Speaking of the 74th Division, one of the five main forces of the Kuomintang Army, everyone knows that this integrated American mechanized division was completely annihilated by our East China Field Army in the Battle of Menglianggu. In fact, in this life-and-death battle that determined the fate of Shandong, all the 74th Division participating in the battle was annihilated, and three regiments of the 74th Division did not participate in the battle because of the training of new soldiers, Chiang Kai-shek naturally did not admit that the 74th Division was completely annihilated, and then expanded on the basis of these three regiments, in a vain attempt to restore the 74th Division to continue the civil war.
The reason why the 74th Division was valued by Chiang Kai-shek was that, in addition to giving the Nationalist army a boost and an example, was that it was super combat effective. In the battle of Menglianggu, in order to annihilate the 74th Division, Li Yu dispatched all the elites of the East China Field Army, and he forced his teeth to remove this serious problem, and the situation in Shandong was suddenly opened. However, after this battle, the East China Field Army also suffered a lot of casualties, and after the war, in the battle of MengLianggu, our army annihilated more than 30,000 enemies, lost more than 10,000 of its own, and the battle loss ratio was 1:3.
In addition to inflicting great casualties on our army at Menglianggu, the 74th Division also returned to the light once in the Battle of Jinan. To say that he is returning to the light is actually his original team of people and horses guarding by danger. The Battle of Jinan was the first urban offensive battle of our army to overcome the enemy's heavy defense of 100,000 troops. At that time, the defender of the city was Wang Yaowu, a senior general of the Kuomintang army, facing Li Yu's 300,000 People's Liberation Army, in order to defend this isolated city in Shandong, he has always asked the Ministry of National Defense to increase its strength, and repeatedly requested that the rebuilt 74th Division be airlifted.
At this time, the rebuilt 74th Division was training in Xuzhou, and Liu Zhi, who was sitting in Xuzhou, did not want to release people and wanted to stay for his own use. However, under the pressure of Chiang Kai-shek, Liu Zhi had to promise Wang Yaowu to airlift as soon as possible. But Wang Yaowu was still disappointed, our People's Liberation Army did not give them much time, and then launched the Battle of Jinan, the Song Shilun Corps first attacked the airfield, and used artillery fire to prevent the Kuomintang army from airlifting. Originally planned to airlift all of the 74th Division, only seven companies were initially transported, and the rest could not be carried out under artillery fire.
These seven companies were the original squad of the 74th Division, led by Liu Bingkun, commander of the 172nd Regiment of the 58th Brigade. Seeing that the plane had transported the old subordinates, Wang Yaowu personally went to greet him, but he saw that 1,000 people were not armed and angry on the spot. Originally, Liu Zhi used the excuse that there were many weapons and equipment in Jinan City, and there was no need to carry them with him. Wang Yaowu secretly scolded Liu Zhi for not being a thing, and the enemies had all hit the doorstep of their homes, still thinking carefully.
Although they did not carry weapons, this group of troops was after all the original elite of the 74th Division, and their combat effectiveness was quite strong. Wang Yaowu used these seven companies as reserves for emergency use. However, what he did not expect was that he had just accepted more than 1,000 elites inside, and 20,000 people had run outside. Wu Huawen, who was originally a peripheral position, announced an uprising, and he led the 96th Army to give way to the main road, and the peripheral position in Jinan was completely lost.
Wang Yaowu quickly reduced his strength, strengthened the defense of the inner city, and sent the reserve team to the post and telecommunications building for defense. The post and telecommunications building is a German-style building in the commercial port area, which is quite strong in itself, and the Kuomintang army has been fully reinforced, with heavy machine guns and mortars placed on the roof, and the windows on each floor are piled with sandbags, only exposing a shooting hole, like a battle fortress.
After the Battle of Jinan began, the 3rd Column, the ace unit of the East China Field Army, was responsible for attacking the commercial port area. Backed by powerful firepower, the 3rd Column quickly eliminated the enemy forces in other areas of the commercial port, but the post and telecommunications building became a hard bone for them to gnaw. Faced with such a fortified building, the 3 columns brought all their heavy weapons to carry out a fierce bombardment, and then, under the cover of heavy machine guns, organized a capable commando team to attack from three directions. Seven companies of the 74th Division shrank in the building, heavy machine guns and mortars, and returned fire quite fiercely. In order to stick to the end, the regimental commander Liu Bingkun also took out the old tradition of the 74th Division and set up a supervision team to improve morale.
The 74th Division fought quite fiercely on Meng Lianggu, and the same was true of the Post and Telecommunications Building. The original squad of the 74th Division was quite brave, someone in the front was killed, and immediately someone in the back pushed away the corpse and continued to shoot, and the firepower of the whole building did not weaken at all. Seeing that the seven companies guarding the building were working so hard, Wang Yaowu issued a reward order to Liu Bingkun and promoted him to major general brigade commander on the spot.
After half a day of fierce fighting, our army attacked the post and telecommunications building little by little, and Liu Bingkun was also seriously wounded and taken prisoner. 3 Vertical and one drum, eliminated the remaining diehards, and finally planted the red flag on the roof of the building. The original group of the 74th Division returned to the light in Jinan City, and finally did not escape the fate of being annihilated.