In January 1947, with the help of the superiority of total strength, the Nationalist army gathered more than 300,000 troops from the north and south lines to attack the Huaye troops of our army. Among them, the main force of the southern line is Ouzhen Group, and the northern line is Li Xianzhou Group. The deployment of the two major groups was led by Ou Zhen to attack Linyi, where Huaye's main force was located, while Li Xianzhou simultaneously squeezed Huaye space from the north, in a vain attempt to kill all the main forces of our army in Shandong. At this time, the greatest threat was the Ou Zhen Corps, and since the lessons of the Battle of Lunan were still in sight, the Nationalist army strictly ordered all armies not to protrude from the queue without authorization in this operation, and to maintain a formation so as not to be broken by our army. Therefore, the Ou Zhen Corps was divided into three roads, left, center, and right, with slow but very steady movements, and the mutual coordination was very good, and for a time it was difficult for Hua Ye to beat the huge opponent of the southern front.
However, Hua Ye has always been good at winning by surprise and taking the initiative to change. This battle is certainly no exception. In the face of the crisis, what kind of combat plan did HuaYe adopt? It is very bold to say, and it also has the consistent combat characteristics of Huaye: abandoning Linyi, the main force turned to secretly go north to find Li Xianzhou for a decisive battle! The idea was very creative, and once successfully implemented, it could avoid the enemy's strong army and hit relatively weak opponents.
The most crucial thing in this method of warfare is to conceal, and if the enemy learns of our army's military intentions, it will certainly not be effective, and it will also lose the strategic point of Linyi. Undoubtedly, the most important move was to arrange the suspected soldiers and drag Li Xianzhou's forward troops in Mengyin, so that the enemy would be convinced that Huaye's army was always in the Linyi area, while the main force of our army had actually quickly gone north to encircle the opponent!
How easy is it to achieve this? The Huaye command came up with a brilliant plan. On February 10, Commander Su summoned Feng Zhenwu of the Luzhong Military Region and issued an order to him to use the 3 regiments under his command of 7,000 troops to play the number of 3 armies, that is, to pretend to be the main force of the huaye southern front, to make a formal resistance, and drag the main force of the Ou Zhen group for a week. Commander Feng made a mistake, most of his troops are some new recruits, the strength is very limited, now taking on such a critical task, how can this drama be performed well? Commander Su smiled and told Feng Zhenwu that this was Linyi's empty city plan, and it was actually not difficult for us to show It to Ou Zhen. He revealed a good information to Feng Zhenwu: the 46th Army, which was the vanguard of the Nationalist army, did not want to attack Linyi, because it was originally a unit controlled by the Zhigui clan and had the idea of preserving strength. More importantly, the commander of the 46th Army was Han Liancheng, who happened to be a senior general secretly arranged by our army within the Nationalist army, and this battle would secretly cooperate with Hua Ye to achieve the tactical objectives of our army.
After hearing this news, Feng Zhenwu's confidence increased greatly, and he followed the plan. Of course, in the process of specifically arranging the suspects, he also came up with a lot of small tricks on his own. In each camp, a large number of pots and stoves, grass bunks and other items were arranged, and the quartermasters of the three armies were laid out, as if there were really 100,000 troops. This is a strategy to emulate ancient warfare, and it is indeed very good to confuse the opponent. A full week later, the 46th Army had not yet figured out the situation at hand, and more than 20,000 people were grinding and rubbing, about 60 miles north of Mengyin, keeping a wait-and-see position. This point was in the minds of the Chinese wilderness, and the main forces of the north and south were ordered to step up the march at the same time. On February 15, 1947, the Southern Front Corps of the Nationalist Army, which was marching slowly, occupied Linyi without much resistance, and the senior officers were overjoyed and boasted that the attack on Linyi had annihilated the troops of Huaye's 16 brigades, and the Shandong People's Liberation Army had collapsed, so as to ask For Merit in Nanjing. As everyone knows, Linyi was originally an empty city that Hua Ye had deliberately given up, and in the north, Li Xianzhou's department was about to be in trouble.
While the enemy was still immersed in the joy of capturing Linyi, on February 19, 1947, Huaye's 200,000-strong army quietly completed the encirclement of laiwu, where there were more than 50,000 people in the main force of Li Xianzhou's troops. From the action of Huaye No. 10 to the completion of the transfer and siege of Laiwu by the large army, it took only 9 days in total! On February 20, the general offensive began, and the 200,000 troops were unstoppable, and the guns outside Laiwu City instantly sounded.
In the early morning of the 23rd, Li Bu was completely compressed in a small circle of 7 square kilometers in the city, and there was no possibility for the enemy to break through. And with 50,000 people crowded into such a small piece of land, the soldiers' mentality was almost desperate. Because any one shell fired by Huaye can cause dozens of casualties among the enemy. On the afternoon of the 23rd, more than 50,000 people in 2 armies of Li Xianzhou's army were completely annihilated by Huaye, and 17 generals were taken prisoner, which was also the most brilliant record of Huaye since the beginning of the war in June 1946.