At 3 pm on October 1, the PRC founding ceremony began. After Mao Zedong read the declaration from the Central People’s Government, the military parade began. All the troops to be reviewed passed in front of the Tiananmen Rostrum from East to West with the Tiananmen platform as the center, according to the sequence of the navy, the army, and the air force.
Commander-in-chief Zhu De, in military uniform, reviewed the troops from his parade car with Nie Rongzhen. The troop consisted of the navy, army and air forces. The march followed. The first to pass Tiananmen Square were the navy formed by personnel chosen from the northeast navy college and East China navy fleet. The army followed next, formed by personnel chosen from 199th infantry division, 619th regiment of the independent 207th division, the temporarily established 4th artillery division, the 3rd panzer division and the 3rd cavalry division. Among them, the infantry division was formed by three infantry regiments, and battalions of Tommy guns, light machine guns, communications, heavy machine guns, light mortar, heavy mortar, anti-tank guns and mountain artillery.
The artillery from the artillery division included 75mm field guns, 105mm howitzers as well as 37mm and 75mm anti-aircraft guns which passed the Tiananmen Rostrum from small to big, and from low to high. The panzer division was formed by regiments of motorized infantry, armored infantry and tank forces. This was followed by the cavalry division, formed by three cavalry regiments and one 75mm field gun battalion drawn by mules.
The last group to pass was the air force, formed by a P-51 fighter squadron, a DE?HAVILLAND Mosquito bomber squad as well as a PT-19 and L-5 training plane squad under the command of North China Military Area Command Aviation Office. When the panzer division entered Tiananmen Square, the air force planes flew over each division in two-plane and three-plane formation, coordinating with the ground panzer division.
