At the beginning of 1950, the Kuomintang army achieved an unprecedented rout on the mainland, the army was scattered, and its combat effectiveness was low, but Chiang Kai-shek still hoped to blockade the mainland with a series of islands such as Taiwan Island, Hainan Island, Kinmen Island, zhoushan Island, etc., and confront the People's Liberation Army in order to counterattack in the future. Among these islands, Chiang Kai-shek attached the greatest importance to the defense of Hainan Island at that time.
Hainan Island is the second largest island in China, and the qiongzhou Strait is north of Hainan Island, across the sea from the Leizhou Peninsula. Although Hainan Island was occupied by the Kuomintang army after the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Qiongya Column led by Feng Baiju, Baima Shan, and others established a base area centered on Wuzhishan, and the troops once grew to the size of 20,000 people, and they fought with the Kuomintang army for many years without being wiped out. At the beginning of 1950, in order to liberate Hainan Island, the Central Military Commission ordered the 43rd Army of the 15th Corps and the 40th Army of the 12th Corps to go to the Leizhou Peninsula to prepare for the liberation of Hainan Island.
The People's Liberation Army started with the army, and its combat effectiveness on the ground is very strong, but because there is no naval and air force, many officers and men have a fear of the sea, and even some middle-ranking and senior generals have injured their legs with guns in order to escape this battle, falsely claiming that they were injured by secret agents. In fact, this can not be entirely blamed on this soldier, because in October 1949, the troops led by Ye Fei of the Tenth Corps of Sanye were completely destroyed when three regiments of more than 9,000 people landed in Kinmen, which caused a great negative impact at that time.
When the 40th and 43rd Armies reached the front, there was no air support, there was a serious shortage of ships, and the ships recruited were mainly wooden sailing ships, with few machine sailing ships and few skilled shipwrights. Most of the officers and men in the four fields are northerners, many of them do not know how to swim, they do not dare to go to the sea at all, and some officers and men often evade training. Not only were the officers and men at the bottom unwilling to fight Hainan Island, the 15th Corps Headquarters, the Siye Command, and the leaders of the Central Military Commission all said at that time that they would postpone the liberation of Hainan Island, but Han Xianchu, commander of the 40th Army, insisted on disagreeing, and also got into trouble with Deng Hua, commander of the 15th Corps, to Lin Zong, and finally Lin Zong agreed with Han Xianchu's opinion.
From February to March 1950, Han Xianchu organized two groups of troops to smuggle into Hainan Island, and most of the troops were successfully smuggled under the assistance of the Qiongya Column, as long as a small number of troops were ambushed by the Kuomintang army and navy. In the case that both groups of troops were successfully smuggled, there were still many generals who were unwilling to personally lead the troops to the island, and when the main force was finally preparing to land on the island, all the people who reported them were deputy posts, and there were more political work cadres than military command cadres. "When others saw that the commanders had gone up, they couldn't say anything.
On April 16, 1950, Han Xianchu led six regiments of the 40th Army and two regiments of the 43rd Army with a total of 25,000 troops in eight regiments, taking 380 wooden sailing ships and 32 aircraft sailing ships, set sail from the Leizhou Peninsula, and after a one-night naval battle with the Kuomintang Navy, finally broke through the siege and successfully landed on Hainan Island. As soon as Siye's large army landed, the battlefield situation quickly became clear, and the 100,000 Kuomintang troops led by Xue Yue could not resist and collapsed. In the end, in order to preserve his strength, Xue Yue withdrew more than 70,000 people to Taiwan. On May 1, 1950, Hainan Island was completely liberated. On June 25, 1950, the Korean War broke out. On June 27, the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet entered the port of Keelung in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and cruised across the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Liberation Army from liberating Taiwan. If the battle to liberate Taiwan had been a few months later, the consequences would have been unimaginable.