The famous battle of the 15th Army was Shangganling, and the two company positions that the American army expected to throw into two battalions and suffer 200 casualties could be captured became the flesh and blood mills of the Us and RoKs, and the loss of troops exceeded their expectations by a hundred times.
The 15th Army was a young detachment, the earliest name was the 9th Column of the Central Plains Field Army, which was only upgraded from local troops during the Liberation War and was subordinate to Chen Geng's 4th Corps. The 15th Army was the younger brother in the corps, and its seniority and military achievements were not as good as those of the 13th army and the 14th army, and it often took on some secondary tasks.
Since the 13th and 14th Armies were responsible for the national defense tasks in the direction of Yunnan, the 15th Army once again became a reserve. Military Commander Qin Jiwei took the initiative to ask for help and signed up to participate in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. When it entered the DPRK in March 1951, the 15th Army had the 44th, 45th and 29th Divisions under its jurisdiction, of which 29 divisions belonged to the 10th Army, and because the 43rd Division could not draw out, the 29th Division was drawn from the 10th Army to the 15th Army.
After the start of the fifth campaign, the 15th Army fought on the Eastern Front with the 20th Army and the 60th Army until south of the 38th Line. However, the U.S. army had already understood the strengths and weaknesses of the volunteers at this time, and when the volunteers ran out of ammunition and food, they launched a large-scale counteroffensive.
The volunteer army invested 11 corps in this campaign, plus 1 corps of the KPA, bringing the total strength to an unprecedented strength of 600,000 people. However, the enemy did not fight hard with the volunteers, but resisted step by step, constantly lengthening the supply lines of the volunteers, and waiting for the volunteers to run out of food.
The actual course of the campaign proved that the volunteer army, which used foot as the main mode of maneuver and the supply materials carried by the soldiers themselves, was difficult to grasp the enemy's main force in the movement war, and it seemed that a large area of land was seized, but the actual results were not large.
Now some people think that the volunteer army relied on the large number of people to win the battle, but how to explain that during the War of Resistance, the Kuomintang army in each battle was always several times larger than the Japanese army, and the result was that the Japanese army won, and the mechanization level and firepower intensity of the Japanese army were far inferior to the US troops on the Korean battlefield.
What's more, although the Volunteer Army had the advantage of strength on the surface, it was still at a great disadvantage in firepower, and the artillery of the 15th Army was not as numerous as that of a division of the US and Roksars, and the ammunition was pitifully small, mainly relying on the guys in the hands of infantry.
As the volunteers began to move, the United Nations launched a ferocious counterattack. Judging from the battle itself, the US military fought very well this time, giving full play to the advantages of the air force and mechanization, using the tank contingent as a sharp knife to insert itself into the rear of the volunteer army.
This was originally the strength of the Volunteer Army, such as the 38th Army in the second battle, which was interspersed with three schools, and now the U.S. Army has learned this trick. The 38th Army's attack on 145 miles took 14 hours, which was a two-hour journey for the U.S. military contingent, and the efficiency of U.S. interspersed was actually much higher than that of the volunteers.
As a result, the battle became very difficult to fight, and many volunteer troops often suddenly found that the American troops had appeared in the rear during the transfer process. According to the standards of the European theater of World War II, both the French and Soviet armies were likely to collapse in this situation, but the Volunteer Army did not.
In order to give the whole army time to transfer and redeploy, the 63rd Army held out for more than ten days in Tieyuan and the 20th Army huachuan, and the 15th Army also did not idle, blocking the enemy in Shibaura for ten days, completely dispelling the enemy's idea of continuing to attack.
Shibaura-ri was located on the eastern side of Tetsuhara, and the United Nations army was blocked in Tetsuhara, so it tried to open a gap in the battle elsewhere and continue to break into the depths of the volunteer army to obtain more results. Due to the enemy's high degree of mechanization, they quickly transferred the rear divisions to the front, hoping to find the weak points in the volunteer line, and this time they set their sights on Shibaura-
Like other units, the 15th Army, after more than two months of continuous marching and combat, reduced its personnel by one-third, the material losses were not replenished, and its combat effectiveness was significantly reduced. The 15th Army had already reached the north of Shibaura-ri, and they marched for several days, trapped and in need of rest.
However, after receiving the order from the headquarters, Qin Jiwei immediately ordered the troops to turn around, occupy the position as soon as possible with full spirit, and prepare for a new vicious battle. Qin Jiwei laid out three lines of defense, with the 29th Division and the 45th Division defending the first two positions, and the older 44th Division serving as a reserve, ready for reinforcements at the third-line position.
In the early morning of May 28, the 134th Regiment of the 45th Division first rushed to a front-line position east of Shibaura-ri, ahead of the enemy's wheels. The soldiers ignored the fatigue of the march and rushed to repair the fortifications, and the 134th Regiment raced against the clock to win a day and a night for themselves, and the enemy's vanguard troops did not arrive until the afternoon of the 29th.
It was precisely because of this day and night that the 134th Regiment had a relatively strong fortification. The 15th Army was able to complete the blockade task in large part thanks to the time to build fortifications. Therefore, it is sometimes the love of the soldiers who do not control the soldiers and squeeze the physical and mental strength and spirit of the soldiers to the limit.
In the face of the BOMBING and artillery fire of the US army, there was no fortification as a support, a few heavy bombs came down, and a company of hundreds of people blew up in the blink of an eye, and the position could not be defended for an hour. Even if you don't eat, drink or sleep, you have to dig up fortifications.
On the afternoon of 29 May, a company of the enemy's vanguard arrived, and the enemy's infantry, of course, was also in trucks, advancing along the road at a fast pace. A surprise attack by the 2nd Battalion of the 134th Regiment repelled the enemy.
At dawn on the 30th, the 1st Company of the 134th Regiment, which guarded the unnamed heights on the west side of the forefront of Park Dafeng, found 1 battalion of the enemy, strengthened 1 company and 14 tanks, and drove towards themselves. The 1st Company waited until the convoy approached 100 meters before firing, catching the enemy off guard.
The Volunteers had now changed their Soviet equipment and had powerful anti-tank grenades, and were no longer as helpless against tanks as they had been during the Battle of Chosin Lake. However, the throwing distance of the anti-tank grenade is only more than ten meters, and it also requires the soldiers to approach the tank with their lives and lives to be effective, and the volunteer army has sacrificed many anti-tankers for this.
Even so, the volunteer soldiers still rushed to get anti-tank grenades, after all, they had the means to compete with enemy tanks. The soldiers of the 1st Company took out the leading tanks one after another, making it impossible for the enemy convoy to advance. The U.S. army called for air force and artillery support and launched a fierce attack on the position of 1 Company. The battle lasted for two days and two nights, and the 1st Company sacrificed most of it before withdrawing from the position.
From June 1, the U.S. army attacked the 45th and 29th divisions without stopping, and the entire Shibaurai area was shrouded in intensive bombing and artillery fire. In just one morning, the 7th Company of the 134th Regiment repelled several enemy attacks and suffered heavy losses themselves.
Deputy instructor Liu Han was seriously wounded and still refused to leave the position, and together with the hygienist, he repelled the enemy's two attacks with grenades, and both of them died heroically. The enemy took the opportunity to occupy most of the positions of the 7th Company, but before they could gain a firm foothold, the counterattack troops of the 9th Company drove them down, and the position was once again controlled by the volunteers.
After the casualties of the artillery squad were exhausted, Liu Xingwen, the 60 gunner, took the initiative to assist the machine gunner Zhao Jinping, and the two of them manipulated heavy machine guns to eliminate the enemy in the distance.
The 134th Regiment organized all those who could fight, filled them into first-line companies, and repeatedly fought with the enemy. During the counterattack of the 8th Company, Chai Yunzhen divided the remaining 5 people in the squad into two groups, alternately covered, and captured 3 hills in a row, annihilating more than 200 enemy troops. He also killed one of the enemy's battalion commanders, and after the war Chai Yun Zhen Rong Li Te and other meritorious service.
On the morning of June 3, the U.S. forces lost their combat effectiveness in the face and were replaced by the 25th Division, which launched a new offensive from noon. The 134th Regiment held out until the night of the same day, blocking the enemy for six days and six nights, and successfully completing the task assigned by its superiors. The 15th Army withdrew the 134th Regiment, which had suffered too many casualties, into a second-line position and was replaced by other units.
Park Dafeng controls the road from Jinhua to Duping, which is the only way from south to north. The 45th Division held on to Park Dafeng, and the U.S. army watched as time passed day by day, but it could not advance northward, but could only continuously increase the strength of bombing and shelling, trying to smash the defenses of the 15th Army.
The 44th Division, as a reserve unit, fought even more tenaciously in the second-line positions, and if the positions were lost, they would inevitably rebel, so that the US troops had to pay a great price for every step forward, and the front line was in a state of stalemate. Ridgway ordered the U.S. 25th Division to break through the defensive line as soon as possible and seize the last fighter, but the 25th Division desperately could not do it.
The 29th Division also withstood the Attack of the American Army at Jiaoyi Peak, and the companies were firmly nailed to the position like nails, so that they could coexist and die with the position. There are only a dozen or twenty people left on some positions, which still deters the US army. Seeing that the situation could not be solved, the UNITED Nations Command ordered the 3rd Division and the Canadian Brigade to enter the battle.
The 4th Company of the 135th Regiment held its position for several days, and the remaining 6 fighters not only repelled 15 enemy attacks during the day, but also organized night raids at night, skillfully laying mines and destroying the enemy's attack. These 6 fighters annihilated more than 200 enemy soldiers without a single casualty. After the war, they were awarded the collective second class.
The night of June 7 finally came, and the Americans stopped attacking and withdrew to the camp. The 15th Army had been holding out on the front line in Shibaura-ri for ten days and had completed the blockade task of the headquarters. At the cost of more than 1,200 casualties, the 15th Army annihilated 5,700 enemy troops, shot down 4 enemy aircraft, and destroyed 13 tanks.
The Shibaurai Blockade battle can be said to be the end of a series of blockade battles, during which several other armies established a solid defensive line north of Shibaurai, and all the volunteers were safely transferred to the predetermined area. Peng Dehuai excitedly sent a report to the 15th Army:
"Qin Jiwei, I thank you very much! Peng Dehuai. ”
For Ridgway, the fighter planes that annihilated the large units of the Volunteer Army had been completely lost, and he had no choice but to order the divisions to stop the attack and continue fighting, and it was pointless to waste the lives of the Americans.
When the months-long fighting in the central Part of the Korean Peninsula finally subsided, and the fifth campaign came to an end, both the Volunteers and the United Nations realized that the war could not end anytime soon, but would inevitably last a long time.
Compared with the Tieyuan and Huachuan Blockade Battles, the Shibaura-ri Blockade Battle of the 15th Army is little known, but after this battle, the 15th Army accumulated rich experience in the blockade battle, and the troops were also tested by blood and fire, laying a good foundation for the victory of the Battle of Shangganling.