The second battle: the history of battle and the enlightenment of victory
From November 6 to December 24, 1950, the Chinese People’s Volunteers, with the cooperation of the Korean People’s Army, attracted the "United Nations Army" headed by the U.S. Army and the South Korean Army to the scheduled battlefield, and suddenly launched a counterattack, which not only completely shattered the "United Nations". The "Christmas offensive" of the "Army", and severely damaged the powerful enemy, sent the enemy back to the 38th line from the Yalu River, completely reversing the situation of the Korean War.
In this battle, our army won a strategically significant victory in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, which caused violent shocks in the U.S. government and the opposition.
The U.S. media circles called the failure of the U.S. military in North Korea a "nightmare" and "tragedy," and exclaimed that it was "the greatest defeat in the history of the U.S. Army."
Campaign review
Pretending to be hostile, lure the enemy to the predetermined battlefield.
After the end of the first battle, the United States was still unclear about the intention of our troops in the war. It believed that the Chinese who appeared in North Korea were only sporadic volunteers, and that the victory of the US military was a foregone conclusion.
Therefore, it is still planned to use ground forces to tentatively attack, and then launch a general offensive from the east and west to the north, and end the war before Christmas.
Prior to this, Peng Dehuai believed that the "United Nations Army" might reorganize the offensive, and proposed to consolidate the victory, prepare for another fight, and if the enemy advances again, let it go deep and then annihilate it.
Mao Zedong totally agreed with Peng Dehuai's opinion.
Based on this, the Volunteer Army decided to adopt the policy of fighting inside, luring the enemy in deep, and breaking through each.
On November 6, the "United Nations Army" began a tentative offensive.
According to the scheduled plan, the Volunteer Army fought with some troops steadily to lure the enemy into deepening.
Under the bewilderment of our military's series of feigning strategies, the enemy dispelled his worries and marched boldly northward. By the 21st, the enemy on both sides of the east and west were lured into our planned battlefield.
The Western Front counterattacked, and the US military suffered heavy losses and retreated to Pyongyang.
On November 25, the Volunteers on the Western Front first launched a counterattack.
Our army seized the weak link of the enemy, and first launched a counterattack against the 7th and 8th Divisions of the 2nd South Korean Army, which was responsible for the right-wing offensive task of the 8th Army of the United States, with the cooperation of the 38th Army and the 42nd Army and the First Section of the 40th Army. The two divisional divisions were annihilated, opening a breakthrough for the battle to counterattack.
Then Peng Dehuai ordered other troops on the western front to annihilate the enemy in front of him.
At the same time, a double-layer circuitous battle deployment was adopted. The 38th Army was ordered to implement an inner circuitous circuit and interspersed with the three institutes; and the 42nd Army was ordered to implement an outer circuitous circuit, interspersed with Shunchuan and Suchuan, and cut off the enemy's retreat, so that the main force frontal pursuit and side attack rout the enemy.
The Volunteer Army departments moved after hearing the order, and the performance of the 113th Division of the 38th Army was particularly outstanding.
The division was ordered to intersperse behind enemy lines and seize Sanli.
The troops marched 72.5 kilometers in a 14-hour rush, and successively defeated many harassing enemy forces. After dawn, they reversed the strict camouflage and concealed operations and ran along the road in the shape of a marching army to attack the enemy's rear.
The enemy plane repeatedly surveyed and judged that this was a South Korean army that had been replaced from the front line.
After the 113th Division seized the Sanli, it seized the opportunity and the enemy seized another key point, Longyuanli.
With only light weapons, it fought fiercely for more than 50 hours with powerful mechanized enemies that broke through and responded to. The distance between the enemies fleeing from the south and the north was less than one kilometer, and the passage was not opened for three days.
From the war to December 1, the U.S. military suffered heavy losses and was forced to discard all its heavy equipment and turn to the west, retreating from Anju and Sucheon to Pyongyang.
Our troops on the Western Front stopped pursuing them on December 2 and switched to rest and reorganization.
The Eastern Front counterattacked and wiped out the "Polar Bear Group."
When the western counterattack started, the enemy on the eastern front continued to advance northward.
On November 27, the main force of the 1st Division of the US Marines and a reinforcement regiment of the 7th Division entered the Changjin Lake area.
On the evening of the 27th, the 9th Corps of the Volunteer Army completed its attack preparations and suddenly launched a counterattack. Overnight, the enemy was divided and surrounded by three isolated points in Xiajieyuli, Liutanli, and Xinxingli on the east and west sides of Changjin Lake and the south bank. .
The besieged enemy not only has fierce ground firepower, but also has strong air support. It is difficult for our army to eat the opponent for a while.
Under extremely difficult circumstances, the 9th Corps decided to concentrate its efforts to wipe out the besieged enemies one by one.
From the evening of November 30 to the dawn of December 2, the 27th Army concentrated its forces and wiped out more than 3,100 members of the 31st Regimental Combat Team ("Polar Bear Regiment") of the 7th Division in Xinxingli, and captured the regiment's flag.
This battle created an example of annihilating a regiment of the US Army in World War I.
At this point, the US forces on the Eastern Front swayed across the board and broke through to the south.
Volunteers threw into the reserve team to encircle, chase and intercept the enemy.
After being hit hard by me, the "United Nations Army" was forced to start a general retreat on December 3.
The volunteer army pursued the victory.
On the 24th, all the enemies were driven south of the "38th Parallel" except for the Xiangyang area, and the second battle ended victoriously.
Campaign revelation
The second battle was the most exciting battle in the mobile war phase of our army's war to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea, and it effectively attacked the arrogance of U.S. imperialism.
The experience of this battle has a lot of enlightenment. In addition to the familiar mobile and flexible strategy and tactics, our invincible fighting spirit, the courage to take responsibility for victory, and the arduous after-installation guarantee, the following three aspects are especially worthy of in-depth study.
The strategic guidance of superior enemy is the prerequisite for "victory first, then war" to control the enemy.
In the battle of war, the first place is the battle of strategic guidance between the two sides.
Compared with MacArthur's wishful thinking and blind optimism, our strategic guidance is obviously more clever.
First of all, correctly assess the strength of the enemy and ourselves, and urgently adjust the 9th Corps to enter the DPRK secretly, ensuring the superiority of the forces against the strong enemy.
Second, make full use of the enemy's arrogance and arrogance to lure the enemy deeper.
After the end of the first battle, the Volunteer Army adopted the policy of combining generous frontal movement defense with guerrilla warfare to show weakness and arrogance to the enemy.
Three active retreats, creating the illusion of fleeing, and releasing prisoners of war. In addition to propagating that the Volunteer Army is a righteous division and a policy of lenient to the prisoners, they also spread to them the news that our army is difficult to supply and want to withdraw to the country, using the captives to deceive the enemy.
A series of deceptions that pretended to be hostile deceived the opponent, and the "United Nations Army" marched northward and finally entered my intended battlefield.
Limited by conditions, the strategic guidance and planning of previous wars relied more on the experience and wisdom of commanders and senior generals, and more reflected the art of command.
Modern warfare puts forward higher requirements on the scientific nature, timeliness, confrontation, and adaptability of strategic guidance.
When we plan and direct the war, we should insist on the unity of science and art.
Not only must carry forward the tradition, be good at using strategy and wisdom, but also make full use of modern technical means such as big data, cloud computing, combat experiments, wargames, and combine temple calculations with actuarial calculations to improve the scientific and accurate strategic guidance Spend.
Breaking the balance and stability of the opponent's combat system can greatly improve combat effectiveness.
In the second battle, in response to the weakness of the U.S. mechanized forces that rely heavily on the lines of communication and were afraid of being cut off, the Volunteers widely adopted the tactics of interspersing and detouring, dividing and encircling, repeatedly inserting the enemy's internal lines or cleverly circling behind the enemy, splitting the enemy, resulting in the enemy's combat system. Lost balance, and even quickly collapsed.
Modern warfare is unfolding in multiple dimensions across the entire territory, and the organic integration of various parts of the combat system is more coordinated and closer, surpassing the direct connection of the elements of combat effectiveness in geographic space, and the overall effectiveness has increased exponentially.
The powerful enemy emphasizes the "overall emergence" of its combat system more than in the past.
Once the system structure is broken, this overall emergence will immediately collapse, and the "collapse effect" of combat effectiveness will appear.
In the age of informatization and intelligence, the biggest advantage of a strong enemy is the ubiquitous penetration of electronic technology and the support of vertical and horizontal integration of network technology.
"Hit the key, break the system" and "destroy the network and break the chain" are the basic focus points for us to win the enemy and break the strength of the enemy.
To analyze the problem with the method of system theory, it is easy to find the winning cardinal.
We must try every means to break the enemy’s military information network and break the enemy’s war potential information network based on the situation; strive to cut off the enemy’s reconnaissance and early warning chain, command and control chain, weapon strike chain, navigation time-frequency chain, and integrated support chain.
On this basis, grasp the opportunities and expand the results.
Restrict the advantage of the powerful enemy, forcing him to have a "fair battle" with me.
The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea was a typical asymmetric war.
Facing the US military's intensive firepower and three-dimensional air-to-ground assault regardless of cost, the Volunteer Army seized the insurmountable weakness of the opponent and tried every possible means to limit its advantage.
For example, night combat and close combat are fully utilized to combat or even strategic heights, making it difficult for the enemy to implement air support.
Our army also makes full use of the terrain to design the battlefield, so that the enemy's mechanized troops cannot take advantage of it, and the artillery can hardly overcome the dead angle of shooting, and so on.
The U.S. military particularly emphasizes the use of its technological and equipment advantages. There is a saying among its senior generals: "Never let your troops fall into a'fair battle'." However, in recent years, regardless of the night battle of Diwaniya on the Iraqi battlefield, It was also the "hammer drop" operation on the Afghan battlefield. The US military, which has an overwhelming advantage in equipment and technology, was caught in a close fight with its opponents and paid an unexpected price.
This also enlightens the world, no matter how powerful opponents they face, they should maintain their subjective consciousness and prevent their opponents from fighting in the way they are trained and good at. "You beat you, I beat mine" and insist on the asymmetry that is beneficial to me. Combat is not only the basic way to give play to subjective initiative, but also the only way to defeat the enemy.
This version of the picture comes from the "Liberation Army Pictorial" data room
Zhang Hui Zhang Minxia