1 in which the army would land a special force unit at Dongshan Island destroying the radar station and capturing PLA prisoners there.

Wu asked the radar stations to confirm the two ROC ships were not American and report on their movement every ten minutes.

[4][3] Wu assigned the overall mission to Kong and instructed him to concentrate his firepower and try to destroy one enemy ship at the time.

[5] After confirming the enemy ships' movement, the PLA General Staff approved the SSF plan at 11:10 p.m. with Zhou Enlai's instructions.

Kong ordered the Group to make close contact with the two ROC ships at high speed without firing.

However the patrol boats launched a second attack which Li did not expect which killed many crew members and caused a fire on the deck.

During the third attack around 2:54 am, two patrol boats were hit by several shells with one suffering significant casualties and the other losing three of its four engines.

At the same time Kong ordered the PT boats to launch torpedoes but they all missed their attack opportunities due to lack of communication and radar guidance leading them to go in the wrong direction and firing mistakenly at a large rock.

[6][7][3] After an hour of fighting, Li changed the tactics from avoiding the PLAN fire to facing the patrol boats.

After a ninety-minute fight, Chang Kiang sank around 3:33 a.m. at twenty-five nautical miles (46 km; 29 mi) southeast of Dongshan Island.

Wang suggested that they immediately return to Taiwan but Hu refused instead wanting ROC bomber aircraft to retaliate by attacking the PLAN task squadron at dawn (due to lack of night bombing experience at sea) and turn the battle situation around.

At 4:40 am, Wang discovered the patrol boats about three miles (4.8 km) away from Chien Men and ordered his artillery to fire on them.

Meanwhile, the PT boats from the Reinforcement Group had reached their firing position about two cable lengths from Chien Men.

At 5:19 am, Zhang ordered the PT boats to launch torpedoes at Chien Men with three out of ten hitting the ROC ship.

Their report described the 6 August battle as "the largest victory of naval engagements in recent years" and stated it proved small boats can attack and sink large warships.

[8] On 17 August, Kong and several representatives met with PRC leaders including Mao, Zhou, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping to give a battle presentation.

On 11 August, Admiral Liu Guangkai who was Commander of the ROC Navy was stripped from his position despite pleas from American naval advisers to give him a second chance.

The PLAN task squadron was near the coast and had more accurate information thanks to the land based radars while the two ROC ships were on their own and did not know they were pursued until it was too late.