With the end of the three-year war of liberation one after another, the Kuomintang army on the mainland was defeated and retreated one after another, except for some islands along the coast that were still occupied, basically the whole country had already been liberated; due to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and the blockade of the Taiwan Strait by the US Seventh Fleet, the liberation process of our army had to be postponed.
In January 1955, the East China Military Region dispatched the navy, land and air forces to carry out offensive operations against Yijiangshan Island, which the Kuomintang army refused to defend, and the commander was Zhang Aiping, then deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army.
Zhang Aiping was born in 1910, although he was young, but he participated in the revolution very early, joined the Communist Party of China in 1928, joined the Red Army in 1929, and became a famous general of our army with continuous experience, especially during the Anti-Japanese War, Zhang Aiping has repeatedly made meritorious contributions, but the only regret is that because of the injury, he missed the 3-year Liberation War. In June 1946, Chiang Kai-shek tore up the peace agreement and mobilized a large number of troops to attack the liberated areas of our army in an all-out way, and the liberated areas of the Central Plains and East China bore the brunt.
Zhang Aiping, then deputy commander of the Central China Military Region, was in charge of the battle on the Jinpu Road, accidentally suffered a heavy blow to the head, and for the sake of safety, he could only go to the Soviet Union to recuperate from his wounds, and did not return to China until the end of 1948, serving as a member of the front committee of the Third Field Army.
The first navy in the history of the People's Liberation Army was formed.
During the entire Liberation War, the Kuomintang army had a lot of sea ** boats to carry out battlefield uprisings, forming the foundation of our army's early navy, originally according to the plan, the construction of the navy was ready to be handed over to Sanye to be responsible, but considering that Sanye Commander ** and Su Yu were working hard to cross the river, so this task was naturally handed over to Zhang Aiping.
Although the war ahead is more urgent, Sanye still sent a lot of people to participate in the construction of the navy, but for Zhang Aiping, the most lacking is talent, Zhang Aiping thought about it, or thought that the naval soldiers, officers and professional and technical personnel who had served in the Kuomintang army were the most critical, so they searched for these professionals in a wide area, and even some of them went to the door in person to seek advice, and in only one year, the first naval unit of the People's Liberation Army officially put up a shelf.
However, even so, preparing for the building of an army and commanding an army to fight are still not the same thing; because Zhang Aiping missed the War of Liberation, he did not serve as a column commander or a corps commander, and he was not familiar with the operations of the large corps; although in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhang Aiping commanded the troops of the East China Military Region to participate in the work of suppressing bandits along the coast, but the operation of the large corps was not at all so simple and competent, let alone leading a sea-crossing operation with the cooperation of the sea, land, and air forces.
As early as 1951, when Zhang Aiping was the commander of the East Zhejiang Military Region, he had already considered the liberation of the coastal islands in eastern Zhejiang. In the pre-war plan, the defense center of the Kuomintang army on many islands in eastern Zhejiang was on Dachen Island, and Yijiangshan Island was an outpost and gateway, so the Kuomintang army on Jiangshan Island played a vital role in the campaign, in order to achieve the cooperation of the three armies, the East China Military Region was prepared half a year in advance, and on January 18, 1955, under the unified command of Zhang Aiping, the victory was achieved in only 4 hours, and the defenders of Dachen Island later surrendered without a fight.