Captain Lin Wenhu knew his gunboat could not sink what it was about to attack. The Liberation displaced 25 tons. The nationalist frigates anchored off Laurel Mountain Island each displaced over a thousand. But Lin had studied the anchorage at Guishan Island, understood that darkness and confined water would neutralize the size advantage, and knew that his target was not the hull below the waterline but the bridge above it — the people who commanded. Before dawn on May 25, 1950, the Liberation opened fire on the nationalist fleet. When the shooting stopped an hour later, the flagship frigate Taihe's bridge had been swept nearly clean of officers, its commander-in-chief Qi Hongzhang lay severely wounded and losing consciousness, and the entire nationalist naval force at the Wanshan Archipelago was withdrawing to save the dying. The first stage of the campaign had lasted roughly sixty minutes.
The Wanshan Archipelago consists of 48 islands scattered across the mouth of the Pearl River, directly athwart the sea lanes connecting the Chinese mainland to Hong Kong and Macau. After the fall of Hainan Island to communist forces in 1950, the nationalist Kuomintang's 3rd Fleet withdrew to Wanshan to establish a defensive perimeter and blockade. The plan was to strangle communist maritime trade and sever the communications links to the two colonial territories across the water. Nationalist naval commander-in-chief Gui Yongqing organized the Wanshan Defense Command and put Qi Hongzhang in command of more than 30 vessels, with the flagship Taihe as his headquarters. The communists, who had comprehensive mainland facilities directly behind them and a force of roughly 10,000 troops against the nationalists' 4,000, recognized the strategic imperative clearly: the archipelago at the enemy's doorstep was easier to take than to tolerate.
Lin Wenhu's pre-dawn attack worked because it was designed not to win a conventional naval engagement but to create chaos in a confined anchorage. By concentrating fire on bridges rather than hulls, the Liberation paralyzed nationalist command without needing to sink a single large ship. The other communist gunboats, Vanguard and Struggle, sank two nationalist gunboats east of Ox Head Island as the landing force took Green Islet and Triangle Island. When dawn revealed that the entire nationalist fleet had been held at bay by a single 25-ton vessel, the enraged nationalist sailors did exactly what Lin had anticipated — they chased it. The Liberation fled toward open water, drawing the nationalist fleet away from the islands and opening the path for the communist landing ship Guishan to beach itself and disgorge its troops. The nationalists, realizing the trap too late, found their wounded flagship beyond reach of rescue if they stayed. They withdrew to save their commander. The land garrison, watching their naval cover vanish without explanation, concluded they had been abandoned. Their morale collapsed. By nightfall they asked to retreat, and were permitted to go.
The nationalist counterattack arrived on May 28, reinforced from Taiwan with frigates, minesweepers, and gunboats. The second and third stages of the campaign became a chess match between nationalist naval superiority in open water and communist artillery superiority close to shore. On May 30, a nationalist detachment ventured too close to the islands and took fire from communist shore batteries on Large Head Islet and Triangle Island. On June 5, communist forces leapfrogged under shore battery cover to take Dong'ao Island, Greater Ten-thousand Mountain Island, and Lesser Ten-thousand Mountain Island. On June 26, under cover of darkness, they secretly emplaced long-range guns on Tri-gate Island. When the nationalist fleet maneuvered near Outer Linding Island on June 27, the hidden batteries opened up. The fight lasted more than five hours and left one nationalist gunboat sunk, one destroyer and four other vessels damaged. The calculus had turned irreversibly: the communists could not be driven from shore, and the shore controlled the water.
By August 7, 1950, when the last islet — Mosquito Tail — fell to communist forces, the campaign had demonstrated something beyond its tactical results. Eleven nationalist ships were captured and eventually returned to service in the communist fleet — turned against their former owners, as the source documents note with a certain dry satisfaction. The largest island, formerly called Trash Tail, was renamed Laurel Mountain in honor of the landing ship that had beached itself there on the first morning. The campaign was the first combined army-naval operation in communist military history. It secured the Pearl River mouth and ended the nationalist blockade. Many nationalist strategists had privately argued that the archipelago was indefensible — too far from friendly bases, too expensive to supply, too vulnerable to the mainland artillery pressing in from every direction. Their warnings had been overruled for political reasons: holding territory at the enemy's door had symbolic value. When the door finally opened, the symbolism consumed itself, and what remained was the archipelago, 48 islands at the Pearl River's mouth, under new management.
The Wanshan Archipelago lies at approximately 21.95°N, 113.75°E, scattered across the mouth of the Pearl River southeast of Zhuhai and south of the Pearl River Delta's urban sprawl. From the air at 5,000–8,000 feet on a clear day, the islands are clearly visible as a loose scatter of green and brown shapes against the South China Sea, with the broad river mouth opening to the northeast toward Guangzhou. Macau International Airport (VMMC) lies roughly 30 km to the northwest. Hong Kong International Airport (VHHH) is about 50 km to the northeast. The distinction between the inshore coastal islands and the more isolated outer islands — where the third stage of the campaign played out — is visible from altitude.