On March 1, 1979, General Xu Shiyou ordered 300 artillery pieces of various types to be aimed at Lang Son City**, and in just half an hour, tens of thousands of shells rained down, with an average of three shells of more than 122 mm caliber per kilometer, plus the coverage of countless small-caliber artillery, the entire city was almost destroyed.
A year ago, in 1978, Vietnam relied on the support of the Chinese people to repel the aggression of France and the United States, so its self-confidence soared, claiming to be the world's third military power after the United States and the Soviet Union, and began to gradually launch aggressive actions on the Sino-Vietnamese border, frequently creating friction incidents, resulting in our **people**.
After Vietnam repeatedly ignored the solemn warnings of our country, the Military Commission decided to send troops to resist Vietnam's aggression and carry out a counterattack in self-defense. As soon as the PLA entered the territory of Vietnam, it realized that Lang Son would become a key place to decide the outcome of the war. Historically, the Central Plains Dynasty attacked Jiaochi (Vietnam) many times, but most of them were blocked by Lang Son.
Once Lang Son is overcome, our armored vehicles and light tanks will have a smooth path of advance, and the Vietnamese army will no longer have any danger to defend. The Vietnamese military is also well aware of the importance of Lang Son, so they deployed their elite troops in the Lang Son area - the 3rd Division, known as the "Venus Division", this unit is the trump card of the Vietnamese Army, which has just finished the battle with the US army, and the combat power is very strong.
In addition, they mobilized nearly 100,000 defenders, and the Vietnamese military was quite confident in their elite troops, and made a high-profile claim that they would hold out to the end, whether it was attacking or defending. What they meant was to rely on the easy-to-defend terrain of Lang Son to trap the PLA there.
Our army has always been disgusted with deception, so it immediately assigned combat tasks to all participating units, planning to first clear the defensive positions on the periphery of Liangzhou, and finally concentrate forces to conquer the hard bone of Lang Son. However, the Vietnamese military was very cunning, taking advantage of bad weather to carry out guerrilla tactics, constantly disrupting our offensive, and deliberately mocking that they would use the guerrilla tactics they had learned to defeat our army, in an attempt to shake the morale of our army.
But in guerrilla warfare, our army is the real specialist. After discovering the Vietnamese army's psychological warfare attempts, the participating units began to fight in the form of guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare, and various tricks and traps emerged one after another, dealing a heavy blow to the Vietnamese military. However, the Vietnamese military used chemical **, which is prohibited by international conventions, which caught our officers and men by surprise and suffered heavy losses.
In this way, the Vietnamese military successfully blocked several small attacks of our troops, so they were arrogant. In the self-defense counterattack, the commander-in-chief, General Xu Shiyou, after carefully studying and judging the battlefield situation, discovered the weak points of the Vietnamese army's defense, and the PLA successively seized Dong Deng, Tan Lang and other places with superior forces, and successfully annihilated the Flying Tiger Regiment of the Venus Division, which was highly praised by the Vietnamese, and also captured the military flag of the Flying Tiger Regiment.
This feat infuriated the Vietnamese general at the time, Vo Nguyen Giap, because the importance of the military flag to the troops was self-evident, and once the military flag fell into the hands of the enemy, the existence of the unit was in jeopardy. The Flying Tiger Regiment is the elite of the elite, and its military flag also has Wu Yuanjia's autograph of "Victory", which is undoubtedly a heavy blow to the Vietnamese army. The Vietnamese army was so angry that they used chemical ** to attack our army again, which completely angered General Xu Shiyou.
He ordered the front-line commanders and fighters of the main attack to concentrate all their artillery on bombarding Lang Son City and raze the city to the ground. Our army has a special affection for artillery, because it has been suppressed by the artillery fire of the invaders for many years, so it attached great importance to the construction of artillery at the beginning of the founding of the army. Subsequently, our 55th Division gathered more than 300 heavy guns, plus countless small-caliber mobile artillery, forming an unprecedented intensive artillery offensive.
In the early morning of March 1, the artillery of our army properly allocated their respective artillery coverage areas according to the map of the urban area and began artillery bombardment. Tens of thousands of shells of different calibers rained down like a storm, three shells landed on every square meter, and the city was instantly plunged into a sea of fire, destroying military and political institutions, transportation hubs, and troop garrisons. The Vietnamese army was blown up to the point of howling wolves, and countless soldiers were reduced to pieces in the artillery fire.
Survivors described the attack as being in a hail of shells. In less than half an hour, almost all the buildings in the entire city were destroyed. The main force of the Venus Division collapsed before it could even wait for the artillery coverage to end, and the remnants of the defeated troops who escaped the artillery bombardment were also annihilated by the joint action of the officers and men of the 55th Division and the tanks and armored vehicles.
At noon on the same day, the five-star red flag was raised on the roof of the provincial capital of Lang Son Thanh, and the city, which had been regarded as a permanent fortress, was conquered. The Vietnamese Venus Division suffered heavy losses, and the two Vietnamese infantry divisions were covered by our fire on the way to Lang Son, and the soldiers lost their armor and fled in a hurry, making it impossible to carry out the support plan. This battle made the People's Liberation Army artillery famous, and the guiding ideology of heavy firepower made them more and more courageous the more they fought.
The elite units of the Vietnamese Army suffered heavy losses and could no longer afford to launch a large-scale offensive to prevent our troops from continuing deep into Vietnam. Vu Nguyen Giap, who is regarded as the god of war by the Vietnamese ** and the people, is no longer mysterious and respectable, and there are differences in attitudes towards China in Vietnam. The industrial system built up by Vietnam in two wars of aggression was completely destroyed, and it is no exaggeration to say that the PLA brought Vietnam back to the Stone Age.
Vietnam's ambition to invade our territory by force has been completely shattered. Vietnam's defeat sounded the alarm for some ambitious neighboring countries in China's neighborhood, and also provided stable external conditions for China's subsequent reform and opening up. The People's Liberation Army has once again proved to the world that any country or force that tries to undermine China's territorial integrity and oppress the Chinese people must first measure the strength of the people's army.