Operation Flying Tiger
Operation Flying Tiger was very much the brainchild of outgoing President Richard Russell, who sought a way to end the war before the new President, McCarthy, could take office and "shove a nuke up Mao's ass" in the words of Russell. The largest amphibious assault since the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 and perhaps even Operation Overlord in 1944, Operation Flying Tiger involved American, New Zealander, and Filipino troops. Canada volunteered troops, but they would have taken too long to get there, so it was understood Canadian troops, arriving as quickly as they could, would have to come later. The goal of Operation Flying Tiger was to quickly encircle any North Chinese troops in the Liaodong peninsula - and then flank the North Chinese troops defending against the combined KMT-US forces in the 10-10 Offensive towards Liaoyang. It was understood that the fighting would be hard, but Russell was confident. After all, the Americans had whipped Japan on Okinawa, a heavily fortified island. An entire peninsula, with more room to mobilize, would go much easier. However, the PLA in Dalian, organized under the Soviet-trained Liu Bocheng (and thus an expert in Soviet-style urban warfare), was also preparing for the inevitable attack.
In early-to-mid-November, just days after Russell's presidential defeat, the United States Seventh Fleet opened up with a massive bombardment of the North Chinese city of Dalian. Within a few hours, Allied troops had hit the shores of Dalian, immediately facing some of the hardest fighting of the entire war. A mostly urban city, troops had to land under heavy artillery and machine gun fire, fighting their way through apartments and factories. Dalian, which was controlled by Japan from 1905-1945, was a largely Japanese-style city. Indeed, much of the infantry fighting manuals from the proposed Operation Downfall proved extremely useful as a result. It was only thanks to incredible morale, discipline, and raw firepower that Allied troops were to secure a beachhead. The bloodiest beach was the New Zealander sector, the ironically named Love Beach, where New Zealander forces took an amazing 85% casualty rate in securing a beach head, stacking bodies of fallen comrades as sandbags to push closer to North Chinese bunkers, which were then destroyed. The final charge of the beach was led by veterans of the former Maori Battalion, which led a charge on the North Chinese trenches that quickly descended into hand-to-hand combat that the Maori won.
However, the operation was not to gain total success after the beach head, as was expected. Strict orders were given to all units to leave Port Arthur itself totally unmolested, as it was a Soviet naval base and any direct attacks on the Soviet Union were viewed as tantamount to starting a Third World War. Although many private individuals referred to the conflict as a "Third World War" and indeed even Charles De Gaulle had used the phrase once, almost every other government blacklisted that word from their vocabulary for the simple fact that all powers feared a direct USSR-US confrontation that might lead to nuclear conflagration. Despite that fact, the Soviets were not unwilling to poke the Americans in the eye. Realizing that the Americans had funded all of the Allied forces, including Yugoslavia and Finland, the Soviets were deeply unsympathetic to North China, but were still willing to give them the tools to give a black eye to the West. The Soviet Union deemed the North Chinese cause to be largely lost and figured it wasn't a huge loss given how erratic they had behaved (Soviet planners preferred more obedient puppets), but funding the North Chinese was seen as an easy way to get revenge for Finland, similarly bleeding the West.
Soviet interceptors were repainted with North Chinese flags and Stars of Davids and immediately ordered into combat. Although the Allies knew that the pilots were speaking to each other in Russian, the official Soviet response was that they were actually Jewish-Chinese, Jews who had been deported to China under Stalin's persecutions. In reality, almost none of them were, because Jews who were seen as "useful" such as soldiers, bureaucrats, scientists, and etc. had been exempt from the deportations. Interestingly, there were also actual Chinese pilots operating from Port Arthur alongside the Soviet pilots, meaning that Communist radio chatter often became characterized by a strange Russo-Mandarin pidgin. In addition, Soviet submarines, similarly painted over with North Chinese flags and Stars of David, operated in the area, sinking merchant mariners and any other isolated ships. One of the worst American losses of the war took place after an isolated troop transport was caught off-guard, before the Americans knew what was going on. 3,100 soldiers drowned in the disaster, the worst day in the American navy since Pearl Harbor.
Worst of all, the hills outside of Port Arthur had huge amounts of North Chinese artillery, as supplied from Soviet Port Arthur, making it impossible to cut off supplies or encircle them. Although the Allies had overall air superiority, Soviet interceptors made their air superiority patchwork. In addition, the Soviets "donated" several SA-2 air defense systems to the North Chinese (coincidentally also manned by "Jewish Chinese"), who quickly used them to defend their artillery network against American bombing. This artillery network on the hills also overlooked almost the entire city of Dalian. Thus, with North Chinese artillery overlooking the city as well as Allied battleships off shore, both sides could freely call in artillery strikes on the other, quickly turning the city into a bloodbath. By all accounts, the Allies had a vastly superior force, but the thorn of Port Arthur meant that they could not use their superior numbers and firepower to encircle and destroy the enemy in one fell swoop. Instead, the battle was a meat-grinder through every single block of the city. As a general rule of thumb, the Allied forces would shell a block with as much artillery as they could, send their men to fight in close-quarters through the ruins of the block, and then upon clearing the block, immediately face a North Chinese bombardment that inflicted equally terrible losses to the advancing regiment. The biggest American advantage would actually prove to be their armored superiority, the M47 Patton (and other less common tanks, like the M48 Patton) easily bested any North Chinese tanks. Indeed, the only hope of North Chinese troops against the Patton was urban ambushes with Panzerfausts, which were common, but not enough to staunch a seemingly inexhaustible supply of American tanks. American armor was the mainstay of every American assault and crucial to the success of Allied troops. The overwhelming power of American armored forces meant that North Chinese forces knew that the battle was lost as soon as the city itself was lost - the PLA had no way of stopping an American advance over plains, so a defeated PLA would be forced to retreat into either other cities, the mountains, or the swamps.
The battle was further compounded by the rather cold winter. Although Dalian remained a warmwater port, further landings around the city to the North advanced not much faster, as the frozen hills and swamps of the Liaodong peninsula proved equally gruesome. The Changbai mountains proved a non-feasible avenue of advance, so it was decided upon securing Dalian, Allied forces would advance up the coastline of the Liaodong Coast onto Jinzhou, flanking the city from both the West (the KMT) and the South (the Western Allies), seizing the city, and then advancing onto Anshan and the largest city of Shenyang (Mukden).
President-elect McCarthy ranted and raved against the "cowardice" of Russell that was clearly getting American troops killed. It was clear that America was "having to fight the war with one arm." The American public had entered the war with determination, prepared to pay back the humiliation of Korea. In terms of losses, they had easily done so multiple times over, but the public had not expected the losses that Allied forces would eventually pay. Compared to the relatively bloodless fall of Turku, the conquest of Dalian enamored the world. In 1956, Dalian was the largest port not only in North China, but all of China and the entire Eastern Bloc. With a population of roughly a million, it was the second largest city in North China and the third largest city in all of Northern China (Beiping, the former Imperial capital, had 2 million).
Allied forces would eventually secure Dalian, a completely shattered city, but at great cost. Only half of the city had evacuated and losses were huge among the remaining. Infuriatingly, the North Chinese artillery units that had inflicted the most hideous losses onto Allied forces continue to rain fire on the Allied forces until bloody charges up the hills finally routed them...at which point they simply retreated into the Soviet Port Arthur. However, regardless, the plan had succeeded. Dalian fell and with Allied troops advancing to Jinzhou, PLA forces in Jiznhou were forced to retreat from the possible encirclement, allowing the KMT troops from the West to link up with Allied troops. Further infuriating the Americans, the bulk of the retreating PLA from Dalian also escaped into the Changbai mountains and then into nearby Anshan, losing much of their heavy equipment, but escaping otherwise intact. The equipment was not seen as a large loss, as the Soviets simply transferred them more surplus equipment.
American troops attempted to follow them into the mountains, but this was largely unsuccessful. Retreating PLA troops were aided by local Manchu guides in the Changbai Mountains (the historical heartland of Nurhaci and the other Manchus who had conquered China), as these mountains were very much the last bastion of non-sinicized Manchu culture in China. Allied troops...were far less welcomed (due to their associations with the hated KMT) and often came into conflict with the local villages. In one incident, wildly broadcasted across the entire People's Republic, a Canadian motorized infantry regiment was forced to retreat under Manchu arrow fire, which to Allied shock, actually penetrated the hoods of Canadian trucks, thus proving deadly. Although this was merely an asterisk onto an otherwise extremely exemplary Canadian military record (especially in Finland), the incident would be the butt of anti-Canadian jokes for generations to come ("who would win, a Canadian motorized infantry company or one stringy boi?")