Menglianggu Campaign

Menglianggu Campaign
Part of the Chinese Civil War
Date May 13–16, 1947 Location Shandong, China Result PLA victory
Belligerents
National Revolutionary Army	People's Liberation Army
Commanders and leaders
Gu Zhutong Tang Enbo Zhang Lingfu † Huang Baitao Qiu Qingquan Hu Lien	Su Yu Chen Yi
Strength
600,000	200,000
Casualties and losses
14,000 killed 18,000 captured	3,500 killed 7,500 wounded

The Menglianggu Campaign (孟良崮战役) was a campaign fought between the nationalists and the communists during the Chinese Civil War in the post-World War II era and resulted in communist victory. The campaign was later used by the communists as a specific battle example in their military science and history, as well as a propaganda piece. The battle mainly took place in Menglianggu of Linyi region in Shandong Province.

From March 1947 Nationalists abandoned their original plan of all-out assault on every communist position; instead, they adjusted their strategy to a much more realistic one: concentrating on attacking the communists in northern Shanxi and Shandong. In the Shandong theater of war, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek named Gu Zhutong, the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, as the commander-in-chief at the front line, setting up his headquarters in Xuzhou. Gu Zhutong had 24 army-sized reorganized divisions totaling more than 60 division-sized reorganized brigades at his command, totaling 450,000+ troops. Out of that number, over 330,000 were in 17 army-sized reorganized divisions totaling more than 43 division-sized reorganized brigades, deployed on the first line, organized into three corps: the I, II and III. These were spearheaded by three crack units of the nationalist forces: the 11th Reorganized Division, the 74th Reorganized Division and the 5th Army. Out of the three corps, the I commanded by Tang Enbo was the largest and strongest, with almost 200,000 troops in eight army-sized reorganized divisions totaling more than 20 division-sized reorganized brigades; this unit was tasked with the main assaults on the communists. From late March to mid April 1947, nationalists succeeded in taking control of the regions along the section of the Jinpu railway from Xuzhou to Jinan and the entire southern Shandong region.

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