Shortly before midnight on Saturday, May 26, the land attack began. An armada of massive transport aircraft protected by squadrons of jet fighters began roaring over the Taiwan Strait, slightly north of the island itself.
An entire divison of China’s 15th Airborne Army rumbled eastward, packed into recently acquired Russian-built IL-76MD/CANDIDs, specially configured for airborne operations. Flying right astern of them, low over the ocean, was a fleet of Y-8X/CUB transporters, likewise packed with troops, the entire fleet under the control of their Airborne Command, a gray-painted A-501 Mainstay.
Taiwan’s air defenses were all but useless now, and the massed ground forces of the Army, which had been swept to the south in the false panic over the Penghu Islands, was now unable to get back because of the wrecked roads, bridges and railroads. Which effectively allowed China’s first landing force to hit the beaches from out of the night, unchallenged. One by one, the huge low-flying aircraft climbed to an altitude of 1,000 feet and disgorged their live loads into two separate dropping zones seven miles apart, two miles behind the glorious white sands of Chinsan Beach.
This spectacular tourist area is situated 13 miles west of Keelung on the north coast of Taipei County. And tonight hundreds and hundreds of paratroopers came thumping into the soft sand behind the wide shoreline, several miles from the nearest urban districts.
By 0230 there were 3,000 to 4,000 on each landing beach, and the Chinese commanders were rallying the Division quickly and efficiently, ordering the airborne troops to move off as soon as they were formed, heading inland away from the sea, forward of the landing area, for almost a mile.
And here the Chinese began to dig in, establishing, well forward of the beachhead, two crescent-shaped screens, which would become the first line of defense Taiwanese troops would encounter should they attempt to attack the forthcoming amphibious force from the mainland.
Taiwan’s problem right now was communication. The military systems were in such bad shape it was nearly impossible to transmit a message, never mind a detailed conversation or report. Certainly there were small units stationed near Taipei that were aware of air activity out on the northern region. And they may even have assumed there were troop drops being made. But they had no forces in contact, no Intelligence, no way of knowing what the invasion force was doing, certainly no way of assessing whether a beach landing was in any way imminent.
Meanwhile the Chinese were thundering forward with their two steel defense perimeters, one astride the road from Taipei, just north of Yangmingshan, the other astride the main approaches to the beach landing areas from Keelung — clean across the road from Feitsuiwan.
They strived in pouring rain all through that Sunday, digging trenches, preparing ammunition, setting up machine guns. The ground mission of China’s 15th Airborne Division was to stop a Taiwanese counterattack at any and all cost. And they had to be ready to protect the landing craft of the big Chinese Marine Division when it hit the beaches, complete with its own armor, artillery and air defenses, early on Monday morning, May 28.
And ready they were. While the main forces had been digging in, a small Chinese marine force, similarly trained to the U.S. Navy SEALs or Britain’s Special Boat Squadron, had checked out and cleared the landing area, marking the lanes, staking out their own positions to supply local machine-gun cover while they guided the landing craft in.
By 0300, three hours before the sun would clear the distant horizon, the sea was suddenly alive with the unmistakable signs of invasion, tiny black landing craft, packed with armed troops streaming in toward the shallows. And as the sky brightened and long, pink fingers began to form among the predawn rain clouds, the sound of the ramps echoed along the shoreline. Big, clanging ramps, manhandled by shouting troops. And down those ramps came the big tracked vehicles, engines howling, as they drove down the steep gradients and splashed into the surf, driving forward, looking for their lane lines on the beach.
Out beyond the waves in the calmer waters a half mile offshore there was a kind of controlled chaos, as ships maneuvered into position, the hydraulic docks opening up to allow more and more of the landing craft to break cover from the LCDs. This was D-Day Normandy on only a slightly smaller scale, and if any Taiwanese units were watching, they were watching the opening round of an unwinnable fight.
Six hours later, everyone who was going ashore had gone ashore. And the ships were turned back across the strait to reload with thousands and thousands more troops, and this time they would be joined by dozens of civilian ships, all making their way to the northern beachhead out on the Chinsan sands.
Rarely had a capital city the size of Taipei experienced such mass confusion. Its three million inhabitants — and three million more in the surrounding district — knew, of course, their island was under attack from the Republic of China. But the Chinese had thus far gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming even one building in the great northern metropolis. They had attacked, exclusively, military installations and military communications, with the exception of the international airport, which they completely disabled but left the passenger terminals untouched.
Thus for the people of Taiwan there was television news bringing hourly reports of the continuing air battles over the central waters of the strait. There were reports of the destruction of the Navy base in the Penghu Islands. And there were further reports of the Taiwanese Navy preparing to defend the shores against a mass invasion from the sea. But nothing was being reported from the beachhead, and there were no signs of bombs, rockets, shells or missiles. The city seemed normal, save for the tension and fear. But there were no sounds of war. It was as if China had decided to shut down the military effectiveness of Taiwan, but possibly nothing further.
Thus Taipei itself continued to function. Shops opened as usual, schools and universities remained active, traffic was its usual hideous mess, but buses ran and people went to work. Hotels stayed open and thousands of tourists trapped in the city booked in for extra weeks. It was impossible to leave Taipei, but equally impossible to travel to Taipei. The major long-distance freeways were virtually deserted, the railroad station was dead, the airport was dead, the runways wrecked. And a curious, uneasy calm enveloped the capital, even though, on the surface, there was the appearance of normality.
The United States had informed the government it would begin an evacuation of its citizens caught in the entanglement of the Chinese invasion, but it quickly became apparent that there was nowhere in the north of the island where a U.S. passenger aircraft could land. And, of course, there were no proper foreign embassies in Taipei, because of the problems of upsetting mainland China. There were just the “pseudo-embassies” where diplomats operated under the cover of the American Institute on the Hsinhyi Road, the British Trade and Cultural Office on the Jenai Road, and the France-Asia Trade Association on the Tunhua Road, none of which had any serious clout with anyone.
And so, as the first waves of Chinese troops splashed ashore 17 miles to the northeast, Taipei continued to function, both citizens and visitors alike, with no option but to await the inevitable arrival of the conquering hordes from the mainland. There was no escape, and life moved precariously forward for all of them.
Five days later, on Saturday morning, June 2, the National Palace Museum was busier than usual. It was somewhere interesting to go for the new prisoners of the city, and the tourist buses were full, wending their way across the Keelung River, up through the northern suburbs to the Waishunghsi neighborhood at the foot of the Yangming Mountains.