Chapter 124 4. Hundreds of planes aimed at Yan'an

Hu Zongnan's first two plots to attack Yan'an completely failed under Mao Zedong's excellent command and the heroic counterattack of the People's Liberation Army.But Chiang Kai-shek and Hu Zongnan did not give up their attempt to capture Yan'an. In early February, Chiang Kai-shek secretly summoned Hu Zongnan from Xi'an to Nanjing, and worked with him to determine the basic plan for attacking the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia liberated areas. Although Hu Zongnan is short in stature and unattractive in appearance, because he is a fellow of Chiang Kai-shek and a graduate of the first batch of Whampoa Military Academy, he can be regarded as Chiang Kai-shek's favorite student. Therefore, he has become one of the officers favored and valued by Chiang Kai-shek .

On February 28, Chiang Kai-shek suddenly flew from Nanjing to Xi'an and summoned Hu Zongnan, director of the Xi'an Sui Department of the Kuomintang, Pei Changhui, deputy director, Zhu Shaozhou, chairman of the Shaanxi Provincial Government, Sheng Wen, chief of staff of the Sui Department, Wang Shuming, deputy commander-in-chief of the Air Force, and commander of the 3rd Military Region of the Air Force. Liu Guoyun and others held a secret military meeting to further study the specific deployment of attacking Yan'an. According to Chiang Kai-shek's combat plan, the 5 brigades in the south of Hu Zong's troops were used as defensive tasks, and 15 brigades with 140,000 people were used as the main offensive from the Yijun, Luochuan, and Yichuan lines to the north; There are 10 brigades with 54,000 people in the Ministry, from Yinchuan in Ningxia, Tongxin and Zhenyuan in Gansu to the east, and 2 brigades with more than 12,000 people in the Dengbaoshan Department in the Shanxi-Shanxi-Sui Border Region, assisting and cooperating from Yulin to the south.In order to strengthen the offensive, Chiang Kai-shek also mobilized 94 combat aircraft, commanded by Wang Shuchrome, to take off from Zhengzhou, Taiyuan, Xi'an and other places to bomb Yan'an to cooperate with the offensive, so as to drive the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the headquarters of the Chinese People's Liberation Army out of the Northwest, and in Yan'an and other places. The purpose of encircling and annihilating the Northwest People's Liberation Army in the nearby areas, or forcing the Northwest People's Liberation Army to cross the Yellow River eastward, is to be flanked by the Kuomintang troops in the south of Hu Zong and the east of the Yellow River to annihilate them.

While mobilizing troops, Hu Zongnan also asked the Kuomintang Air Force to assist. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, in order to launch the anti-communist civil war, the Kuomintang divided the country into five air force military regions with reference to the distribution of the People's Liberation Army. 7 provinces.At that time, the combat aircraft of the Air Force stationed in Xi'an under the command of the 3rd Military Region of the Air Force included: the 11th Brigade of the Air Force, which belonged to 4 squadrons, of which 3 squadrons each had 12 P-47 aircraft, and one squadron had 12 P-47 fighter jets; The 9th Squadron has 12 B-25 bombers.In order to temporarily transfer one to two squadrons of C-47 or C-46 airlift aircraft belonging to the 10th Brigade of Nanjing Air Force or the 20th Brigade of Shanghai Air Force, 12 to 24 aircraft.

Chiang Kai-shek thought that there were not enough planes in Xi'an, so he instructed Zhou Zhirou, the commander-in-chief of the air force, to transfer more planes to Xi'an.Soon, Wang Shuming, chief of staff of the Air Force General Command, flew to Xi'an in person, and transferred 8 B-24 heavy bombers from the 8th Brigade of the Shanghai Air Force, and flew to Huxian Airport in the south of Xi'an; two squadrons were transferred from the 5th Brigade of the Nanjing Air Force , including 24 P-51 fighter jets. In this way, more than a hundred combat aircraft, including C-46, C-47, P-40, P-47, P-51, B-24, and B-25, stopped at Xi'an Airport at once.It was the first time in the history of the Kuomintang Air Force that so many planes were parked at this airport. It seems that the Kuomintang spent a lot of money in capturing Yan'an.