Review and Thoughts of the Nansha Naval Battle

The "3.14" naval battle was the closest actual maritime battle to the Chinese military. There are many experiences and lessons worth summarizing today.

The largest caliber weapon of the Vietnamese army participating in the confrontation is only the 40mm gun of the HQ 505 landing ship. The other two armed transport ships are equipped with anti-aircraft machine guns, which cannot pose a major threat to our fleet. The first shot of the battle was when Vietnamese soldiers fired. After the war began, the Vietnamese army was immediately and completely suppressed. The Yue 605 transport ship was sunk in 9 minutes. Although the 40mm gun of the Yue 505 landing ship responded quickly and fired first, it was 30 kilometers (3 nautical miles) away from our 531 ship and failed to pose a substantial threat to me. During the battle, China's 531 ship had appropriate tactics, focusing on attacking the Yue 505 ship's gun positions and driving platform. It only hit 7 100mm artillery shells and destroyed the gun positions and driving platform, causing the Yue 505 landing ship to quickly lose its combat effectiveness. Although the 100mm main gun later malfunctioned and misfired, a 505 target ship was left for the 37mm secondary gun that would not fight back.

There is a serious disconnect in the timeliness of command between China and Vietnam. The battle started at 8:47. At 9:15 (28 minutes later), Ship 556, which was 5.5 nautical miles northeast of Chigua Reef and Qiong Reef, had just received the formation order to open fire. At this time, Ship 605 was still in a "muddle-headed" confrontation. . The 556th ship stopped firing at 9:37. After firing for 12 minutes, the 820-ton Yue 605 was still not sunk, and it was still struggling to escape. Later, it was learned through intelligence channels that the 605th ship failed to return to port (on its way back). sunk). The Yue 505 landing ship that ran aground on the beach has a tonnage of 4,100 tons. It is Vietnam’s largest combat ship and its treasure. The Chinese Navy did not organize in time to completely sink it. Fortunately, Vietnam's shipbuilding capabilities are poor and it has never been able to repair it. This is also the reason why some data incorrectly claim that one ship was sunk and two ships were severely damaged in Vietnam. The actual result was that Vietnam had 2 ships sunk and 1 destroyed.

China’s pre-war determination was limited to seizing islands and reefs rather than recovering them. After achieving an overwhelming victory, China quickly withdrew due to fear of Vietnamese air strikes and did not continue to expand its results. At that time, the Vietnamese army did not provide air support to Nansha. The Su-22 of the Vietnamese Air Force is equipped with KH-28 anti-radiation missiles. As long as our radar suddenly shuts down and maneuvers to evade, the missile will definitely be lost. If the Su-22 mounts a rocket nest to attack the ship, the hit rate will be extremely low and it will expose itself to the artillery of our formation. More importantly, the Su-22 is not even equipped with an inertial navigation system and relies on Doppler radar navigation, which has extremely poor accuracy and cannot detect point targets such as warships at sea. Therefore, the Su-22 of the Vietnamese army at that time did not have anti-ship capabilities, and it was overly cautious to worry about the Su-22.

The 3.14 naval battle was another Chinese naval battle after the Xisha Battle in 1974. Although the scale of the battle was small, it can be seen that the Chinese navy has vigorously built up its fleet after more than ten years after the Xisha Battle. The fleet size and quality It has been greatly improved, which gave the Chinese Navy a clear equipment advantage in this battle. At the same time, the problem of China's air power not being able to effectively cover the Nansha Islands was undoubtedly exposed by this battle, which also promoted China's later vigorous construction of long-range air combat capabilities.