FSC: Discuss the three advantages the CCF possessed over UN Forces. What can we learn from them?

The CCF’s primary advantages came down to the principals of the offense: speed, concentration, audacity, and tempo. Their primary advantages were surprise, concentration, and audacity and that outset of their intervention. Due to MacArthur’s insistence that the Chinese would not intervene, Americans ignored POWs and other indications of Chinese occupying North Korea. To the Chinese’s credit: “In bivouac, no man showed himself, for any reason. discipline was firm, and perfect. Any man who vilated instructions in any way was shot.” Even if they were to believe and proceed with caution, Americans were not ready for the canalizing terrain and the Chinese effective irregular or “Indian Tactics.” Their surprise, attacking American units piece by piece, concentration of troops over smaller American units, and audacity of simply executed infantry waves of attackers succeeded time after time.

To put the Chinese numbers in perspective, “In June 1950, the CCF Fourth Field Army, some 600,000 men, Lin Piao commanding, marched to the Korean border to stand ready for any eventuality. During the summer and early autumn, other field armies followed.” They came down on American forces in hordes.  Heavily outnumbered and ignorant of the Chinese tactics, Americans were defeated in detail time and time again.

As the outcome of the war would prove, the Chinese’s tempo was unsustainable. Their offensive onslaught worked successfully through the winter but would not win the war. The Chinese succeeded time and time again in small scale battles and gained tactical level respect from United States forces through the course of the war. Americans could not infantry as hard as the CCF in the artic conditions of North Korea.