At the end of December 1949, Kuomintang rule on the mainland basically collapsed. The Kuomintang troops in Guangdong, including Xue Yue, Yu Hanmou, and Chen Jitang, retreated to Hainan. Chiang Kai-shek sent Chen Cheng, the chief executive of the southeast, to fly from Taiwan to Hainan to arrange defenses, hoping to use the Qiongzhou Strait to block the People's Liberation Army, so that Hainan Island and the Zhoushan, Kinmen, and Wanshan Islands would jointly form a barrier to defend Taiwan and serve as a springboard for "counter-offensive and restoration of the country" in the future.
On December 10, the Battle of Guangxi ended, and Lin Zongsiye's command returned to Wuhan from Hengyang. Instructions were given to the troops before leaving. Among them, "the 43rd Army moved east to the Lianjiang, Xinyi, and Huaxian areas to rest after a slight assembly at the present location, and prepared to take Qiongya later." The 40th Army assembled in the Qinzhou, Fangcheng, and Hepu areas to rest, and then prepared to cooperate with the 43rd Army to capture Qiongya.
On the 14th, the chief of the Four Wilds jointly sent a telegram to Deng Hua, commander of the 15th Corps, instructing that "in the campaign to attack Hainan Island, the head of the 15th Corps shall assume unified command." ”
In order to implement the instructions of the chief of the four fields, while paying close attention to the collection of ships, all units should attach great importance to the study of the characteristics of the sea crossing operation. These included the situation of the phoenix direction, tides, and currents, the choice of landing sites, and the methods for dealing with attacks and disturbances by the Kuomintang army, navy, and air force.
The Kuomintang army on Hainan Island was under the unified command of Xue Yue, with a total of 5 armies and 19 divisions, about 50 ships of various types in the 3rd Fleet of the Navy, and 45 fighters, bombers, and transport aircraft of four brigades of the Air Force. With the superiority of the navy and air force and relying on the favorable conditions of the island, the "Boling Defense Line" of three-dimensional defense was formed, and its specific deployment was:
Qiongdong Defense Zone: With Li Yutang as the commander, he commanded a total of 23,000 people in the 32nd Army and other units, organized into the 1st Route Army, stationed in Qiongshan, Wenchang, Qiongdong, Lehui, Wanning, qiongzhong counties.
Qiongbei Defense Zone: With Li Tiejun as the commander, he commanded a total of 14,000 people of the 62nd Army and other units into the 2nd Route Army, which was stationed in Haikou, Chengmai, Ding'an and other cities and counties.
Qiongxi Defense Zone: Commander Rong You, commanding the remnants of the 4th Army and the 64th Army, a total of 13,000 people, was organized into the 3rd Route Army, which was stationed in Dan County, Lingao, Chengmai and other counties.
Qiongnan Defense Zone: Commanded by Chen Ji, he commanded a total of 17,000 people of the 63rd Army and other units to form the 4th Route Army, which was stationed in Lingshui, Yaxian, Baoting and other counties.
The navy and air force were placed in the Qiongbei area and set up a naval and air force headquarters in Haikou, under the unified command of Xue Yue, who undertook the task of patrolling and blocking the Qiongzhou Strait
Crossing the sea must have enough troops and ships, otherwise it is difficult to win. A huge contradiction lies before the 15th Corps: where to find so many ships? Wait until enough ships are found to carry an army to cross the sea, and the time will drag on until a few months later.
To this end, the South China Sub-Bureau issued an order on 2 January: Make all-out plans for all kinds of equipment, ships, and fuel necessary for operations in Hainan, requisition all landing craft, whether public or private, and borrow all diesel and gasoline engines from the units of various organs.
According to the results of the regimental statistics on January 5, the 40th Army recruited 143 boats, and only 85 sea vessels carrying more than 30 people; the 43rd Army recruited 300 boats, half of which were small boats carrying only 15 people. Such a carrying capacity cannot meet the needs of combat. It is also necessary to train the shipwright and the helmsman, and at the same time, the enemy ships have not yet figured out a proper way.
According to the budget list issued by the 15th Corps to the Logistics Department of the Central Military Commission on January 22, the purchase and repair of 30 landing craft and the modification of 300 machine-powered boats cost a total of 16 billion yuan (old currency).
Therefore, Deng Hua and Lai Chuanzhu said: "According to the above situation, in the old calendar years, to complete the preparations for this large-scale sea crossing operation, in fact, it was too late, and it was necessary to postpone it backwards. However, after the old calendar years, the wind direction changed, and the sailboat could not be used, such as all the modified machines, which could not be completed in a short period of time, and the cost was very large. How to deal with it, please indicate. ”
Chief Siye attached great importance to the operation on Hainan Island, and on January 5, he sent a telegram to Deng Hua, Lai Chuanzhu, and Hong Xuezhi, pointing out: Strive for five or six months to complete the preparations for crossing the sea. During the preparation period, in addition to preparing ships for the crossing troops, training their sailors, training the troops not to be seasick, and sea tactics and landing tactics. He also strengthened his countermeasures, provided ammunition and cadres to Feng Baiju's troops, and strengthened military and political command, and tried to smuggle small troops into the Feng department one after another to fight guerrilla warfare, and prepared to cooperate with the main force to land in the future.
Due to the determination of the chief of the four fields, the 15th Corps did not wait until it was equipped with a sailing boat and a landing craft, but actively prepared for sea crossing operations according to local conditions. Facts have proved that Siye's early seizure of Hainan Island has played a special role in the security of China's coastal areas.
With the active mobilization of the central authorities and Guangzhou, in early February, Chen Yi, political commissar of the Logistics Department of the Central and Southern Military Region, and his party of 8 people went to Hong Kong to buy ships with millions of silver dollars allocated by the central authorities. A few days later, the dock turned down, and there was no such thing as a landing craft, only a few large passenger ships, the target was too large, and it could not be docked, nor could it be used to carry troops. Chen Yi and the others went to Macau again, and the situation was the same, only to buy some seasickness medicine, compasses and lifebuoys to come back.
It was so easy to scrape together money but got nothing, Chen Yi was very breathless. Returning to Guangzhou to report to Ye Jianying, Ye said calmly, "We expected this result long ago, but it is better for you to go and let the soldiers in the front know that Siye and the central chief care about them." ”
Major General Chen Yi
Chen Yi came to Xu Wen's corps headquarters to report to Deng Hua, who said: "The corps has given up the idea of buying a ship, and on the one hand tried to transform the wooden sailing ship into a machine sailing ship, but mainly relied on the sailing ship to cross the sea. By abandoning the illusion of a machine ship, the preparations of the 15th Corps were more effective. ”
After much deliberation, the commander of the 15th Corps preferred to first adopt the method of smuggling by small units. At this moment, Feng Baiju, commander and political commissar of the Qiongya Column, who had been fighting for a long time on Hainan Island, sent Fu Zhenzhong, chief of staff, and several comrades to smuggle themselves from the northwest corner of Hainan Island by fishing boat to the southwest corner of the Leizhou Peninsula to land.
Since its establishment during the period of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the Qiongya Column has independently adhered to the revolutionary struggle and opened up a large area of revolutionary base area in central Hainan. After Xue Yue arrived in Hainan, in order to stabilize the defense, he mobilized his troops to first encircle and suppress the Qiongya column base area in wuzhi mountain. In order to get the help of the Mainland People's Liberation Army as soon as possible, Feng Baiju sent Fu Zhenzhong to the mainland to report to the plaster chief on the enemy situation and the situation in hainan's base areas.
With this mission in mind, Fu Zhenzhong and two entourage boarded the merchant's ship through underground connections. At that time, the situation in Hainan had not yet entered a state of war, fishermen wanted to go to the sea, merchants wanted to go to the mainland to buy goods, and the Kuomintang army was only in a state of turmoil, but the sea was not forbidden. Therefore, Fu Zhenzhong took advantage of the night to cross the strait and come to the mainland. He first met Deng Yue, commander of the 118th Division of the 40th Army, and then went to the army command post to meet with Commander Han Xianchu and came to Guangzhou together to report on the situation on the island.
On January 25, Ye Jianying and Deng, Lai, and Hong met with Fu Zhenzhong in Guangzhou. He made a detailed report on the situation in Hainan and conveyed Feng Baiju's two suggestions: First, before the deployment of the Kuomintang army's coastal defense was ready, he should first send a unit of troops to smuggle across the sea in batches to enhance the strength of the Qiongya column on the island; second, if smuggling did not work, first send a batch of ammunition to the Qiongya column.
Ye Jianying, Deng Hua, and others were very happy after listening to Fu Zhenzhong's report, and agreed that since the comrades of the Qiongya Column could smuggle across the sea, we could also smuggle in and land. The method of smuggling in small troops first is feasible.
According to the instructions of the Central Military Commission and Siye, after more than a month of understanding and studying the situation on Hainan Island, the 15th Corps initially formed the campaign guidelines of "active smuggling, combining small crossings in batches with final landings."
In early February 1950, the Kuomintang army stepped up "encirclement and suppression" against the Qiongya column on the island. According to the report of the Qiongya Column to the 15th Corps on February 13, "The Qiongya Bandit Army is increasingly active in attacking us. If this situation continues to develop, coupled with the delay in the time for the large army to cross the sea, the areas where our outer line work is better may be destroyed by the enemy, and the qiongzhong cooperation operation will suffer greater difficulties when the large army lands. And as the enemy forces attack us, the people's grain will be plundered in large quantities, and our grain-raising work will be seriously affected, and not only will the grain be difficult to solve when the army lands, but our grain will also have difficulties. Therefore, we urgently demand that you quickly try to smuggle weapons and small troops to Qiong, so that we can deal effectively with the enemy attack, fight against enemy plunder, and effectively welcome the landing of the army. ”
After receiving an urgent telegram from Qiongzhong, the commander of the 15th Corps decided after studying it: Although the preparations for our army's sea crossing operations have not yet been completed and the time is not yet ripe for the large-scale forced crossing of the main force, in order to support Qiongzhong's anti-"encirclement and suppression" struggle, strengthen our army's receiving strength on the island, explore experience in sea crossing operations, and create conditions for large-scale landing operations, we must seize the favorable season when there is still a north wind and begin to carry out smuggling.
How large is the force to smuggle in, and what kind of landing site to choose? These are two core issues of smuggling operations that need to be treated with caution. It is more difficult to smuggle one platoon and one company, and one reinforcement regiment each of the two armies is too long, and the target is too large to be exposed.
Therefore, it was decided that the two armies would first use 1 reinforced battalion of troops each to take advantage of the favorable opportunity of the enemy encircling and suppressing our army on the island and weakening the coastal defense on both sides to carry out smuggling to the east and west sides of Hainan Island.
All preparations were in place, and the smuggling force began operations in early March. Whether or not the first smuggling was successful not only related to the safety of hundreds of smuggling troops, but also affected the planning of the entire campaign and the confidence of the whole army in victory in crossing the sea. This difficult task was entrusted to the 352nd Regiment of the 118th Division of the 40th Army.
The superior ordered the regiment to organize a reinforcement battalion to set out from Dengloujiao at the southwestern tip of the Leizhou Peninsula and sail 360 miles southwest at night, expecting to land near Baima Well in DanXian on the west bank of Hainan Island before dawn, break through the enemy's coastal defenses under the support of Qiongzhong, and advance into the Liberated Area of Wuzhishan to create conditions for the strong crossing of our main force.
Chen Qingshan, director of the Political Department of the Qiongya Column (left), and Gou Zaisong, chief of staff of the 118th Division (right)
The regiment formed a sea crossing advance battalion with 1 battalion that had made many military achievements, and within three days it had made all the preparations before the expedition.
On the afternoon of March 5, the whole battalion held an oath-taking meeting at Dengloujiao Beach, and Han Xianchu, deputy commander of the 12th Corps and commander of the 40th Army, awarded the battalion a red flag of "Landing Operation Vanguard". At 17:00, 799 comrades of the whole battalion, led by Gou Zaisong, chief of staff of the division, Luo Shaofu, regimental commander, Chen Yongkang, battalion commander, and Zhang Zhongxian, instructor, and with the assistance of Guo Zhuangqiang, chief of the reconnaissance section of the Qiongya Column, took 13 wooden sailing boats and set sail.
At this time, the sea was blowing northeast phoenix, and at low tide, 13 warships sailed into the depths of the strait in an arrow-like battle formation. Halfway through, the wind suddenly stopped, and the only way to sail by paddle swing was so slow that it was impossible to land before dawn as originally planned. Gou Zaisong immediately ordered the ships to prepare for the attack of the Kuomintang navy and air force.
At dawn on the 6th, more than a dozen Kuomintang sailing ships were found traveling in the same direction. Gou Zaisong ordered the fleet to disguise themselves as civilian ships and sail with the Nationalist fleet. At noon, three Kuomintang planes circled over the fleet for reconnaissance, and our army's fleet trailed the front fleet, making it difficult for the enemy planes to distinguish between true and false.
At 13:00, when the convoy was about to approach the intended landing site, it was detected by the Nationalist troops, intercepted by the fire of 2 warships and 4 aircraft, and intercepted by two companies of Nationalist defenders on the shore. The advance battalion fought back heroically while rowing hard.
As they approached the beach, the warriors jumped into the sea and forcibly landed. The machine gunners and gunners who remained on board fired heavily at the enemy on the shore to cover the landing of the troops. Zhao Lianyou, the 60th gunner of the machine gun company, fired 54 shells and hit 53 rounds, killing and wounding the enemy in large numbers, and the Kuomintang defenders scattered and fled.
At this time, the receiving troops led by Chen Qingshan, deputy director of the Political Department of the Qiongya Column, arrived in time to attack the enemy. At about 14:00, the advance battalion, under the support of the 8th and 9th Regiments of the 1st Qiongzhong General Brigade, forcibly landed at Chaotou City (10 kilometers south of Baima Jing). But all 13 ships were blown up by Nationalist planes.
The advance battalion arrived at the village of Banmeng lao on the morning of the 7th, met with the Qiongzhong 8th Regiment victoriously, and moved to the Wuzhi Mountains that night. The first smuggling was successful.
The 43rd Army carried out its first smuggling mission with the 1st Battalion of the 383rd Regiment of the 128th Division and its 1,070-strong artillery company, commanded by Regiment Commander Xu Fangchun and Director of the Political Office Liu Qingxiang. According to the scheduled schedule, the departure should be made at 13:00 on March 6. However, there was no wind that day, and Commander Li instructed to suspend the waiting for the wind.
Unexpectedly, a few days later, there was still no wind on the sea, and although the commanders and fighters were very anxious, Commander Li insisted on waiting for the wind and never rushed to act. It was not until March 10 that the northeast wind came, the sky was overcast, and it was difficult for enemy aircraft to move. Commander Li seized the opportunity and ordered the reinforcement battalion, which was already ready to go, to board the ship immediately.
At 13:00, 1,070 warriors of the 43rd Army set off on 21 wooden sailing boats from Lizhou Island in the southeast of Zhanjiang City, and sailed northeast of Hainan Island from Chishui Port to Tongguling. Fortunately, in bad weather, the enemy's navy and air force did not move, and the fleet was not found.
The advance battalion fought against the fierce winds and waves for 15 hours, and although the fleet was scattered and lost contact with each other, each ship advanced towards its intended destination. At about 9 o'clock on the 11th, the vanguard ship landed near Chishui Port, and the rest of the ships landed scattered on a nearby 30-kilometer section, and the rear-tail ship did not land until 24:00 at night.
The Independent Regiment of the Qiongya Column, which was responsible for receiving the response, led the militia led by Ye Minghua, secretary of the local county party committee, and Li Guangbang, the county magistrate, to bring the smuggling troops to the scheduled meeting point one by one, and on the morning of the 12th, the troops arrived at the Wenchang guerrilla area.
On the 13th, two regiments of the Kuomintang 62nd Army stationed in Wenchang followed up in pursuit, and the advance battalion, supported by the independent regiment of the Qiongya Column, annihilated 1 battalion of the enemy, and then entered the Qiongshan base area for recuperation.
At the same time, the 40th Army, after learning of the information that the so-called "Guangdong Anti-Communist Self-Defense Army" on Weizhou Island possessed a number of large ships, immediately sent the 119th Division to launch a battle.
On March 7, the reinforced regiment composed of the 356th Regiment, led by the division's chief of staff Shack, quickly surrounded Weizhou Bay in wooden sailing ships and machine sailing ships, and launched a landing operation. The enemy on the island was caught off guard and rushed to battle, preparing to flee by boat. Three of our army's "earth gunboats" have blocked the harbor and injured the Kuomintang warship "Haishuo", which served as a cover, and the ship escaped, leaving none of the more than 500 enemies on the island to slip through the net. More than 300 large and good wooden sailing ships, which are very suitable for crossing the sea, were all captured by the 40th Army.
With so many ships, the entire 40th Army was enough to cross the sea. Therefore, Commander Han Xianchu suggested to Commander Deng Hua that the original plan of smuggling one regiment of each of the 40th and 43rd Armies be changed, and that the entire army of the 40th Army should land in a large-scale manner, with the 43rd Army as the second echelon.
Deng Hua considered that the battle plan had already been submitted to Siye and the Central Military Commission for approval, and that the second smuggling would be implemented in a few days, and changing the plan now would cause unnecessary trouble. He argued with Han for half a day, but finally insisted on carrying out the smuggling of the two regiments as originally planned.
On March 26, the 40th Army, with the main force of the 352nd Regiment of the 118th Division, the 2nd Battalion of the 353rd Regiment, and the Artillery Brigade, a total of 3,000 people, formed a reinforcement regiment, and under the leadership of Ma Baishan, deputy commander of the Qiongya Column, and Liu Zhenhua, director of the Political Department of the 118th Division, they set off from Dengloujiao in 81 wooden sailing boats and sailed towards Lingaojiao in qiongbei.
Until the second half of the night. The temperature at sea plummeted, the fog was thick, and the ships could only sail by compass, so they gradually broke away from the formation. Liu Zhenhua, Ma Baishan, and others urgently discussed and resolved to continue to advance, ordering all ships to fight for themselves when they lost contact, and to land on a single ship and go up Five Finger Mountain alone. They radioed this order to the battalions.
At about 3 o'clock on the 27th, the 2nd Battalion and the 92nd Artillery Company of the 352nd Regiment first encountered the enemy's gunboats, and Liu Zhenhua and others ordered the artillery companies to open fire, losing the enemy ships, and the fleet continued to advance. At this time, due to the change in temperature, the sea water changed from the westward flowing water in the first half of the night to the eastward flowing water, the ship became sailing against the current, the direction was more difficult to grasp, the fleet was forced to tilt to the southeast, and the scattered ships were close to Hainan Island.
At about 5 o'clock, the fog turned from thick to light. Just as they vaguely saw the coast of Hainan Island, suddenly there was a fierce sound of gunfire and the explosion of grenades and shells in front of them on the right. Ma Baishan concluded that this was the receiving troops at the predetermined landing point at Lingao Cape and the enemy had struck, and according to this judgment, the opposite side should be the coast of Chengmai County, which was fifty miles to the east of the scheduled landing point, and the enemy defense on this line was much stronger than that in the Lingao Cape area.
At this time, the enemy on the shore also spotted the fleet and began to shoot at our fleet. The situation was urgent, and there was no room for half a moment's hesitation, so Liu Zhenhua immediately ordered the nearby ship to land forcibly. The sky was getting brighter and brighter, our army was completely exposed to the enemy, the enemy's fire was more fierce, and the enemy planes also flew in to drop bombs and strafe.
The commanders and fighters of our army were not afraid of sacrifice, and a reinforced platoon that rushed to the front first jumped into the sea, waded into the water and rushed to the beachhead, and quickly captured a group of bunkers.
When the ships that were strengthening the main force of the regiment landed one after another, 2 warships and several aircraft of the Kuomintang army violently bombarded our qiangdu troops. At this critical moment, the two warships of the 4th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 352nd Regiment immediately turned the rudder, faced the warships and aircraft, and directed the fire to themselves until the last bullet was fired, at the cost of the sacrifice of most of the commanders and fighters, covering the landing of the main force.
The 1st General Brigade of the Qiongya Column and the advance smuggling battalion of the 40th Army, which was tasked with receiving the reinforcements, were unable to receive them due to the change of the landing site of the reinforcement regiment, but instead engaged in a fierce battle with the Kuomintang troops at the scheduled landing site, which contained the enemy's strength and reduced the pressure on the reinforcement regiment.
At noon on the 27th, the troops successively landed scattered in the area of Yubao Port and Linshi Port, which were 20 kilometers east of Lingao Cape, which deviated from the original location. After landing on the shore, we assembled in a village called Just Village. Subsequently, under the support of local party and government organizations and militia, on the evening of the 29th, they met with the Qiongya Column victory division.
The second smuggling by the 127th Division of the 43rd Army was the most complicated and the most unfavorable factors. The crossing was scheduled to begin at 21:00 on March 24, and the troops boarded the ship on time, but stopped the operation due to insufficient wind. However, due to the lack of organization, 232 people from a reinforced company of the 2nd Battalion of the 381st Regiment of the 127th Division set out to sea ahead of schedule on the evening of the 25th.
At 7:00 a.m. on the 26th, the four ships arrived on the opposite shore, and there was no Qiongya column to meet them, but there was no enemy deployment on the shore. The company commander advocated landing, but the commander of the regimental headquarters operations unit with the team was afraid of exposing our army's landing intentions and fearing that the landing force of the lone army was weak, so he decided to turn his head and return. On the way back, the unit was killed by the fire of two enemy ships and four aircraft, and only 55 people successfully returned, and the rest were heroically killed.
On March 31, the weather finally changed. At 22:40 that night, the reinforcement regiment composed of 379 regiments of the 127th Division, the 1st Battalion of the 381st Regiment, and the Guard Company, led by division commander Wang Dongbao, political commissar Song Weiyu, and assisted by the propaganda director of the Qiongbei Prefectural Committee, set sailed from Haizai Port at the southeast end of the Leizhou Peninsula on 88 wooden sailing boats and sailed to Puqian Port east of Haikou City.
Major General Song Weiyu
At dawn on April 1, as the reinforcement regiment approached the coast of Tashi, it suddenly heard the fierce sound of gunfire coming from the front, and it turned out that the independent regiment of the Qiongya Column, the 1st Regiment of the 3rd General Brigade, and the advance battalion commanded by Xu Fangchun, which had come to receive the reinforcement regiment's landing, had engaged the defending enemy.
At 4:30 a.m., the battle for the beach began, and after more than half an hour of fighting, the reinforcement regiment broke through the enemy's first-line coastal fortifications, conquered more than 10 enemy bunkers, annihilated 2 enemy companies, captured more than 100 enemy soldiers, and inflicted about 40 casualties on our part. After the reinforcement regiment landed, it met the division with the receiving troops in victory.
The success of our army's smuggling several times has brought about a major change in the balance of enemy and our forces on Hainan Island, and laid a victorious foundation for the large-scale cross-sea operations of the main forces in the follow-up.
In a month's time, the People's Liberation Army succeeded in two consecutive batches of four smuggling attempts, which greatly shocked the Kuomintang army on Hainan Island. Xue Yue deeply felt that Hainan's defense was in jeopardy, and in order to "make up for the dead," he on the one hand dispatched troops to track and pursue the PLA troops on the island, in an attempt to take advantage of the PLA's unstable foothold to encircle and annihilate them; on the other hand, he practiced high-pressure rule, eradicated dissidents, and shocked people's hearts.
Despite the panic of the people on the island, Xue Yue was determined to confront the People's Liberation Army to the end. Judging that the People's Liberation Army would make a major landing in April, he transferred the 252nd and 256th Divisions stationed in Qiongnan and most of the navy and air force to the front of the strait. The whole army was ordered to be in a state of readiness from dusk to dawn each day, with coastal defense forces entering positions and commanders entering command positions.
In fact, Xue Yue knew that his troops were limited, and his defensive measures on the long coastline were stretched, and after several successful smuggling attempts by the People's Liberation Army, Xue Yue focused his defenses on the Chengmai and Lingao fronts, which coincided with the location where the main force of the People's Liberation Army finally landed.
In the Wenchang and Danxian areas, because the sea crossing voyage was too long, it was not convenient for the large army to cross the sea, and when Xue Yue formulated the defense plan, he always regarded it as an assistance, and only deployed some defensive vigilance units to monitor their smuggling, and deployed the 2nd and 3rd Route Army as mobile corps in the area between Ding'an and Chengmai, and responded at any time.
But Xue Yue had problems in the deployment of troops. Xue Yue planned to send the 32nd Army, which had the strongest combat effectiveness, to defend the front line of Lingao and Chengmai, the 32nd Army was subordinate to the 21st Corps, and the commander Liu Anqi graduated from the Huangpu Iii Period and was a descendant of Chiang Kai-shek, who had always disobeyed Xue Yue's command and was unwilling to pull troops from Qiongshan and Wenchang to Lingao and Chengmai.
The commander of the 32nd Army, Li Yutang, was even bigger, huangpu I, a famous anti-Japanese general, and had the saying of three Li Zhi of Shandong (Li Yutang, Li Yannian, and Li Xianzhou). During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he led the Taishan Army under Xue Yue, but the relationship between the two was not harmonious.
During the Second Battle of Changsha, the Tenth Army was attacked by four elite Japanese brigades, and although it fought bloodily, it lost the strategic jinjing. Subsequently, the military commander Li Yutang was held responsible by Xue Yue and removed from his post.
During the Defense of Hengyang, Li Yutang was ordered to command reinforcements to rescue his old unit, the Tenth Army. However, Xue Yue secretly caused the progress of various reinforcements to be slow, and did not buy Li Yutang's account, and Li Yutang resigned angrily.
After the outbreak of the civil war, Li Yutang was the commander of the reorganized 24th Army, with jurisdiction over the 20th, 26th, 72nd, and 88th Divisions, and was responsible for public security between Xuzhou and Yanzhou. However, Xue Yue, director of the Xuzhou Sui Bureau, put on small shoes for him again, and without greeting, he successively transferred the four reorganized divisions under his command, making Li Yutang an empty commander, with only two security regiments left under his command.
With the old hatred, and at the instigation of Liu Anqi, a fellow villager in Shandong, Li Yutang refused to lead the 32nd Army to defend Lingao and Chengmai. Xue Yue had no choice but to arrange for the defense of the 4th Army, 62nd Army, and 64th Army, which were less effective. These three armies were all Cantonese troops, of which Xue Zhongshu, commander of the 4th Army, was Xue Yue's second brother, and Rong Youluo, commander of the 64th Army, was Xue Yue's compatriot and confidant.
At 17:00 on April 10, Deng Hua issued an order to carry out large-scale landing operations: 6 regiments of the 40th Army and 2 regiments of the 43rd Army must be prepared before April 13, wait for the opportunity to cross, and strive to implement a forced crossing at the time of the advection of the sea tide on the 15th and 18th.
At 19:30 on April 16, the first echelon of the 40th Marine Combat Corps consisted of 26,000 men, namely the 118th Division of the 40th Army (owing the 352nd Regiment), the 119th Division, and the 120th Division, a total of 18,700 people and more than 7,000 people of the 128th Division of the 43rd Army (owing 3 battalions), who were divided into 350 warships, divided into east and west road formations, and crossed from DenglouJiao at the southern tip of the Leizhou Peninsula.
The 129th Division of the 43rd Army, the 380th Regiment of the 127th Division and the 381st Regiment of the 43rd Army, the second echelon of the sea crossing, were divided into 81 ships, and crossed from Santang to follow the first echelon.
At 3:00 a.m. on April 17, the first echelon approached Hainan Island. At this time, the 5th Regiment of the 5th General Brigade of the Qiongya Column, the 2nd Regiment of the 3rd General Brigade, and the 1st General Brigade of the 40th and 43rd Armies, all of whom had been sent to the island in advance, rushed to Lingao Point under the command of Ma Baishan and Liu Zhenhua to block the kuomintang troops who had come to the rescue and received the landing of the first echelon.
At 6 o'clock, the first echelon was fifty or sixty meters from the shore, and the soldiers of the vanguard ship jumped into the chest-deep sea, and by the afternoon, the landing force of the 40th Army had defeated the blockade of 2 regiments of the 131st Division of the 64th Army of the defenders, conquered 9 bunker groups in a row, and occupied the core defensive position of the defenders, Linshan (present-day Gaoshan Ridge). Subsequently, with a part of the troops to surround the county seat of Lingao, the main force continued to advance in depth.
On the 19th, the 118th Division annihilated the 156th Division and 1 regiment of the Nationalist 4th Army in the Us-Taiwan area, the 119th Division rushed to attack the headquarters of the 64th Army in Calais, and Zhang Zhong, deputy commander of the 64th Army and commander of the 131st Division, panicked and disregarded Rong Youluo's order to counterattack, and led his troops to retreat without authorization, resulting in the Lingao front quickly falling into the hands of the People's Liberation Army.
At 4 o'clock on the 17th, the main force of the 128th Division of the 43rd Army landed in the area of Yubao Port and Leigong Island. After the troops landed, they first seized the key points of Caifangling and Qiaotou City, annihilated more than 1,200 people of the 64th Army, established beachhead positions, and surrounded the enemy at Huachang Port.
Rong You slightly dispatched 4 regiments of the 64th Army at Fushan to attack Huachang Port in an attempt to prevent the landing force of the 43rd Army from developing in depth and ensure the security of the flank of Haikou City. On the morning of the 18th, the Fukuyama garrison moved north, but was intercepted by the 127th Division's Advance Reinforcement Regiment and the 3rd General Brigade of the Qiongya Column, and the main force of the 128th Division defeated it. The advance smuggling battalion of the 128th Division took the opportunity to chase the enemy into Fukuyama City in one fell swoop, and launched a street battle with the enemy, after 7 hours of fighting, most of the enemy was annihilated, a few were scattered, and our army occupied the city.
Commander of the Third Route Army for the Defense of Hainan Island and one of the heroes of the Hengyang Defense War- Rong Youluo
At this point, the main force crossing the sea, with the cooperation of Qiong Zhong and the advance landing troops, controlled the key points of the coast in the northern Region of Qiong, and broke through the Boling Defense Line, which Xue Yue boasted was "impregnable".
Due to the inaccurate intelligence of the Kuomintang army, Xue Yue failed to grasp the actual number of landings of our army in time, and when the first echelon landed, he thought that it was a small unit smuggling. He adjusted his troop deployment in an attempt to eliminate the 128th Division of the 43rd Army that threatened Haikou City. On the 19th, Xue Yue gathered the main force of the 62nd Army in the Chengmai area and ordered the 252nd Division of the 32nd Army stationed in Haikou City to reinforce the Chengmai area.
On the morning of the 20th, the 128th Division encountered the 252nd Division of the 32nd Army of the Kuomintang Army at Huangzhu and Meiting, north of chengmai county. The 128th Division immediately surrounded it and launched a fierce attack. At the same time, the advance reinforcement regiment of the 127th Division quickly advanced to the Meiren area, occupied favorable terrain, built simple fortifications, and prepared for reinforcements to ensure that the 128th Division annihilated the main force of the 252nd Division.
In order to lift the siege of the 252nd Division, Xue Yue ordered the 62nd Army and the provisional 13th Division, the Instructor, and another regiment of the 252nd Division to quickly reinforce Huangzhu and Meiting and impose a counter-encirclement on the 128th Division.
Determined to make a plan, Deng Hua took advantage of Xue Yue's main force to besiege the landing forces of the 43rd Army and launch a large-scale encirclement and annihilation battle in Chengmai and the area north of it in order to eliminate Xue Yue's main force. On the one hand, he ordered the landing troops of the 43rd Army to hold their positions and resist the attack of the Nationalist army several times that of himself, and on the other hand, he ordered the main force of the 40th Army to rush eastward and surround the Nationalist troops attacking the 128th Division. At the same time, the 3rd General Brigade and the Independent Regiment of the Qiong Column actively coordinated the main landing force.
At dawn on April 21, five divisions of the Nationalist Army, supported by aircraft and artillery, launched a fierce attack on the positions of the 128th Division. The 128th Division quickly adjusted its deployment, assigned a small number of troops to resist the siege of the outer line, concentrated its main force on the inner line, and strove to annihilate the main force of the encircled Nationalist 252nd Division as soon as possible.
Commander and fighter of the 40th Army in the Battle of Meiting
At this time, a complex situation of encirclement and counter-encirclement and interlacing of canine teeth appeared on the battlefield. Neither side dared to fire artillery, and engaged in short hand-to-hand combat in many positions. On the 22nd, the 40th Army and the 43rd Army, together with the Qiong column 3 general brigade and the independent regiment, simultaneously launched a fierce attack on the Kuomintang army.
Only at this time did Xue Yue figure out that it was a large force of the People's Liberation Army coming. Fearing that the main force would be completely annihilated, he hurriedly ordered the remnants to retreat in the direction of Haikou City. Our army liberated Qiongshan and Haikou on the morning of the 23rd, and completely annihilated 2 divisions of the 62nd Army, the 13th Division, and the Instructor of the 62nd Army who had time to escape in the future.
In this encirclement and annihilation battle, the 252nd Division of the 32nd Army of the Kuomintang Army, two divisions of the 62nd Army, the Provisional 13th Division, and the Instructor were completely annihilated. The core position of Xue Yue's defense system around the island ——— the Qiongbei garrison area collapsed at this point.
On April 18, after Chiang Kai-shek learned of the landing of large PLA troops in Hainan, he knew that Hainan Island could not be defended and ordered the abandonment of Hainan Island. According to Jiang's orders, Xue Yue ordered a full retreat south on the 22nd.
On the afternoon of the 24th, the forward commander of the 15th Corps learned that the remnants of Xue Yue had withdrawn to the south separately, and ordered the troops to be divided into three roads: east, west, and middle to pursue them rapidly. In the past May, the extremely hot weather and environment on Hainan Island have brought great difficulties to the commanders and fighters of our army, but all the units have been able to endure it, and still carry forward the style of highly impoverished pursuit and fierce fighting, and the enthusiasm for combat has always been high.
According to Kuomintang historical records, the remnants of the Kuomintang army that withdrew from Hainan Island to Taiwan on May 2 had 15,000 men from the 32nd Army, 2,000 each from the 4th Army and the 64th Army, 800 from the 62nd Army, and 25,000 from the 63rd Army and the Hainan Defense Command. In total, less than 50,000 people.
The Hainan Island landing campaign, which began with the smuggling of the first batch of reinforcement battalions on March 5, 1950, and lasted for 58 days until the liberation of the two ports of Northern Li and Basuo on May 1, smashed the three-dimensional defense of the Kuomintang army, navy and air force, and liberated the whole island.
In this campaign, a total of 5 divisions and 9 regiments of the Kuomintang Army were annihilated, totaling more than 33,000 people, of whom 24,890 were taken prisoner, 418 artillery pieces of various kinds, 17,209 guns of various kinds, 4 aircraft, 7 tanks and armored vehicles, 140 cars, 4 downed aircraft, 1 sunk warship, and 5 were wounded. More than 4,500 people were killed or missing by the People's Liberation Army.