The World’s Greatest Underreported Invasion
Captain Murdock M. Moore, U.S. Air Force (Retired)
When considering the situation in the South China Sea, and the history that presaged the current tensions (See “Crisis in the Taiwan Strait,” December, pp. 14–21), it is important to look at what was then the largest seaborne invasion since World War II. More than 2,130 vessels, 4,000 sailors, and 100,000 troops crossed the line of departure. Most invasion vessels were wooden-hulled, sail-powered junks, yet they won against a 20th-century navy. It was China, April 1950—and the invasion of Hainan Island.
That spring saw the Chinese Civil War “death match” between Mao Tse Tung and Chiang Kai Shek almost over. Mao ruled from Manchuria to edge of the South China Sea. “Edge,” because while some brigades, divisions, and whole armies had determined the “Mandate of Heaven” now favored Mao and had switched sides, the 120,000 Nationalist troops on Hainan stayed loyal to Chiang.
Holding back the red tide was the 19-mile Hainan Strait, a thin gray line of secondhand World War II ships, and a 45-plane air force.
Across the strait, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Ye Sian Ying had no air force (it was formulating opposite Taiwan), and his six-month-old “navy” lacked steam power, gun turrets, and iron hulls. But he had 100,000 battle-hardened troops, 15,000 partisans in Hainan’s interior—and the initiative.
General Ye knew flanking attacks on Hainan would require daylight operations, exposing his troops to Nationalist air and sea dominance. A direct across-the-strait night assault would be better, as the Nationalist air force very seldom flew at night, and its naval picket line would be overwhelmed with targets difficult to see and hit.
Then a fortuitous disaster occurred. A battalion-strength raiding probe of Hainan’s northwest coast landed on a particularly well-fortified beach. The invaders were wiped out. Lessons were learned—a wrong one by island commander General Xue Yue.
General Xue determined the invaders would return to the same beach. He also determined that he had just enough time to remove his best troops from other beaches, send them into the central mountains, wipe out the aggressive guerrilla group, then return them to their beach bunkers. 20 April 1950 saw Xue’s troops headed inland as 2,130 vessels to the north sailed south with the evening tide.
Luck was with the invaders as they sailed through a gap in the Nationalists’ naval picket line. The invaders’ wooden hulls gave a poor radar return (a sort of unintended “pre-stealth stealth”). Finally, the picket-line flagship Taiping Hao—the former USS Decker (DE-47)—stumbled into the tail end of the invasion armada. She closed on an outboard “transport junk”—actually an escort vessel with hidden short-barreled mountain guns. Close-hauling for a capture, the Taiping Hao skipper allowed the junk to fall under his ship’s gun angles. Seeing this, the junk’s skipper dropped his vessel’s sides and let fly a broadside. Then volley after volley flew into the impotent Taiping Hao until she staggered away out of range to recover.
Other Nationalist ships rushed into the fray, but none tried a Trafalgar line-break or Jutland T-cross. They stood back and ineffectively sniped away at the convoy’s rear, as they failed to notice that their armor-piercing rounds were passing through the wooden hulls without exploding. Dawn saw them still sniping at long-abandoned and beached vessels.
Dawn also saw the invaders who had easily breached the thinly manned north beach defenses moving inland. Reacting to an urgent coast “recall,” General Xue’s troops executed an attack reversal. It became badly disjointed, allowing the easy ambush and near annihilation of his troops. By late April it was over. After suffering 33,000 casualties, a defeated Xue fled by air to Taiwan, escorted by two P-51 fighters.
Two months later, the Korean War began, and President Harry Truman put the Seventh Fleet between China and Taiwan. Four months later, China entered the Korean War, and the invasion of Taiwan went on the back burner, where it remains today.
And what of Hainan today? It stands as a possible PLA invasion springboard to the oil-rich islands and reefs to the south.
