In the impression of many people, the Kuomintang army was weak. But in fact, there was a Kuomintang army with terrible combat effectiveness, which once shook China and the United States. This army is not the famous five trump cards, but the 60th Army of the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang 60th Army is really too strong to be able to face the kind of super existence of the British and American forces.
60 bears
The 60th Army of the Kuomintang consisted of 3 infantry divisions in Yunnan, the Dian Army, and miscellaneous troops. In 1946, the 60th Army took a U.S. military transport ship from northern Vietnam to the northeast by sea, and fought fiercely with the People's Liberation Army. The results are very impressive! Defeat after defeat can hardly describe the weakness of the 60th Army. After 2 years of fighting, the 60th Army was annihilated, 4 divisions were annihilated, 1 division revolted, and a total of 5 divisions were gone. You read that right, the 60th Army, which had only 3 divisions, was wiped out by 5 divisions ... There are no more of the original 60 soldiers who left Yunnan. Due to the poor performance of the 60th Army and the consumption of too many materials, Liang Huasheng, chairman of Jilin Province of the Kuomintang, was very dissatisfied with the 60th Army, and scolded the 60th Army as "60 bears" in public, and even the army commander Zeng Zesheng was not allowed to live in public housing, and finally had to move to a temple on the outskirts of the city and find a 10-square-meter abbot's room for office. On October 17, 1948, under the premise that the general trend of the Kuomintang Army in Northeast China had gone, Zeng Zesheng, who had learned from the pain and thought clearly, led the 60th Army of the Kuomintang to revolt on the Changchun battlefield, and the uprising was reorganized into the 50th Army of the People's Liberation Army. In order to dispel the concerns of the officers and soldiers of the uprising, the structure of the 60th Army was not dispersed, and almost the entire squad was moved directly to the 50th Army. After changing his clothes and military flag, the 60th Army of the Kuomintang became the 50th Army of the People's Liberation Army, and this army was still under the control of Zeng Zesheng. The 60th Army was a typical Kuomintang miscellaneous army, and Zeng Zesheng was also a typical Kuomintang commander. In his autobiography of his army commander Zeng Zesheng himself, he wrote:
In 1943, when I was transferred from the commander of the 182nd Division to the commander of the 184th Division, I borrowed 6 million yuan from the bank and started a hoarding business. In 1945, the Japanese surrendered, I entered Vietnam with the army and surrendered, and then borrowed from the bank to raise 20 million yuan of principal, to do gold business, by Vietnam using airplanes to travel, a few days to turn, can be exempted from taxes and freight, only a few months, in addition to the bank principal and interest paid off, there are still more than 300 taels of gold.
The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was in full swing, but it still did not delay Zeng Zesheng from making a fortune, and he used military aircraft to resell materials in the form of smuggling. Of course, the Kuomintang officers at that time were like this, and it was no wonder that Zeng Zesheng would be too unsociable if he didn't do this. Such an old-style army, just changed its skin, and the original team became the 50th Army of the People's Liberation Army. Given the extraordinarily poor record of the Kuomintang 60th Army, it is reasonable for the PLA to doubt the combat effectiveness of the 50th Army. After all, this is the famous 60 bears, the material transportation brigade. To treat them as miscellaneous cards is to protect them, and to use them as the main force is irresponsible to them. Although the 50th Army also made some small contributions in the battle of crossing the river, it was a tailwind battle and did not reflect any combat effectiveness. So as soon as the whole country was liberated, the 50th Army was arranged to farm. In the first half of 1950, the 50th Army received a military order to go to Hubei to participate in agricultural production. This arrangement is actually quite good for a miscellaneous department, and they will live in peace and stability in the future. However, the situation in North Korea suddenly became tense a few months later, troops were being used everywhere in the country, there were threats everywhere, and the troops were stretched, and the 50th Army also happened to be a unit with experience in northeast operations. Therefore, in late September 1950, the 50th Army received an urgent order from the Central Military Commission, immediately put down its hoes and gathered its troops, boarded a train from Hankou Station, and headed for the northeast overnight. This time, a 50 murder was played.
50 fierce
On the Kuomintang side, the 60th Army was a ragtag unit with very poor equipment. When it was reorganized into the 50th Army of the People's Liberation Army, it was actually classified as a miscellaneous army, and the equipment was not good. The People's Liberation Army is already poor, and the good equipment captured must be given priority to the main force, so that the strength of the equipment can be brought into full play. As for the 50th Army, whoever is the boss will not regard them as the main force. At the time of the invasion of Korea, the 50th Army had only 16 mountain artillery, 10 American-style 4.2-inch chemical mortars, and 45 82 mortars, without any anti-tank firearms, and the soldiers of the whole army basically relied on rifles and grenades to fight. Compared with the U.S. military, this is a unit called Hanako, even within the PLA, which is relatively poor equipment. In order to protect the 50th Army, Mr. Peng put the 38th Army, the strongest main force of the Volunteer Army, next to the 50th Army, just in case. But what I didn't expect was that the first time I met the United Nations Army, the 50th Army played a record that stunned everyone. On January 2, 1951, three infantry battalions of the 149th Division, the forward of the 50th Army, encountered the British Royal Tank Battalion. Without any anti-tank firearms, the fighters of the 50th Army rushed forward with blasting canisters and cluster grenades. In this battle, the British Royal Tank Battalion was completely wiped out, 500 men were annihilated, 227 were captured, 27 tanks were blown up, and 25 cars, armored vehicles, and tanks were captured. When the good news was sent to the General Headquarters of the Volunteer Army, Peng Dehuai was angry, and the 50th Army brought the habit of the old army to lie about the achievements of the Volunteer Army. None of the units of the army achieved this feat. Military political commissar Xu Wenlie called and said:
"The boss is angry, lying about the military situation is going to kill his head! ”
The 50th Army verified the results twice and reported it twice, but the command still didn't believe it, so let them verify it again. Finally, Hu Baoyu, a photojournalist accompanying the 50th Army, went to the battlefield to take a lot of photos and sent them to the headquarters.
Blown up tank
Captured British soldiers After seeing these photos, Mr. Peng finally believed that the 50th Army had really wiped out the British Royal Tank Battalion. This was the first and only time that the Volunteers eliminated the tank battalion of the United Nations Army in a structured way on the Korean battlefield. This brilliant record was achieved by the 50th Army. It is worth mentioning that the predecessor of the British Royal Tank Battalion, which was completely annihilated, was the British 18th Irish Regiment, which slaughtered Guangzhou, Dinghai, Zhenjiang and other places during the Opium War. This regiment once recorded the Battle of Zhenjiang as follows: "The Chinese burned one by one like firecrackers" and said in the documentary that the air tasted like roast duck.
And when the 50th Army wiped out this army on the Korean battlefield, the veteran recalled this: "British tanks exploded one by one." From the Chinese burning one by one like firecrackers, to the British tanks exploding one by one. It was the 50th Army that did all this. The day after the destruction of the British Royal Tank Battalion, the 50th Army was the first to storm Seoul and fought a bloody battle with the garrison American troops, and routed them. The news of the seizure of Seoul by the Volunteers caused a huge shock in the international community and was regarded as a disgrace by the United Nations forces. When the news reached China, the crowd in Beijing's Tiananmen Square reveled all night. It was the 50th Army that captured this great feat for the Volunteer Army.
50 Officers and Men Cheering in Seoul In the fourth battle that followed, according to Peng Dehuai's deployment of "putting the west on top of the east," the Volunteer Army used a small number of troops of the 50th Army and one division of the 38th Army on the Western Front to block and contain the United Nations forces and buy time for the main force. The 3 divisions of the 50th Army had only one mission, to withstand the enemy to the death. The selected position is facing the Han River, and there is no room for retreat, so if you hold it, you will hold it, and if you can't hold it, everyone and land will die. In the defensive operation that lasted for more than 50 days, the 50th Army killed, wounded and captured more than 11,000 enemies, but more than half of its own casualties were lost, and almost all of the formations were disabled. When they left the battlefield, they could still fight in formation, but only four battalions and four companies. Among them, the 447th Regiment of the 149th Division of the 50th Army held Baiyun Mountain for 11 days and nights under the premise of a huge disparity between the enemy and our forces, and more than 2,000 officers and soldiers all died heroically, winning extremely valuable time for our army. After the battle, this unit was awarded the honorary title of "Baiyun Mountain Regiment" and was awarded the special meritorious battle flag, which is unique among all the regimental-level units of the troops entering the DPRK. At the military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the battle flag of the "Baiyun Mountain Regiment" passed through Tiananmen Square and was inspected by the people of the whole country. The 50th Army, which had recovered its combat strength after retreating to the rear to recuperate, received another difficult task to launch a sea-crossing and island attack operation against the American army. During the Panmunjom negotiations at that time, the US representative arrogantly said that although the armistice boundary on land was at the 38th parallel, the actual boundary between sea and air was at the mouth of the Yalu River. In order to crush the arrogance of the US representatives, the Chinese Volunteers decided to launch an operation to cross the sea and seize the islands near the mouth of the Yalu River, and the 50 th Army was responsible for this arduous task. In this month's battle, the 50th Army launched a series of sea-crossing operations, capturing dozens of islands of various sizes, such as Pole Island, Tan Island, Yamato Island, Xiaohe Island, and Ai Island, completely driving the US military's sphere of influence back to the 38th parallel, and giving the Chinese representatives a favorable position in the negotiations. So far, the 50th Army has proved itself with actual combat achievements, becoming one of the main forces of the Volunteer Army, and has won the title of "50 Fierce" on the side of the United Nations Army. The achievements of the 50th Army shook the world, and when it was learned that this army was reorganized from the 60th Army, it is said that Chiang Kai-shek was silent in Taiwan for a long time.
A magical metamorphosis
60 bears, just like that, became 50 fierce , and the record was stronger than many pure old Red Army units. This shows that the military skills education within the Kuomintang is still very effective, and the military skills of the Kuomintang soldiers are actually very proficient. Moreover, many Kuomintang officers and soldiers are actually very afraid of death. For example, in the Battle of Jinan, a small group of national troops under Wang Yaowu fought very tenaciously, even if they knew that they would die, they did not surrender, and finally all of them died. There are actually a lot of small national troops like this, and they are full of blood, and there were more cases when they fought with the Japanese army back then. But these hot-blooded men were all senselessly sacrificed in the end, so that no one was willing to fight in the end. 60 bears, it used to be the same. Why did the ordinary Kuomintang army become a reorganization and change its clothes, and its combat effectiveness could skyrocket by a hundredfold? I'm sorry, but this is a Chinese military secret, and I will not give you any advice.