The Korean War is the founding battle of New China, it played the prestige of the Chinese soldiers, played a precious time of peace, mentioned the Korean War we only know the five major battles and Shangganling, but do you know which turning point of the Korean War was the battle?
Speaking of the turning point of the war, the Battle of T-Zi Shan deserved it, it was the last and most unsuccessful attack launched by the coalition forces in the confrontation stage of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, after which the coalition forces were no longer able to launch an attack on the volunteer army.
The Battle of T-Shaped Mountain can be called the strongest defensive battle of the Volunteer Army, and can also be called the "most face-punching" battle of the US Army, the US general Van Vliet originally wanted to pick up a soft persimmon and pinch it, but did not want hundreds of US troops, plus 170,000 shells, could not attack a platoon of T-shaped Mountain, and even let the Volunteer Army achieve a brilliant record of 1 to 14, and afterwards the Battle of T-Shaped Mountain shook the world.
As early as when China decided to resist us aggression and aid Korea, our country was well aware that the difference in firepower between the volunteer army and the US army was not a dime and a half, because the volunteer troops were also equipped with some American-style ordnance, most of which were obtained from the Kuomintang during the Liberation War, and the People's Liberation Army suffered a lot of losses in the face of the Kuomintang's powerful firepower.
Therefore, at the beginning, the volunteer soldiers were already mentally prepared, but what people did not expect was that as soon as the two armies fought, the volunteer army found that the US army not only had advanced guns, they could also get extremely strong air support, and the number of ground armor and artillery was also terrible, and the Yankees never skimped on shells, our army was fired one shot at a time, and the US army was hit by ton, which showed that the difference in strength between the two armies was too great.
At that time, an army of the US army was equipped with 18 155 mm howitzers, 54 105 mm howitzers, hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles, and the supply of shells was even more continuous; while the artillery unit of the Volunteer Army only had the captured 75 mm mountain guns, which were powerful. The supply of artillery shells was so inferior to that of the Americans that our army had only fired more than a thousand shells in the first two battles.
In order to reduce casualties, the volunteer army built a fortification with the tunnel as the core on the position according to the actual situation, which greatly reduced the threat caused by the US artillery fire.
Although the US military fire is strong, the Volunteer Army, with its tenacious will and the spirit of undaunted sacrifice, has caused the United Nations Army led by the US Army to suffer a lot, and by the second half of 1952, the UN Army was actually no longer able to seize any position of the Volunteer Army, and thus the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea entered a stalemate stage.
The lack of hope of victory in the Korean War has made the morale of the United Nations army very low, and the US Army General and commander of the Eighth Army, Van Vliet, can be said to be the most distressed person, since he entered the DPRK, his record is simply unbearable.
In particular, the defeat of the Battle of Shangganling was not only a military defeat for Van Vliet, but also a political defeat, and the Battle of Shangganling in 1952 was not only a game between China and the United States, but also a game between Truman and Eisenhower for the US presidency.
Why? That's because Eisenhower believed that the Korean War was time to end, and Truman wanted to carry the war through to the end, so Truman desperately needed a victory, so he ordered Van Vleet to launch the Battle of Shangganling.
But who knew that the US army and the volunteer army fought fiercely in Shangganling for more than forty days, and the hills of Shangganling were flattened by the artillery fire of the US army, and the US army failed to occupy Shangganling, but was killed and wounded by the volunteer army more than 25,000 people, and finally returned with a big defeat.
The defeat of Shangganling made VanVleet offend both Truman and Eisenhower, and Truman, who was in desperate need of victory, scolded VanVleet for being incompetent, and Eisenhower scolded VanVleet for not valuing the lives of his soldiers, so VanVleet was like a rat in a bellows, angry at both ends.
VanVleet felt that the future was uncertain, no matter who succeeded the President of the United States, his military career would probably stop at the Korean battlefield, and the commander-in-chief of the United Nations Army, Clarke, was a disciple of VanVleet, and he sympathized with VanVleet.
Clark said the situation was not so bad that it could be eliminated by simply winning a small victory and then getting journalists to publicize it, and Van Vleet agreed to Clark's suggestion.
Perhaps scared by the volunteer army, Van Vliet learned to be smart this time, he calculated in his heart, if you want to achieve absolute victory, you must find a soft persimmon pinch, so Van Vliet picked and chose, and finally selected the T-shaped mountain, which is located 13 kilometers west of the Iron Plain, and the Seongsan and Zhishan are distributed in the "D" character, so the US army calls it "T-shaped mountain", and the volunteer army calls it "T-shaped mountain".
The reason why Van Vliet chose "T-Shaped Mountain" is because the T-Shaped Mountain position is only more than three hundred square meters, almost one-tenth of the ten-thousandth of Shangganling, and in addition, there is only one platoon of volunteer soldiers stationed here, and it has just been transferred to the defense, and has never fought with the US army, so Van Vliet decided that it is absolutely impossible to take the Dingzi Mountain.
Clarke broke his heart in order to help VanVleet make an impact, clark invited 12 reporters from nine media companies in the United States to come and observe, only to wait for Van Vliet to win the T-shaped mountain to publicize Van Vliet's "brilliant record".
On January 15, 1953, the U.S. First Army formulated a detailed operational plan, which was planned to deploy the 2nd Battalion of the 31st Regiment of the 7th Division as the main attack unit, the 73rd Tank Brigade to provide cover for the 2nd Battalion, and the 58th Bomber Wing, the 57th Field Artillery Battalion, and 7 regimental artillery battalions to provide artillery support. An offensive was launched on 25 January 1953.
It can be seen that Van Vliet had to take T-Shaped Mountain this time, and on January 20, 1953, the 57th Field Artillery Battalion of the US Army began shelling T-Shaped Mountain, and gradually increased the density of artillery strikes. On 24 January, the U.S. Air Force began bombing Volunteer positions, and the ground attack forces carried out two tentative attacks as planned. On the night of January 24, the U.S. attacking forces were ready, waiting for VanVleet to issue the offensive order on the 25th.
We might think that the enemy had carried out four days of indiscriminate bombardment of the volunteer positions, but what was the situation of the volunteer soldiers? Stationed at Dingzi Mountain were soldiers from 1 1 company and 1 platoon of the 201st Regiment of the 67th Division of the Volunteer Army, and as early as the first round of bombardment of the time mountain began by the US army, a platoon of fighters had already drilled into the tunnel, listening to the rumbling artillery fire outside the tunnel, although the soldiers were a little surprised, there was no danger. So the U.S. military is just wasting shells.
At twelve o'clock in the afternoon on January 25, the American infantry finally entered the battlefield under the cover of tanks, and Philip, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. 31st Regiment, ordered the American soldiers to attack Zhishan in three ways: one company plus seven tanks pretending to attack Zhishan, one company plus six tanks to cut off the connection between T-Shaped Mountain and other highlands, and all the remaining American troops, plus twenty tanks, were responsible for attacking the T-shaped mountain heights.
The U.S. military first sent a platoon of commandos, in order to successfully take the T-shaped mountain, the U.S. army had conducted 9 exercises before the start of the battle, according to the U.S. troops who participated in the battle at the time, they could also complete the assault mission with their eyes closed, which showed the importance That Van Vliet attached to the Battle of T-Shaped Mountain.
In order to cooperate with the commando team to complete the task, the US army also dispatched two spitfire groups to cooperate with the commando operation, and more than a dozen tanks were responsible for the fixed point of the volunteer fire point, the soldiers of the volunteer platoon had long been prepared, and as soon as they saw the extension of the US artillery fire, they jumped out of the tunnel and entered the position.
Chen Zhi, deputy squad leader of the 1st Platoon 3rd Squad, took the lead in leading his combat group into the position, and after careful observation, they found that the attacking American troops had advanced to the ridge area, and if Chen Zhi and others entered the position later, then the position was likely to be lost.
At first, the American army found that there was no movement in the volunteer position, thinking that the volunteer soldiers had been eliminated by artillery fire, because no one could survive under such a dense artillery fire, but when they relaxed, the volunteer soldiers suddenly strafed with machine guns, and in just a moment, a large area fell in response.
The U.S. troops panicked and hid in the low-lying areas of the mountains, which made the volunteer soldiers happy, and the volunteer soldiers saw the U.S. troops piled up together in a daze, picked up grenades and threw them at the enemy, and another group of U.S. troops became the ghosts of the volunteers.
Two Spitfire groups of the American Army were quite brave, and they spewed fire at the Volunteer positions in an attempt to stop the Volunteers from throwing grenades with flames, but one of the Spitfires was killed by our army as soon as they appeared, while the other Spitfire escaped due to the failure of the flamethrower.
Under the blows of the volunteers, the American commandos were seriously wounded and lost their combat effectiveness, and Philip hurriedly sent reinforcements to support, but the American troops who came to support suddenly found that the volunteer marksmanship on the high ground was very accurate, and they had no way to get closer to the commandos.
The enemy's tanks were also in a frequent situation, and they obviously attacked the fire of the enemy reinforcements, but they found that no matter how fierce the artillery fire, the volunteer soldiers were safe and sound, because our soldiers would change places after firing a shot, and would never take more than a second at the same fire point. So the U.S. tank guns also lost their role.
The suppressed U.S. forces could only wait for the air force's artillery support, but soon the U.S. Air Force also became the target of U.S. military curses, and the suppressed infantry believed that the air force's bombing had no effect on the war situation at all, and sometimes even dropped bombs near their own people.
Philip had no choice but to use only his remaining troops, and with the attack of another platoon, the U.S. offensive only slightly improved, and many volunteer soldiers were shot and killed, but the volunteer soldiers fought more and more courageously, repelling five large-scale U.S. charges in a row.
Seeing that hundreds of American troops still did not capture the T-shaped mountain heights, Colonel Cohen, the commander of the 31st regiment of the US army, ordered the cancellation of the battle and all withdrew, Van Vliet faced more than a dozen reporters present, his face was like ashes, he originally thought that there was only one platoon of the volunteer army on the T-shaped mountain, which could be pinched as a soft persimmon, but he did not expect that the soldiers in this platoon were ironclad, and the AMERICAN army was humiliated.
In the Battle of T-Shaped Mountain, our army suffered 11 casualties, killed more than 150 American troops, and set a brilliant record of 1 to 14, in addition to casualties, the U.S. army also consumed 170,000 shells, with a total cost of 200 million US dollars.
170,000 shells were fired into the high ground of nearly three hundred square meters, what a terrible scene, it is said that at that time, The Dingzi Mountain was blown down by the artillery fire of the US army by more than ten meters, it is also possible to think, under such difficult conditions, only one platoon of soldiers of the Volunteer Army created the peak of the defensive war, the Americans and Europeans know how they persevered, people only know that after the Dingzi Mountain, the whole world was shocked.
Van Vliet originally wanted reporters to publicize their achievements, but they never expected that the ending would be so embarrassing, the American reporter recorded the results of the defeat of the US army in T-Shaped Mountain, and after returning home, it was printed in the newspaper, and the American people were in an uproar, so the US Congress specially launched an investigation, the US Army chief of staff was forced to come to Congress to make a statement, and the last generation of "war maniacs" VanVleet was also dismissed, ending his military career.