<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > a lifetime regret</h1>
It is undeniable that before the Battle of Kinmen, Ye Fei, the military commander in charge of the operation, made the mistake of light enemy. He later summed up the reasons for the defeat at the Battle of Kinmen as follows:
The battle to cross the sea and capture Xiamen (before the Battle of Kinmen) was already very dangerous, but fortunately this danger was overcome and Xiamen was successfully conquered. Good things often turn into bad things, because of the victory in Xiamen, we did not pay attention to the difficulty of crossing the sea, did not accept this lesson, and as a result, we ran into nails in Kinmen...
As a founding general with great military achievements, General Ye Fei's ability is beyond doubt, but it is precisely because of this that this defeat makes people feel particularly heartbroken and regretful. His short sentence above was exchanged for the lives of 9,086 soldiers.
The ancients had a poem: "Jiangdong's sons are multi-talented, and their comeback is unknown." The Western Chu Overlord army was defeated like a mountain, and there is a possibility of making a comeback, and since the People's Liberation Army went south, it has been invincible all the way, so why has it not made a comeback? However, history is so stingy, many historic opportunities are often only once, and if they are missed, they will not be there again.
In his later years, General Ye Fei still did not have the opportunity to make up for his omissions, and he wrote bitterly in his memoirs: "I will never forget the defeat of Kinmen, I want to make a meritorious contribution, but the opportunity is lost, and it is always a great regret for me that I did not capture Kinmen Island." Until his death, Ye Fei could not dissolve the pain of the Golden Gate.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > battlefield construction</h1>
Although General Ye Fei did make mistakes, I am not in favor of putting all the faults on him, which is not only very unobjective, but also unfair.
After the defeat at the Battle of Kinmen, the central government began to realize that in order to cross the sea, it was necessary to obtain support from the Soviet side. For this reason, in December of that year, when we visited the Soviet Union, we specifically proposed to Stalin that we hoped that the Soviet side could provide us with some flying personnel or secret military task force fleets, but the Soviet side, hindered by the restrictions of the Yalta Agreement, only agreed to send some non-combatants such as command advisers and military instructors, and declined our other requests.
Soon after, war broke out on the peninsula next door, and the arrival of the Seventh Fleet forced us to shift our center of gravity from the southeast to the northeast.
Why do we need Soviet support so much? The answer is very simple: in terms of the strength of our army at that time, it was not difficult to take the big and small Kinmen, and the real problem was how to prevent the Nationalist army from reinforcing the troops of the big and small Kinmen.
To block enemy reinforcements, it is necessary to have enough sea and air forces to cover the surrounding waters of Kinmen, in short, we need to have airfields, anchorages, warehouses, fuel, weapons, artillery positions, warships, seawalls, etc., and this requires a lot of manpower, material resources, financial resources, experience, and technology as support.
Even with these human and material experience and technology, how to put them into Fujian is also a very difficult thing, we need to build roads, railways, and Fujian has been famous for its mountains since ancient times, known as "eight mountains, one water and one field". This also requires a lot of human, material and financial resources.
In early September 1953, four years after the defeat in the Battle of Kinmen, the East China Military Region took advantage of the fact that the United States was deeply mired in the Korean War and drew up a battle plan for recovering kinmen, and then Chen Yi, Ye Fei, Zhang Aiping, and others took the report to Beijing, hoping to be ashamed of the snow, but General Manager Peng's instructions on the battle plan were: "The budget is very large, there is no great certainty..." The central authorities also agreed with Peng Zong's view that "nearly 500 million yuan is needed, it cannot be spent, and at least such a large amount of funds should not be used in 1954."
We were too poor to fight such a battle, and the East China Military Region subsequently received a notice that the preparations for the attack on Kinmen were suspended.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Dachen Island and Kinmen</h1>
In June 1954, the United States and Chiang Kai-shek signed the famous Mutual Defense Treaty, according to which one of them would take action if attacked. It is self-evident who the treaty is directed at.
However, the tough stance of the United States could only lead to a tougher stance, and soon the "Landing Battle Plan for the Great Exhibition Island" was sent up.
This operational plan was bold and meticulous, and seized a major "loophole" in the "Mutual Defense Treaty": The United States only said that it would assist in the defense of Taiwan and Penghu, but did not say whether it would assist in the defense of the mainland's coastal islands. And we're just going to test what the Bottom Line is for Americans. At this time, Chiang Kai-shek was still engaged in fierce negotiations with the United States, and we seized this opportunity to take Dachen Island in one fell swoop.
For us, Dachen Island is more important than Kinmen, and it is beyond doubt that by taking it, we can remove the threat that Wenzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, Hangzhou and other places have been exposed to, whether it is politically or economically, there is no doubt about it.
But since you decided to fight, why not take down the Golden Gate together? The reason is still mentioned earlier: the consumption is too large and unaffordable. This decision is actually quite helpless, but from a long-term and strategic point of view, leaving Kinmen for involvement actually makes a smarter move.