After the end of the Jinan Campaign, only a few Nationalist strongholds were left in Shandong, including Qingdao, and the PEOPLE's worries about going south were swept away. Su Yu proposed that the Huaihai Campaign could be carried out immediately, hoping to take advantage of the victory to attack and annihilate the Huaiyin, Huai'an, Baoying, Gaoyou, and Haizhou nationalist armies, known as the Huaihai Campaign, with the main objective of annihilating Huang Baitao's 7th Corps and Li Yannian's 9th Appeasement Zone, which were farther away from Xuzhou, in preparation for the capture of Xuzhou.
Chairman Mao proposed to mobilize a total of 600,000 troops from the two major field armies of the Central Plains Field Army and the East China Field Army to engage the Kuomintang army in a major decisive battle in the Central Plains and determine the world in one battle, which is the so-called Great Huaihai. At that time, the Kuomintang army had 800,000 troops in the Central Plains, and the most capable troops in Chiang Kai-shek's hands were all in the Central Plains, and the famous generals of the Huangpu department were gathered, including the 18th Army and the Fifth Army among the five main forces.
The first stage of the Huaihai Campaign was to annihilate the Seventh Corps of the Kuomintang Army, which was the largest corps of the Kuomintang Army at that time, and the commander Huang Baitao, although he was from the Miscellaneous Army, was very talented. This corps was mainly composed of miscellaneous troops, so Su Yu initially wanted to destroy Huang Baitao's corps in six days, but the first battle almost broke his teeth, Huang Baitao desperately resisted, enough to resist for 11 days, and finally Huang Baitao committed suicide.
The second phase of the Huaihai Campaign was the Battle of Shuangduiji, with Nakano responsible for annihilating Huang Wei's 12th Corps, which was also Su Yu's most tense stage. At that time, Hua Ye not only had to block the Kuomintang troops that Xuzhou and Bengbu might come to the aid of each other to ensure the encirclement and annihilation of Huang Wei's corps, but also let Chen Shiyu go to reinforce Nakano with three columns and a large number of heavy weapons.
The 12th Corps of the Kuomintang Army was the most elite Nationalist corps on the battlefield in the country at that time, consisting of the 18th Army, the 14th Army, the 10th Army, the 85th Army and a rapid column, all of which were all American ordnance units and Chiang Kai-shek's concubines, well-equipped and very strong in combat.
The 18th Army under the jurisdiction of the 12th Corps is one of the five main forces of the Kuomintang, and it is the oldest and most famous force in the "five main forces" of the Kuomintang, the earliest, the most powerful and the most famous generals, and the unit that has become famous during the warlord melee. This unit is a unit of Chiang Kai-shek and Chen Chengzhi's lineage, and the backbone of this unit is all graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy, which has both strong combat effectiveness and good military discipline, and can set an example for other units.
During the Battle of Songhu, the 18th Army engaged in repeated battles with the Japanese army in Luodian, the most fierce battle, and major general Cai Bingyan (Huangpu I), commander of the 201st Brigade of the 18th Army, was killed, and Li Shusen (Huangpu I), commander of the 67th Division of the 18th Army, was seriously wounded. The 67th Division was later replaced by Huang Wei, who was urgently transferred from Germany, and the huge armor division of the 67th Division ended up fighting less than one regiment, because the battle in Luodian was too fierce, and the Nationalist generals at that time called it a flesh and blood mill. In the next eight years of war, this unit was worthy of the title of ace of the Nationalist Army, and repeatedly inflicted heavy damage on the Japanese army.
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the 18th Army was reorganized into the 11th Division, and the division was headed by Hu Lian, who graduated from the huangpu fourth term. Hu Lian and Zhang Lingfu are both classmates and fellow countrymen, but Hu Lian is different from Zhang Lingfu, he is very cunning, so Nakano, Huaye repeatedly tried to surround and annihilate him, not only did not achieve the goal, but suffered heavy losses. In 1948, the reorganized 11th Division was reinstated as the 18th Army.
The commander of the 12th Corps of the Kuomintang Army was Huang Wei, and the deputy commander was Hu Lian, both of whom had served as the commanders of the 18th Army, and in the Battle of Shuangduiji, the 18th Army was also the number one main force of the 12th Corps, which made the People's Liberation Army suffer a lot of losses.
On December 2, 1948, the Huang Wei Corps was compressed into a narrow area of 5 kilometers around the double stack. But this unit resistance is very tenacious, Huang Wei and Hu Lian are both offensive and defensive generals, their military ability is not weak, Huang Wei is not what everyone calls nerds, although he is dull in command, but his willpower is very tenacious. In a short period of time, the 12th Corps built thousands of bunkers and dense trenches.
All of Nakano's troops participated in the battle to encircle and annihilate the Huang Wei Corps, but due to the lack of heavy weapons, not only could not annihilate the 12th Corps, but many units were almost wiped out in the process of blocking the breakthrough of the Huang Wei Corps. Under these circumstances, Huaye Chief of Staff Chen Shiyu led three columns and heavy weapons of the Special Forces Column to urgently come to reinforce Nakano, which made obvious progress in the battle.
On December 6, 1948, the 7th Column of the East China Field Army was ordered to join the attack sequence of the 12th Corps of the enemy and prepare to attack the enemy's front-line positions of Dawangzhuang, Jiangudui and Xiaowangzhuang. Dawangzhuang was located in the plain area, about one kilometer south of the Shuangduiji, and was the barrier to the core position of the enemy's Twelfth Corps. More than 250 meters on the east side is the commanding height of the battlefield, the sharp valley pile, on which the enemy regiment artillery observation station is set up. Attack dawangzhuang and Jiangudui, then the headquarters of the 12th Corps will not be able to be saved.
Huang Wei and Hu Lian both knew the importance of Dawangzhuang, so they put the 33rd Regiment of the 118th Division of the 18th Army here, and although the 33rd Regiment belonged to the 118th Division of the 18th Army, it was from the 11th Division of the 18th Army. This unit is fully equipped with American weapons and strong combat effectiveness, and many soldiers are veterans who participated in the War of Resistance.
On December 9, after the attack order was issued, the 20th Division of the Seventh Column of Huaye took the lead in attacking Dawangzhuang. The 58th and 60th regiments under his jurisdiction served as the main attacker, and the 59th regiment was on standby. Although the Seventh Column of Huaye took part in the Battle of Nianzhuang not long ago, the 58th Regiment and the 60th Regiment of the 20th Division have been serving as reserves, and have not participated in the battle.
Before the battle, huaye's offensive forces dug forward 150 meters and dug three longitudinal trenches to shorten the attacking distance and enable the troops to deploy quickly. After the Tiger Regiment saw Huaye digging a trench, it was equipped with a part of the tanks in an attempt to disrupt Huaye's offensive deployment, but the effect was not ideal.
Before the 58th Regiment and the 60th Regiment attacked, the artillery of the 7th Column of Huaye and the 20th Division covered Dawangzhuang for ten minutes, and the main attack battalion of the 60th Regiment concentrated machine gun fire to suppress the fire in the nationalist bunker, and then the three main attack battalions attacked Dawangzhuang in turn. Due to the light enemy, the Tiger Regiment was driven out in one turn, and Hu Lian, the deputy commander of the 12th Corps, was so angry that he almost shot the leader of the Tiger Regiment, ordering the 18th Army to concentrate artillery fire on Dawangzhuang, and then let the regimental commander personally charge with his troops.
Logically, after a unit charged two or three times, the physical strength of the officers and men of the unit would be almost exhausted, and they had to stop and rest, but this unit made a dozen consecutive charges into the village and recaptured most of the area of the great king. In the end, the 58th and 60th Regiments had to hand over their positions to the 59th Regiment due to heavy casualties and withdraw to the southwest corner of Shonai to rest.
At the critical moment of the fierce battle between the two sides, Wang Jinshan, commander of the Sixth Column of Nakano, sent his elite troops, the 46th Regiment of the Sixth Column, to support them, and together with the 59th Regiment and the 60th Regiment, they once again entered Shonai and the Tiger Regiment of the Nationalist Army and its reinforcements for a bloody battle. Shells from both sides rained down like raindrops in this small village of less than a hundred families, grenades, flamethrowers, explosive packs, mortar shells exploding sounded never stopped, and in one room there were more than a dozen people fighting bayonets. During the Liberation War, few Kuomintang troops dared to fight with the People's Liberation Army for bayonets and white-knife battles, but the last elites of the 18th Army and the Japanese army had fought bayonets, so they were not afraid of the bayonets of the People's Liberation Army at all.
After the battle, all the houses and fortifications in Dawangzhuang were destroyed, the corpses of commanders and soldiers and officers and soldiers on both sides were layered on top of each other, and the blood in the trenches soaked the legs of his pants. Although the 118th Division finally wanted to throw the remnants of its forces into it, it failed under the strong blow of Nakano Hanano. Finally, the 62nd Regiment of the 21st Division of the Seventh Column entered Dawangzhuang to take over the position.
Stationed in the nearby Xiaowangzhuang were the division headquarters of the 23rd Division of the enemy's Eighty-fifth Army and two regiments, who witnessed this fierce and protracted battle and were frightened to immediately surrender to the Seventh Column of Huaye.
However, the battle of Dawangzhuang did not end after the battle, the remnants of the 18th Army retreated to the commanding heights of the battlefield, The Valley Pile, and the remnants of the 21st Division of the Seventh Column of Huaye and the 18th Army repeatedly pulled on this hill bag of more than 30 meters high more than a dozen times, and the two battles were completely fought into a war of attrition. When the 21st Division of the Seventh Column of Huaye finally occupied the Jiangudui, looking north from the commanding heights, the core position of the entire enemy Twelfth Corps was exposed in front of Huaye's Seventh Column: the fortifications of the "Motor City" several kilometers long, the artillery positions, the crisscrossing traffic trenches, the trenches, and the headquarters at all levels below the corps. After the Jiangudui was taken, Huang Wei had to order the troops to disperse and break through, and finally he and his deputy commander Wu Shaozhou and other generals were captured during the breakout.