In mid-November 1946, Xue Yue, director of the Xuzhou Appeasement Office, commanded 23 integrated divisions of the Kuomintang army, totaling 66 brigades and 500,000 troops, to launch a large-scale attack on the Base Areas of Shandong and Northern Jiangsu where Chen Yi and Su Yu were located in four routes.
At this time, Chen Yi's Shandong Field Army and Su Yu's Central China Field Army had just been merged for only 3 months, and the total strength did not exceed 270,000.
In fact, at the end of September, when the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army were just merged, Mao Zedong gave two instructions on the operational policy of the two men, one of which was:
Instead of dividing the troops into two enemies, you must concentrate on fighting one enemy.
The concentration of superior forces is a tradition and combat experience formed during the period of the Red Army, which is the truth of war that has been proved by practice, but Chen Yi and Su Yu, who are specific to this time, have their own subtleties, and the subtleties of the two come from the history of the formation of the two field armies.
Before the merger of Chen Yi and Su Yu, the two had their own liberated areas, Chen Yi was in charge of the Shandong Liberated Area, the capital was in Linyi, Shandong, Su Yu was in charge of the Central China Liberated Area, and the capital was in Huaiyin, Jiangsu. The reason why Chen and Su came together was that there were many twists and turns.
After the outbreak of the civil war, in accordance with the overall offensive posture of the Kuomintang army, the Central Military Commission and Mao Zedong demanded that the two field armies in Shandong and central China go out of their base areas and fight in Huaibei and Huainan on the outer line, so as to take Xuzhou, the important town of the Kuomintang army, with the cooperation of Liu Deng's army in the Central Plains. This is also the experience of Mao Zedong since Jinggangshan, which has repeatedly broken strong enemies.
Mao Zedong's instructions were also in line with Chen Yi's wishes, and he actively led about 50,000 men of the 2nd Column, the 7th and 8th Divisions, the main forces of the Shandong Field Army, out of the southeast and into Huaibei. However, Chen Yi actively went out of Shandong, and Su Yu did not leave northern Jiangsu, and he went south to the rich Base Area of Central Jiangsu to conduct internal warfare. As a result, the situation in which Mao Zedong and Chen Yi hoped that the two field armies would fight together did not take shape, and as a result, the two field armies formed an independent operation and were far apart.
The reason for this was that it was thought in advance that as long as Su Yu fought well in Suzhong, he could respond to Chen Yi's actions in Huaibei, but this was not the case.
Su Yu fought very well in Suzhong and won the results of seven battles and seven victories, because after all, he was in his own liberated area and had the support of manpower and material resources, but Chen Yi, who had left his liberated area, did not play well in Huaibei.
Chen Yi, who was far away from the Liberated Areas, encountered climatic problems when he first entered Huaibei, and the torrential rains and stagnant water made the Soldiers in Shandong unsatisfied, but the beginning was not bad, and they won a great victory in the morning sun and annihilated all the 92nd Brigade of the Kuomintang Army in one fell swoop.
However, due to the fact that the main force of the Central China Field Army was far away in central Jiangsu, and only a 9-column was left in the northern Jiangsu region, so the troops were empty, Huainan was first occupied by the Kuomintang army, and after Huainan was occupied, the Kuomintang army had no worries on the southern front, so they boldly attacked Huaiyin, the capital of the Liberated Areas of Central China.
The responsibility for defending Huaiyin, the capital of the Central China Liberated Area, fell to the Shandong Field Army, far from the Liberated Areas of Shandong.
Chen Yi was an old Red Army soldier in the Nanchang uprising, and naturally knew the active defensive strategy for dealing with a strong enemy; in the face of the attack of a large number of enemies, he also attacked Si County, which was guarded by the Guigang 7th Army, with the best defensive posture of attacking, in order to block the passage of the Kuomintang army into the liberated areas, but due to the objective rainstorm and mud, coupled with the extreme fatigue of the Shandong troops coming from afar, it was very unfavorable to the attack, and coupled with the fact that the Guigang 7th Army defending Si County had a strong fighting capacity and were all veterans, Chen Yi not only failed to break through Si County, but suffered huge casualties , had to take the initiative to withdraw the siege. The Kuomintang army took advantage of the victory to kill Huaiyin.
Huaiyin was the capital of the Liberated Areas of Central China, and Chen Yi had a heavy responsibility for defending it, but at the same time he received news that his Capital of Shandong, Linyi, was also under attack by the Kuomintang army.
This made Chen Yi very miserable, on the one hand, his main force had to bear the responsibility of defending the capital of northern Jiangsu, on the other hand, his own Capital of Shandong was still under attack.
We cannot be harsh on anyone today by taking into account the overall situation, because people are not sages, all people have basic human nature, and there is no problem in sacrificing themselves to complete others, but at that time, if we had to choose one of the two, sacrificing Shandong to protect northern Jiangsu was not a good choice, because strategically speaking, Shandong was far more important than northern Jiangsu, far from saying that the Bohai region of Shandong has always been a passageway for Soviet equipment from Dalian to the liberated areas.
However, when Chen Yi failed to break through Si County, Su Yu was at ease in Suzhong, he fought three battles and three victories, and there were still four battles that were not fought, so it was impossible for him to return to northern Jiangsu.
After the Kuomintang army occupied Sixian County, Xue Yue used a feint attack on Shuyang, but in fact took Huaiyin's strategy of "attacking the west from the east", and coordinated the raid on Huaiyin with the elite 7th Army and the reorganized 74th Division. When Xue Yue took Suining and Suqian, and then pressed forward to Huaiyin, Su Yu led the main force to fight six battles and six victories in Suzhong; when Zhang Lingfu led the commander of the reorganized 74th Division to raid Huaiyin on September 13, four days ago, on September 9, Su Yu's main force fighting in Suzhong was ready to withdraw from Hai'an, which was 500 miles away from Huaiyin, and the water network was long, and with the speed of the march at that time, it would not reach Huaiyin at the earliest on September 20.
Zhang Lingfu captured Huaiyin on the night of September 19, and Huai'an two days later.
The loss of lianghuai caused the liberated areas of central China to be surrounded by Kuomintang troops on the northern and southern fronts, and although Su Yu fought seven battles and seven victories in central China, he had to abandon Suzhong and go north to join Chen Yi's Shandong Field Army, so that after seven battles and seven victories, Suzhong became an enemy rear.
The loss of lianghuai also became a burden of Chen Yi's military defeat, and the Shandong field army blamed him for not going to northern Jiangsu, and the central China field army blamed him for losing two Huai, so the words that he would not fight were born. It is no wonder that the soldiers of the troops, after all, compared with Su Yu's seven battles and seven victories in the Soviet Union, Chen Yi lost the capital of the Central China Liberated Area, and the difference between the seven battles and seven victories and the loss of two Huai was obvious.
That is, the loss of the two Huai finally caused Su Yu to lead the main force of the Central China Field Army to leave central Jiangsu and go north, and met Chen Yi's Shandong Field Army on September 23. After the round, the two armies were commanded, with Chen Yi as commander and political commissar, Su Yu as deputy commander, and Tan Zhenlin as deputy political commissar, but although the two armies met in form, they did not really meet in their hearts.
After the rendezvous of the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army, the set strategic goal is to return to the pre-outbreak of the civil war a few months ago, that is, the two armies turned to the outside line and fought a big battle with Xuzhou as the center, which is actually the prototype of the Huaihai Campaign.
At this time, Xue Yue's 4-way army drove over.
I. The Shandong base area and the northern Jiangsu base area are attacked at the same time, which one to defend first?
Xue Yue's 4-way army advanced in the following sequence:
The first road: Feng Zhi'an, commander of the Third Sui District and commander of the reorganized 33rd Army, led 5 reorganized divisions, with the reorganized 26th Division (attached to the 1st Rapid Column) as the backbone, from Fengxian, Zaozhuang, and Taierzhuang to Linyi and Ducheng;
The second way: Wu Qiwei, deputy director of the Xuzhou Sui Bureau, led 6 armies (integrated divisions), with Hu Lian, commander of the reorganized 11th Division, as the commander-in-chief of the front line, and attacked from Suqian to Xin'an Town and Muyang;
The third road: Li Yannian, deputy director of the Xuzhou Sui Bureau, commanded the reorganized 74th Division, the 7th Army of the Gui Clan and other 6 reorganized divisions (corps), from Huaiyin and Huai'an to Lianshui attack;
Fourth Route: Li Mo'an, commander of the First Sui District, led 6 reorganized divisions and attacked from Dongtai in the direction of Yancheng and Funing.
From the northernmost first road Feng Zhi'an out of Feng County near Zaozhuang in Lunan, to the southernmost fourth road Li Mo'an out of Dongtai near Yancheng in northern Jiangsu, just to surround Lunan and northern Jiangsu. To the east of Lunan and Northern Jiangsu was the sea, and Xue Yue's army would advance from west to east, making it difficult for Chen Yi and Su Yu to have room for maneuver.
Xue Yue's first operational objective was to cut off the connection between Shandong and the liberated areas of central China.
Everyone knows that concentrating superior forces to annihilate the enemy is the magic weapon for our army to win, not to mention Mao Zedong's special instructions, but two sudden events have put Chen and Su through a test:
First: Chen Yi's Zaozhuang in the Shandong Liberated Area was lost, and Linyi, the capital of the Liberated Area, was threatened;
Second: In the Liberated Area of Northern Jiangsu in Suyu, the reorganized 74th Division attacked Lianshui with two Huai.
Of course, it is good to concentrate troops, but who will be hit first by concentrating troops?
Chen Yi meant that he would first take the Shandong Field Army back to Shandong to defend Linyi, and Su Yu's Central China Field Army could stay in northern Jiangsu or go to Shandong with him to fight.
Of course, Chen Yi's idea of defending his hometown was understandable, but this move was opposed by the Central Military Commission and Mao Zedong, so Chen Yi obeyed the order to stay, and he used a brigade to participate in the Battle of Lianshui of su Yuhua's central field army, and ordered 2 columns to block the reinforcements of the Nationalist 7th Army.
During the Lianshui Defense War, Chen Yi had always been uneasy, and he was worried about Linyi, but because the Lianshui Defense War was in full swing, he was not good at making demands. After the end of the Lianshui Defense War, Chen Yi also got the news that the Shandong Nationalist army was likely to attack Linyi, and he really could not rest assured of his backyard, but Rao was so, he only took the 8th Division back to Lunan, and left the 2nd Column and the 7th Division in northern Jiangsu. As soon as Chen Yi returned to Shandong, he fought a counterattack battle on Taiwan and Zaolu, but his troops were really insufficient, and at the most critical time, he was just missing the assault force of one brigade in his hands, and the result was a failure, not only did not achieve the expected results, but made the enemy's integrated 26th Division more and more close to Linyi. Since this return to Lunan was chen yi's own initiative, he had to quickly return to northern Jiangsu with the 8th Division.
If the 7th Division had been brought back to Lunan, the battle would have changed, but in this way, it would have been more likely to widen the rift between the two field armies of Yamano and Huaye, which could seriously lead to a split.
When Chen Yi led the 8th Division back to Lunan, Su Yu took the main force of the Central China Field Army to defend Yancheng. The 1st Division, the 7th and 10th Columns of the Central China Field Army, and the Pi Dingjun Brigade resisted the attack of 5 brigades of the reorganized 25th, 65th and 83rd Divisions of the Kuomintang Army, resulting in the annihilation of 6,000 enemy troops. Strictly speaking, the Defense of Yancheng was a rout battle under superior forces, and although there were a small number of captures, the results were not ideal.
Although Chen Yi and Su Yu did not go through the study of the military class, they were killed on the battlefield, and the military experts who have been in the battlefield for a long time learned war in war, and the important thing is to sum up the successful experience and the lessons of failure. What to do next?
At the beginning of the civil war, Mao Zedong proposed that the two armies of Shandong and Central China go together to fight on the outer line of Huainan and Huaibei, and fight against the enemy with the momentum of attacking from north to south, which is actually the merger of the two armies that concentrate superior forces, but Su Yu went to Suzhong and Chen Yi went to Huaibei, and the result was that the two armies fought separately, and eventually lost the two Huai and Suzhong, as well as the defeat of Lunan and the unsatisfactory results of the Yancheng battle, so that Chen Yi and Su Yu finally understood that with their respective strengths, they could not actually compete with the powerful Kuomintang army. It is still necessary to return to the original road of concentrated use of the two armies.
After Chen and Su truly unified their understanding of concentrating their forces, they also unified their understanding of annihilating the Kuomintang army on the outer line of Huaibei. As a result, Chen and Su attacked Xue Yue's 4-way attack, and there was a rule.
Because the offensive route of Xue Yue's 4th Road army was more than 300 kilometers wide from south to north, and the gaps between the various roads were very large, it was difficult to coordinate, which created an excellent opportunity for Chen Yi and Su Yu to divide and annihilate, but the question came, the two armies together are one force, which way does this force fight Xue Yue's 4th Road army?
The reality is that Chen Yi's old base area of Lunan was attacked by an enemy army along the way, and what is very dangerous is that the enemy army on this road is very close to Linyi, the capital of the Shandong Liberated Area; although SuYu's northern Jiangsu base area has been attacked by three enemy troops, the capital has been lost, and the northern Jiangsu base area is already in danger.
However, Chen Yi, as the commander of the East China Field Army after the merger, and Su Yu, the deputy commander, finally decided on the strategy of fighting the second road Wu Qiwei.
The reason why Wu Qiwei was beaten now, and the reason given by Zhuge Liang now is that the First Road Feng Public Security Department, the Third Road Li Mo'an Department, and the Fourth Road Li Yannian Department act cautiously, while the Second Road Wu Qiwei is fierce and quite dangerous, and once it breaks into the hinterland of the Northern Jiangsu Liberated Area, it will divide Shandong and the Northern Jiangsu Liberated Area, so that Su Yu's Central China Field Army will lose its foothold in Northern Jiangsu, and this road is isolated and prominent, and it is also between the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army. It is convenient for the two armies to coordinate the implementation of encirclement and annihilation.
Naturally, these reasons are all reasonable, but in the end, the Central China Field Army left the base area of northern Jiangsu and went to Shandong, so fighting in northern Jiangsu is actually superfluous, if it is to annihilate the enemy's living forces, Feng Zhi'an on the first road is actually better to fight. The reason for fighting Wu Qiwei was, of course, chen Yi's overall view, and for the sake of the unity of the two armies, he was willing to fight the enemy in northern Jiangsu first.
Chen Yi and Su Yu decided to concentrate on 24 regiments of the 1st and 2nd Columns of the Shandong Field Army, the 7th and 8th Divisions, and the 9th Column of the Central China Field Army to meet the Kuomintang troops dispatched from Suqian.
Chen and Su's plan was to first annihilate the reorganized 69th Division in the triangle areas of Suqian, Shuyang, and Xin'an with three times the enemy's strength, and then take advantage of the victory to annihilate the reorganized 11th Division, and at the same time use the strength of the other 28 regiments of the Central China Field Army to monitor and block the other 3-way Nationalist forces. Among them, 10 regiments of the 6th Division and the 6th Huainan Brigade, led by Tan Zhenlin, commander and political commissar of the 6th Division, organized defense in the Lianshui area to ensure and respond to the strategic development of the main force in the Northern Subei region.
2. The course of the Battle of Subei
On December 13, the Nationalists attacked in two directions, north and east, and the reorganized 69th Division, led by Dai Zhiqi, attacked Xin'an Town from Suqian to the north, and this division was divided into two columns, the left column was the pre-3rd Brigade and the 41st Brigade, and the right column was the 60th Brigade; and the reorganized 11th Division, under the leadership of division commander Hu Lian, attacked Shuyang from Suqian to the east.
Chen and Su were determined to first concentrate their main forces to divide and annihilate the left side of the reorganized 69th Division, and then annihilate the enemy's right road, and at the same time, attack and block the reorganized 11th Division, making it impossible to reinforce the 69th Division. The basic spirit of Chen and Su was to concentrate the main force of superiority to strike at the enemy's weaker side of the road, and then divide and encircle and annihilate.
The main force of the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army immediately followed Chen and Su's deployment and secretly marched toward the war zone the next night.
On the 15th, Ye Fei's 1st Column, He Yixiang's 8th Division, and Cheng Jun's 7th Division of the Shandong Field Army, as well as Xu Shiyou's 9th Column of the Central China Field Army, suddenly encircled the reorganized 69th and 11th Divisions that were moving.
Ye Fei's 1st column was interspersed between the reorganized 69th Division and the reorganized 11th Division, and two regiments of his 3rd Brigade attacked Caojiaji, where Hu Lian's 11th Division headquarters was located, annihilating 1 engineer battalion and most of the cavalry battalion, and most recently only 200/300 meters away from Hu Lian's division headquarters, causing chaos in Hu Lian's headquarters and temporarily unable to reinforce the 69th Division. On the evening of the 16th, the 1st Column divided into two routes, dividing Hu Lian's 11th Division and the 69th Division's Pre-3Rd Brigade, the 60th Brigade into three parts, and when the Pre-3rd Brigade faced the end of being annihilated, Hu Lian's 11th Division desperately moved closer to the Pre-3rd Brigade, but it was never able to succeed under the resistance of the 1st Column.
As soon as the battle began, He Yixiang's 8th Division launched a fierce attack on Fengshan, the commanding height in the middle of the enemy's reorganized 69th Division, and occupied Fengshan after 4 surprise attacks, and Dai Zhiqi, commander of the 69th Division, found that Fengshan was lost and desperately launched a counterattack on Fengshan, but instead of taking Fengshan in one day of fierce fighting, he suffered heavy losses.
On the evening of the 17th, He Yixiang's 8th Division launched a fierce attack on Xiaodianzi, where the enemy's 3rd Brigade, which was divided by the 1st column, was the best at attacking the stronghold, and after a few hours not only attacked Xiaodianzi, but also completely annihilated the Pre-3rd Brigade in one fell swoop.
When He Yixiang's 8th Division annihilated the enemy's 3rd Brigade, Ye Fei's 1st Column and Cheng jun's 7th Division each annihilated one of the enemy's 60th Brigade and completely annihilated the enemy's 60th Brigade on the enemy's breakthrough road.
At dawn on the 18th, Huaye Xu Shiyou's 9th Column and 9th Brigade launched an attack on the headquarters of the enemy's integrated 69th Division, but it did not work, and the result was in Chen, Su"
The enemy shall be settled by 12 o'clock tonight, regardless of any sacrifice
Under the order of death, at 4 a.m. on the 19th, the division headquarters of the reorganized 69th Division was taken, and Lieutenant General Dai Zhiqi committed suicide.
At this point, the battle, which lasted for 4 days and nights and was called the Battle of Subei, ended in victory, and the East China Field Army captured 119 artillery pieces (including 35 field guns) and a large amount of ammunition at the cost of 8,000 casualties, annihilated 3 and a half brigades of the enemy's reorganized 69th Division, and more than 21,000 people in the 5th Engineer Regiment and other units, taking more than 16,000 prisoners, Dai Zhiqi, commander of the reorganized 69th Division, and Huang Baode, commander of the 60th Brigade, committed suicide, and the deputy division commander and deputy chief of staff were captured.
When the reorganized 69th Division was besieged, Hu Lian of the reorganized 11th Division also actively moved closer to the 69th Division, and his vanguard 18th Brigade entered only a few miles away from the headquarters of the reorganized 69th Division, but Hu Lian was an old fox, and he immediately gave up the rescue when he saw that the situation was not good, and ordered the brigade to retreat to Suqian overnight.
3. The significance of the Battle of Subei
The Battle of Subei finally reversed the decline of Chen Yi and Su Yu's two armies fighting independently, becoming the first large-scale campaign annihilation battle jointly commanded by the two men, and the first major victory after the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army met.
This campaign also has extraordinary significance for the formal merger of the two armies, because the integration of the two armies is not only a formality, but also a psychological mutual recognition. If the first battle is won after the merger of the two armies, it will deepen the trust between the shandong field army and the units of the central China field army and between the leaders; on the contrary, if the battle is successful or lost, there will be distrust between the various units, and the distrust between the friendly forces on the battlefield will be difficult to win the battle.
What is particularly valuable is that this Subei Campaign was fought in the northern Jiangsu battlefield, but the main force of the operation was Chen Yi's Shandong Field Army, and in terms of military command, it was chen Yi and Su Yu's joint command, that is to say, Su Yu participated in the command and operation of the Shandong Field Army, and such harmonious cooperation cannot but be said to rely on Chen Yi's overall view.