Landing Operation on Hainan Island
| Landing Operation on Hainan Island | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Chinese Civil War | |||||||
 PLA soldiers training for the offensive |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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Xue Yue Li Mi |
Deng Hua Lai Chuanzhu Feng Baiju Han Xianchu |
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| Strength | |||||||
| 120,000+ | 115,000+ | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 33,000 | 4,500 | ||||||
The Landing Operation on Hainan Island (Chinese: 海南岛登陆战役; pinyin: Hǎinándǎo Dēnglù Zhànyì), also known as the Hainan Island Campaign (海南岛战役) or the Hainan Campaign (海南战役) for short, was a series of battles fought between the Kuomintang (Nationalists) (National Revolutionary Army, NRA) and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) for the island of Hainan during the resumption of the Chinese Civil War in the post-World War II period, and resulted in a PLA victory.
The Nationalist strategy was simple: defend the island of Hainan by fending off the imminent enemy attack. The Nationalists formed the General Headquarters of Hainan Defense and Xue Yue was named as commander-in-chief. Five armies and two divisions, a naval fleet totaling more than four dozen warships, a marine regiment, and four groups of the air force with forty-five aircraft of various kinds were assigned to defend the island, and a 3-D defense was established. The Nationalist 32nd Army was assigned to guard the eastern portion of the island, the Nationalist Temporarily Organized 13th Division, the Training Division, and the 62nd Army were assigned to guard the northern part of the island, the Nationalist 4th and 64th Armies were assigned to guard the western part of the island, the Nationalist 63rd Army was assigned to guard the southern part of the island. Nationalist 3rd fleet and air force units were tasked to patrol the waters and prevent the enemy from approaching the island. Like his troops, Xue Yue was confident they could hold the island, and he named the defensive setup after his courtesy name: the Boling Defensive Line (Chinese: 伯陵防线).
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