Ouyang Ge
On September 1, 1940, the "Declaration," the "Ta Kung Pao," and other major domestic newspapers published a notice about the execution of Ouyang Ge, a rear admiral of the Republic of China Navy and former chief of education of the Electric Thunder School, saying that during the battles in Jiangyin and Madang, he repeatedly committed acts of "not ordering the enemy in front of him and not advancing for the sake of reasons," and that he had forged documents amounting to more than 170,000 yuan, and after verification, he was given military law. As a result, he became the highest rank in the history of the Republic of China Navy to be executed by military law, and the only admiral to be shot during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. In less than a decade, Ouyang Ge went from a lost admiral to Chiang Kai-shek's naval darling, but he flourished and declined, and finally ended up in prison and executed.
News reports on Ouyang Ge's execution (Declaration, 1 September 1940).
At the time of his execution, Ouyang Ge had been dismissed from his post for two years and was released on bail. When he announced his immediate execution on August 20, 1940, he himself was unprepared and felt "very unexpected" when he learned that "I was executed by order of the Commission." At noon that day, Ouyang Ge was escorted to the execution ground. On the way, the piercing sound of air defense sirens began to fill the air over Chongqing. It is said that when the execution was about to be carried out by enemy aircraft, the executioners shot the prisoners in a hasty manner on the side of the road. From dismissal to bail to sudden execution, Ouyang Ge's death was a mystery and a suspicious case in the history of the Republic of China Navy.
The news of Ouyang Ge's execution came out, causing an uproar in the military and political circles. In addition to his former status as a senior admiral in the Navy, he was also a veteran figure in the Kuomintang. Ouyang Ge, a native of Yihuang, Jiangxi, was the son of the famous Buddhist scholar Ouyang Jingwu. After graduating from Yantai Naval School in 1916, he followed Sun Yat-sen south during the French Protector War. In 1922, when he was the captain of the "Yuzhang", he escorted the Yongfeng ship that Sun Yat-sen was on and became acquainted with Chiang Kai-shek. After that, he served as vice president of Whampoa Maritime School. In the 1926 "Zhongshan Ship Incident", he participated in the arrest and interrogation of Li Zhilong, and was considered one of the main masters, and was therefore detained. After the April 12 coup, he was released and immediately sent to Europe to study military affairs. After returning to China at the end of 1931, he was accepted by Chiang Kai-shek as a concubine and was entrusted with the important task of establishing a "revolutionary new navy", the Electric Mine School.
After the emergence of the Long Lightning School, Ouyang Ge and He Yingqin, Xiao Zheng, Chen Lifu, Chen Guofu, and Wu Tiecheng gradually established good relations; and Gui Yongqing was still a fellow villager in Jiangxi, and they had cooperation when the Lightning School was founded, and they had a deep friendship with each other. In November 1935, the Fifth National Congress of the Kuomintang was held, and after many activities, Ouyang Ge was elected as the fifth alternate member of the Central Supervision Commission. As a result, after being dismissed from his post in 1938 for the fall of Madang Fortress, many people in the party, government, and military circles interceded for him. Chen Guofu, Chen Lifu, Wu Tiecheng, Yu Hanmou, and Li Zongren jointly called Chiang Kai-shek to transfer the case after learning of the case. On July 16, 1938, Chen Guofu telephoned Chiang Kai-shek, saying that Ouyang Ge "may have been at fault, has been engaged in the navy all his life, has expertise, pleaded for early release, and tried to make meritorious contributions to the crime, so as to establish his naval aspirations and continue to serve the country."
Allegations of corruption are also controversial. When investigating the military projects handled by Ouyang Ge, the Ministry of Military Affairs held that "there are no cases to be documented in all projects" and even suggested that "they be returned for correction or temporarily stored for investigation." After the quartermaster department investigated the accounts of the school that collected nuclear power mines, although it said that Ouyang Ge "did not know the facts of the money handled", it could not produce conclusive evidence of his corruption. Chen Lifu said of the case in his later years that he insisted that "his fault is that he is proud of his talents, and corruption does not seem to be like it." Chen Guofu also said that he was "usually full of vigor and easy to be jealous of". Afterwards, some public opinion believed that "Ouyang Ge regarded himself too highly, causing him to offend many of the old-school commanders", so that he was framed and killed by other naval factions. The so-called "old-school commanders" refer to the "Central Navy" headed by the Fujian clan.
China's modern navy began at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and until the eve of the Northern Expedition, there were three main factions: the Central Navy, which was subordinate to the Beiyang government with the Fujian people as the mainstay, the Northeast Navy under Feng Zhang (later the Qingdao Department), and the Guangdong Navy (i.e., the Huangpu Department) under the control of the Guangdong Government. After the Northern Expedition, the Min Navy (i.e., the Central Navy) switched to supporting the National Revolutionary Army, thus maintaining the position of the Central Navy. It was not until September 1929, when the Central Navy assisted in the conquest of the Gui clan, that the Admiralty was established, with the leader of the Min clan, Yang Shuzhuang, as the minister, and Chen Shaokuan as the vice minister (later succeeded). After that, the Min clan basically controlled the Admiralty. By the eve of the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there were 2,341 officers in the Admiralty and 1,871 in Fujian, accounting for about 80 percent.
Chen Shaokuan, then Secretary of the Navy
In contrast, Chiang Kai-shek himself did not trust the Fujian Navy, and even once advocated the abolition of the General Headquarters of the Navy and the transformation of it into a naval bureau under the Ministry of Military Affairs. Although he once made a bold statement that "we expect that in ten years, there will be a navy of 600,000 tons, which will become a first-class naval country in the world", whether it is Chen Shaokuan's request for ship purchase and shipbuilding, or the need for the daily operation of the Admiralty, they all take a perfunctory attitude. His wishful thinking was to build his own water force outside the various factions of the Navy. On March 27, 1933, the Electric Thunder School was established in Zhenjiang Ganlu Temple, with Ouyang Ge as the principal. The school was the "Concubine Navy" established by Chiang Kai-shek.
At the beginning of its establishment, the school belonged to the Ministry of Military Affairs, and it was declared that the school was not a navy, but an army lightning school for pure water attack and defense. Although it is called an army unit, all the systems of the school are naval. The so-called "electric mine" refers to the electrical release of torpedoes and mines, such work is generally performed by smaller torpedo boats and mine-laying ships, the main goal of the school is to cultivate the strength of small surface ships. Obviously, the Lightning School is not only a military school, but also a water combat unit. Since its creation, the General Staff Headquarters has assigned the Lightning Brigade to its name. In the following years, a number of new and old ships were successively received from various places, such as "Tongxin", "Tongde", "Cedian" and so on. At the same time, it also spent a lot of money to order advanced torpedo boats, speedboat carriers and mine-laying ships from Britain and Germany, and purchased mines and other weapons from Italy. While introducing foreign equipment, Chiang Kai-shek supported Ouyang Ge in hiring German and Italian instructors and inviting foreign consultants to act as engineering and technical personnel of the school.
In May 1936, the Electric Mine School was moved to Huangtian Port in Jiangyin and officially named the "Electric Mine School of the Ministry of Military Affairs", with Chiang Kai-shek personally serving as the principal and Ouyang Ge as the chief of education in charge of practical work. With the support of Chiang Kai-shek, the school further expanded its establishment, "all kinds of new equipment, successively realized, and the number of personnel and equipment increased gradually." In addition to the military academy departments, there are also student brigades, student corps, speedboat brigades, lightning brigades, factories, etc., with a total of more than 7,000 officers and men. In addition to the large number of personnel, the Lightning School also had the largest and most advanced speedboat unit in the country at that time, consisting of four squadrons, with fifteen Imperial and German fish speedboats, and about twenty other supporting ships. At that time, public opinion commented that "the school is large in scale and well-funded, second only to the Air Force." By the eve of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Electric Mine School under Ouyang Ge had become a "small navy" on the Yangtze River, and its intention to override other naval factions was clearly revealed.
Seeing that the Lightning School was rapidly expanding, the Fujian Navy headed by Chen Shaokuan naturally became more and more disgusted with Ouyang Ge and did its best to suppress it, and the conflict between the two sides began to become public. In the summer of 1936, the Ministry of Military Affairs sent Ouyang Ge's resume to the Admiralty in the hope of awarding him the rank of vice admiral. However, the Admiralty replied that Ouyang Ge's qualifications were only enough for a major. In November of the same year, 30 students of the fourth engine class of the Fuzhou Naval Academy were expelled by Chen Shaokuan for violating school rules. However, Ouyang Ge recruited twelve of them into the Lightning School, and then sent them all to study in Germany. A month later, the "Xi'an Incident" occurred, and Ouyang Ge, who was in Nanjing at the time, rushed back to the Lightning School overnight, ordered the arsenal to be opened, and distributed guns and equipment to students and cadets for emergency alert, fearing that Chen Shaokuan would take the opportunity to eliminate the Lightning School at this time. It was not until Chiang Kai-shek safely returned to Nanjing that Ouyang Ge announced the cancellation of the state of war readiness.
In order to prevent the Japanese army from invading the Yangtze River along the waterway, the Central Military Commission decided to implement the established shipwreck operation to block the Jiangyin waterway. On August 11, Chen Shaokuan personally led the fleet to carry out shipwreck operations, sinking a total of eight warships and twenty merchant ships. In this large-scale shipwreck operation, the Admiralty did not know the specific location of the Ouyangge shipwreck line, let alone coordinate and communicate, which directly caused difficulties in the future attack of torpedo boats. On August 15, two torpedo boats of the Lightning School, "Shi Kefa 102" and "Wen Tianxiang 171", were ordered to attack the flagship of the Japanese fleet "Izumo" moored on the Huangpu River. However, due to the obstruction of the waterway by the river yin and the torpedo boat attack channel, the "Wen 171" boat was lost and stranded on the way. On the 16th, only one arrived at the battle position. The next day, although some media said that "the Izumo ship was seriously injured, and rumors from all sides have sunk." But the torpedoes did not hit the target, and finally only hit the embankment by the river. On August 20, He Yingqin secretly sent a telegram to Ouyang Ge: "Although it was unsuccessful, it has reduced the arrogance of the enemy ships. I hope to continue to work hard... To the fullest. ”
Torpedoes used by electric mine schools
After that, the Central Navy was repeatedly hit hard by the Japanese army, and the capital ships such as "Ninghai", "Pinghai" and "Jiankang" were all sunk in air raids. Witnessing the tragic situation of the main fleet, Ouyang Ge showed a state of schadenfreude, and once said to Safuchu: "Unexpectedly, Chen Mou's navy even has today. He even reported to Chiang Kai-shek that the Fujian general Chen Jiliang had escaped from the battle. Chiang Kai-shek was furious at this and immediately ordered Chen Shaokuan to "be shot on the spot." Chen Shaokuan was greatly annoyed by this, and only after personally explaining this misunderstanding did he dispel this misunderstanding. In contrast, the strength of the speedboat brigade of the Lightning School has been preserved, and the air raid stone caves hidden in Huangtian Port are rarely seen on the river.
During this period, Ouyang Ge mainly followed the instructions of the Central Military Commission and laid mines on the Jiangyin front to deter the Japanese ships. The mines laid by the Lightning School were imported from England and Germany, and the number was limited, but the Admiralty was reluctant to allocate other mines for support. As a result, Ouyang Ge confronted each other, did not cooperate with the Admiralty, and even refused to announce the specific location of the Mine Mine at the Lightning School, which made the entire Admiralty angry. As a result, Chen Shaokuan explained this as the whereabouts of the mine funds were unknown, so there were no mines to be deployed, so Ouyang Ge was reluctant to report on the mine laying situation. The Navy even submitted this almost rumor-like report to the Military Commission for punishment, which became the initial trigger for Ouyang Ge's imprisonment for corruption. Of course, Ouyang Ge was also worried that he had not won a battle record, or was falsely accused, and once instructed the speedboat brigade to send two torpedo boats every night to cruise in search of fighters, and even wrote in the order: "One or two enemy ships must be sunk, otherwise it will be reprimanded by public opinion." However, until the fall of Nanjing, the Lightning School still did not achieve any results.
In late December, Ouyang Ge led the troops of the Lightning School to withdraw to the first line of Hukou and Jiujiang. During the Defence of Madang, the Electric Mine School was responsible for laying mines. On June 17, 1938, the Japanese army began to attack the fortress of Madang. In the fierce battle, the Japanese fleet successfully broke through the minefield, transported a large number of reinforcements through the waterway to land, and then launched a series of shelling on the Changshan position where the Nationalist army was stationed to cooperate with the Japanese land attack. On 26 June, the fortress of Madang was finally lost. Enraged, Chiang Kai-shek ordered that "all officers and men under The command of Madang be surrendered and escorted, regardless of their department." The day after the fall, Ouyang Ge was dismissed from his post on the charge of "misrepresenting military information, being unfavorable in combat, and not knowing the facts of the money handled", and announced that the lightning school would be abolished from immediate effect.
Other generals who were dealt with by military law during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, such as Feng Wu, the initiator of the "Wenxi Fire," Long Muhan, the chief officer of the 88th Division, who was dismissed from his post for "unfavorable combat" during the Battle of Eastern Henan, Wang Haonan, who was taken for "dereliction of duty," and Xue Weiying, who was also dismissed from his post because of the loss of Madang Fortress, were all tried and executed by military law in a very short period of time. He himself has been in detention and house arrest for a long time.
From the second half of 1939, Ouyang Ge was even released on bail and lived in the residence of his friend Xiao Zheng in Ba County, Sichuan. According to the recollection of the lightning school students who visited him, "family members can also live together, and only a few guards are sent to guard him", and he himself "moves freely" on a daily basis. In addition, he maintained correspondence with the students and instructors of the former Lightning School, asking the students to "tell me at any time about the recent situation" and instructing them to "be diligent and make up for their clumsiness, but they can be far away from slander", and also called his station "pleasant scenery" conducive to recuperation. Exactly two years later, on August 15, 1940, Ouyang Ge, who seemed to have escaped the limelight, suddenly received the news of the death penalty verdict.
A letter that Ouyang Ge sent to the student while on bail
In the decades after Ouyang Ge's death, the discussion around the case has not stopped within the Kuomintang. Most of the graduates of the Lightning School blamed Ouyang Ge's fall on the suppression of the Fujian Navy, believing that Ouyang Ge was "framed by others by taking advantage of the opportunity," and even believed that Ouyang Ge's sudden execution was secretly committed by someone when Chiang Kai-shek and He Yingqin were not in Chongqing.
In the summer of 1971, when Li Yuxi, a graduate of the first phase of the Electric Mine School who had been promoted to the rank of Kuomintang admiral, met Chiang Kai-shek, he directly proposed that "Ouyang Education Chief had committed a crime during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, but he was really wronged" and requested that he be thoroughly investigated and rehabilitated. Chiang Kai-shek did not comment, first asking Li Yuxi to list the facts and write a formal written report, after which he said that he could be rehabilitated at the appropriate time. However, Chiang Kai-shek was seriously ill at the time and died soon after. The so-called rehabilitation is also gone. Twenty years later, a grand commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Ouyang Ge's death was held. About 100 students from the first to fourth phases of the Lightning School attended the ceremony, and the elderly Chen Lifu and Xiao Zheng also personally offered sacrifices.
In 2000, the graduates of the first phase of lightning mines who were still alive still organized commemorative activities.
Li Yuxi's own graduation certificate from the Lightning School
Oral History of Mr. Li Yuxi, ed. Zhang Li, Kyushu Publishing House, 2013.
Oral History of Students at Sea School, ed. Zhang Li, Kyushu Publishing House, 2013.
Now re-examining the historical data, in addition to the factors of the "civil war" of the Republic of China Navy behind Ouyang Ge's death, Chiang Kai-shek himself is also the key, and he is the one who really determines his fate. After the fall of Madang in 1938, Xu Yongchang clearly remembered Bai Chongxi telling him: "Ouyang Gezhi is not available, and Mr. Jiang's warrant is handed over to the military law for enforcement and handling." As for the death sentence two years later, it is also the result of Chiang Kai-shek's own insistence. When the news of the death penalty came out, Chen Lifu, Chen Guofu, He Jian, Li Liejun, Zhang Dingpan, Zhang Ji, and others all interceded for Ouyang Ge.
On August 17, 1940, Wu Zhihui, the elder of the Kuomintang, personally wrote to Chiang Kai-shek: "At that time, Heng because of Ouyang Gejun's courage and perseverance in the Zhongshan warship in the past, and later the adventure of the Izumo ship, for the sake of our Central Committee member Zhongyi Ying, or mistaken for the navy's opportunity, dare to treat with please be lenient ... The president was also cautious, and this important case was allowed to drag on for a long time. It is best for the president to be lenient in time, to raise the points on the right, and to send personnel to investigate in detail, that is, the crowd is particularly convinced... Mr. Ouyang was really admired by the sages of the sea, and he paid attention to this case and was cautious and cautious. In the letter, Chiang Kai-shek was repeatedly exhorted: "If you kill a corrupt official, you should sacrifice yourself today." But when this judge is not careful, and misrepresents a person of outstanding merit, it is enough to make the sage angry and disgusted. The next afternoon, Wu Zhihui personally visited the door, and Chiang Kai-shek clearly recorded in his diary as "talking about Ouyang Geshi."
Although Wu Zhihui and others tried their best to intercede, it did not change Chiang Kai-shek's determination to deal with Ouyang Ge. On August 19, Chiang Kai-shek held an enlarged joint commemorative week at the Central Military Commission for this matter, at which he "pronounced Ouyang Ge the death penalty," accusing him of "Ouyang Ge's fraud and loss of the Madang Fortress, and despite his previous achievements, he was still shot." In addition, Jiang also particularly emphasized that Ouyang Ge's handling was not improper, and bitterly accused "those comrades of this party who have eased their cheeks."
It is worth noting that Chiang Kai-shek disposed of Ouyang Ge and dissolved the Electric Mine School, but this did not mean that the Fujian Navy regained power again. Just as Chen Shaokuan was preparing to receive the equipment of the Lightning School, the Ministry of Military Affairs informed the Naval Command to suspend the reception and not allow him to intervene directly. After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, especially after Ouyang Ge's fellow villager Gui Yongqing took charge of the navy, non-Fujian people represented by the lightning system began to gather and gradually replaced the position of the Fujian in the navy. After the Kuomintang regime retreated to Taiwan, the lightning officer corps even became one of the true cores of its naval power. Taking only the twenty-eight graduates from the first phase of the Lightning School who came to Taiwan as an example, there were three officials who worshiped generals, ten lieutenant generals, and as many as ten major generals. Although Ouyang Ge, who was determined to build a "new navy," was sentenced to death, the "electric thunder system" forces he cultivated later flourished in the Kuomintang navy, and eventually grew.
(Thanks to Zhang Li, a researcher at the Institute of Modern History of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, China, for supporting this article.) For a detailed process of the change in Chiang Kai-shek's attitude toward Ouyang Ge, see also the humble article "Between Use and Abandonment: The Ouyang Ge Case and Chiang Kai-shek's Naval Personnel Disposition", Anti-Japanese War Research, No. 4, 2014. ）