Word: yikiang
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Dates: during 1955-1955
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Chiang Kai-shek's beleaguered Nationalists made their third retreat in six weeks. First, Yikiang fell in battle, then the Tachens were given up under U.S. protection and pressure. Last week the Nationalists evacuated six-square-mile Nanchi Island, 90 miles south of the fallen Tachens-first taking off 2,000 civilians, then the garrison of some 5,000 troops. The Nanchi withdrawal was a purely Nationalist operation. Chiang's aging P-47s and PBYs (World War II prop planes), aided by Nationalist F-84 and F-86 jets, covered the move. U.S. air-sea rescue teams stood...
...Helena was the knowledge that the land and the ship and the fleet lay in the core of a diplomatic tornado that was swirling around the world. Two hundred and fifty miles away, the mangled bodies of Chinese Nationalists killed in the Communist Chinese attack on the islet of Yikiang were tossed ashore by the turbulent waters of the East China Sea. There was little calm, outward or inward, in Washington or in London or in the United Nations headquarters at New York. In the world's capitals, last week was recognized as a time of decision and danger...
...attacking force at regimental strength (which would be 2,500 on the Chinese scale). They heavily outnumbered and soon overwhelmed the Nationalists. At dusk, the big Nationalist garrison on Upper Tachen, eight miles away, could still hear machine-gun fire. But later in the night silence fell on Yikiang. Next day the triumphant Reds sent 100 planes to bomb the Tachens-one of the largest raids of the island...
Shock Wave. Yikiang (full name: Yikiangshan, meaning "one-river mountain") is no great strategic loss, as the U.S. Administration hastily pointed out, but the psychological shock was severe...
...steppingstones for a Red approach to the Nationalist stronghold: their principal value is as an early radar warning post for air attacks from the North. The Pentagon considers the Tachens "valuable but not vital." They have one small airfield which cannot now be used because of artillery from Yikiang; there is a second-rate radar station. Believing the Tachens expendable, the Pentagon says that it long ago tried to persuade the Nationalists to withdraw from them. Last week, after the fall of Yikiang, the U.S. pulled out its small military advisory group on the Tachens and brought pressure on Chiang...