In April 1949, during the battle of crossing the river, the General Front Committee decided to form three groups, three groups for the east and middle, and two for the west group. The two major groups will attack Nanjing together.
On April 20, the Kuomintang government refused to sign a domestic peace agreement, and the battle to cross the river began as scheduled.
On the morning of the 21st, the Sanyezhong Group first broke through between Guichi and Wuhu, cutting off the Yangtze River defense line of the Jiang army. Then the Eastern and Western groups set out. At dusk, the Erye Corps crossed more than twice on the front of the pond about 200 huali wide in Anqing. The crossing of the river by Nino was carried out under the cover of powerful artillery fire. At 20 o'clock that night, Nino crossed 16 regiments and controlled the landing field more than 200 li wide and 10 to 20 li deep. By the 23rd, all of Niye's main forces had crossed the Yangtze River.
With its wooden sailing ship, the PLA broke through Chiang Kai-shek's three-dimensional defense line of land, sea and air, which undoubtedly surprised Chiang Kai-shek and others. Liu Bocheng had predicted that as long as the crossing of the river was successful, the enemy army might be completely chaotic. As expected, the Jiangsu defense enemy forces retreated like a tide to the entire line of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Zhejiang. The Nanjing government fled to Guangzhou, and Nanjing's radio stations suddenly stopped broadcasting. All this shows that they are completely unprepared for this situation. Liu Bocheng was quick to see his hand and immediately suggested to the General Front Committee that he change his original plan, and that instead of crossing the movement with Sanye to the east, go to the Nanjing area, but go on an expedition to the southeast, in addition to completing the task of cutting off the Zhejiang-Gan Road, go straight out of Jiangxi and Fujian to carry out a larger roundabout encirclement.
This immediately obtained the consent of the General Front Committee, and the scope of the scheduled Battle of Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou was greatly expanded.
In accordance with this new decision, Liu Bocheng immediately commanded his troops to move into a large-depth pursuit operation. Originally, before crossing the river, the Erye headquarters repeatedly instructed the troops to quickly penetrate deep into the enemy's depth after crossing the river, rush in front of the enemy, cut off the enemy's retreat, surround it first, and then turn back to annihilate. However, Liu Bocheng changed his original plan, so some troops could not adapt to this new situation of rapid decline for a while, and did not dare to dispatch in time or drive straight in. Liu Bocheng immediately reiterated the policy of striking, rushing, and pursuing, saying: "The enemy has become a collapse, and it is impossible to put up effective resistance until a new defensive line is formed. ”
Therefore, the armies of Erye immediately carried out parallel pursuit, combining tracking pursuit and surpassing pursuit, so that the detachment and encirclement could be used freely. In this way, the speed of pursuit was greatly accelerated and the results of the pursuit of the entire unit were greatly expanded.
The battle to cross the river began on April 21 and ended on June 1. Nino annihilated more than 106,000 enemies in this battle. In 40 days, 86 cities including Anqing, Quzhou, Jinhua and Shangrao and vast areas in southern Anhui, western Zhejiang, northern Fujian and central Jiangsu were liberated. Chen Geng later said: "Commander Liu's such a change has allowed us to expand our results by more than three times and capture more than ten times the area originally envisaged!" ”
The book "Ten Marshals of the People's Liberation Army of the Chinese People's Republic of China: A little-known history of the ten commanders of the People's Liberation Army", published by the CCP History Publishing House, chronicles the entire process of Liu Bocheng's change of battle plan in the battle of crossing the river. The book is the company's annual bestseller and once ranked first on China's military book hot list.