Prior to the fifth campaign, the Volunteers fought with the Allied Forces four times, the first three of which could be said to have won a complete victory for the Volunteers, and the Fourth Campaign the Volunteers lost, retreating from the vicinity of the 37th Line to the 38th Line, abandoning the cities of Seoul, Inchon, and a large area between the 37th And 38th Lines. Through these four encounters, the warring sides both got to know each other, and the United Nations gradually found the weaknesses of the Volunteers and used these weaknesses to win the fourth battle, which greatly boosted the morale of the United Nations army.
To be honest, at this time, Peng Zong decided to launch the fifth campaign, which was not a good time. Shiji must have summed up the defeat of the fourth campaign, but I did not find the final result, so I cannot know the exact situation of Shiji at that time, but the chiefs of Shiji at that time must have thought that the volunteer army had the ability to drive the United Nations army into the sea, and the defeat of the fourth battle was due to a series of other reasons such as insufficient troops, lack of logistics, and so on, but the real reason was not so.
According to the records of the Americans, in the Battle of Yunshan, American soldiers found a pamphlet lost on the battlefield, which summarized the combat characteristics of the Americans. The Battle of Yunshan was the first battle of the Volunteer Army to go abroad, so it can be seen that in order to defeat the United Nations Army, the Volunteer Army has long studied the operational characteristics of the US Army, but how much did the grass-roots commanders of the Volunteer Army know? How much did you understand? Still unknown.
At that time, most of the commanders at the grass-roots level of our army had experienced the training of the War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation, had rich combat experience, and were estimated to have a certain understanding of coordinated operations between land and air and infantry and tanks, but we must be clear about one thing: Japanese aircraft and tanks are incomparable with those of the United States in terms of quality and quantity, and their power is not at all an order of magnitude, so whether ordinary commanders and fighters realize that they are in position is really unknown.
In the second campaign, the 9th Corps generally adopted the old tactics of group charging against the United Nations army, which not only did not achieve the expected results, but also caused a large number of casualties. The fifth battle also had a scene that should not have happened, five divisions, a total of 50,000 to 60,000 volunteers crowded in a narrow strip of less than 20 kilometers wide on the north bank of the Han River, was heavily bombarded and shelled by the United Nations army, and suffered heavy losses. It can be seen that the commanders and fighters of the Volunteer Army at that time, especially the troops who fought with the UNITED Nations Army for the first time, had a far from understanding the power of the JOINT operations of the UNITED Nations Army, land, sea and air.
In the battle of Pingli in the fourth battle, the 5th Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division of the US Cavalry was ordered to reinforce, blocked by a division of the Volunteer Army, the support operation was blocked, the regimental commander finally had no way, the whole regiment of more than 30 tanks, concentrated, joined 160 infantry to form a task force, led by him personally, made a final attempt, and finally they broke through the layers of the volunteer defense line, more than ten tanks rushed to Pingli, so that the morale of the defenders in Pingli was greatly boosted.
It can be seen that the Americans' foot-and-tank coordinated operations are not small, and when they reach a certain scale, it is difficult to stop them with the ability of the volunteer army at that time. Coincidentally, in the fifth campaign, when the United Nations Army detected that our army had begun to retreat, it immediately organized a large number of infantry and tankers to coordinate with the assault detachment to launch a surprise attack operation against our army's defensive line.
After experiencing the retreat of the third campaign, Li Qiwei figured out an effective way to deal with our army's interspersed detours and dividing the encirclement, which was actually very conventional; when encountering a large-scale attack by the volunteer army, he used the mechanization of the troops to quickly retreat about 30 kilometers (this distance was exactly a day's trip of the volunteer army, and the volunteer army could not catch up), and quickly established a solid position in order to withstand the possible attack of the volunteer army at night. If the United Nations army was surrounded by volunteers, they quickly established a ring defensive position, blocked the attack of the volunteer army at night, and broke through under the cover of aircraft during the day, which was very effective, resulting in the volunteer to the fifth battle, if you want to annihilate the United Nations military camp level combat units, you have to use all your strength, and often at a huge cost.
In the operation of the large corps, Ridgway asked the United Nations army to close together and advance hand in hand to reduce the space for our army to intersperse detours; in the fourth campaign, our army won a great victory in Hengcheng and tore a gap in the eastern front, but it was defeated in Pingli, and in just three days, Ridgway filled the gap, which shows that he had already taken precautions.
The United Nations army has found a way to deal with the volunteers, but has the volunteers found a way to deal with the United Nations army? Judging from the battle plan and battle progress of the fifth campaign, the fifth campaign is almost a flap for the fourth campaign. The strategy of the fourth campaign was to put the west top and the east, and the fifth battle, due to the abundance of troops, began with a full-scale attack, the middle line was ready to penetrate the Defense Line of the United Nations Army, and then adopted the tactics of interspersing detours and dividing and encircling, and when the battle began, due to the rapid contraction of the United Nations Army, the Volunteer Army fought a front-line flat push, and there was no way for Shiji to temporarily change the tactics and fight the West Top East Offensive, and the result was almost the same as the fourth battle. The difference was that the United Nations army seized the opportunity, concentrated its forces, and counterattacked on all fronts, resulting in a heavy loss for the volunteer army.
It can be seen that the fundamental reason for the defeat of the Volunteer Army in the fourth campaign, including the loss of the fifth campaign, is that the Volunteer Army has not yet found a way to eliminate the United Nations Army.
The reason for the Volunteers' fifth campaign was ostensibly a fear of a United Nations landing operation. After the end of the fourth campaign, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States never mentioned the landing operation plan, and there is a passage in Ridgway's memoirs that when Van Vliet was the commander of the 8th Army, he proposed landing operations, but Was not hesitated to refuse, this is because of the attitude of the United States to the Korean War, the United States did not want to expand the situation, on the one hand, worried about soviet intervention, on the other hand, worried about falling into the Korean War, depleting its own strength in vain, resulting in its own disadvantage.
However, China did not know these circumstances, and not only launched the fifth campaign, but also focused its main energy on the landing of American troops on the east-west coastal defense in the later stages of the war.
After the fourth campaign, peng Dehuai returned to Beijing to communicate with Mao Zedong, and determined the tone of the Korean War, if you can win quickly, you will win quickly, and if you cannot win quickly, you will win slowly, note that the central idea is to win, so it can be seen that both Peng Dehuai and Mao Zedong believe that the Korean War can be won, that is to say, with the ability of the volunteer army, the United Nations army can be driven to the sea, when Mr. Peng put forward the idea of the fifth campaign, Mao Zedong quickly agreed, which may be the biggest motivation for the volunteer army to launch the fifth campaign, and both of them want to devote their efforts to one battle. It can be seen that both men have the heart of a light enemy, and the generals and commanders have this heart, and it is conceivable that the entire volunteer army must also have the heart of a light enemy, and it is inevitable that the enemy will suffer losses without fighting.
The logistics of the volunteer army did not fundamentally improve until the fifth battle, or even during the entire fifth campaign, when the 3rd and 19th corps of the volunteer army that entered the DPRK, after eating the dry food they carried, could only endure hunger, and when they rushed to the front line, some soldiers had been hungry for more than ten days, and their physical strength had dropped significantly, and they needed to rest and replenish.
The troops who had just entered the DPRK did not understand the United Nations army and were not familiar with the terrain, so Hong Xuezhi repeatedly suggested that the enemy be placed in the Tieyuan area and then annihilated, and the head of the Zhiji Division held the same view, but Peng Zong took into account that the Tieyuan area, the flat terrain, was favorable to the enemy, rather than to the volunteer army, and did not adopt it. Of course, none of this mattered, what is important was that Peng Dehuai misjudged the situation at that time, believing that the volunteer army could completely defeat the Un Army, so it was good to put it in or fight out, and the result was not much different, so after weighing it again and again, he still decided to fight out, in fact, with the strength of the Volunteer Army at that time, he was no longer able to drive the UN Army into the sea.
At the end of the fifth campaign, China found that it was not capable of driving the United Nations troops into the sea, and the United States also found itself unable to break through the defense line of the Sino-DPRK coalition forces near the 38th line, coupled with the high anti-war sentiment in the United States, eager to get out of the Korean War, it put forward the will for peace talks through various channels, and China also responded positively. From this point of view, the Fifth Campaign is an inevitable process of history, which seems to be accidental, but in fact it is inevitable.
What if the Volunteers had the capacity to drive unannounced troops into the sea? There is no doubt that the United States will withdraw its troops from Korea, Kim Il-sung will complete the cause of national liberation, and the world pattern will be a different picture, but this is only if, in the comparison of the national strengths of China and the United States at that time, the volunteer army could not have such a capability.
As everyone knows, during the Liberation War, the People's Liberation Army was able to reorganize the division, or even the whole army, to eliminate the Nationalist army, and in the Korean War, the volunteer army was also able to reorganize the division and even the whole army to eliminate the South Korean army, but in the face of American soldiers who were more afraid of death than the Kuomintang soldiers, even eating the next battalion had to take the trouble of the old nose, and this was the gap in national strength. War has its own regularity, the strength of the will to fight can change the outcome of a battle, but can not change the outcome of a war, or a war no matter how tortuous the process, but the outcome of the war is actually predetermined before the war.
In fact, the Korean War is the same, the result of the war has nothing to do with the strength of the Korean and Northern Governments, and even the strength of the volunteer army has little to do with the strength of the two camps of the United States and the Soviet Union at that time, because when the volunteer army crossed the 38 line, it would cause strong resistance from the United States, when the United States crossed the 38 line, it would cause strong resistance from China and the Soviet Union, and finally the ceasefire between China and the United States on the 38 line was also the embodiment of the strength of the two camps.