lessons and lessons, and resolutely cannot give the Kuomintang army any more opportunities.
Lessons learned should be learned to prevent the recurrence of this incident
Before the battle on Nanri Island, the focus of the PLA's operations had always been on the Korean Peninsula, but the Kuomintang chose to take advantage of the situation and wantonly attack and harass the coastal line, and tried to find out the deployment of the PLA's coastal defenses, which also concealed Chiang Kai-shek's sinister intention of attempting to "counterattack the mainland."
And the actions of the national army did not appear overnight.
As early as the winter of 1951, the Kuomintang sent troops to harass Nanri Island eight times, and they also analyzed the strategic value of Nanri Island and attempted to use it as a springboard to carry out a "counteroffensive" plan.
In December of that year, there was another relatively large-scale attack, but fortunately, the officers and men defending the island reacted quickly and launched an attack, and the invading national army was quickly defeated, and after losing more than 150 people, they hurriedly boarded the ship and fled.
On several occasions, similar situations occurred in which the Nationalist army's attempt to occupy Nanri Island was never successful due to the timely and sufficient resistance.
It was precisely because the Kuomintang repeatedly attacked and harassed without success, and the troops stationed on the island gradually developed a paralyzing and careless mind, so they did not pay enough attention to it after discovering some abnormal signs.
If the higher authorities had paid full attention to the dynamics of the Kuomintang army, the result would have been very different.
In fact, at that time, the officers and soldiers on the island could not resist the well-prepared Kuomintang army of several thousand people, and they stubbornly resisted for 10 hours, and they could no longer support until waiting for the follow-up troops to come to the island, and the reinforcements who were the first to go to the island also fell into a bitter battle and lost contact with the rear after the landing.
In the course of the enemy's attack on Nanri Island, the officers and men of the 28th Army were never able to accurately grasp the enemy's true situation, and in the absence of intelligence, there were also major mistakes in some policy decisions.
However, judging from the situation at that time, due to the backwardness of technology, the decision-making of every war has extremely high requirements for commanders and fighters, and once there is a lack of intelligence, then the blow will be devastating.
The mistakes in tactics caused by poor decision-making were also the main reason for the collapse of Nanri Island.
At that time, the five platoons of the 249th Regiment of the 28th Army support unit began to counterattack after landing on the island, because almost all the officers and soldiers defending the island were killed, these soldiers were attacked by the enemy just after landing on the island, and only one platoon of soldiers successfully landed on the island to fight, but they still died heroically after fighting to the death with the enemy.
The second group of support troops set off five hours after the departure of the first batch of support troops, and the landing site they chose was only 4 kilometers away from the landing site of the first batch of troops.
The third group of troops suffered the same situation, falling into a bitter battle and suffering a crushing defeat.
It can also be seen from these circumstances that although the total number of the three reinforcements is not small, since they are all fought in batches, they can easily be broken by each one.
In particular, the two reinforcements in front of them were unable to stabilize their positions and gain a firm foothold, and it was difficult for them to exert their operational superiority in the face of an enemy several times their size, and they were all wiped out soon after.
In light of the situation of international struggle, this disadvantage is even greater.
Because the US army held back the strength of the Chinese Volunteers in Korea, they also vigorously advocated and hoped that the national army would launch a "counteroffensive." At that time, the country's military strength was not very abundant, and after falling into the difficult problem of fighting on two fronts, the Central Military Commission also demanded that the Fujian Military Region mainly rely on its own strength to complete its defense.
Fujian is located along the coast and is densely populated with islands, but the coastal defense forces of New China are not enough to support adequate defense, and this has also brought great challenges to the combat readiness work of the Fujian Military Region.
General Ye Fei, the later founding general of the People's Republic of China, learned from the pain, he organized a comprehensive reflection, intensified the patrol work of the coastal provinces, and in case of emergency, the troops could directly requisition civilian ships for defense, and this way of military-civilian coordination also laid a firm foundation for resisting the invasion of the national army.
Because the Kuomintang was also complacent after the battle on Nanri Island, they launched the Battle of Dongshan Island the following year, and this time General Ye Fei led his troops to completely break Chiang Kai-shek's conspiracy to "counterattack the mainland" and bankrupt the Kuomintang's "bridgehead" plan.
Since then, although Chiang Kai-shek has been shouting "counterattack" on his lips, he has already had the answer in his heart, and he no longer dares to launch an offensive at will.
It can be said that the Battle of Nanri Island was also the only victory of the Kuomintang in the "counteroffensive".
Later, the various "plans" issued by Chiang Kai-shek's "Joint War Exercise Planning and Operation Office" were nothing more than coping with and echoing them in his own mind, and he did not really plan to "counterattack."
This is actually related to some of Chiang Kai-shek's ideas: from the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek did not trust the United States very much, and he and American politicians also used each other, and he also knew very well that the United States only used his island as a "card".
In the 60s of the last century, many areas of the mainland suffered serious natural disasters, and at this time, Chiang Kai-shek came to "work interest" again, and set up the "Guoguang Plan", which included a number of specific operational plans such as landing, special operations, attacks, and counteroffensives, and the plans were very detailed, huge and complex.
And these things on paper are not very smooth in practice.
In 1965, Chiang Kai-shek also personally carried out a simulated landing off the coast of Taoziyuan in Zuoying, Taiwan, but he did not expect that during the exercise, five landing vehicles were overturned by the waves, resulting in the direct loss of dozens of national troops.
Over time, all the "plans" came to naught, and years later, he also decided that all this would be in vain, and could only be a useless cry.
Resources
- Admiral Ye Fei, who is headed by the word "dare" Bright Net
- "Guoguang Project Operation Room" by Yang Liguang. Footprints People's Hero Mai Xiande