During the Liberation War, the East China Battlefield has always been the focus of contention between the two sides, and it is close to the political and economic center of the Kuomintang, so Chiang Kai-shek has repeatedly launched large-scale attacks on this area. The East China Field Army led by Chen Yi and Su Yu not only did not be eliminated in the battle against the Kuomintang army, but on the contrary, it became bigger and bigger, and became a strong force with strong combat effectiveness.
In the 1947 Battle of Lunan, Chen Yi and Su Yu led the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army to fight for 19 consecutive days, annihilating 53,000 Kuomintang troops, including 36,000 prisoners, including two lieutenant generals and division commanders. In addition, in this campaign, a large number of weapons and equipment were captured, including twenty-four tanks, two hundred and seventeen howitzers, field artillery, mountain artillery and other artillery, and four hundred and seventy-four automobiles.
After the end of the Lunan Campaign, the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army were merged into the East China Field Army, with 11 infantry columns and a special forces column under its jurisdiction, with Chen Yi as the commander and Su Yu as the deputy commander, and the specific military command was under the responsibility of Su Yu. The Kuomintang army regarded HuaYe as a serious problem, so it gathered 23 reorganized divisions (armies) and 53 brigades, a total of 310,000 troops, and launched an attack on Huaye's capital linyi in Lunan in two ways.
This time, the Kuomintang army adopted the posture of attacking from the north and south, and launched an attack on Huaye to retake Linyi; on the southern front, Ou Zhen, commander of the reorganized 19th Army, commanded 8 reorganized divisions and 21 brigades, and attacked Linyi from the front line of Taierzhuang and Xin'an Town, and on the northern front, Li Xianzhou, deputy commander of the Second Appeasement District, commanded the 46th Army, the 73rd Army, and the 12th Army from Zichuan and Boshan to Laiwu, and the Xintai front line responded. The Kuomintang army also sent eight reorganized divisions to guard the Longhai, Jinpu, and Jiaoji railways, and four reorganized divisions were drawn to assemble in the Lunan area to prevent Huaye's westward retreat and the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Liberation Army round.
On January 31, 1947, the Kuomintang army marched in tandem with all sides of the army, adopting a policy of concentrating forces and fighting steadily and steadily advancing towards Linyi. Hua Ye did not choose to stick to Linyi, and in a decisive battle with the Nationalist army in Linyi, Su Yu ordered the Second Column to annihilate hao Pengju's two divisions from February 6 to 7, and after capturing Hao Pengju, decided to annihilate Li Xianzhou's corps on the northern front. In order to confuse the enemy and make the enemy mistakenly think that our army was going to fight a decisive battle with the enemy on the southern front, Su Yu ordered the local armed forces to advance into Yanzhou, and at the same time ordered them to build a pontoon bridge on the canal, creating the illusion that the main force was advancing west and Liu Deng's army was turning, and then ordered the main force to secretly go north.
On February 15, the Nationalist army on the southern front occupied Linyi. Chen Cheng and Ou Zhen lied about the military situation, saying that the Kuomintang troops had annihilated 16 enemy brigades on the outskirts of Linyi, and at this time the air force units detected that the local units of our army were building pontoon bridges over the canal, because our army was fleeing westward, and Chiang Kai-shek believed it to be true and ordered Li Xianzhou's corps to accelerate its southward advance.
In fact, su Yu's series of plans were not seen by everyone in the Kuomintang army, and Wang Yaowu, commander of the Second Appeasement District, saw it, and he had long sensed that the situation was not right, especially after Chen Cheng lied about annihilating Huaye's 16 brigades, Wang Yaowu did not believe it, so he ordered Li Xianzhou to slow down and see if the situation was moving, and Wang Chen Cheng repeatedly accused Li Xianzhou of being slow to move, and severely accused him, causing him to retreat and not to advance. Li Xianzhou sent intelligence personnel to investigate the movements of the Plakmen on many occasions, but the Lunan area was the old Plakmen and had a deep mass base, and the intelligence personnel of the Kuomintang Army could not penetrate it at all.
On January 18, as Huaye's main forces continued to move north, Wang Yaowu's intelligence personnel finally found out the movement of Huaye's main force, and Wang Yaowu completely determined Huaye's purpose and ordered Li Xianzhou to retreat north immediately, but it was too late at this time. On the 19th, Hua Ye's first column arrived, and on the 20th, Hua Ye found that Li Xianzhou's corps was going to run, at this time only one column arrived, and the rest of the troops were still rushing in urgently, Ye Fei in order to prevent Li Xianzhou's corps from escaping, led a column to enter directly, and stubbornly entangled the main force of Li Xianzhou's corps. Han Liancheng, commander of the reorganized 46th Division (Army), was an underground party member, and after he launched an attack on Huaye, he immediately hid, resulting in the leaderlessness of the reorganized 46th Division.
When Li Xianzhou's corps was fleeing, it was very chaotic, and 50,000 or 60,000 people poured into the defensive positions of the 18th Division of the 6th Column of Huaye, and all kinds of artillery and light and heavy machine guns of the 6th Column 18th Division were opened, compressing more than 50,000 enemies into a low-lying area of the Shahe River 5 kilometers from north to south and 3 kilometers from east to west.
In just three days, Hua Ye annihilated two Nationalist headquarters, seven divisions totaling 56,000 men, and 48,000 prisoners at the cost of more than 8,800 casualties. In this battle, our army captured quite a lot, especially the Huaye Sixth Column, the number of annihilated enemies reached 24,700, of which 19,300 were taken prisoner, all of which were replaced by American equipment, the 16th Division also had two regiments and 1 battalion for American equipment, the 49th Regiment of the 17th Division was American equipment, and the 51st Regiment had 1 battalion and two companies of American equipment, and the firepower of each unit was significantly enhanced.
References: A Brief History of the 24th Army Group of the Army, Decisive Battle: North China Liberation War 1945-1949