At the end of 1946, the Subei Campaign had just ended, and after eight or nine days of discussion, the central authorities reached a strategic plan for the Lunan campaign with Huaye and Shanye, and resolved that Huaye's main force would go north into Lulu and complete the annihilation of the enemy forces attacking Linyi; in addition, in order to unify the command and approved by the central authorities, the Central China Field Army and the Shandong Field Army were merged, and the establishment of the East China Field Army finally took a substantial step.
Zhu De and comrades of the East China Field Army
Compared with the Central Soviet Liberated Area, the Kuomintang paid more attention to the attack on the Lunan Liberated Area, and more than half of the enemy troops of the 25 divisions in the East China Battlefield were used to attack the Lunan Liberated Area, and the enemy troops from Xuzhou to Zaozhuang swung in a long snake formation, defending each other, and at the critical moment they could huddle together to rescue, which was the combat experience summed up by Xue Yue and Su Yu in the past six months or so.
After the victory in the Battle of Subei, the Kuomintang lost nearly 100,000 troops on the northern and southern fronts, and as the person in charge of appeasement on the northern and southern fronts, Xue Yue and Li Mo'an were in a very different situation; although Li Mo'an was beaten by Su Yu in seven battles and seven defeats, fortunately he occupied the towns along the Yangtze River and was not punished by Chiang Kai-shek, on the contrary, Xue Yue launched several battles in northern Jiangsu and Lunan but did not achieve much, and met a gray face in front of Chiang Kai-shek; for this reason, after the Battle of Subei, the enemy troops of the four roads turned to defense on the spot, except for the one way that they were completely annihilated. Only the attack on Linyi remained offensive.
The enemy took advantage of the fact that the main force of the mountain field was moving south to occupy Bian Zhuang and Xiangcheng in the southwest of Linyi, only thirty kilometers away from Linyi, and at the forefront of the long snake array were the reorganized Twenty-sixth Division and the First Rapid Column of the Kuomintang, and the division commander Ma Liwu led this Jiang Yan troop to rampage in Lunan. In particular, the First Rapid Column was created by Chiang Ching-kuo himself, and its advanced weapons were also equipped with mobile weapons such as tanks.
The troops coordinating the attack of the Reorganized Twenty-sixth Division also included the Feng Zhi'an Department of the Enemy's Thirty-third Army, located near Taierzhuang, which had always been at odds with the Central Army, and then the Reorganized Fifty-first Division, which was stationed at Zaozhuang behind the Twenty-sixth Division, and the three divisions were only thirty kilometers apart in a glyph shape. After the Lunan operation was determined, Su Yu originally planned to fight the weaker enemy Thirty-third Army first, but later considering that there were too many enemy troops attacking Lunan, even if the Thirty-third Army was completely annihilated, it would be difficult to reverse the situation in Lunan, but it would prematurely expose the strength and combat intentions of our army. What's more, it is possible to concentrate 27 main forces at a time and fight 6 regiments of the enemy army to have an absolute advantage; Su Yu's last anti-conventional use of troops was in the Battle of Huangqiao, first fighting Han Deloitte's independent Sixth Division, and after 6 years Su Yu wanted to surprise the army again.
Su Yu
Su Yu, who had determined the operational objectives, ordered the 1st Column (Ye Feibu), the 8th Division, and the 1st Division (Tao Yongbu) to secretly move north from northern Jiangsu to rendezvous with the Ninth Division, a regiment of the 4th Division, the 10th Division, and the local special service regiment that had already arrived in Lunan. At the same time, in order to contain the enemy's reorganized 74th Division and the Seventh Army of the Gui Clan in the direction of Lianghuai and Lianshui, the second column, the sixth division, the seventh division, the ninth column, and the thirteenth brigade were commanded by Tan Zhenlin and provided reinforcements in the Shuyang area of northern Jiangsu.
After the battle plan was submitted to the Central Committee, the Central Military Commission instructed:
The Lunan Campaign concerned the overall situation in Eastern China, and even if all the cities in northern Jiangsu were lost, there would be a way to restore this victory
"The Central Military Commission hopes that the merged East China Field Army will fight a bigger annihilation battle than the Subei Campaign to completely change the situation in East China." Under the call of the central authorities, the whole army strengthened the determination of Lunan to fight and achieved unprecedented political unity.
Due to the tight time and the specific operational arrangements formulated on the way north, Su Yu decided to divide the troops involved in the Lunan operation into two roads, the right road was composed of the Eighth Division, the Ninth Division, the Tenth Division, the Tenth Regiment of the Fourth Division, and the Lunan Regional Special Service Regiment, and the command of the Luzhong Military Region was under the responsibility of the Luzhong Military Region; the left road was composed of the First Division of Huaye and the First Column of Shanye, which were under the direct command of the field army.
When Tao Yongbu marched north, although it was detected by enemy planes, it still did not attract the attention of ma Liwu, the commander of the front line, and near New Year's Day, he actually left his post and ran to the rear of Yicheng for the New Year' Day. Before the Storm Pavilion could begin, Su Yu ordered the troops to attack two hours in advance.
The enemy army was in the midst of a happy New Year, and was confused by the sound of gunfire from all directions, especially in the absence of front-line command, the troops became blind without organization, Ma Liwu quickly called the command after receiving the battle report from the front, and the telephone line was cut off by our army, and finally he made a simple deployment to the front line by radio, and then hurried to the front line, and as a result, the frightened soldiers who had not gone far were coaxed back, and Ma Liwu knew that the front line could not go back.
In view of the lessons of the Subei Campaign, su Yu repeatedly stressed at the pre-war meeting to the commanders on the front line that the reorganization of the Twenty-sixth Division must be carried out quickly, and that division and encirclement must be carried out at the same time; therefore, as soon as the Right Route Army began to fight, it quickly attacked the junction points of the enemy's various units, and the Tenth Division took the lead in attacking Fushan Pass, cutting off the entire enemy's retreat to Zaozhuang and at the same time blocking the reinforcements in the direction of Zaozhuang; the Coastal Guard Brigade captured Xiangcheng, cutting off the connection between the 169th Brigade of the reorganized Twenty-sixth Division, and the rest of the right-line troops also successively attacked the enemy's defensive points such as Pingshan, Qingshan, and Fenghuangshan. The objective of the campaign to divide the enemy army was completed.
Offensive map of the first phase of the Battle of Lunan
The Left Route Army was the two strongest units of the East China Field Army, the best at fighting hard battles and field battles, and at the beginning of the attack, the 1st Column surrounded a regiment stationed in Bian Zhuang, the main force went straight to the headquarters of the Twenty-sixth Division and the Rapid Column in Majiazhuang, and the 1st Division detoured south to occupy Lanling, Hongshan, and other places to cut off the connection between the Twenty-sixth Division and the Thirty-third Army, and joined the Right Road troops from the south of Sima Zhai; after a night of fighting, the Right Route Army destroyed most of the 44th Brigade of the Enemy Twenty-sixth Division stationed in Taizitang, and formed a situation of dividing and encircling the enemy's reorganized Twenty-sixth Division with the Left Route Army.
Although the division and encirclement were completed, we still had misgivings about fighting the enemy's first rapid column, and in the face of the enemy's Iron King VIII, many soldiers still saw it for the first time and did not know how to start at all; only Comrade Chen Yi of the entire East China Field Army was familiar with the structure of tanks, and at the pre-war meeting Chen Yi once talked about the weakness of tanks, Su Yu understood that theory and practice were not the same thing at all, it was difficult for the units to inflict a devastating blow on the first column without actual combat, and once the enemy tanks opened the gap, the enemy was likely to break through the encirclement of our army. Therefore, Su Yu ordered the first rapid column to be surrounded first without fighting, and the hard bones were left to be gnawed last.
Tanks captured by the East China Field Army
On January 4, the East China Field Army was preparing to launch a final annihilation battle, at this time it suddenly rained and snowed, Su Yu immediately ordered the attack plan unchanged, the first rapid column gathered in Majiazhuang, Chenjiaqiao and other places saw that there was no hope of rescue, and began to break out to the west, tanks, cars, artillery mixed with troops out of the battlefield, the scene gradually lost control; as long as people with a little common sense of war know how terrible it is to break away from the position surrounded by the other side's heavy troops in broad daylight, but at this time the enemy army can not take care of it at all, and flees in the direction of Zaozhuang with tanks As a result, the enemy army did not run far and fell into the mud swamp of the leaky lake with the car, and it was difficult to move; then the East China Field Army launched a charge against the enemy, and the two armies braved the rain and engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the mire.
In the course of the battle, enemy tanks continued to open fire on our army, and PLA fighters used explosive packs and grenades to bomb tanks, and even smashed tank antennas and observation openings with shovels and pickaxes. Groups of prisoners covered in mud were escorted ashore, tanks, cars, and cannons were all over the slopes, and the soldiers were excited to clean up the battlefield, not caring about their wet cotton clothes and frostbitten hands, while cleaning and telling the story of the tanks.
In the process of gathering and reorganizing the Twenty-sixth Division and the Rapid Column, the other two enemy troops were not without rescue, the enemy Thirty-third Army attacked Hengshan, the Fifty-first Division of Zaozhuang advanced to Simazhai and Taipingzhuang, and both enemy troops were beaten back by the Shandong Field Army. In this battle, the East China Field Army annihilated more than 30,000 enemy troops and captured a large amount of weapons and equipment, and Ma Liwu sighed:
This was also one of the most painful losses in internal and external warfare since the formation of the army
。 Ma Liwu attributed the reason for the defeat to the fact that the East China Field Army had a sound battle plan, and the Nationalist army went deep alone and did not retreat for a long time, which was a big taboo for soldiers.
The encirclement and annihilation of the Twenty-sixth Division and the First Rapid Column was the first stage of the Lunan Campaign; after that, although the East China Field Army expanded its battle results and captured Zaozhuang and completely annihilated the enemy's reorganized Fifty-first Division, the first stage was of even greater significance in terms of the impact of the campaign alone, and the scale of the campaign also hit a new high since the Liberation War.