In the early 1950s, when New China had just been founded, the country was in ruins due to the chaos of the past hundred years, all aspects of government affairs were urgently to be dealt with, and the situation in the national treasury became unoptimistic due to years of war. However, during such a period, China still resolutely sent a huge volunteer army to the country on the other side of the Yalu River, and this war was the Korean War that shocked the world. In this war, there was an ace army that used the tactics of flooding the Seventh Army to defeat the American army, so how did they do it?
At first, in 1950, the North Korean government took the lead in raising troops, hoping to unify the Korean Peninsula by force. It took only three days for the Korean officers and soldiers to take Seoul lightly, and in the subsequent battles, the Korean army was gradually defeated. At this time, the United States naturally could not sit idly by and ignore the danger of the younger brother, so it immediately reacted, first sending an air force stationed in the Far East, and a few months later the US military officially sent the Tenth Army to land at Inchon.
The DPRK naturally could not compete with this US landing, so it quickly made a strategic retreat. At this time, after China was aware of the moves of the US military, Premier Zhou Enlai issued a warning to the behavior of the US military and expressed an intolerable attitude toward the US military's aggression against its neighbors, but MacArthur concluded that China, which had just established a stable situation, would not send troops, and brazenly burned the war to the Liaodong region of our country on the other side of the Yalu River, and even sent air forces to bomb. This obviously violated the sovereignty of our country, so after weighing it up, our country quickly formed the Chinese People's Volunteer Army and entered the korean war.
Among these armies, including the 38th, 39th, and 40th Group Armies, known as the "Three Tigers of the Northeast Field Army," these armies made outstanding achievements in the War of Liberation and the War of Resistance Against Japan, and did not fail to live up to the expectations of the people of the motherland during this War of Resistance Against US Aggression and Aid Korea. To say that the most legendary war is undoubtedly the flooding of the American army by the Thirty-ninth Army. In this battle, they used very few resources and personnel losses, making the US army pay a double price.
So what is the origin of such an army? The predecessor of the Thirty-ninth Army was the Red Twenty-fifth Army, which underwent the revolutionary period of the Red Army and was reorganized into the 344th Brigade of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army during the War of Resistance Against Japan. Later, after absorbing other teams in the course of the war and strengthening their strength, it was renamed the Second Column of the Northeast People's Liberation Army in the Liberation War. Finally, as the founding of the People's Republic of China approached, the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China issued an order to unify the names of the troops, and the army was finally named the Thirty-ninth Army.
It is precisely because these armies have been active in the northeast region for a long time and are very familiar with the terrain and climate and other conditions in this region, so as soon as they arrived in Korea, they adapted to the battlefield environment at a very fast speed, and coupled with the experienced command of our generals, our country was like a tiger in the campaign. In the first encounter with the US military, our country shattered the illusion that the US military wanted to quickly end the war and go home for Thanksgiving, and gave it a head-on blow.
In the subsequent Battle of Chosin Lake, it was the turn of the Thirty-eighth Army to show their cohesion, and on the battlefield they repeatedly made strange moves, first a long march, launched a surprise attack, and then set up an ambush to cut off the enemy's retreat route, making the American army suffer heavy losses, and this battle also became a turning point in the entire battlefield. In the third campaign, our country had pushed the front back to the vicinity of Seoul and annihilated nearly 10,000 American troops after seven days and nights.
The next fourth battle was this time when the American army was flooded. At this time, the UN army had seen the cohesion of the Chinese army and began to reorganize the army to prepare for a counteroffensive. Of course, after these three battles, the energy of our army has also been greatly depleted, and the US generals have seized this opportunity, as well as speculating that our expedition is insufficiently supplied, and forcibly dragging our army into a defensive state. Marshal Peng Dehuai saw the situation of our army, immediately reacted and commanded, and changed the policy and tactics from position warfare to mobile defensive warfare. The specific tactic is to divert the enemy's advance to the north by changing positions.
Under such tactical guidance, our army was stationed on the north bank of the Han River. Seeing this, the American army continued to advance, and then the two sides began a new round of fighting, and the Thirty-ninth Army was naturally in the ranks of the battle. Under such a situation in which the two sides were inseparable from each other in a fierce battle, Wu Xinquan, commander of the Thirty-ninth Army, because of his rich experience in the War of Resistance as an old revolutionary and accurate judgment of the war situation, was aware of a reservoir near the battlefield. As a result, a strange trick of using this condition to defeat the enemy slowly appeared in his mind.
Aware of this, Wu Xinquan immediately summoned Cai Yu, then head of the reconnaissance section, and ordered him to send a search to investigate the specific situation of the reservoir, and then shut down the process of storing water in the reservoir and return to report the situation to him. According to the survey, this dam is a project that uses the flow rate of water to generate electricity, and such a project has stopped functioning due to the fierce war, and the gate of the reservoir is also unattended.
After receiving the report, Wu Xinquan immediately began to simulate the sand table of this battle plan, and after many rehearsals, he immediately filmed the battle plan of this flooded US army. According to his original plan, it was supposed to blow up the dam and take advantage of the abundant water period of the snowy mountains in the spring supplemented by a large amount of water from the artificial lake to impact the US military. But such a plan was ultimately rejected because once the dam was blown up, there were too many uncontrollable factors in the flow of water, and even caused losses to their own troops. Not only that, but such a project naturally brought a lot of benefits to the local people, and if such a destruction was obviously very inhumane, the plan was eventually changed to open the floodgates and release water.
However, even if the floodgates are opened and the water is released, we can only try not to hurt our own people, and then the army begins to wait for an opportunity. Therefore, in the early morning of April 1951, a US army advanced to the south bank of the Han River to prepare to start the river crossing operation, Wu Xinquan saw that the time was ripe, he immediately issued an order to open the gate and release water, and a large amount of water rushed out in an instant, directly causing the water level of the river to rise sharply in a short period of time. This US army was obviously caught off guard by this sudden situation, not only the army's pontoon bridge across the river was washed away, some weapons and equipment and armored vehicles were also destroyed, and many US soldiers were drowned, and even the position was damaged to varying degrees.
According to the subsequent investigation, this US army is the veteran strong army of the US army first division that has made great achievements in world war II, which is enough to prove the ingenuity of Wu Xinquan's plan, this time flooding the US army not only caused the loss of this army, but also because the bridge across the river was washed away, it also brought great inconvenience to the follow-up US military operations, and also caused the road to be muddy so that the mechanized troops had to march at a greatly reduced speed. After learning that the plan had been extremely successful, Wu Xinquan also lamented, "This is the power of the flooded Seventh Army," which is probably also due to the treasures given to us by outstanding figures in the long history of the Chinese nation.