The archipelago consists of 48 islands strategically located at the mouth of the Pearl River, a chokepoint on the communication lines to Hong Kong and Macau.
In response, the communist force decided to take the archipelago and eliminate the threat and crush the nationalist blockade of the mouth of the Pearl River.
Shortly before dawn, the advance guard of the communist force in charge of fire support reached the nationalist anchorage at the Laurel Mountain (Guishan, 桂山) Island.
Fully aware that his 25-ton gunboat was completely incapable of sinking its large opponents each displaced over a thousand tons, Captain Lin skillfully ordered his crew to concentrate fire on the superstructures of larger nationalist ships.
The nationalist fleet was soon faced another dilemma: continue fighting the two communist naval vessels or saving the dying sailors, including the severely wounded commander-in-chief, who was out of consciousness by already this time.
The nationalist naval force cruised in waters north of Little Green Islet (Xiaoqingzhou, 小青洲) and Ox Head (Niutou, 牛头) island, attempted to bombard the communist positions on lands and the transport fleet.
However, the communists also learned from earlier experience and reached the conclusion of not to engaging the much stronger nationalist naval force in the open ocean where the condition favored the latter.
In the early morning of June 27, 1950, the hidden communist shore batteries suddenly opened up on the unsuspecting nationalist fleet, and defenders on the nationalist-held islands, the fierce fight lasted for more than five hours.
After numerous extraordinarily brave but completely futile attempts[citation needed] to approach the shore to support the nationalist defenders on land which resulted in one gunboat sunk, one destroyer, two large patrol craft two minesweepers and two gunboats damaged, it was painfully clear that the outgunned nationalist fleet must withdraw to the open waters further away in order to avoid annihilation by the superior communist artillery on land.
Finally, on August 7, 1950, the communist campaign to take the Wanshan Archipelago ended in total victory after taking the Mosquito Tail Islet (Wenwei Zhou, 蚊尾洲) The communist takeover of the Wanshan Archipelago eliminated the nationalist threat to its vital shipping lines to Hong Kong and Macau and crushed nationalist blockade of mouth of the Pearl River.
As a result, many of the repairs that could be done locally had the comprehensive facilities and infrastructures been available would require traveling back to the distant friendly bases, thus greatly increased cost.
Many nationalist strategist and naval commanders had pointed out this disadvantage and along with the geographically disadvantage (i.e. the lack of comprehensive facilities and infrastructures), wisely and correctly suggest to withdraw from the Wanshan Archipelago in order to strengthen the defense elsewhere, but their requests were denied because holding on something at the enemy's door step would have a significant symbolic meaning of great political propaganda value, but when the inevitable fall had finally occurred, the resulting disaster had negated any previous gains in political and psychological propaganda.