Fall of Yikiang

It was a bright, sunny day in the East China Sea. There was a tang in the air and a stiff breeze; the water was choppy but not rough. A good day it was for yachting, a reporter in Taipei sardonically observed. There were plenty of surface craft in the sea off tiny (little more than a half square mile) Yikiang Island, but they were not yachts. The Chinese Communists were successfully invading Yikiang --their first combat seizure of a Nationalist-held island since 1950.

The 700 "irregulars"--guerrillas, fishermen and observers--in the Yikiang garrison had no air or sea protection. They had been repeatedly shelled from Communist-held Toumen, six miles away. At mid-morning on the day of the assault, the Reds began shelling the tiny island from two destroyers, four gunboats and a swarm of patrol boats. At noon 60 Red planes--Russian-built light bombers and fighter-bombers, with MIG jets for top cover--began plastering the Nationalists with 500-lb. bombs. Under this rain of fire, the garrison clung to its burrows; while they were holed up, the invaders came ashore from a swarm of armored, motorized junks.

Washington intelligence estimated the 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 war.

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.

The Chinese Reds had apparently studied the U.S. Marines' technique of combined operations--land, sea and air--and their seamanship was good enough for the job.

They not only dared; they succeeded. The seizure of the unimportant island quickly raised important questions.

Aside from Formosa and the Pescadores, which the U.S. is committed to defend, the Nationalists hold four groups of small islands, scattered along 400 miles of the Chinese coast: the Tachens, the Nanchis, the Matsus and the Quemoys {see map). The Tachens are the hardest to defend, since they are almost out of combat range for Nationalist planes from Taipei. Conversely, they are much too far from Formosa to be 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 to withdraw the garrison (one full division) and some 8,000 civilians.

Valuable Quemoy. The other island clusters are easier for Nationalist planes to protect, but none except the Pescadores are steppingstones to Formosa.

Quemoy, however, is uniquely useful to the Nationalists as a harassing base, since it is only five miles (easy artillery range) from the big Communist port of Amoy, and so prevents the Reds from making full use of Amoy harbor.

Last September the Reds shelled Quemoy heavily, in what looked like the prelude to attack, but they have failed--so far--to follow through. U.S. strategists are inclined to agree with the Nationalists that Quemoy must be held. Chiang Kai-shek's government demanded a firm and public pledge by the U.S. to defend Quemoy. President Eisenhower's message this week to Congress implied that Quemoy would be defended.

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