In 1958, New China encountered unprecedented difficulties, diplomatically at odds with the Soviet Union, and the national economy suffered natural disasters, and there was a widespread famine.
At this grim moment, Chiang Kai-shek, who had retreated to an isolated island, seemed to see a golden opportunity and sent a large number of planes into the coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong to wait for an opportunity to sabotage.
In order to crack down on the arrogance of the US-Chiang Clique, Defense Minister Peng Dehuai formulated two major measures, one was to send elite air force troops into the Fujian front, and the other was the famous "shelling of Kinmen," and appointed Nie Fengzhi as deputy commander of the Fuzhou Military Region and commander of the Air Force.
Nie Fengzhi is a famous general of our army, brave in battle, good at using strange tactics, especially good at breaking conventional thinking, doing the opposite, so he repeatedly disobeyed or even changed military orders, but he can always achieve unexpected results, so he is called "Black Tiger General", not only describing his mighty and domineering, but also praising his courage to dare to disobey!
Nie Fengzhi was originally from the army and had no dealings with aircraft before the founding of the People's Republic of China, but after the founding of the People's Republic of China, he was appointed commander of the air force of the East China Military Region, especially during the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, he served as the commander of the Sino-DPRK joint air force, and began a legendary air force career.
Nie Fengzhi did not understand the Air Force, and like a primary school student, he humbly asked for advice from soviet advisers, who could only be in China for a month, but because Nie Fengzhi "stalked" and sought advice, he finally stayed for two months, which also made Nie Fengzhi's air force professional knowledge improve very quickly.
Moreover, in order to personally experience the uniqueness of air combat, Nie Fengzhi had to ask soviet advisers to personally fly the fighter plane and carry him into the air for practical operation. This made it difficult for the Soviet advisers, not to take him to the sky to play with anything difficult, but nie Fengzhi asked to experience many highly dangerous air combat actions.
As we all know, the Air Force recruits pilots very strictly, and has very strict requirements for physical health, because many tactical actions of air combat will make most ordinary people unable to bear, such as the most basic dive, which will make people's blood pressure rise sharply, and may even burst blood vessels, and also such as the air force's basic air rolling, air steering, but also let some people with poor health faint instantly.
At that time, Nie Fengzhi was already in his 40s, and he had suffered many injuries in the war, and according to the regulations of the Air Force, he could not sit in the cockpit of a fighter, but the Soviet advisers could not resist Nie Fengzhi's soft and hard requests, and finally had to agree to take him to heaven to "experience".
Of course, the Soviet advisers did not dare to make those fierce movements, so they slowed down many of them as much as possible, and after each time, they also asked Nie Fengzhi, who was sitting in the passenger seat in the back: "Does it feel okay?" ”
They had agreed in advance that if they didn't feel good, they would immediately say no, but Nie Fengzhi replied very confidently every time: "Very good!" Go on! ”
The Soviet advisers relaxed their minds and demonstrated a series of air combat maneuvers before returning to the ground. When the plane had come to a standstill, the Soviet adviser looked back and was stunned!
Only to see that Nie Fengzhihun was full of vomit all over his body, and he was already dizzy and couldn't stand up!
It was with this fierce vigor that Nie Fengzhi quickly transformed from a land combat general into an air combat hero, commanded the Chinese Volunteer Air Force to make many bold innovations, and applied many infantry tactics to air combat in another way, such as the tactics of "fighting bayonets in the air" and the tactics of "air encirclement point reinforcement", which proved to be very revolutionary and practical tactics.
Therefore, although the pilots of the Chinese Volunteer Army only had a few hundred hours of flying experience, they relied on their fearless spirit and the infantry tactics of winning every battle to beat the ace pilots of the US military with thousands of hours of flight experience, which made the invincible US Air Force exclaim: "China has grown into a world air force power almost overnight!" ”
By 1958, Nie Fengzhi's strategic and tactical approach to the Air Force was as fierce as he had commanded the Army, so the Central Military Commission decided to make him the forefront of the Air Force command mission in Fujian.
When our army is fighting in a large corps, it is very good at the "big pocket tactics" of "ten-sided ambush"; Nie Fengzhi feels that it is also suitable for the use of "ten-sided ambush in the air" in the face of the increasing scale of modern air combat; of course, it is impossible for the air force to lie there and wait, and to achieve the same effect, it is necessary to use a large number of scientific calculations that are accurate to the second, and the fighter planes that take off from different airfields are skillfully arranged according to the strict time difference.
The deployment of our military planes at various airports is highly classified, and it is also what Chiang Kai-shek wants to spy on in every possible way; in order to keep it secret, Nie Fengzhi constantly made secret transfers, disrupting the original arrangements, and causing Chiang Kai-shek to make a wrong judgment.
Second, in the face of Chiang Kai-shek's tentative "fire reconnaissance" attack, Nie Fengzhi never used the fighters at the forefront of Fujian, but mobilized planes from the Guangdong region to return fire.
However, Chiang Kai-shek, with the support of the United States, insisted on going his own way and organized one of the largest air battles in the history of Chinese warfare.
On September 24, 1958, Chiang Kai-shek dispatched more than 100 advanced F-48 fighters at once, equipped with the world's most advanced "Sidewinder" infrared missile at that time, and had the potential to completely annihilate our air force in one fell swoop.
However, they underestimated the increasingly powerful air force of the new China, at that time, our army was also equipped with no inferior MiG-17 fighters and self-developed J-5 fighters, and it was not worse than Chiang Kai-shek in terms of numbers and the skills of air force pilots.
After Nie Fengzhi learned that Jiang Jun was in full swing, he immediately began the "Air Pocket Array" that he had planned for a long time, and according to the precisely designed plan, he constantly ordered the fighters at various airports to attack.
Due to the different distances and different time of attack, the order in which the fighters attacking from various airfields arrived on the battlefield was also different, so it created a "ten-sided ambush" position for Chiang Kai-shek's army.
Jiang Jun's planes found that there was an ambush in front of them and wanted to turn around, but they were horrified to find that no matter what direction they moved, there were always a large number of PLA fighters waiting for them in the front, just like the lone army that strayed into a ten-sided ambush during the Liberation War, and could not get rid of the fate of being annihilated!
The "924 Air Battle" is not only a major battle in the history of the Chinese Air Force, but also a rewriting of the history of air combat in the world. Because this was the first time that "air-to-air missiles" were used in combat, no one thought that the "debut show" of the Sidewinder missile developed by the United States was actually in China, so the major media in the world were reporting on this battle at that time.
(Photo: The wreckage of a Sidewinder missile picked up by our army)
Of course, not only the Sidewinder missiles that have attracted the world's attention, but also the clever "pocket tactics" of the Chinese Air Force have made the air forces of all countries shout wonder and unheard of!
Chairman Mao was also very satisfied with this air battle, and specially called Nie Fengzhi and said: "Your pocket tactics are very clever, and now newspapers all over the world are talking about you!" ”
Nie Fengzhi replied modestly, "I'm not so clever, but I'm actually crooked." ”
Chairman Mao said with a smile: "Many of our inventions are obtained by crooked beatings, and we must sum up and study and popularize them well, and the second time we will not be crooked and correct!" ”
This is the secret of our army's invincibility in a hundred battles; although it may be inferior in weapons and equipment, with its ever-changing strategy and tactics, it can still defeat the enemy army with very advanced weapons and equipment!
(References: Biography of General Nie Fengzhi, People's Daily, Yanhuang Chunqiu)
——To learn more about the story of the founding generals, you can check out the column of the history inn, a total of 100 founding generals.