In the Battle of Chosin Lake, the tank group of the US army impressed the participating units of the 9th Corps of the Volunteer Army, and its tank units caused us great trouble when attacking the core positions of the US army many times.
As we said in the previous article, the US 1st Marine Division has a division-affiliated tank battalion, which has 4 tank companies, each company has 17 M26 tanks, 3 M4A3 tanks, and 1 M32 tank repair vehicle; in addition, the 1st Marine Division has 9 Spitfire tanks, and each Marine Regiment's anti-tank company has 5 M26 tanks.
The tank company of the 31st Regiment of the U.S. Army in the Chosin Lake Theater was also equipped with 22 M4A3 tanks and 1 M32 tank repair vehicle.
In addition to these genuine tanks, the tracked equipment such as the M19 double-barrel 40 mm self-propelled anti-aircraft gun that the U.S. army was equipped with at that time was often called a tank by the Volunteer Army. This is also the reason why at the beginning of the battle, there were not many regular tanks on the American positions, but the volunteers believed that they encountered a lot of tanks.
In the face of the TANK tank group, the volunteers also had some anti-tank equipment at that time, and it is very interesting that these equipment is actually "American weapons", such as the famous Bazooka rocket launcher.
In the movies "Chosin Lake" and "Pratunam Bridge", there are special demonstrations of the use of American Bazooka bazookas by volunteers, and in real history, the volunteer army of Chosin Lake has indeed been equipped and used Bazooka bazookas.
Some friends may have doubts about the origin of the Volunteer Bazooka, so let's talk about it first.
The Bazooka rocket launcher was an anti-tank weapon heavily equipped by the U.S. military during World War II, and of course it was also widely used in actual combat against the enemy in the fortifications.
We know that at that time, the national army could get US weapons assistance, and the list of US aided weapons included bazooka rocket launchers.
By June 1945, the number of Bazooka rocket launchers actually equipped by the Nationalist army had reached 1,098, and the follow-up was still being installed.
At that time, the Indian army was the most well-equipped army equipped with Bazooka bazookas, and each infantry battalion was equipped with 4 Bazooka bazookas, which were generally called small rockets or rocket launchers at that time.
In addition to the troops stationed in India, the DOMESTIC US orDG forces are also equipped with bazooka rocket launchers, and this new weapon is also highly evaluated.
For example, the commander of the 94th Army commented: Not only are the three-zero rifle and light and heavy machine guns very sophisticated, but the new weapons such as flame emitters, submachine guns, bazookas, and carbines have played a great role in close combat.
However, most of these new weapons are given priority equipment to the central military lineage, and the miscellaneous army has to lean back. For example, Sun Lianzhong, commander of the Sixth Theater at the time, had privately seized 6 bazookas for his basic unit, the 30th Army, and these bazookas were originally intended for the 18th Army. As a result, the 18th Army naturally did not buy it, and it had to return 3 more.
A commander of a theater of operations was not even worth a few bazookas, and it was really unpleasant to pass this out, so he later allocated some bazookas to Sun Lianzhong's 30th Army.
However, these bazookas were not yet warmed up, and they were captured by the troops of the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Military Region in the Battle of Handan in October 1945, which should be the first time our army captured the Bazooka bazooka.
In the ensuing War of Liberation, the Nationalist army equipped and used more bazookas, but our army also captured more bazookas.
According to statistics, in the first year of the War of Liberation, the whole army captured 463 rocket launchers; in the second year, 252 rocket launchers; in the third year, 1,201 rocket launchers; in the fourth year, 422 rocket launchers; and in total, 2,338 rocket launchers were captured in the War of Liberation.
Not all of these captured bazookas can be used, except for those whose war damage is difficult to repair, the rest are also equipped with our army's troops, and because we have anti-tank and part-time demand, these US-made bazookas can play a more important role in the hands of our army.
At the Battle of Chosin Lake, the 20th, 26th, and 27th Armies of the 9th Corps of the Volunteer Army were mostly the main forces of Sanye. Many of the nationalist troops fighting against Sanye were units equipped with American weapons, so they were also equipped with many American weapons in the units belonging to the 9th Corps, including rocket launchers.
According to the statistics of the strength of the volunteer army at that time, the 20th Army of the 9th Corps was equipped with a total of 53 rocket launchers, the 26th Army was equipped with 74 rocket launchers, and the 27th Army was equipped with 86 rocket launchers. The Volunteers' bazookas were also equipped to the infantry battalion level, and basically 2 to 3 bazookas were available per battalion.
Therefore, in the movie "Chosin Lake", the battalion commander Tanzi directly operated the Bazooka bazooka, which may not be captured on the spot, in fact, there was originally such a weapon in the battalion at that time, but in terms of the specific performance of the Bazooka, it is generally not used to fight aircraft, and the main task is anti-tank.
Of course, the Bazooka bazookas that the Volunteers were equipped with were 60 mm calibers, and they were unable to deal with the tanks of the US army.
At the beginning of the Korean War, in the face of the KPA's T34 tank, the US military used the 60 mm caliber bazooka, but it was basically useless, so it was later urgently equipped with the 88.9 mm super bazooka.
The tanks equipped by the US military at that time were mainly M26 Pershing and M4A3 Sherman, and the volunteer army used 60 mm caliber bazooka to fight, which was also difficult to fight.
Some veterans of the 20th Army once recalled that the rocket launchers of the time were used to hit the tanks of the US army, because the caliber was too small, and only a white dot was left on the hit. Moreover, there were not many bazookas in the hands of the volunteers, and it could not be said that they had let go of the fight.
In the case of the 20th Army, on average, each infantry battalion has only 2 bazookas, and the bazooka shells are not as many as they want.
At that time, the 58th Division consumed a total of 238 bazooka shells in the entire campaign, the 59th Division consumed 275 bazooka shells, and the 60th Division consumed 119 bazooka shells, and the whole army consumed a total of 632 bazooka shells in the entire campaign.
The 27th Army was equipped with the most bazookas in the 9th Corps, but only 875 bazooka rounds were consumed in actual combat, which means that the combined bazooka bomb consumption of the two elite armies in the entire campaign was only about 1500 rounds.
In addition, it should be noted that these ammunition are not actually shot out, some ammunition is lost in the air raids of the US army, some are sacrificed before the bazooka player is killed, the ammunition is also lost, and the real bazooka bomb is even less.
And as mentioned earlier, for the tanks that the U.S. military was equipped at the time, the 60-millimeter rocket was difficult to move.
When the 58th Division of the 20th Army attacked the enemy in Hagaru-ri, it reported that the bazookas were ineffective against the anti-tanks except for small packets of explosives and group formations.
The 60th Division of the 20th Army, when blocking the Drexdale Task Force, could not do anything about the M26 tanks of the US army. After the bazooka was finished, it was only when the commandos carried explosives packs and all 27 people of the "Demolition King" Shouzhigao were sacrificed to blow up one of the US tanks, while the remaining 16 M26 tanks broke through the volunteer army's blockade and arrived at Hagaru-ri.
The arrival of a large number of tanks gave the American army a movable steel fortress, and the volunteers had to pay a huge price to deal with these steel behemoths, and once it was dawn, the volunteer attack would not be able to unfold, and the gains gained at night would not be expanded.
Therefore, for anti-tank operations, it can only be based on breaking roads and bridges, hoping to stop the activities of tanks by creating roadblocks. As we said in a previous article, the 20th Army's initial intention to blow up the Watergate Bridge was actually to prevent U.S. tanks from reinforcing the theater more.
So was the Bazooka bazooka really useless at the time? Not quite.
When the 20th Army later summed up the anti-tank combat method of operations, it had such an experience: with the existing rocket launchers and recoilless guns within 50 to 80 meters, thirty to forty tons of tanks can also be destroyed, and when fighting, the first one and the next one can be destroyed, so that the middle front and rear cannot move, and then each destroys it.
The 30- to 40-ton tank refers to the Sherman tank, which at the time was smallly equipped by the 1st Marine Division, and the tank company of the 31st Regiment of the Army was fully equipped with Sherman tanks, and in anti-tank operations of the 27th Army, it was indeed an example of using bazookas to shoot down tanks.
At that time, the situation was that the 242nd Regiment of the 81st Division of the 27th Army was tasked with blocking operations on the outskirts of Xinxingli, and the tank company of the 31st Regiment of the US Army was outside the encirclement, so it launched an attack on the 242nd Regiment with tanks in an attempt to open a breakthrough. However, because the infantry was in the encirclement, the US tank company was not accompanied by infantry.
The 242nd Regiment used rocket launchers to fight the first American tank, but this time the engagement distance was within thirty or forty meters, and the American army was defenseless, and did not completely destroy Sherman, which belonged to the tank soldiers who abandoned the vehicle and fled after being wounded. Other tanks, on the other hand, still used melee tactics, were killed by the commandos with explosive packs focusing on the tracks.
Therefore, in order to make the bazooka play a role at that time, it was necessary to hit the key parts of the tank at a very close distance of tens of meters.
However, U.S. tanks are usually group activities, generally there are infantry to follow, the operation of the Bazooka rocket launcher is more complicated, but also to choose a good shooting position, it is difficult to have a better chance in actual combat. It is often the bazooka that is killed and injured during the movement or in the process of preparing to launch, and even if it is successfully launched, it may not be able to hit the tank exactly, or the hit the tank may not hit its key parts.
Coupled with the fact that we were not equipped with many bazookas and very little ammunition at that time, coupled with the inconvenience caused by the extremely cold weather for the operation of the bazooka hand, it was not much that the real use of bazookas to destroy and injure enemy tanks in the Battle of Chosin Lake was not much, mainly relying on infantry to use blasters and explosive packs to resist tanks, and the cost of such a fight was often very large.
The real anti-tank weapons of the Volunteer Infantry were later equipped with a large number of Type 51 rocket launchers and Type 52 recoilless guns and a large number of Soviet-made anti-tank grenades, which we did not have at the Battle of Chosin Lake.