The Battle of Shangganling was the last large-scale offensive operation of the US army on the peninsula, and after the defeat of this campaign, the US army did not launch an attack at or above the battalion level, but the offensive momentum of the volunteer army became more and more fierce. In this battle that the US military originally planned to "fight small and make a small fuss" and finally turned into a bloody battle, how many people did the coalition forces lose?
The 43-day Battle of Shangganling ended with the final victory of the Volunteer Army
Mr. Peng once said: The Five Holy Mountains are the gateway to the entire peninsula's central line, and if the Five Holy Mountains are lost, there is no danger to defend them two hundred kilometers to the back. Whoever loses the Five Holy Mountains will become a sinner of history. However, a cruel fact is that under the fierce attack of the US army, the Blood Ridge and the Sadness Ridge, which were garrisoned by the Northern Army as the barrier of the Five Holy Mountains, were lost successively, and Shanggan Ridge became the only remaining barrier.
The original plan of van Vleet, commander of the US Eighth Army, was to send out two battalions and occupy Shangganling at a cost of 200 casualties in about five days. However, the final result was that the US army successively invested more than 60,000 people in 3 regiments of the 7th Infantry Division, 4 regiments of the pseudo-2nd Division, 3 regiments of the Pseudo-9th Division, the 187th Airborne Regiment, the Colombian Battalion, the Ethiopian Battalion, and the 105th Recruit Formation Training Division.
If the Five Holy Mountains are lost, there will be no danger to defend the next 200 kilometers
In addition, 16 artillery battalions plus 3 independent artillery companies (equipped with more than 330 guns of 105 mm or more), 8 tank companies (equipped with more than 170 tanks of various types), and an aviation brigade (about 100 aircraft, a total of more than 3,000 sorties) were supported by the operation. The Volunteers did not have a single plane in the sky and not a single tank on the ground.
Due to the narrow territory of Shangganling, the total area is only 3.7 square kilometers, and the two highlands 597.9 and 537.7 garrisoned by the 15th Army can only be placed in the next company. At that time, the two highlands were garrisoned by the 9th Company and the 1st Company of the 135th Regiment. They did not have any anti-aircraft weapons, and the heavy fire was only an 82 mortar and a recoilless gun.
On the first day of the war, the U.S. military fired 300,000 shells, and the shell casings piled up
On October 14, 1952, the Battle of Shangganling was officially launched. Van Vleet increased the fire preparedness from the normal 40 rounds of shelling to 260 rounds, firing 300,000 shells at two heights in one day, while the Volunteers returned fire with only 3,000 shells, less than one percent of the Americans.
Under the fierce artillery fire of the Us army, the fortifications built by the volunteer army for 4 months were completely destroyed, and the soldiers of the two companies also suffered heavy casualties. Van Vleet originally thought that Shangganling was within reach, but he did not expect that even if the surface position was lost, the volunteer army still did not give up, and all turned into the tunnel to continue fighting. The surface positions were lost during the day and retaken at night, and the battle formed a tug-of-war situation between the two sides.
Under heavy American artillery fire, the volunteers' surface positions were destroyed
The volunteers were not blindly passive defensive, and they quickly concentrated their artillery fire and actively attacked to kill and injure the enemy's living forces. The two sides of the small Shangganling Began to gather more and more troops, and the casualties became greater and greater. By October 25, the 7th Infantry Division had to withdraw due to heavy casualties and topped the pseudo-2nd Division.
At 4:00 a.m. on November 4, the departure and assembly site of the 187th Airborne Regiment was discovered by Li Changsheng, the commander of the 91st Regiment of the Volunteer Army, who immediately called for artillery fire to strike. 24 Katyusha accurately covered the enemy, 187 was beaten to the flesh, withdrew to Japan overnight, and never returned to the battlefield. At this point, all American troops withdrew from the battle and were attacked by the minions.
Li Changsheng, commander of the 91st Regiment, discovered the departure and assembly site of the enemy's airborne 187th Regiment and called for artillery fire to inflict heavy casualties
Walter Helms's "American Troops in the Korean War" Volume 01, page 367, records: In 12 days, the U.S. army suffered more than 5,200 casualties, and the 187th Airborne Battle Group suffered unprecedented heavy losses, and we had no other way but to withdraw from the battle.
The battle, which came to be known in the West as "Verdun of the East," lasted 43 days, far exceeding Van Vleet's expectations. In 43 days, the Coalition was shot down more than 300 aircraft, destroyed 44 tanks, destroyed 72 artillery pieces, and annihilated 25,498 people, with a casualty rate of more than 40%.
The soil taken from Shangganling is full of shell casings and shrapnel
And the heroic volunteer soldiers also paid a huge price. In the past 43 days, on average, more than 40,000 shells have been dropped on our positions every day, and 500,000 rounds per square kilometer have been dropped. Of the 42,000 men who fought, 11,529 were killed (including 9,819 combat casualties and 1,716 logistical casualties). Of the 27 companies of the 15th Army, 16 companies were destroyed and rebuilt three times, and one of the companies was replenished with more than 800 people.
On the eve of the return of the volunteers in 1958, the troops returned to Shangganling to comfort the heroic souls
Since the end of the Battle of Shangganling, the US military academy has carried out countless sand table deductions, and the results are all won by the US army, which makes the US military confused about what is wrong. In this war of modernization, which is awash in a massive amount of industrial products, they have overlooked the most important point: the fighting spirit of the volunteer army that never gives up, which is the spirit that makes the weak feel frightened and the brave boil with blood, and it is also the essence that the US military can never understand.