In the second half of 1949, the Liberation War had entered the final stage, and the Kuomintang army was exhausted at this time, and could only entrench itself in the remote areas of the southwest and the southeast coastal area to survive. On October 24, the 10th Corps of the People's Liberation Army Sanye was ordered to launch the Battle of Kinmen, and a total of three regiments attacked the enemy in wooden sailing boats, and successfully seized the beach and landed on the island. However, the ferry boat was immediately destroyed by the Kuomintang army's land, sea, and air three-dimensional firepower, resulting in the follow-up troops landing on the island without boats, and the vanguard troops were completely damaged after two days and nights of bloody fighting with enemy troops several times their size, which became the biggest defeat of our army in the War of Liberation. Let's review this history, it is not easy to create, bother the officials to pay attention to the comments, give people roses to leave a lingering fragrance, and appreciate high-quality articles without getting lost.
1. Historical background
Kinmen Island is located in the southwest waters of Fujian Province, China, and is only 5 miles off the coast of Fujian Province5 nautical miles, the total area of the island is about 15165 square kilometers. Kinmen chokes the throat of Xiamen Port, is the barrier of southern Fujian, looks east of Taiwan, China, and the west of Xiamen, Zheng Chenggong, the surname of the late Ming Dynasty, once raised troops here, and the geographical location in the coastal area of Fujian is extremely important. Since June 1946, the Chinese mainland has been in flames of war, and the PLA has begun a devastating offensive, and the Kuomintang army has been defeated repeatedly, changing from all-out offensive to key offensive, from key offensive to all-round defense, and then from all-round defense to key defense, constantly losing cities and losing divisions. By 1949, with the victory of the three major battles and the loss of Nanjing, the main force of the Kuomintang army was almost annihilated, and the morale of the troops was low. Chiang Kai-shek also fled to the island of Taiwan with the remnants of the defeated army, preparing to take advantage of the dangers of the strait to resist stubbornly, and if Taiwan is to be liberated, Kinmen is the ideal springboard. Before June 1949, the Kuomintang army had almost no fortifications on Kinmen Island, but with the development of the war in Fujian, the enemy began to strengthen the defense of Kinmen. The eastern part of Kinmen Island is high and steep, and it is not easy to climb, but the western half of the island is relatively flat, and its northern shore is muddy sand, which is conducive to landing, and is the focus of the defense of the Kuomintang army. In addition to the construction of fortifications on the island, the enemy also built field positions and set up a large number of obstacles in the landing area. Chiang Kai-shek also dispatched the 22nd Corps, the 201st Division of the Youth Army and the 11th Division of the 12th Corps to defend, totaling more than 20,000 men.
On October 15, the main force of the 10th Corps of Sanye of the People's Liberation Army launched a sea-crossing operation against Xiamen Island, and liberated the whole island and Gulangyu Island on the 17th, completely annihilating more than 40,000 enemies defending the island. The victory in this battle dealt a heavy blow to the morale of the Kuomintang army, and also accumulated some valuable experience for the follow-up cross-sea operations of the 10th Army Corps. However, it also increased the paralyzing thinking of our officers and men of underestimating the enemy, believing that cross-sea operations were nothing more than that, and at the same time raised the vigilance of the Kuomintang troops in Kinmen. Chiang Kai-shek successively withdrew the troops under the jurisdiction of the 12th Corps in the Chaoshan area to Kinmen, and by the 24th, the total strength of the enemy army in Kinmen had increased to more than 40,000 men. At this time, our army was also continuing to prepare to launch a sea-crossing operation, and the corps commander Ye Fei decided to transfer seven regiments from the First Army to take on the task of capturing the Great and Small Golden Gates under the command of Zhu Shaoqing, the commander of the 28th Army. After receiving the attack mission, Commander Zhu immediately began preparations for crossing the sea, but most of the coastal ships were destroyed by the Kuomintang troops, and the small number of ships collected could only carry one battalion, and they could not complete the cross-sea operation at all. According to the original plan, the 28th Army will launch a sea-crossing campaign on 20 October, with the 82nd Division and commanding the 251st Regiment of the 84th Division, the 253rd Regiment of the 85th Division, and the 259th Regiment of the 87th Division of the 29th Army, and attack the Greater Kinmen Island in two echelons, and then attack the Little Kinmen Island with two regiments of the 85th Division. However, due to the serious shortage of ships, the attack had to be postponed until the 23rd. In order to solve the current predicament, the 10th Corps urgently ordered the 28th Army to step up preparations and on the other hand concentrated all the ships of the various armies under its jurisdiction to the 28th Army to ensure the sea-crossing operation of the vanguard force. On the 21st, our scouts also discovered that the Kuomintang troops had arrived in Kinmen Bay, and a large number of ships were subsequently returning to and from Kinmen Island, but the senior generals failed to determine whether the enemy troops withdrew to Taiwan or reinforced Kinmen, so they did not take contingency measures, and missed the key information that the number of enemy troops on the island had changed significantly, and this negligence was also one of the important reasons for the subsequent defeat. By the 23rd, the 28th Army had concentrated a ship that could carry three regiments of troops, and according to pre-war calculations, our army launched a sea-crossing campaign at night, and the first echelon sailed three regiments to land first, and after the ships returned, after deducting the losses of the battle and wind and waves, the second echelon could sail at least two regiments, which was equivalent to being able to transport five regiments of troops to land in one night, so that the balance of forces between the enemy and us on the island was basically equal, and it was enough to consolidate the position and solve the remnants of the enemy. General Ye Fei thought that the time was ripe, so he ordered the attacking troops to seize the fighters and launch a sea-crossing campaign on the night of the 24th, liberating Kinmen in one fell swoop.
Second, the course of the battle
The 28th Army drew up a thorough plan for this sea-crossing campaign, preparing to use three regiments, the 244th Regiment of the 82nd Division, the 251st Regiment of the 84th Division, and the 253rd Regiment of the 85th Division of the 29th Army, as the first troops on Padeng Island. If the battle goes well, the battle is scheduled to be resolved within 3 days. At 8 o'clock in the evening of 24 October, the first echelon of our army boarded the ship and set sail according to the predetermined plan, quietly marching towards Kinmen Island. That night, there were no stars and moons in the sky, and the sea was almost pitch black, because the sailors who operated the ship were all from Fuzhou, Quanzhou and other places, and were not familiar with the local waterways, and the crew did not have time to train in advance, so they did not coordinate well in the dark and did not work well. In addition, the headquarters of the 82nd Division, which was in charge of the command, did not follow up with the ship, and communication was not smooth, so the regiments sailed on their own, and the troops were in confusion before the attack began. When the ships approached the shore of the island, it coincided with the low tide and was blocked by the artillery fire of the Kuomintang army. At about 2 o'clock on October 25, under the cover of our artillery fire, the regiments began to forcibly land and break through, the 244th Regiment completed the landing in the section from Lancuo to Longkou, and the vanguard battalion of the 251st Regiment landed smoothly in the Huwei Township area, but the follow-up battalion was attacked by enemy artillery fire, which was heavy, and the 253rd Regiment landed in the area east of Guningtou. Due to the lack of experience in landing operations, the organizational structure of various units of our army was chaotic after landing, and not only did the three regiments not have unified command, but the command system of each regiment was also in a state of confusion, and the troops under the control of officers above the battalion level were at most only one company. Under the premise of an unfavorable start, the troops landing on the island did not consolidate their beachhead in time, but launched an attack on the enemy in accordance with the established operational direction, interspersing the enemy's depth. The initial progress was smooth, the enemy's resistance was very weak, and by dawn, our army had advanced to the areas of Xishan, Guanyintingshan, Huwei, Anqi, and Putou.
At 4:30 a.m. on October 25, the 118th Division of the 18th Army and the two regiments of the original defenders, with the cooperation of tanks and artillery, carried out a counterattack on the landing troops in three directions with superior forces. At 8 o'clock, the enemy troops again sent out fighter planes to bomb our positions and ships that had not yet returned, and the battle became very fierce. Xing Yongsheng, the commander of the 244th Regiment, was seriously wounded, but he still led the soldiers to fight back tenaciously and repelled the enemy's attacks again and again. Hu Lian, commander of the enemy's 12th Corps, and Gao Kuiyuan, commander of the 18th Army, came to the battlefield in person, braving guns and cannons to cheer up the soldiers. Hu Lian shouted, "Forget the shame of the double stack? Then he took out wine and roast chicken to feed the wounded soldiers, and the Kuomintang army was deeply encouraged, and the offensive became more and more fierce. By 12 o'clock, the 244th regiment ran out of ammunition, and most of the fighters died heroically. Liu Tianxiang, the commander of the 251st Regiment, fought hard with the enemy continuously, and the troops were divided and surrounded by the enemy, with nearly 1,000 people in the whole regiment. One of them desperately broke out of the encirclement and moved to Guningtou to join the 253rd Regiment, and the other fought for several hours, crushing the Kuomintang army after 7 attacks, almost all of them were killed. The only two remaining squads also broke through to Guningtou and joined up with the 253rd Regiment. The 253rd Regiment and the rest of the brother troops that held the head of Guning repelled many counterattacks by the Kuomintang army, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy, but they themselves were also extremely miserable, and the situation was extremely critical. At this time, the ships previously used were stranded at low tide after landing because there was no one to return to the ship's command, and they were bombed indiscriminately by the enemy's air force and navy, and the second echelon responsible for follow-up support had no boats to cross the sea, so they could only look at the ocean and sigh.
Faced with the critical situation, the 10th Corps ordered an urgent mobilization to collect ships, but with great effort, only a small number of ships were collected, which was only enough to carry four companies. So Sun Yunxiu, the commander of the 246th Regiment, led 4 companies to board the ship to reinforce it, but due to the bad weather at that time, some of the ships were blown away by the wind and waves, and the actual landing force was only 10 platoons, less than 1,000 people. After a night of hard fighting, the reinforcements finally joined up with the forces holding Guningtou. At dawn on October 26, the Kuomintang army concentrated several times its forces, and with the cooperation of tanks, artillery and aircraft, launched a fierce offensive against our troops holding the head of Guning. In the case of being at a disadvantage in numbers and equipment, our soldiers put up a tragic resistance and repelled the enemy's attacks again and again. The brutal battle lasted a whole day, and due to the excessive size of the **, the enemy had to transfer reinforcements many times, but our army could no longer wait for a single soldier to reinforce the army. By 22 o'clock in the evening, the landing force had run out of ammunition and could no longer hold its position, so it had to take advantage of the darkness to break north to the sea. However, not a single ship could be found on the seashore, so the rest of our army moved to the mountainous area southeast of Kinmen Island. On the afternoon of October 27, near Shuangru Mountain, the rest of our army was discovered and surrounded by the Kuomintang army, and the two sides began a fierce exchange of fire, and the battle continued for another whole day. The bloody battle lasted until the afternoon of the 28th, and the bloody, exhausted soldiers finally could not support it, and the commander of the 246th regiment, Sun Yunxiu, committed suicide after being wounded, and most of the rest were captured. A small number of other fighters fled into the mountains and forests, and fought with the enemy for a long time, until a month later, when the gunfire on Kinmen Island completely stopped. And the one who held out the longest was Xu Bo, the commander of the 253rd Regiment, who had been hiding in a cave in North Taiwu Mountain after breaking through, digging and eating sweet potatoes to satisfy his hunger, until he was discovered and captured by the Kuomintang army three months later.
III. Post-War Impact
The bloody battle of Kinmen was a major loss of the People's Liberation Army in the War of Liberation, and in the history of the PLA, there were only two major defeats, one was in the fifth battle of the Korean War, the 180th Division of the Volunteer Army was besieged by the United States Army, and the other was the Battle of Kinmen. In the battle to attack Kinmen Island, our army killed and wounded more than 9,000 Kuomintang troops, but more than 9,000 people from more than three regiments of the landing troops died heroically, and one was captured. After the battle, General Ye Fei was severely criticized by Sanye, and the 10th Corps held a special meeting to review the campaign. The main lessons of the defeat in this battle are as follows: First, under the situation of a complete victory in the War of Liberation, the senior commander of the Corps was paralyzed by the enemy, blindly optimistic, and before the combat mission of chasing down and destroying the remnants of the enemy was completed, he prematurely shifted the focus of his work, was busy taking over the city, and handed over the command responsibility for the attack on Kinmen to the 28th Army; Second, they did not have a serious understanding of the characteristics and difficulties of the sea-crossing and landing operations, the ships were not fully prepared, the enemy situation was not accurately grasped, and the two corps of the 12th Corps of the Kuomintang Army reinforced Kinmen, and the major changes in the enemy's and our forces were not detected in time, and the battle was still launched in a hasty manner according to the original plan. Third, the combat organization and command were not strict, and not a single division-level commander landed with the ship, resulting in the three regiments of different formations not having unified command, and each of them did not form a joint force in the battle.
After the People's Liberation Army launched the campaign to cross the Yangtze River, our army swept thousands of troops on the domestic battlefield, and the Kuomintang army was defeated like a mountain. However, the victory in the Battle of Kinmen gave them a shot in the arm and gave the enemy hope of defending by the sea. After the war, the Kuomintang hyped up this precious victory to boost the morale of the remnants of the defeated soldiers on the island of Taiwan, and Chen Cheng, a senior Kuomintang general, repeatedly declared in public that the Battle of Kinmen "was the first big nail encountered since the crossing of the Yangtze River." The scale of this battle was not large, and the number of troops and civilians participating in the battle was less than 10,000, but its far-reaching impact was far from being comparable to an ordinary divisional and regiment-level battle. It is precisely because of the heavy defeat in the Battle of Kinmen that our army began to actively strengthen the building of naval and air forces, and did not dare to launch a landing operation by relying on the army alone as ignorant and fearless as in the past. In view of the disastrous defeat in the Battle of Kinmen, before the Fourth Field Army was about to launch a campaign to liberate Hainan Island, ** sent a special telegram asking the Fourth Field to ask the Third Field for advice and learn from the experience of crossing the sea, so as not to repeat the mistakes of Kinmen. Later, the Fourth Field Army, after full preparation, collected more than two thousand ships, which were used in one time50,000 people went to the island and successfully captured Hainan Island. After summarizing the Battle of Kinmen, the Sanye Army also won the Battle of Dongshan Island in 1953 and the Battle of Yijiangshan Island in 1955. If you want to know more about the history of the Battle of Kinmen, I recommend you ** "Chronicle of the Battle of Kinmen" and "The Battle of Kinmen --- Remembrance of the Battle of Kinmen".