In the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the gap in equipment between China and the United States was huge
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War broke out. Originally, this was just a civil war between the north and the south of the Korean Peninsula, but with the participation of the United Nations army led by the US military, the war continued to push northward, threatening China across the Yalu River. Faced with the DPRK's appeal for help and the sinister intentions of the US military, the new China, which had just been established for a year at that time, chose to resist the United States and aid Korea and resolutely safeguard China's interests and justice. In October 1950, Peng Dehuai led the Chinese Volunteer Army to Korea and began a confrontation with the United Nations army led by the American army.
Korean
At that time, the weapons equipped by the US military were in the forefront of the world, and it was not exaggerated to say that the US military was really armed to the teeth. On the other hand, the Mainland People's Volunteer Army only has a chaotic and backward arsenal of all nations. The comparison between the two compartments can only be described as "the enemy has none, the enemy has more than me, and the enemy is good and I am bad."
During the Korean War, the US military invested countless advanced combat weapons into the battlefield, including about 1,200 aircraft, including combat interceptors, strategic bombers and other models, more than 1,500 tanks, and nearly 6,000 artillery of various types. The Chinese Volunteers were armed with only light weapons, neither aircraft nor artillery, so they were extremely passive in combat.
In 1951, China and the United States were deadlocked, and for a time neither side could repel the other, and entered a state of confrontation. However, as time progressed, the number of Sino-US wars increased, and the disparity in weapons between the two sides at this time was clearly reflected in the number of casualties. Our army can still use tactics to achieve many victories in the face of the enemy, but in the face of indiscriminate bombardment of aircraft artillery, there is no possibility of counterattack, and it suffers heavy damage under the suppression of firepower.
When the news of the front line of the Korean battlefield reached Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing, the chairman, who had always loved soldiers, was very distressed. However, the industrial level of the newly established new China is still lacking, and it will not be able to bridge the gap in this weapon for a while.
When he was having a headache, Chairman Mao thought of a candidate, and the other side immediately got up and went to the Korean battlefield after a brief understanding of the gap between China and the United States. Under his command, the continental volunteers' defensive capabilities were directly increased by fifteen times, leaving the Americans with no way to do anything about it. Who is this man, and what ability does he have to turn around the dilemma of the Mainland Volunteers under the shells of the US Army in one fell swoop?
As a young elementary school student, Wang Yaonan played a big role in the Communist Party
The man sent by Chairman Mao Zedong to the Korean battlefield was named Wang Yaonan, who was born in 1911 in Shangli, Pingxiang, Jiangxi. The Wang family has been making firecrackers by hand for generations, and Wang Yaonan followed his father to the mine to do child labor at a very young age, and learned firecracker making with the elders of the family, and he became proficient in just a few years. In 1922, at the age of eleven, Wang Yaonan began to join the Anyuan Children's League, the first children's regiment in China led by the Communist Party, and in the following years, he participated in various strikes and revolutions organized by the Communist Party.
Wang Yaonan
In 1928, Wang Yaonan followed the Anyang miners to participate in the Autumn Harvest Uprising led by Mao Zedong and served as the leader of the demolition team in the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army; in 1928, in the process of counter-encirclement and suppression, Wang Yaonan presided over the construction of the Xiangshui Bridge near Huichang, so that the 30,000 Red Army could successfully break through; in 1930, at the age of nineteen, Wang Yaonan joined the Communist Party of China and formed the Engineer Company of the Red First Army in the same year; in 1933, Wang Yaonan led the engineer corps to use tunnel blasting technology to blow up the walls of Shaxian County, so that the enemy army was completely destroyed; in 1934 The Red Army's Long March was blocked by the shanxi warlord Yan Xishan's troops, and Wang Yaonan used his own technology to blow up the other side's ironclad vehicles.
Such deeds allowed Wang Yaonan to accumulate combat experience while also step by step as the commander of the engineer battalion of the Red Army headquarters. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, Wang Yaonan also invented methods of warfare such as mine warfare, plain tunnel warfare, and transportation warfare, and achieved very remarkable results in actual combat.
Tunnel warfare
Mine warfare
Later, Wang Yaonan gradually faded from everyone's sight because of his injury.
The mountain tunnel warfare is beginning to take shape
After understanding the situation on the Korean battlefield, Wang Yaonan first analyzed it from the perspective of his own research and specialization. First of all, the mine warfare and tunnel warfare used in the past are basically tactics proposed for the mainland plains, and they are more flexible, and the combatants can adapt to changes. The geographical conditions of North Korea are quite different from those of the mainland, where it is more mountainous.
In addition, tunnel warfare and mine warfare are suitable for close-range combat, within the range of pistol grenades, while the U.S. military in the Korean battlefield mostly uses weapons such as aircraft cannons, which is long-distance combat.
In the face of such changes in terrain and combat methods, Wang Yaonan also expressed his concerns in his conversation with Chairman Mao. At the same time, considering that New China had just been founded and there was not enough industrial capacity to provide the equipment needed for combat tunnel excavation, the mainland exchanged vegetables and fruits for five hundred air compressors to prepare for the Korean battlefield.
In this way, Wang Yaonan arrived in Korea with these five hundred air compressors and thousands of sniper rifles and other weapons, and successfully joined the mainland volunteer army. At the enlarged meeting of the Party Committee of the People's Volunteer Army, Wang Yaonan conveyed Chairman Mao Zedong's instructions to the crowd. After the meeting, he made careful observations on the position and finally gave his opinion - to carry out tunnel combat.
Wang Yaonan, who was thinking
First, according to the topographical characteristics of the Korean mountainous positions, the number and location of the strongholds were determined, and the tunnels were used to build the strongholds; then the various strongholds were connected by tunnels, and a certain number of weapons capable of long-range combat were assigned to the tunnels, and the tunnels were directly aimed at the enemy, and finally the tunnel fortifications were expanded. The tunnel as a whole is hexagonal, similar to the shape of a honeycomb, with several hexagons closely arranged. Finally, Wang Yaonan also asked the tunnel to have functions such as fire prevention, cold protection, moisture prevention, and anti-poison to prevent the enemy from destroying the tunnel.
Volunteers build tunnels
In September 1951, under the guidance of Wang Yaonan, the whole army of the Chinese Volunteer Army began to build tunnels in the positions. Soon, the Fifth Regiment of the US 1st Cavalry Division, together with the 28th British Commonwealth Brigade, attempted to occupy our 216th position, Ma Liangshan, and after discovering the purpose of the US army, the 191st Division of the 64th Army of the Continental Volunteer Army began to resist and counterattack, and Wang Yaonan also rushed to Ma Liangshan to guide the improvement of the tunnel. It was also in this battle that the United Nations army, led by the US army, truly appreciated the power of tunnel warfare and began a months-long nightmare.
Because the tunnel was underground, it was difficult for aircraft heavy artillery to find the location, even indiscriminate bombing was difficult to cause damage to the volunteers. Before That, Wang Yaonan stressed that the tunnel must be hexagonal and closely linked like a honeycomb, in order to prevent the enemy from concentrating firepower to destroy a certain tunnel alone. Due to the hexagonal mesh structure, no matter which direction the enemy is attacking from, it will be counterattacked from the other direction.
Thus, although the 191st Division only garrisoned one company of troops in the tunnel, through flexible combat methods and the conversion of the tunnel, it repelled as many as twenty-one Attacks of the United Nations Army in one day, annihilating more than 700 enemy troops, while the 191st Division suffered only more than 20 casualties. The comparison of casualties between the two sides clearly reflects the superiority of tunnel warfare.
Since then, the United Nations army has occupied the surface of our army's Position in Ma Liang Shan five times, but it will not be long before our army will use the complicated tunnels to retake the position. In these tunnel battles, our army has always avoided making unnecessary sacrifices for the sake of temporary victory or defeat, but the United Nations army has only cared about the immediate victory and ignored the lives of soldiers and suffered heavy losses. In the end, our army annihilated more than 4,300 enemy troops, shot down fourteen enemy planes, and destroyed six enemy tanks.
Tunnel warfare has increased our army's defensive strength by 15 times
It can be said that the great victory of the tunnel operation made the United Nations Army very headache about this tactic, and the US military, after learning from the experience of the defeat of the United Nations Army, did not choose to compete for surface positions at the beginning, but used intensive artillery fire and low-altitude bombardment to bombard the Volunteer positions indiscriminately.
However, Wang Yaonan had already taken into account factors such as artillery bombardment at the beginning of the concept of tunnel warfare, and in general, the shells with the greatest firepower could bombard up to a depth of several meters, while the distance between the tunnels dug by the volunteers and the surface was much greater than ten meters. Therefore, although the US military dispatched a lot of aircraft and artillery to try to capture the volunteer position, it did not return every time, at most it flattened the position, and the threat and damage to the volunteer army was minimal.
On the other hand, the Volunteer Army accumulated a lot of experience in fighting the enemy again and again, and while continuing to fight in the tunnel, it also improved the tunnel to make it more conducive to defense and attack. First of all, the distance between the tunnel and the surface is enough to withstand the continuous bombardment of enemy artillery and aircraft; and the pit crossing can provide conditions for the field fortifications, in the gap between the enemy to stop the bombardment, the volunteer army can quickly pull the cannon to the mouth of the tunnel, and accurately bombard the enemy position, and then rely on the complex structure of the tunnel to pull the gun to the internal safety position in time. In this way, even if the enemy locks the position of our shells, it will not be able to keep up with the speed of our army's avoidance.
Our army fought at the mouth of the tunnel
In the Battle of Shangganling, the US general Van Vliet increased the artillery firepower of the US army from 43 rounds per day to 126 rounds, and in the next forty days or so, a total of nearly 2 million shells and 5,000 aerial shells were fired at our army. The top of the hill in Shangganling was cut by the indiscriminate bombardment of the US army by two meters, and large boulders were also blown into powder. Relying on the tunnels, our army fought with the enemy 59 times, repelling nearly 900 enemy charges. In this battle, the United Nations army suffered more than 25,000 casualties, which was seriously damaged.
Shangganling victory
According to the statistics of defensive operations in 1951, the 40-50 shells of the US army caused one casualty of the mainland volunteers; according to the data of 1952, the 660 shells of the US army were the only casualties of our army. Compared with the two compartments, our army's defensive capability has increased by 15 times! This astonishing improvement is greatly attributable to Wang Yaonan and his tunnel warfare.
The US military has fought with our army several times, and finally reacted to the advantages and disadvantages of tunnel operations, so it also began to imitate our army digging tunnels. They used the excavator method of pouring concrete in the open channel, and it was completed quickly with advanced equipment. However, the 113th Division of the 38th Army of the Volunteer Army only sent 4 platoons of troops to attack the Us position, and the US Army thought that this was a good time to teach the Volunteer Army a lesson, and did not want the other side to occupy this position in 14 minutes.
It turned out that most of the tunnels of the US military were built for the purpose of hiding, and the thickness of the top of the tunnels was only 3-7 meters, far less than the 15 meters of the volunteer army. In addition, the volunteers spent a lot of effort to hollow out the mountain to build tunnels, but the American army did not grasp this essence, only thinking that the volunteers were temporarily hiding from their aircraft cannons. After that, the US army was not dead-hearted, and imitated several battles in succession, until they were suppressed and beaten very badly every time, so they did not dare to continue to imitate.
On the Korean battlefield, the Mainland Volunteer Army built tens of thousands of tunnels, with a total length of 1250 kilometers. Almost all the mountains near the 38th Line were hollowed out by the volunteers and built tunnels, which greatly solved the problem of raising soldiers. At the same time, because these tunnels can resist the bombardment of enemy large-caliber artillery fire and have good attack capabilities, they are praised by the troops as an underground steel Great Wall that cannot be defeated and blown up.
Wang Yaonan, who first proposed mountain tunnel warfare, was also awarded the rank of major general of the engineer corps in September 1955. It can be said that Wang Yaonan's life is a history of military engineering, and he also lived up to expectations, standing up every time he was needed, and casting the glory of Chinese sappers with his own hands.
Wang Yaonan's medal during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression