Author: Tai Shi Xiaosheng
The wheels of history roll forward. The Kuomintang army suffered repeated setbacks in its attacks on the Liberated Areas, and eventually became the end of the crossbow.
Chairman Mao and his comrades-in-arms formed the smallest headquarters in the world in the humble farmhouse of Xibaipo Village and began to plan a full-line strategic attack on the Kuomintang.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="44" >, as soon as the cannon sounded, Chairman Mao excitedly said: "Good! I see how Hu Zongnan explained this time? ”</h1>
Strategic offensive, that is, the People's Liberation Army is in an offensive position on the whole, while the Kuomintang army is in a defensive position, taking the Kuomintang-ruled areas as the main battlefield for our army to annihilate the enemy, and directing the direction of the offensive directly to the heavy army group of the Kuomintang army and to its key and empty heartland. As a result, the Chinese People's Liberation Army shifted from strategic defense to strategic offense, opening the curtain on a full-front offensive.
In August 1947, the Battle of Shajiadian, which annihilated more than 6,000 people of the reorganized 36th Division, one of the three main forces of the Hu Zongnan Group, became a turning point for the Northwest Field Army to turn into a strategic offensive. When the Battle of Shajiadian was in progress, Chairman Mao was at Liangjiacha, which was only 20 miles from the battlefield. As soon as the cannon sounded, he said excitedly, "Good! I see how Hu Zongnan explained this time. ”
The Inner Line Corps of the East China Field Army, through the Jiaodong Defensive Campaign and the Battle of the Western Middle Section of Jiaoji Road, not only completed the task of clamping down on Fan Hanjie's corps, but also captured Zhoucun and Weixian, forcing the Kuomintang troops in Shandong to shrink into several isolated strongholds in Jinan, Chongzhou, Qingdao, and Linyi, thus opening up a good situation for the implementation of the strategic counteroffensive and offensive in Eastern China.
On the northern front, from September 1947 to March 1948, the Northeast Nationalist and Turkish Coalition Army launched a continuous autumn offensive and a winter offensive, annihilating more than 200,000 enemies, recovering 33 cities above the county level, compressing the Kuomintang army within a small area of Changchun, Shenyang, and Jinzhou, creating an extremely favorable situation for the next step of annihilating the Northeast Kuomintang army. As a result, the Shanxi Yanxishan department was reduced to Jinzhong, Taiyuan and its surrounding areas, and it was completely on the defensive.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="43" > second, small, medium and wide tactics, Chairman Mao said with great excitement: "Exhaust the city, let him get out of the egg."</h1>
In the early days of the Liberation War, because the enemy was extremely strong, the strength of the People's Liberation Army at that time could not protect the towns, especially the large towns. Therefore, Chairman Mao adopted a strategy of "giving way to the avenue and occupying the two compartments," ceding a large number of towns, especially the large towns, to the Kuomintang army, and launching a siege of the enemy based on the countryside. When the war was in its second year, Chairman Mao began to consider the question of conquering and occupying towns.
In the practice of war, Chairman Mao formed a whole set of strategies and tactics for the capture of towns and cities. The basic principle of its siege is: "If the enemy is still on the defensive, we can further expand our newly occupied areas, attack those cities and lines of communication where the enemy is weak, and occupy them for a long time or temporarily according to their circumstances", "first take small cities, medium cities and large villages, and then take large cities." ”
The main tactics of the siege are: to carry out the attack on the fort, to form a siege, to cut it fiercely, to forcibly encircle and annihilate, to mobilize the masses, and to besiege it for a long time.
We must adopt the method of combining ground attack with tunnel warfare in order to reduce casualties and ensure victory; if we use the ground attack method alone, the casualties will be very large, and it may not really guarantee victory; siege and reinforcement, that is, we should change the operational plan on the spot, from siege to city, change to mainly attack and reinforcement, and then attack the city after winning and aiding the enemy.
In 1947, after the Battle of Qingfengdian, the Shijiazhuang garrison was more isolated, and Chairman Mao made a timely deployment to attack Shimen (Shijiazhuang) and fight reinforcements. On October 25, 1947, the Field Army Front Committee held an enlarged meeting to study and formulate a battle plan. It was decided that "offensive tactics of position warfare should be the main method," and the principle of steady and steady progress should be adopted, and the tunnel operation should be used to approach the bunkers, and the combination of shelling and blasting would destroy the enemy fortifications; then, infantry would make a surprise attack and seize the various positions.
At dawn on November 6, the People's Liberation Army launched an attack on Shijiazhuang, occupying most of the outlying strongholds that day. On the 7th, the airfield was occupied and the enemy's air aid was cut off. On the 8th, under the cover of artillery fire, the siege troops quickly broke through the outer city ditch with the means of continuous blasting and continuous assault. At 16:00 on the 10th, the assault units blew up the inner city ditch under the cover of artillery fire and attacked the urban area. Then he adopted the tactics of breaking through walls and courtyards, boldly implementing small detours and small interspersed tactics, engaging in street battles with the enemy and repelling the enemy's counterattack many times. At 11 o'clock on the 12th, the enemy's core position was captured, and the battle ended.
On March 6, 1948, the Chen (Shiyu) Tang (Liang) Corps of the People's Liberation Army and the Chen Xie Clique followed the instructions of the Central Military Commission on seeking opportunities to fight in the area south of Zhangguan in Zhengzhou, marched into the area south of Lingfeng, Linru, and Yiyang, and proposed to the Central Military Commission to hold the Battle of Luoyang with two corps. On March 7, the Central Military Commission agreed to launch the Battle of Luoyang with the command of Chen Shiyu, Tang Liang, the 3rd and 8th Columns, the 4th and 9th Columns of the Chen Xie Clique, and the troops of the 5th Military Sub-district of the Taiyue Military Region, with a total of 28 regiments, to launch the Battle of Luoyang with the aim of capturing Luoyang and preparing to annihilate Sun Yuanliang's reinforcements.
Chairman Mao instructed, "In such an important city as Luoyang, Gu Zhutong will never fail to reinforce. You should attack Luoyang with one unit, attract the enemy to come to your aid, concentrate all your efforts on annihilating the enemy, and focus on fighting for reinforcement." On the 8th, the 8th and 9th Columns, which were tasked with blocking aid, attacked and occupied the Yan Division, Xin'an and Shichi respectively, and took control of the blocking positions. On the evening of the 9th, the 3rd and 4th columns, which were tasked with the siege, completed the siege of Luoyang with rushing means and broke through the four passes.
At dusk on the 11th, the enemy began to besiege the city walls before the enemy on the periphery had been completely eliminated. That night, the troops of the 3rd Column who took on the main offensive task formed a assault battalion with 3 assault companies, and with the support of 30 artillery pieces, adopted the tactics of continuous blasting and continuous assault, cleared 15 sub-defensive facilities and first broke through the east gate, and then the follow-up troops entered the city one after another, and developed to the south gate, the north gate, and the west gate, and launched a street battle with the enemy. On the 12th, the 4th Column broke through the South Gate and West Gate City Walls, and together with the 3rd Column, it developed in depth and annihilated most of the enemy. More than 4,000 remnants of the enemy withdrew to the core position of the Northwest Sports Field, and by the evening of the 14th, they were completely annihilated by us, and the division commander Qiu Xingxiang was taken prisoner.
When our main force was preparing to capture Luoyang, the Hu Lian corps that had entered Shangshui began to return to reinforcements. On March 14, the enemy advanced to the town of Fudian, met the main force of Sun Yuanliang's army, and rushed to the west, approaching Luoyang on the 17th. Because the two enemies were close together, and because the rain and snow were mixed, and the waters of the Yi River and Luo River rose, it was not conducive to another battle, so I took the initiative to withdraw from Luoyang.
In late March, the 1st and 11th columns of Liu Deng's field army moved in the direction of Taikang and Zhecheng to contain the enemy Zhang Yi's regiment; the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th columns and the 10th column of the East China Field Army took the opportunity to attack the towns of Shangcai, Runan, and Zhumadian, and transferred to the Yushan'e region. In order to cover the action of Liu Deng's field army, the main force of Chen Tang's corps attacked and occupied Xuchang, Xinzheng and other places in early April; Chen Xie's group re-attacked Luoyang and Yanshi and other towns on April 5, annihilating more than 4,600 people of the enemy's integrated 47th Army.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" > Third, to make a quick decision, Chairman Mao excitedly said: "Concentrate the maximum firepower and troops and eat him."</h1>
Zero knocking of brown candy means that when a weak army fights against a strong enemy, it must annihilate it little by little like eating brown candy, and after a certain period of time, "zero knock", "set small victories, many victories into big victories", and finally "eat" the enemy.
The application and development of Chairman Mao's operational principles of "fighting a war of annihilation," "protracted and quick decision," and "contempt and attention" in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea is a concrete embodiment of the idea of active defense and an effective method of warfare for an army with inferior equipment to defeat an enemy with modern superior equipment.
The essence of the zero-knock candy tactic is to fight a small war of annihilation. Chairman Mao said: "Successive battles have proved that our army has carried out a strategic or campaign detour, and it is difficult to achieve the task of annihilation by encircling several divisions of the US army, or an entire division, or even a whole regiment at a time. This is because the US military still has a strong will to fight and self-confidence. In order to defeat the enemy's will to fight and self-confidence, the zero-knock candy tactic requires a quick battle and a quick decision, with the main task of destroying the enemy in formation, and the attempt at each battle should not be too large, with an average of one army being able to completely annihilate one battalion of the US army in each campaign, and the South Korean army requiring each army to annihilate an average of one regiment of the enemy as the principle, accumulating small victories into big victories, and gradually transitioning to a large annihilation war.
Using the zero-knock-on-the-crunch tactic, "there must be a certain amount of time for the necessary preparations; while concentrating superior forces and firepower, attention must be paid to combining the tactical division and encirclement with the campaign division and encirclement; there must be two echelons or reserves to expand the results of the battle and take precautions."
During the Korean War, the Chinese and DPRK armies resolutely implemented Chairman Mao's instructions and extensively carried out a small annihilation campaign of "you annihilate 1 squad of the enemy and 1 platoon of the enemy" with the tactic of "you annihilate 1 squad of the enemy and I annihilate 1 platoon of the enemy."
Peng Dehuai recalled the in-depth implementation of Chairman Mao's zero-knock candy tactics in those years, and sighed: "The construction of a solid line of positions has already appeared in the summer of 1951. The chairman's instructions to the enemy forces were carried out with zero knock candy tactics begun. That is, to concentrate the maximum amount of firepower and troops, do a good job of concealing the offensive positions, and annihilate one enemy unit at a time, most of which is the enemy's one battalion. There have been many such annihilation battles, about four or five times a month, and there are not many concentrated battles, and they have really learned to attack the strongholds of the position. "
In the spring and summer of 1952, when we consolidated our positions and engaged in operations, our army attacked the enemy with active small-unit combat activities and sniper activities, gradually pushed the focus of operations to the enemy's positions, and inflicted heavy blows on the enemy.
Before the end of March, because our army's defensive system with tunnels as the backbone and support points had just been completed, and the positions were not yet consolidated, our army's combat activities were mainly to smash the enemy's small-scale attacks and small detachments' reconnaissance and harassment activities. At the same time, our army also organized small detachments below the company to actively attack the enemy by means of ambush, counter-ambush, sneak attack, and other tactical means, and carried out sniper activities (then called cold guns and cold artillery activities), killing and injuring a large number of the enemy's exposed living forces and destroying the enemy's weapons and equipment, so as to cover our army's city-building activities.
After the formation of a certain scale in our tunnel fortifications, the Volunteer Army Command issued instructions on March 19, asking each of our front-line armies to organize one or two small "prepared, planned, and controlled active attacks" with the goal of annihilating units below the enemy's company in late March and April, and clearly proposing to "take active measures to consolidate the existing positions, not sparing any favorable fighters, annihilating moving and exposed enemies, and crowding out the places with cameras" as our army's operational policy thereafter. The combat activities of our army's small units have developed further.
Since the beginning of April, our army has begun to carry out organized and planned combat activities to squeeze out the middle zone between the enemy and us and to capture the support points of the enemy's prominent companies and platoons. While I squeezed the middle ground and captured the enemy's forward support points, sniper activities were also widely carried out across the line and became increasingly active. At this time, every position of our army organized special marksmen and sharpshooters to rely on the positions to hunt down and annihilate the exposed targets of the enemy.
In addition, it also organized swimming artillery, carried out mobile shooting, attacked tanks and vehicles in the enemy's movement, and began to carry out planned and organized battles to destroy the enemy's artillery positions According to incomplete statistics, in the sniper operations from May to August, our army annihilated more than 13,600 enemy soldiers (excluding the results of the mobile artillery sniper attack), killed and injured a large number of enemy forces, and effectively restricted the enemy's daytime activities in its basic positions.
In the course of future operations, although the combat effectiveness of our army has been greatly enhanced and the number of enemies annihilated in each battle has increased, the basic method of warfare used is still zero-knock brown candy. Until the third offensive operation of the counterattack campaign in the summer of 1953, its basic tactics remained the same.
In this offensive operation (June 24 to July 27), the Chinese People's Volunteer Army and the Korean People's Army launched an attack on the enemy's all-linear limited targets, and the first-line armies selected 66 targets in the enemy platoons, company support points, and individual battalion defense hubs, with the support of artillery fire, concentrated their forces, relied on positions, and made sudden moves. There are 279 cars and more than 7,400 guns of various kinds.
About the author: Taishi Xiaosheng, a lover of history, is especially passionate about reading and writing party history and military history. I have always wanted to look back at history more clearly, look at history more rationally, and write history more fluently.
The majority of history buffs are welcome to exchange axes.