Author: Cowherds in Su District
In May 1948, when Su Yu was preparing to attack Chiang Kai-shek's 5th Army, a large number of enemy troops were reinforced, and the plain area was not dangerous to defend. The east was not bright and the west was bright, and the 5th Army was not easy to fight, but another opportunity appeared: the 3rd and 8th columns of Huaye, which followed Qiu Qingquan to the north, had entered the areas of Tongxu and Qixian in Henan, and there was only one day's trip from Kaifeng.
Su Yu
He immediately decided to take the initiative of first opening the seal and then annihilating the enemy to aid the enemy, and shift the battlefield from southwest Lu, where Chiang Kai-shek's heavy troops were gathered, to eastern Henan. Su Yu knew that Kaifeng was the capital of Henan Province and an important town in the Central Plains, and if it was conquered, it would certainly have a huge impact on the Central Plains and the whole country, and Jiang Shi would never ignore Kaifeng, and was bound to urgently dispatch reinforcements. And no matter which way the reinforcements came, Hua Ye could find opportunities to annihilate the enemy in the movement.
On June 16, he resolutely issued a new operational order, specifically deployed: First, the 3rd column and 8th column were used as siege groups, commanded by Chen Shiyu and Tang Liang, to first take kaifeng chengguan by means of rushing attack, and then rely on chengguan to quickly attack the city. Second, in order to ensure the victory of the siege operation, with nearly three times the strength of the siege group, the Huaye Command, that is, Su Yu, took over the command and took on the task of blocking and containing. Among them: Qin Jiwei Nakano, who was newly under the command of HuaYe, inserted 9 columns between Zhengzhou and Kaifeng to block the enemy that Zhengzhou might come to the aid of. Wang Bingzhang's Nakano 11th Column and the Jiluyu Military Region's 1st Independent Brigade were located in the Juye area, holding Qiu Qingquan's troops from north to south from the flank to the rear. Ye Fei's 1st Column, Tao Yong's 4th Column, and Wang Bicheng's 6th Column, southwest of Lu, quickly advanced into the areas of Dingtao, Cao County, Minquan, and Kaocheng, and used their movement defenses to block Qiu Qingquan's westward aid to Kaifeng.
Su Yu also mobilized troops from other places to participate in the battle, ordering a unit of troops from the Jiluyu Military Region and the Yuwan Soviet Military Region to capture Dongming and Lanfeng (present-day Lankao County), and to break the railway from Lanfeng to Pheasant Gang section of the Longhai Road.
After he changed the operational objectives, Qiu Qingquan's 5th Army changed from annihilating objects to focusing on reinforcements. In order to seize the rare fighter, Su Yu reported to the chairman on the one hand, and ordered the troops to execute on the other hand. The chairman admired Su Yu's wit and approved his temporary disposal plan the next day, stressing that when the situation was tense, it was necessary to "handle it independently and not ask for instructions."
Together with the Kaifeng War, several of Chiang Kai-shek's other mobile corps in the Central Plains were bound to be urgently reinforced, and the Huaye reinforcements directly commanded by Su Yu could only deal with Qiu Qingquan's corps, and the other roads could only rely on friendly and neighboring troops. According to the concept of the 3rd Route Army of the Central Plains of Suyu "suddenly gathering and suddenly dividing" to fight a war of annihilation, the Central Plains Field Army in the southern part of the Central Plains, which was renamed by the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Field Army, must cooperate, and the previous chairman had an instruction that "all parties assist the Millet Corps in annihilating the Fifth Army", which clarified the command relationship.
Therefore, Liu, Deng, and Chen, commanders of Nakano who learned of Su Yu's battle plan, telegraphed Chairman and Su Yu that in order to cooperate with HuaYe's battle, they had decided to dispatch 5 columns to fully block the northern reinforcements of Hu Lian's corps, and asked Huaye's troops to "have no worries" about the south.
The problem of the south side is solved, and there is also the east side. The East China Field Army's troops remaining in the eastern interior of Shandong and Northern Jiangsu had two corps, which were ordered by Su Yu in March 1948 to be the 2nd Corps and the 4th Corps. The former was the former Shandong Corps, commanded by Xu Shiyou and Huaye Deputy Political Commissar Tan Zhenlin; the latter, the Northern Jiangsu Corps, commanded by Wei Guoqing and Chen Pixian.
Su Yu, acting commander and acting political commissar of the East China Field Army, took two measures: First, he ordered Xu Shiyou and Tan Zhenlin's command post to continue to expand their offensive in the Xu (Prefecture) and Ji (South) sections of the Jinpu Road, encircled Gunzhou, Shandong, and mobilized Huang Baitao's reorganized 25th Division or the reorganized 83rd Division to aid the north, so as not to be transferred by Jiang Shi to the eastern Henan battlefield for reinforcements; second, to order Wei Guoqing's command post to launch an offensive in the Xin'an Town to Haizhou section of the Longhai Road to contain Chiang's army.
Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I'll be able to pry the earth." Su Yu also moved his whole body, pointing at the elevated Ling banner, and the generals of the two battlefields in the Central Plains and East China tensed their nerves, and he himself became the command center and protagonist.
Su Yu changed his moves, and Jiang And his think tanks were still in the dark, still dispatching troops to Southwest Lu with 100,000 fires, constantly urging the generals under his command to advance.
A magnificent war drama began. In the early morning of June 17, Chen Shiyu, who was marching north, commanded the 3rd column and the 8th column to suddenly turn troops and swing their divisions under the city of Kaifeng. The Kaifeng garrison was Liu Maoen, the chairman of Henan, who had jurisdiction over the reorganized 66th Division and some local troops, and was actually commanded by Li Zhongxin, a Huangpu general of the Chiang Kai-shek clan and commander of the 66th Division from the Huangpu Sixth Period.
Liu Mao'en
Li Zhongxin led his troops to fight against Su Yu many times, attacked Hai'an during the Battle of Suzhong, rescued Zhang Lingfu during the Battle of Menglianggu, and saw that the old qualified Wang Tiehan was captured alive and The Huangpu Scholar Zhang Lingfu was killed, and he was safe and sound, and he rarely suffered losses after following Su Yu into the Central Plains Battlefield, and he could not help but be a little lucky.
He and Liu Mao'en always believed that Su Yu was attracting the main force of Chiang Kai-shek's army to the southwest of Lu for a decisive battle, believing that there was "no real battle" and that the walls of Kaifeng were tall and strong, so not only did they not store enough ammunition and grain, but even the city fortifications were not fully completed.
When Huaye's troops made a surprise attack, Li Zhongxin and his subordinates suddenly looked like earth and made a mess, and in desperation, they had no choice but to summon up their spirits, straighten out their troops and horses, and rush to the battle. Huaye 3rd column and 8th column are good at urban offensive battles, have conquered Tai'an, Xuchang and Luoyang, siege and blasting experience is experienced, Su Yu thought of their strengths when he opened the seal.
When the battle began, Su Yu urgently sent a column of Huaye special forces from his side to assist in the battle. The special column artillery opened the breakthrough with direct aiming and shooting, and suppressed the defenders and command structures in the city with indirect aiming, pushing the cannon hundreds of meters in front of the defenders' fortifications to shoot. The 3rd column and the 8th column are more like tigers, and Li Zhongxin only has a share of beatings.
In just 5 days and nights, Hua Ye took Kaifeng, and more than 30,000 defenders were completely annihilated, and with the capture of blocking reinforcements, Chiang Kai-shek's Zhongyuan men and horses lost more than 40,000 at once. Li Zhongxin once dodged the first day of the first year, did not dodge the fifteenth, and when he rushed over the wall to escape, he was shot and killed indiscriminately. Ignoring the respect of the provincial chairman, Liu Mao'en found duck blood to coat his whole body, disguised as an old professor and mixed with the evacuated crowd of ordinary people to escape in a thrilling way.
Captured Chiang Kai-shek
[Deeply cultivate the history of war, carry forward positive energy, soldiers say that all parties are welcome to submit articles, private messages will be restored]