Battle of Chosin Reservoir ends in the complete destruction of the X Corps

Commissar

Banned
As the tin says and as a separate companion thread to the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River thread, lets get this OP rolling.

Better coordination, a bit more luck and sharper lookouts results in the Chinese bagging and destroying the:


  • 1st Marine Division U.S.
  • 3rd Infantry Division U.S.
  • 7th Infantry Division U.S.
  • 41 Commando Royal Marines UK
  • KATUSA and police ROK
103,520 men in all.

Let the doom and gloom flow.
 
I can see that the PLA will be very busy building EPW camps and hosting re-education classes. Oh, and having a victory parade through Tiananmen Square.
 
ASB. The Chinese army was not prepared for the artic weather, and half of it's forces didn't even show up on time being snow bound, with no food and wearing plimsolls. So unless you can change the weather, or give China a few thousand trucks with Soviet mechanics + air cover for them, this is never going to happen.
 

Commissar

Banned
ASB. The Chinese army was not prepared for the artic weather, and half of it's forces didn't even show up on time being snow bound, with no food and wearing plimsolls. So unless you can change the weather, or give China a few thousand trucks with Soviet mechanics + air cover for them, this is never going to happen.

The First Marines would beg to differ as they got pocketed and barely fought its way out in a surprise night assault and even then had to run a gauntlet of Chinese fire as they occupied all the high ground.

RCT-31: Pocketed, barely survived being split in three sections and only a remnant managed to get clear.

Time and again the Xth Corp had to fight clear of Chinese Road Blocks and despite the bad coordination and Logistics, the Chinese nearly pulled off the complete destruction of Xth Corp.

So no, not ASB. Difficult to pull off, but definitely not ASB.
 
Back in 1992 or so, I used to drink with a retired Marine who had been in the 1st and mentioned he was in Chosin. I asked him if he had been scared. He said, no but if he had known how outnumbered they were he would have been scared shitless.
 
All it would have taken is the Soviets to have given the Chinese some Signals support. They had units surrounding X Corps on all sides but couldn't co-ordinate closing the gaps as fast as the US forces could run through them.
 
The 3rd Division was pretty much holding the port area and was not committed decisively. It is hard to see it getting pocketed as it is right next to the sea. A few bad breaks in the weather and the UN might indeed have lost the Marines and 7th Infantry Division.

This is not as decisive a catastrophe as losing the 8th Army would be, but it is bad enough. The US Army would have either had to commit National Guard divisions (which it did later in the war), or consider withdrawal as the Army was out of units it could commit right away.

The US Marine Corps might have been reduced to a few battalions after this (which is what the Army was pushing for when the Department of Defense was created)

MacArthur gets sacked earlier (really, what choice would Truman have)

Losing 2 divisions might very well mean that the UN cannot stop the PLA from driving it into the sea later in the year.. although it depends on how quickly National Guard divisions could be committed and whether the political will to do so would exist.

Nuclear release might have been more seriously considered, although the existing objections to widening the war (which this would do) still stand and certainly the US was willing to write off Korea if it became necessary. It was not desirable, and would be a disaster, but not as catastrophic as World War III would be.
 
The First Marines would beg to differ as they got pocketed and barely fought its way out in a surprise night assault and even then had to run a gauntlet of Chinese fire as they occupied all the high ground.

RCT-31: Pocketed, barely survived being split in three sections and only a remnant managed to get clear.

Time and again the Xth Corp had to fight clear of Chinese Road Blocks and despite the bad coordination and Logistics, the Chinese nearly pulled off the complete destruction of Xth Corp.

So no, not ASB. Difficult to pull off, but definitely not ASB.

The "gauntlet" was typically made of platoon size groups making futile attempt to slow the Marine's escape. They were subject to air attack, had no heavy weapons, little ammo, no food for days, and were freezing to death. One entire company froze to death in their ambush positions to a man having never fired a shot.

The Chinese called it driving geese. They had no realistic chance of actually trapping them. There were a lot of men in the area, but many were not positioned, and not many actually combat effective.

It was a hellish experience for both sides. But if you could re-create the conditions in a lab and ran it a hundred times, the results would be the same every time.
 
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The "gauntlet" was typically made of platoon size groups making futile attempt to slow the Marine's escape. They were subject to air attack, had no heavy weapons, little ammo, no food for days, and were freezing to death. One entire company froze to death in their ambush positions to a man having never fired a shot.

The Chinese called it driving geese. They had no realistic chance of actually trapping them. There were a lot of men in the area, but many were not positioned, and not many actually combat effective.

It was a hellish experience for both sides. But if you could re-create the conditions in a lab and ran it a hundred times, the results would be the same every time.

+1

The Chinese had huge numbers of men but actually their ability to block UN forces was limited at this time. Their logistic tail at this time was also shot to hell and often concisted of man-packed supply trains
 
I agree that as is the Chinese couldn't manage it, they didn't have the C&C ability to pull it off, not least because they didn't have radio's below regimental and sometimes divisional level.
However if the Chinese (with Russian help) set up a radio net and do a better job of coordinating the thousands of company and battalion sized groups they have scattered over the area then instead of isolated groups trying to halt the X Corps retreat they could have actually cut the roads and encircled them. Also while the Chinese logistical system was awful, it was less vulnerable than the US as it was not as dependent on the (appalling) road network. That meant that, unlike the US, the Chinese could live without a roads, so that if the PLA gets round the back and cuts the roads back to Inchon then the Marines and 7th Division are doomed.
However I do agree that it requires such major improvements in Chinese C&C that the US would notice and thus take the PLA much more seriously, preventing Chosin from occurring in the first place. But if ASB's give the PLA a decent C4ISR net and the training to use it overnight then X Corps and potentially the whole 8th Army is screwed.
 

Bearcat

Banned
+1

The Chinese had huge numbers of men but actually their ability to block UN forces was limited at this time. Their logistic tail at this time was also shot to hell and often concisted of man-packed supply trains

The Chinese were horridly supplied and outfitted. My dad used to talk about finding *lots* of Chinese frozen to death as the Marines moved south.

So you'd need a pretty large POD much earlier, to give the PLA much better kit and logistics. Hard to work that in with WW2 and the Revolution. Such a POD very likely butterflies away Korea as we know it, likely by making it happen earlier. Not quite ASB, but very, very unlikely.
 

Commissar

Banned
The "gauntlet" was typically made of platoon size groups making futile attempt to slow the Marine's escape. They were subject to air attack, had no heavy weapons, little ammo, no food for days, and were freezing to death. One entire company froze to death in their ambush positions to a man having never fired a shot.

And yet they pocketed American Units in regimental and Divisional encirclements and came within a hair of wiping them out piece meal. Some more alert night guards and many American Units would have been bagged.

It was pretty damn close run. So again not ASB, but very possible.
 
And yet somehow the encirclement of the American regiments or divisions kept failing. One escape is one thing, an entire series of encirclements failing is something else.
 
The Chinese could have done better, no question. If they'd had a few radio's then expect several thousand possibly into the tens of thousands more Americans made prisoners or killed.
But as others have said it seems unlikely they could have gotten the entire force. If they'd had that coordination beforehand, the battle wouldn't have happened. If they suddenly got a lot of radio's they'd still have to deal learning how to use them correctly, and a lack of logistics.
So give the Americans a bloodier nose, no problem.
Taking them all however would have to include a LOT of luck.
 
The Chinese could have done better, no question. If they'd had a few radio's then expect several thousand possibly into the tens of thousands more Americans made prisoners or killed.
But as others have said it seems unlikely they could have gotten the entire force. If they'd had that coordination beforehand, the battle wouldn't have happened. If they suddenly got a lot of radio's they'd still have to deal learning how to use them correctly, and a lack of logistics.
So give the Americans a bloodier nose, no problem.
Taking them all however would have to include a LOT of luck.

or worse flying weather... although nasty a lot of days, the Marines and 7th Division had a lot of air support, both tactical and airlift. Less of that could have been decisive. The bridging material flown in for example was absolutely critical in getting the vehicles (and thus the wounded) out.
 

Commissar

Banned
And yet somehow the encirclement of the American regiments or divisions kept failing. One escape is one thing, an entire series of encirclements failing is something else.

The encirclement of 5th and 7th Marines failed as the Chinese Sentries were not on the ball and the Marines' night assault succeeded.

RCT-31 only survive being split in three because the Chinese Discipline broke down along with the officers and they began looting before finishing off the survivors.

Poor coordination and bad luck spoiled the other encirclements as well.
 
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