Americans still don't understand: Why can't weapons crush China and Shangganling?

There is a saying: Americans really understand China people from Shangganling. If the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea was China's founding war, then the victory of Shangganling Campaign laid the northern boundary between Korea and North Korea and brought decades of peace in East Asia.

The reason why this campaign will reverse Americans' cognition of China people is precisely because in this campaign, the United States crushed the China Volunteers in terms of the level of weapons and equipment and the scale of fire coverage, but in the end, the volunteers who dominated won.

Therefore, in just 43 days in Shangganling, the "United Nations Army" led by the United States launched more than 900 charges on our narrow position of only 3.7 square kilometers in Shangganling, and projected more than 90 rounds of artillery shells/kloc-0. With such firepower density, it seems that there is no room for debate to win easily in Shangganling, but the US military will never shake our position.

The US military still can't figure out: Why did they finally lose this vital position in the Korean War when weapons and firepower crushed China in all directions?

During the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, New China was just established, poor and weak, and its development level was still in the stage of traditional backward agricultural country, with almost zero industrial base. Under such difficult conditions, in order to avoid the threat of American imperialism, Chinese people's Volunteer Army chose to fight in the DPRK, which laid the foundation for China's peace and prosperity in the coming decades.

At this time, most of Chinese people's Volunteer Army's weapons and equipment were "second-hand goods" seized in the Liberation War and War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, with uneven quality and models, and the supply of ammunition was very difficult. As the emerging world hegemon after the end of World War II, the U.S. army, navy and air force are complete, with various weapons and advanced level: F4U pirate fighter, M4 Sherman medium tank and M-26 Pershing heavy tank. ...

On the other hand, our army's equipment is shabby and uneven, and its weapons are only some cannons and machine guns. The army establishment is only the most traditional and basic army establishment, not to mention the unimaginable behemoths such as tanks and planes.

In terms of ammunition supply, the supply line of the volunteers was even blown to pieces by the US Air Force. Ten cars of materials can only be safely delivered to four or five cars at most, and there are often cases of lack of clothes, food and ammunition. The US military, on the other hand, takes Japan and South Korea as its rear bases, and uses countless ships and cars to continuously transport tons of materials and ammunition to the front line, thus ensuring sufficient firepower.

Therefore, China's army in the Korean battlefield is facing the American army, which can be described as "the American army I don't have is stronger than the American army I have". Even Chairman Mao couldn't help feeling when evaluating the armament difference between China and the United States. Volunteers are like "beggars are better than dragon kings" to the US military, which shows that the US military equipment crushes our army in all directions.

Therefore, when the US military launched the "United Nations Army" to cross the 38th parallel and burn the war all the way to the Yalu River, the whole world believed that as long as the Soviet Union did not intervene, the US military would surely win. It is worth noting that although the Soviet Union did not intervene, China directly intervened, winning a full house as soon as it entered the DPRK, which dealt a heavy blow to the American First Division, the proud trump card of the American army, and also taught the American army the first "Chinese funeral".

Then, the China Volunteers were unstoppable all the way, gradually breaking the hope of the US military to "end the war before Thanksgiving" and "end the war before Christmas", and gradually mastering the operational initiative. This battlefield situation made the then commander of the United Nations in South Korea, General Van Frith, deeply anxious.

Van Frith is a typical winner of the fire theory. He strongly advocates destroying the enemy's effective strength with fierce firepower to reduce his own losses. Under his guiding ideology, the US military played the famous "Van Frith Ammunition Quantity" on the Korean battlefield. For example, in the summer offensive of 195 1, in order to capture the 983 highland, Van Frith consumed 360,000 shells in nine days.

Van Frith believes that in the face of their own "super firepower", the volunteers can't resist the attack of the US military at all, and they have no power to fight back. Therefore, after seeing that the volunteers were increasingly mastering the active offensive, he took the initiative to ask Clark, then commander of the US Far East, to use the Ninth Army to cooperate with his super firepower tactics and launch a "showdown" to reverse the situation and regain the initiative.

Van Frith chose Shangganling as the battle point, which is located at the intersection of the positions of the two armies, namely the 597.9 highland and 537.9 highland in the front section of Wusheng Mountain. Although these two highlands are only 3.7 square kilometers, once our army falls, there will be no danger to defend, and the US military can open the door to Ma Pingchuan and seize our army's position of at least 200 kilometers.

After the American attack began, American artillery shells poured down with six rounds of intensive fire per second. On the first day alone, Shangganling fired more than 300,000 shells and more than 500 aerial bombs. Such artillery density made the battle of Shangganling more intense than ever before, exceeding the highest level in World War II.

However, even though the US military paid a huge amount of ammunition for this, cutting the top of the position by one layer and exploding the soil layer by two meters, it still did not shake the position of the volunteers. This result undoubtedly makes Van Frith's ammunition quantity a joke. So, how did the volunteers resist the super fire attack of the US military?

Defeating the strong with the weak has always been the strength of China's army. China's army can do this because of its superb strategy and tactics and tenacious fighting will. As early as the beginning of studying American super firepower, China made full use of the topographical advantages of Shangganling and invented the tactics of "tunnel warfare".

Tunnel tactics, that is, using the mountain itself to dig holes and ditches to build fortifications. According to the regulations, the top thickness of these tunnels is generally more than 30m, the protective thickness of the openings should be at least10-15m, and the tunnel width should be1.2m.. At least two exits should be designed for each tunnel, and the tunnels are criss-crossed and interconnected to form a defense network with deep crossing.

On the basis of this tunnel, it is also equipped with various supporting defense systems such as trenches, traffic trenches, anti-tank trenches and firearms bunkers, which creates favorable conditions for the volunteers to carry out defensive operations.

In the Battle of Shangganling, the volunteers concealed themselves by relying on 48 tunnels with a length of 10 meters, which resisted the sudden attack of American ammunition and greatly reduced the combat casualty rate of the volunteers. Taking advantage of the gap between American artillery fire transfer, the volunteers jumped out of the tunnel, occupied field fortifications, and took the initiative to attack in front of the front line to annihilate the attacking enemy.

Even if the enemy breaks into the position, the volunteers can fight back with the help of the reserve troops hidden in the tunnel and the troops in the adjacent positions, and make full use of the close cooperation between artillery and infantry, as well as the cooperation between the troops in the tunnel and the troops in depth. With these tactics, the volunteers repelled more than 900 American attacks in the Battle of Shangganling, annihilated more than 25,000 enemies, and finally held their positions.

Of course, in the process of tunnel tactics implementation, which relies on close cooperation and coordination, it is also inseparable from the volunteers' own extremely high military literacy and combat capability, switching back and forth between attack and defense, catching every fleeting fighter in time, and exerting this tactic to the fullest.

What is even more respectable and awesome is the extremely tenacious fighting spirit of the volunteers. Every time a group of soldiers fall, a new group of soldiers will continue to rush forward without hesitation, as if there is no end. According to American veterans who participated in the Battle of Shangganling, "China's volunteers, as if they would never finish fighting, will always be rushed up." This is an important reason why the United States cannot defeat Shangganling.

In this battle, countless war heroes emerged, such as Hu Xiudao, a lone hero, who killed or injured more than 280 enemy soldiers without losing an inch of land, creating a shining example of fighting alone. At the same time, countless volunteers like Hu Xiudao wrote one battlefield legend after another with their vigor and tenacity, and created a miraculous victory in the Battle of Shangganling.

And this lofty spirit of daring to sacrifice may be beyond the understanding of exquisite and selfish American imperialism for a lifetime.