"Blow up Lang Shan! Not a single house is allowed to stay! ”
preface
The Battle of Lang Son was a key battle between China and Vietnam that determined the overall success or failure of the battle, because the terrain in the north of Lang Son is mountainous and forested, while the southern part is a vast plain, Lang Son is not only an important transportation transit point in northern Vietnam, but also a natural barrier in the capital Hanoi, which has a very strategic position.
If we can take Lang Son Son , then our army will be in full swing, and the capital Hanoi will be in the pocket.
1. The warring parties
The strategic plan of our army before the start of the war was to capture Lang Son and cause great coercion on Hanoi. After more than ten days of fierce fighting, our army's eastern front has been victorious all the way, and the important towns in northern Vietnam have been conquered one by one by our eastern route army, while on the western front, our army has pushed to Sabah and is preparing to launch an attack on the 316A division, the ace unit of the Vietnamese army.
The 55th Army on the Eastern Front will approach Lang Son , the last line of defense for such a military powerhouse, the capital Hanoi.
The Vietnamese army will also deploy heavy troops to defend, and an unprecedented fierce battle on Lang Son will begin.
The Vietnamese sent the Third Division of the People's Army, which was the ace division of the Vietnamese army, good at attacking, able to fight close combat and night combat, and was one of the main divisions engaged with the United States in the Vietnam War. It has three infantry regiments under its command of 2, 12 and 141 and the 68th artillery regiment, of which the 12th regiment is known as the "heroic regiment" and the 141st regiment is known as the "hero of the people's armed forces", all of which are the best in the Vietnamese army.
The division boasted of its strong horses and amazing combat effectiveness, and once clamored that it would "hit the friendship pass for breakfast and hit Nanning for the Spring Festival."
And our army that mainly attacked Langshan was the 55th Army of the Guangzhou Military Region and the 162nd Division of the 54th Army, the predecessor of the 55th Army was the Chen Mingren Corps of the Changsha Uprising, and the backbone of the 55th Army was the rebel troops, so before the founding of the People's Republic of China, it mainly participated in the suppression of bandits, so it was not conspicuous in the sequence of our army, and this war against Vietnam became famous in World War I.
Second, the prelude to the great war, clear the periphery
The frontal attack on Lang Son had only one road to pass, and the 3rd Division of the Vietnamese Army placed its main forces on the hilltop heights on both sides of the road, overlooking the road, forming a dense network of crossfire. Therefore, in order for large-scale mechanized troops to pass, the periphery must first be cleared.
On February 27, 1979, the 55th Army divided into three routes, under the cover of powerful artillery fire, two regiments of the 163rd Division stormed Kouma Mountain and 417 Heights, while the 419th Regiment of the 164th Division took Ba Shan.
At that time, it was raining heavily, our attacking troops were moving in the rain, and the Vietnamese army deployed heavy weapons at various important strongholds to defend it, and launched a condescending attack on our army, forming a dense fire crossing network.
Among them, the battle to conquer Koma Mountain was particularly arduous, because our army attacked in the rain, so the line of sight was affected by the rain and fog, and often entered the Vietnamese army's firepower crossing network, and the casualties of the troops were relatively serious.
In the case of a setback in the offensive, our army adjusted its thinking.
The strategy of using tanks as advance attacks and cooperating with Butan was successful at the beginning, but soon the Vietnamese army also found an effective way to counterattack, our tank units were intensively attacked by enemy fire, the tanks were destroyed quickly, and our offensive was once again thwarted.
After that, our army quickly changed its attack strategy again, with artillery units fighting with infantry, and infantry attacked with artillery landing points.
Immediately follow-up artillery followed, again firing at other enemy strongholds. In this way, our army pulled out the nails point by point, and the fire points of the Vietnamese army were removed one by one.
After two days and one night of bloody fighting, the main peaks of Kouma Mountain and the 417 Heights and other major enemy strongholds in Langshan were occupied by our troops. Our army launched attacks on the city of Lang Son from three directions: north, west and east. The 3rd Division of the Vietnamese Army was also ready to break the net. Because once Lang Son is lost, the capital Hanoi will have no danger.
3. Ten thousand shells bombarded Langshan
On March 1, 1979, our army's general offensive began, because the offensive of the Eastern Front troops for more than 20 days was twists and turns, which was not very smooth, and General Xu Shiyou, who had been holding a fire, angrily ordered: "Blow up Langshan!" Not a single house is allowed to stay! ”
At 9 a.m., 300 heavy guns bombarded Langshan, and tens of thousands of rounds fell within 30 minutes, and the city of Langson was blown into a sea of fire, after which the 55th Army attacked with the 163rd Division as the main attack, and its 489th Regiment carried out a major assault along the railway to the Langsan Qingqihe Bridge.
The 488th Regiment, together with the 489th Regiment, annihilated the enemy in the area east of the railway and north of Lang San. The 164th and 165th Divisions attacked Lang Son from the left and right flanks. The 3rd Division of the Vietnamese Army resisted desperately, relying on defensive positions to desperately block the attack, and the intensity of the battle was unprecedented. The battle became the fiercest battle in the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam.
During the battle, our army mainly launched attacks along the railway, while the Vietnamese army relied on various commanding heights along the railway to block the path of our army's attack with a dense fire network.
Although our army had heavy artillery support, the Vietnamese firepower was too dense and could support each other, so our army was slow and suffered heavy casualties.
In the early morning of March 2, our army changed its tactics, brought tanks and artillery closer to the front line, and even used heavy artillery to directly target the fire points of the Vietnamese army, allowing the Vietnamese fortification stronghold to be strong, it could not withstand such a fire blow, and the attacking forces were divided into multiple groups under the heavy fire.
At the same time, it launched attacks on the big and small stone mountains and the 279 heights, gradually occupying the enemy's surface positions.
At 11 a.m., the enemy's strongholds were occupied by our troops one after another, and at the same time, another attacking force of the 55th Army jumped along the railway, and after several melee battles, penetrated straight into the Qiqi River Bridge, blocking the retreat of the Vietnamese army in the area north of the bridge. At noon, all three divisions of the 55th Army broke into the city of Lang Son , and the remnants of the Vietnamese army stubbornly blocked the attack based on buildings and roadblocks.
Our army simply pushed the heavy artillery into the street, reached the level fire, and flew the houses bombed by the remnants of the enemy.
The battle lasted until the evening of March 2, when the entire city of Lang Son was fully occupied by our troops, and after occupying Lang Son , our army achieved its intended strategic purpose and was planning to withdraw. At this time, the Vietnamese side, which did not have rotten meat, claimed to the whole world that our army had not occupied Lang Son . It turned out that our army occupied the new urban area of Langshan, and the south bank of the Qiqiang River was the old urban area, and now our army was completely enraged.
Since you are still not convinced, then let's continue to fight, so, General Xu Shiyou waved his hand, hit the Qiqiang River, and beat me fiercely. Therefore, on March 4, all units of the 55th Army and the 43rd Army of our army opened the way with artillery, took advantage of the fog, and used assault boats, rubber boats and other tools to cross the Qiqiang River by divide the road, and after successfully crossing the river, stormed the three heights defended by the remnants of the 3rd Division of the Vietnamese Army, including the 428th and 391st and the Temple of Literature.
At this time, the 3rd Division of the Vietnamese Army was already a bird of fright, suffering heavy casualties and chaos under the powerful offensive of our army, and then the whole army was destroyed. At this point, old towns such as Lang Son were also taken by our army. In order to further deter the Vietnamese, our army advanced another 5 kilometers south of the Chi Choi River to Hanoi. Frightened, the Vietnamese issued a nationwide mobilization order, and the whole people were soldiers, and urgently transferred the troops who invaded Cambodia back to the country for emergency relief.
At this point, the fiercest battle between China and Vietnam ended.
China has always been a peace-loving country, and all wars are waged because of invasion or provocation by foreign enemies. As Chairman Mao said: "If anyone does not offend me, I will not offend, but if anyone offends me, I will offend!" ”
epilogue
We have all the wine and shotguns ready, depending on which one you choose. In the early days of the Korean War, the United States also ignored the mainland's warnings and openly crossed the 38th parallel, and it was only when the fist of the volunteers beat him that he realized the power of China.
Therefore, during the U.S.-Vietnam War, in the face of China's warning not to cross the border, the United States obediently did not dare to stretch its foot over.
Vietnam did not learn from the lessons of the Americans, continued to provoke frequently, and ended up in such a situation, it is clear that they are still too naïve to learn from their predecessors.