"When I went to the battlefield, I wasn't ready to come back alive, killing one is enough, killing two to earn one."
"Get on the bayonet and get ready to charge!"
Surely you have heard of "fighting bayonets", "white-knuckle combat", but have you heard of "fighting bayonets at sea"? It is to give full play to the superiority of our navy ships, strike at close range, concentrate fire and attack, and stab the steel knife into the enemy's chest, so that they can know what is the spirit of the Chinese navy fighters who regard death as home.
At 5 o'clock on August 5, 1965, the flagship of the 2nd Fleet of the Kuomintang Navy, the "Jianmen", led the "Zhangjiang" to sail from Zuoying Port in Taiwan, in an attempt to transport bandits to the Sujianjiao and Guleiguan areas in southern Fujian. After discovering the enemy's situation, the border radar station of the Chinese People's Navy immediately reported it to the South China Sea Fleet, which immediately put the Shantou Marine Police District into first-class combat readiness.
At that time, half of the warships in the Shantou Marine Police District were in a state of repair and maintenance, and after receiving the combat order, all the commanders and fighters rushed to repair and maintain the warboats, and each of the boats quickly adjusted their technical backbone and completed the pre-battle preparations within two hours. A total of four high-speed frigates from the 41st Frigate Brigade and six torpedo boats from the 11th Speedboat Brigade were dispatched to form a maritime assault formation and gallop to the vicinity of Nanao Island to rendezvous.
In the combat briefing received by the soldiers, they only mentioned that the Kuomintang had two warships, one large and one small, and that the higher authorities ordered our naval formation to carry forward the fighting spirit of "not fearing hardship and not fearing death" to inflict heavy losses on the enemy and defeat the enemy's arrogance.
However, when the fighters really saw the enemy ships with their own eyes, the huge volume gap between the ships of the two sides gave the fighters a great sense of psychological oppression. Among them, the "Jianmen" was originally a US-made minesweeper with a full load displacement of 1,250 tons and equipped with 10 guns of caliber of 76.2 mm or less; and the "Zhangjiang" was a small US-made submarine hunting ship with a full load displacement of 450 tons and equipped with 10 guns of caliber of less than 76.2 mm. And our frigates have a maximum displacement of only more than 100 tons, the maximum caliber of naval defense guns is 37 mm, and torpedo boats are even smaller, only more than 20 tons, and each boat carries only 2 torpedoes.
Although there is a huge disparity between our and the enemy's warships in terms of tonnage and weaponry, our officers and men are sworn to defend their homeland to the death, giving full play to the advantages of our warships in small size, high speed, large numbers, and fast rate of fire.
At 1:42 a.m. on 6 August, the frigate's radar was the first to spot the enemy ship "Zhangjiang," and the fleet commander Kong Zhaonian, then deputy commander of the Shantou Marine Police District, ordered all ships to carry out light control and covertly engage the enemy. Soon, the enemy ships discovered our fleet, so the guns of various calibers on the ships began to bombard fiercely, and our high-speed frigate formations braved the enemy artillery fire and bravely rushed to the enemy ships to attack.
From 2000 meters, 1500 meters, 1000 meters..... It was not until they were 500 meters away from the enemy that Commander Kong Zhaonian gave an order that four high-speed frigates carried out a concentrated fire assault, hitting from 500 meters to 100 meters, and the "Zhangjiang" was hit one after another and then caught fire. At a distance of 30 meters, each ship used a direct aiming method to attack the vital parts below the waterline, and the "Zhangjiang" immediately caught fire and exploded and sank to the bottom of the sea.
After the Zhangjiang was sunk, the enemy ship "Jianmen" was still hovering in the nearby waters, and in order to expand the results of the battle, the South China Sea Fleet immediately ordered five second-echelon torpedo boats No. 119, 120, 121, 122, and 136 to go into battle (one of the torpedo boats returned home due to mechanical failure), and at the same time ordered three high-speed frigates on the battlefield (of which 611 boats were seriously injured and withdrew from the battle) and No. 161 gunboats (command ships) to form a formation and immediately pursue and destroy the "Jianmen." When the convoy pursued the "Jianmen" to a distance of 6 nautical miles, all the guns on the "Jianmen" began to fire fiercely at the convoy, and the commanders and fighters of our convoy were fearless and calmly and witty in carrying out counter-artillery maneuvers.
Due to the high speed of the torpedo boat, the hull of the boat vibrated so badly that it was difficult to copy and send telegrams, and Shi Suocai, who was the telegraph officer of the 119th boat at that time, used the receiver insulator that was cracked, and the signal came and went. So, he pulled the machine with his left hand, and copied and sent the telegram with his right hand according to the law of vibration, and even then he sent and received more than 50 telegrams without the slightest error.
In order to improve the torpedo hit rate, the officers and men braved artillery fire and did not fire the torpedo until it was 2.5 chains away from the enemy ship (1 chain is equivalent to 185.2 meters), and only 12 minutes after engaging the enemy, with three loud thunder-like sounds, the "Jianmen" sank in the southeast direction of Dongshan Island.
In the "86" naval battle, two enemy ships were sunk, and at the cost of 4 killed and 28 wounded, our side killed more than 170 enemies and captured 33 people under Wang Yunshan, captain of the "Jianmen," thus creating a brilliant record of "defeating the big with the small and defeating the strong with the weak," and won the victory of the People's Navy in the largest naval annihilation battle since the founding of New China. For his outstanding military achievements, he was awarded the honorary titles of Project 611 frigate "Sea Hero Boat" and No. 119 torpedo boat "Hero Speedboat".
It has to be said that the "bayonet fight at sea" has displayed the momentum of our army, demonstrated the heroic and fearless spirit of the officers and men of our navy, and also revealed the embarrassing situation of our navy in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China.