The Battle of Ta Lan Village in Cao Bang Province, Vietnam

The Battle of Talan Village in Caoping Province, Vietnam

The battle of Talan Village in Caoping Province, Vietnam, which took place on the morning of February 18, 1979, can be said to be the first battle between the Chinese and Vietnamese armies on the Gaoping battlefield. The turning point of the battle.

In this battle, the People's Liberation Army suffered 42 casualties and lost 10 Type 59 tanks. As a result, the strategic objectives of the entire Gaoping campaign could not be achieved, and the Northern Group troops fell into passivity. A company of the Vietnamese army lost 26 people and captured 1 person, but it gained the initiative on the Gaoping battlefield.

The battle passed

Talan Village is located about 12 kilometers northwest of the center of Gaoping, Vietnam. The simple road from He'an County to Gaoping City passes through the middle of the village. Wartime is the only way for the 123rd Division of the People's Liberation Army to attack Gaoping City.

Before the war, the Vietnamese army, from high-level officials to ordinary soldiers, believed that the People's Liberation Army would be defeated (some Vietnamese soldiers were influenced by propaganda), so they only built defensive positions along some major roads along the border with a depth of about 10 kilometers. , the Vietnamese troops in the hinterland of the defense zone basically did not prepare for war.

At 5 pm on February 17, after the avant-garde regiment of the 121st Division of the People's Liberation Army captured Tong Nong County in Vietnam, the main forces of the subsequent 121st Division and 123rd Division continued to advance towards the Kotun area on the northwest side of Gaoping City as planned, aiming to Cut off the only way for the main force of the Gaoping Vietnamese Army to escape to Taiyuan Province.

The 346th Division of the Vietnamese Army, which was responsible for the defense operations of the entire Cao Bang Province, was divided and surrounded by our army. The division headquarters basically lost command authority over its subordinate units. Three infantry companies, 52 tanks and 4 engineering vehicles of the avant-garde force of the 123rd Division of the People's Liberation Army quickly advanced to the northwest of Gaoping City. The sharp knife troops arrived at Dalan Village around 7 a.m. on the 18th.

If nothing unexpected happens, the vanguard troops of the 123rd Division will be able to capture Kotun before noon on the 18th, and the main force of the Vietnamese army in the northern part of Gaoping Province will become the thorn in the side of our army.

An accident happened. At around 6 a.m. on the 18th, Vietnam’s First Military Region Command promptly adjusted the combat plan of the Gaoping troops. Based on the intelligence provided by the forward positions, it ordered the 10th Company of the 9th Battalion of the 851st Regiment of the 346th Division stationed near Talan Village to block our People’s Liberation Army’s attack in Gaoping City. The district troops and various agencies and units retreated to buy time.

The 9th Battalion and 10th Company of the 851st Regiment of the 346th Division of the Vietnamese Army hastily responded to the battle without the cooperation of the civilian army and without building a position. They brought 60 automatic rifles, 1 82 recoilless gun, and 12 US-made B41 anti- Tank rocket launchers, 8 light and heavy machine guns and 1 radio rushed directly to Dalan Village for defense.

At around 7:10 in the morning, the Vietnamese army was not yet ready for battle. Four People's Liberation Army tanks carrying infantry passed through Dalan Village and drove quickly towards Gaoping City.

The two transport vehicles of the Vietnamese army had no time to hide, and the personnel abandoned the vehicles and went into the mountains and forests on both sides of the road. At that time, the People's Liberation Army did not discover more than 100 Vietnamese troops on both sides of the road in Talan Village.

After our army’s four tanks carrying infantry passed through Talan Village, the Vietnamese army quickly set up an ambush on a section of road about 600 meters long on the southeast side of the village. They deployed 6 rocket launchers in the front and rear, and deployed light and heavy rocket launchers on both sides of the middle. Machine guns and 82 recoilless rifles are deployed in the village.

The Vietnamese army had just arranged the combat mission, and three more tanks of the People's Liberation Army marched to the Talan Village area carrying infantry. The commander of the Vietnamese army waited for the tanks of the People's Liberation Army to enter the ambush circle, and then ordered the 5th Platoon of the 10th Company to The soldiers attacked with rocket launchers while the machine gunners used crossfire to attack the infantry on the tanks.

At that time, when our tank formation entered Talan Village, they only found tank ruts on the road and no traces of fighting nearby. In order to reach the target location as soon as possible, the infantry relaxed their vigilance and did not go forward to carry out vigilance. . The Vietnamese army suddenly opened fire, and in just a few dozen seconds, three tanks were hit and damaged.

The infantry quickly jumped out of their vehicles to fight, but being surrounded by the Vietnamese army, it was difficult to form an effective counterattack, and more than half of them suffered casualties in one fell swoop.

Five Chinese tanks about 500 meters west of the ambush site discovered that the front formation was under attack, and immediately ordered the infantry to jump out of the vehicle to fight. The tanks quickly maneuvered, with each vehicle separated by about 50 meters, and used tank guns at the same time. and vehicle-mounted machine guns fired at Dalan Village and the side of the road opposite the village.

After ambushing the three tanks in front, the Vietnamese army quickly used favorable terrain such as ridges and ditches to hide and avoid the fierce firepower of the subsequent tank formations. When the five tanks drove onto the Talan Highway Bridge, , the 4th platoon of the Vietnamese army, whose position had not yet been exposed, once again concentrated its firepower to cut off the heads and tails, destroying 2 tanks and damaging 1 tank.

The tank that was ambushed was the 3rd Company of the 1st Battalion of the 41st Tank Regiment of the Guangzhou Military Region. The commander of the 1st Tank Battalion Zhou Xuluo and the crew of the vehicle were both shot and injured; the tank of the company commander Gong Chaoqing was also shot, and he and his crew were also shot. The driver, Lin Hanchao, was seriously injured. Under the cover of infantry, he crawled out of the tank to fight back.

After the battalion commander and company commander's vehicles were shot and damaged, 1st Platoon Commander Jiang Jianqiang quickly directed the remaining tanks to organize a counterattack. Soon after, he was shot and damaged, and all the crew members in the vehicle were seriously injured. The commander of the 6th tank, Wang Jinming, made a prompt decision and commanded another tank to shoot from the left and right towards the Vietnamese army position, covering the infantry to break out of the encirclement.

At the critical moment, Zhang Guoming, the commander of the 367th Regiment of the 123rd Division, took part of the 2nd Battalion and 4th Company on the 1st and 2nd Tank Companies to reach Dalan Village; Liu Zhengchao, the instructor of the 1st Tank Battalion, quickly cooperated with the commander Zhang Guoming. The infantry and tanks cooperated to suppress the Vietnamese army's firepower and support the heavily damaged 3rd tank company and the leading infantry detachment.

Liu Yuejun, commander of the 4th Infantry Company, discovered that the Vietnamese army had six firepower points in Dalan Village and a platoon of troops on the unnamed high ground to the southeast of the village. He decisively implemented tank fire suppression and three infantry lines Assault tactics, after more than an hour of fierce fighting, 4 tanks were injured and 6 people were sacrificed. 5 fire points of the Vietnamese army were eliminated.

26 Vietnamese soldiers were killed and 1 was captured. The remaining Vietnamese The army threw away their helmets and armor and plunged into the vast mountains surrounding the village.

From a campaign perspective, the Battle of Dalan Village was just an episode encountered by large forces when they were interspersed with battles; the 367th Regiment and the 1st Battalion of the 41st Army Tank Regiment fought a beautiful counterattack. In the ambush battle, if the troops continue to advance towards Kotun at this time, the main force of the Gaoping Vietnamese army that has not yet prepared for war will be unable to escape, especially the tank troops assigned to the 346th Division of the Vietnamese army, all of which are surrounded by our army.

Shortly after the battle in Dalan Village, Liu Chaozheng, the instructor of the 1st Battalion of the Tank Regiment, suddenly ordered the seven tanks that had broken out of the encirclement and were advancing towards Kotun to return to Dalan Village for fortification.

As a result, the Vietnamese tank troops stationed in Gaoping City fled to Taiyuan with a large number of Gaoping officials and their families from noon to 9 pm on the 19th. Only a small amount of infantry was left to defend the entire Gaoping City. Civilians were also forcibly driven into the deep mountains and old forests by the Vietnamese army. At this point, our army lost the best opportunity to win the battle of Gaoping.

The post-war investigation found that the reason for such serious mistakes in the 41st Army was objective technical problems.

At around 6 a.m. on the 18th, when the tank troops were passing through Gouli Village, north of Dalan Village, the troops were also ambushed by the Vietnamese army. At that time, the Vietnamese army implemented communication jamming, and the tank troops and infantry troops were unable to Radios were used to keep in touch. In an emergency, the 41st Army Tank Regiment used high-power radios to directly contact the army headquarters.

The 41st Army Headquarters and the North Group Headquarters are originally one team with two sets of brands. The group commander is General Ou Zhifu, deputy commander of the Guangzhou Military Region; in order to ensure the overall victory, the Army Headquarters also assigned the 123rd Division vanguard Enemy situations encountered by the troops were reported to the Eastern Front Command.

After learning of the situation, Commander-in-Chief Xu Shiyou issued an order: the vanguard troops should seize favorable terrain, use tanks to attack enemy vehicles, and resolutely eliminate this enemy force.

As a result, the 41st Army headquarters misunderstood "avant-garde troops seizing favorable terrain" as intervening troops to organize defense on the spot, and then issued this order to the 121st Division and 123rd Division headquarters that performed interleaved missions. The 123rd Division headquarters did not know before that the attached tank unit was directly under the army and had contacted the army headquarters due to poor communication, so it directly ordered the troops to organize defense on the spot.

It was this information gap that caused a large gap of 20 kilometers from the southwest to the northwest of Caoping Province. It was not until February 25 that the gap was closed.

Except for the 246th Regiment, the 346th Division and its affiliated units of the Vietnamese Army responsible for defensive operations in Cao Bang Province were successfully broken into pieces and successfully evacuated. Our People's Liberation Army troops lost the best opportunity for victory in the Battle of Cao Bang.

Judging from the post-war summary, the Eastern Front Command did not hold anyone accountable for this mistake. The 2nd Battalion and 4th Company of the 367th Regiment performed heroically and were awarded the "Strong Bone Sixth Company Type" by the Central Military Commission. "Company" honorary title may be because the leaders are aware of the technical shortcomings of our army.

After the end of the Self-Defense War against Vietnam, considering that our army had too many command levels, backward communication technology, and easily missed the war initiative, the Central Military Commission decentralized the defense work in the Guangxi border areas to the Guangxi Military Region, from Four new border defense divisions were formed from the troops participating in the war.

In this way, if there is a new war in the direction of Guangxi, the border defense troops do not need to go through divisions, corps, and military regions and then report to the Central Military Commission. Instead, they will report directly to the Central Military Commission from divisions and military regions, which saves a lot of time. A cumbersome link.

In the direction of Yunnan, because the Kunming Military Region Headquarters is not far from the border, the independent divisions of the Yunnan Military Region were merged into the military region's combat force sequence, and multiple border defense regiments were formed. The Kunming Military Region unified the command of various armed forces in the jurisdiction. , and also reduces the tedious command links in the middle.

In general, the combat command systems in Guangxi and Yunnan have adopted two different reform models, but the response capabilities of the troops have become more flexible.

Looking back at the Vietnamese army, which won a small-scale victory in Talan Village, they believed that Vietnam had the ability to protect itself, and did not pay attention to the reform of the command system and technological upgrading. They just blindly expanded the active troops and enforced the The national military management system requires civilians over the age of 16 and under 45 to undergo two hours of military training every day, except for the sick, disabled and pregnant people.

From a long-term perspective, Vietnam’s Le Duan Group is so militaristic that Vietnam’s economy, education, and agriculture will inevitably be severely restricted, leading to the gradual decline of Vietnam’s comprehensive national strength. Over time, Vietnam lacks a strong economic foundation. , the support of the developed education system and agricultural system can only decline.

Five years later, when our People's Liberation Army launched the "Two Mountains" recapture war, the gap in the overall combat effectiveness of the Chinese and Vietnamese armies became increasingly obvious. Since then, when our army has used electronic reconnaissance and detection technology to fight, the Vietnamese army is still at the stage of development of a military power during World War II!