With the long whistle sounding, the combined formation of warships left Xiamen Harbor and marched while practicing and marching towards the South China Sea. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Looking out of the porthole of the command ship, the further south you go, the more ships come and go, most of them oil tankers and cargo ships.

It seems that merchant ships coming from the Strait of Malacca bound for East Asia will inevitably pass through the TW Strait, because this is the most fuel-efficient, the closest route, and it is also relatively safe. If you take the Gonggu Strait, you will have to detour thousands of nautical miles.

Ahead, it is close to the mouth of the Pearl River.

The destination of this stop is Hainan Province.

If Hainan Province does not have Hainan Island, it will not be able to establish a province. As for the liberation of Hainan Island, its primary contributor should be He Xianchu, the commander of the 150th Army.

Hainan Island, also known as Qiongya, covers an area of 32,200 square kilometers, facing the Leizhou Peninsula across the sea, is the second largest island in China, the gateway and barrier of South China, and its strategic position is very important.

After the Chinese People's Liberation Army launched the Battle of Crossing the River and went all the way south to occupy Nanjing, it went all the way south and captured the coastal areas of Guangdong.

At the same time as the Third Field Army launched the Jingmen Campaign, the Fourth Field Army was also making preparations to capture Hainan Island.

However, due to the defeat in the Jingmen Campaign, the Central Military Commission realized the inadequacy of our army's military strength, especially the inadequacy of its naval strength, and put forward an order to launch an attack on Hainan Island after full preparations.

At this time, it was already the second year after the founding of the People's Republic of China, except that the People's Liberation Army launched an operation to liberate the remaining national territory. The task of recovering and rebuilding the country's economy is also very heavy.

The task of attacking Hainan Island was He Xianchu, commander of the 150th Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

He was a fierce general who made outstanding achievements in the War of Liberation.

Although he received an order from the Central Military Commission to postpone the offensive, he still did not give up preparations for the liberation of Hainan Island.

His plan was to occupy Hainan Island smoothly in the first half of the year when the south monsoon was blowing.

According to the Central Military Commission's adjusted plan, an offensive can be launched in the second half of the year after the campaign is ready and mature.

At that time, most of the land had been liberated. Some units have been disarmed and repatriated and reunited, and one has already begun to be demobilized.

However, the 150th Army still has to shoulder the task of liberating Hainan Island, which means that it has to pay sacrifices.

The commander of the army did not hesitate, he suppressed the order to slow down the preparations for the offensive, and according to the original plan, ordered the troops to continue the preparations for the offensive in the first half of the year.

Commanders and fighters at all levels are actively making preparations in accordance with his orders.

The first is to collect civilian ships and educate and train shipwrights. Because we don't have a strong navy, we can only rely on requisitioning civilian ships from the coastal areas to transport troops.

Second, the troops will conduct training in adaptation to the sea. For the army, the most important thing is to get on the ship, adapt to the shaking of the ship, not get seasick, and maintain the combat effectiveness of the troops. This must also be achieved through training.

Third, it is necessary to make good preparations for the establishment of political power after the landing, and to make detailed preparations for personnel, cadres, materials, ideology, and so on.

The 153rd Group Army, another group army in the task of liberating Hainan, conveyed the order of the central authorities to postpone the implementation of the plan to attack Hainan Island.

Therefore, the officers and men are not very well prepared, they are not materially prepared, and they are not ideologically prepared.

After the mobilization of the troops, everyone was indignant and their fighting spirit was high. As a result, He Xianchu issued a proposal to the military region to launch an attack on Hainan Island according to the original plan and at the original time.

The Central Military Commission originally planned to launch an offensive in the second half of the year, but seeing that the front-line troops were now eager to fight and had high morale, it conformed to the changes in the situation and agreed to launch an offensive in the first half of the year according to the plan if the troops were ready.

What a wise decision to make now!

Because if it drags on to the second half of the year, then, due to the outbreak of the Korean War, the US Seventh Fleet entered the Taiwan Strait. If Hainan Island had not been liberated at that time, the Seventh Fleet would have been stationed in the Qiongzhou Strait.

In that case, if Hainan Island is not even in our hands, New China's gateway to South China will be further blocked, and there will be no room for strategic buffer, let alone the competition for islands in the South China Sea.

Commander He Xianchu took the initiative to seek war, which was a great risk, and there was also great resistance. At that time, a cadre at the deputy military level, in order to avoid the command of boarding the ship, actually harmed himself and found a way to injure his leg.

However, because of his insistence, he has created a great historical opportunity for the survival and development of the Chinese nation.

In order to liberate Hainan Island at an early date, the Central Military Commission instructed the Fourth Field Army to prepare for the attack on Qiongya with the 153rd Army and the 150th Army at the end of the Guangxi Campaign.

In accordance with the instructions of the Central Military Commission, the Fourth Field Army formed a sea-crossing combat corps of more than 100,000 people and assembled on the Leizhou Peninsula to prepare for sea-crossing operations. In addition, there are 20,000 Qiongya Columns led by the Communist Party of China and persisting in a long-term struggle behind enemy lines.

In February of that year, a meeting of cadres at and above the army level was held in Yangcheng, at which the guiding principle of "active smuggling, combining small crossings in batches with the final landing" for the Hainan Island campaign was determined.

In accordance with the spirit of the Yangcheng Conference and the instructions of the Central Military Commission, all units participating in the battle have actively carried out vigorous large-scale military training at sea, learned knowledge of maritime operations, improved their combat capability at sea, and strengthened the combat confidence and determination of cadres and fighters to fight warships with wooden boats.

The Nanyue Provincial People's Government organized a large number of migrant workers to rush to repair roads, transport food, ammunition, and war materials, and at the same time mobilized a large number of shipwrights and shipwrights to participate in the war, effectively ensuring the needs of training troops at sea and large-scale sea-crossing operations.

In March, taking advantage of the monsoon in the north, four smuggling were organized in two batches.

The first batch of smuggling, two reinforced battalions were sent respectively, and the smuggling was successful;

The second group, with two reinforced regiments each, was also successful.

The success of the two groups of four smuggling not only increased the strength of about one division on the island, but also accumulated a lot of experience in sea-crossing operations, thus creating favorable conditions for the subsequent liberation of the island by the main force.

On the basis of conscientiously summing up experience and stepping up preparations for various preparatory work, the PLA sea-crossing combat unit decided to form two echelons to carry out a large-scale forced crossing from the front of the strait.

The first echelon consisted of 25,000 men from eight regiments of two armies, and crossed the sea by two routes, east and west.

The second echelon consisted of more than 150,000 men from five regiments of the 153rd Army.

At 19:30 a.m. on 16 April, the first echelon took 318 wooden sailing ships and 32 motorized sailing boats, and crossed the Qiongzhou Strait from the southern tip of the Leizhou Peninsula side by side in two formations.

The firepower boats on cover duty engaged in an all-night artillery battle with enemy ships.

On the morning of 17 July, the troops of the Western Route landed on the front line of Gaojiao, west of Haikou. Under the response of the early landing force and the Qiongya column, after fierce fighting, the key points of Lingao were controlled. The landing force on the eastern route landed on the island and captured Fukuyama.

On the 23rd, Haikou was liberated. The next day, the second echelon successfully landed at Tianwei Harbor and pursued south with the first echelon.

On the 30th, Yulin and Sanya were captured.

On 1 May, they occupied Basho and Beili. At this point, the whole island was declared liberated.

The liberation of Hainan Island cleared the foothold of the enemy army on the coast of South China and broke the naval blockade of South China, which was of great significance for the defense of China's southern gate and the defense of maritime transportation and fishery production.

If it hadn't been defeated at the beginning, there would not have been today's Hainan Island naval base.

Well, the North Sea Fleet and the East Sea Fleet are coming, where to stop?

Fortunately, before the outbreak of the war on the peninsula, the heroic PLA officers and soldiers liberated it.

Therefore, after a few days of drifting at sea, the two fleets arrived at Sanya City, the home port of the South China Sea Fleet, ---- for docking.