Битва за хребет Разбитого Сердца в Корейской войне

1951 engagement of the Korean War

The Battle of Heartbreak Ridge (hangul=단장의 능선 전투; ), also known as the Battle of Wendengli , was a month long battle in the Korean War which took place between September 13th and October 15th, 1951. After withdrawing from Bloody Ridge, the Korean People's Army (KPA) set up new positions just away on a 7 mile (11 km) long hill mass. If anything, the defenses were even more formidable here than on Bloody Ridge. The Battle of Heartbreak Ridge was one of several major engagements in the hills of North Korea a few miles north of the 38th Parallel (the pre war boundary between North and South Korea), near Chorwon. For the Chinese, this battle is often confused with the Battle of Triangle Hill, which occurred a year later.

During the battle of Bloody Ridge, U. S. Eighth Army commander General James Van Fleet had submitted an outline plan, called Talons, to United Nations commander General Matthew Ridgway envisioning an advance of to remove the sag in the Eighth Army's eastern front. Ridgway had turned down more ambitious plans for an amphibious landing near Wonsan and for a deep advance into North Korea, but he had no objection to a modest ground offensive. Preparations for Talons continued until 5 September, when Van Fleet evidently took a close look at the final casualty totals from Bloody Ridge. Since Talons would be on a much larger scale, Van Fleet decided that the operation was not worth the probable cost in lives and matériel. Instead he informed Ridgway that he favored sustaining his "tidying up" on the Eighth Army right flank during the remainder of September, using "elbowing" tactics without any definite objective line assigned. Around 1 October he would stop his offensive operations in the east, then launch an attack in the west by the U. S. I Corps about the middle of the month, provided the armistice negotiations permitted. If this I Corps maneuver were successful, Van Fleet would follow up with an amphibious operation on the east coast near Tongch'on. This would link up with a land advance northeast from Kumhwa. The quick change in plans by the Eighth Army commander surprised Ridgway, but he posed no objection to the continuance of the limited objective attacks on an opportunistic basis. The proposed amphibious assault, however, Ridgway would only approve for planning purposes. Acting swiftly, Van Fleet issued a general directive to his corps commanders on 8 September emphasizing limited objective attacks, reconnaissance, and patrolling. He followed up the directive the same day with instructions to X Corps to take the ridge just north of Bloody Ridge and another north of the Punchbowl. Since the KPA opposite X Corps had just sustained a defeat on Bloody Ridge, Van Fleet thought that immediate thrusts would keep them off balance and would gain the new ridge lines before the KPA had a chance to recover. X Corps assigned the task of taking the peaks north of Bloody Ridge to the U. S. 2nd Infantry Division. The objective was the southern tip of a long, narrow ridge running north and south between the Mundung ni Valley on the west and the Sat'ae ri Valley on the east; spur ridges arching east and west from the main ridge caused one observer to describe the objective as the "spinal column of a fish, with hundreds of vertebrae." Possession of the central ridge would prevent the KPA from using the adjacent valleys to attack the X Corps' defense lines west of the Punchbowl. Heartbreak Ridge, as the objective was later named by news correspondents covering the action, had three main peaks. At the southern terminus was Hill 894 which commanded the approach from Bloody Ridge, 3 mile (5 km) to the south; Hill 931 , the highest peak in the ridge, lay to the north; and north of Hill 931 rose the needlelike projection of Hill 851 .]] The costs of the long battle were high for both sides. The 2nd Infantry Division had suffered over 3,700 casualties during the 13 September to 15 October period, with the 23rd Regiment and its attached French Battalion incurring almost half of this total. The KPA 6th, 12th and 13th Divisions and the PVA 204th Division all suffered heavily. Estimates by the 2nd Division of the KPA/PVA losses totaled close to 25,000 men. Approximately half of these casualties had come during the Touchdown operation. The increase in casualties had been accompanied by a similar rise in ammunition expenditures. Besides the millions of rounds of small arms ammunition that were used, the 2nd Division received the following artillery support: 76mm gun 62,000 rounds; 105mm howitzer 401,000 rounds; 155mm howitzer 84,000 rounds; and 8 inch howitzer 13,000 rounds. The division's mortar crews sent over 119,000 rounds of 60mm, 81mm and 4.2 inch mortar fire and the 57mm and 75mm recoilless rifle teams directed nearly 18,000 rounds at the KPA/PVA. Although there were shortages in some types of ammunition at the theater level, Van Fleet had given the 2nd Division commander permission to fire "all the ammunition thought necessary to take the positions." To supplement the artillery support given the division, the Fifth Air Force flew 842 sorties over the Heartbreak Ridge area and loosed 250 tons of bombs on the KPA/PVA. Against the deep bunkers of the KPA, anything less than a direct hit was ineffective.

The battle is associated with the title and backstory of the 1986 movie Heartbreak Ridge directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Eastwood's character is a fictional veteran of the battle at Heartbreak Ridge (as is one other character), for which he received the Medal of Honor. The movie itself is a fictional account of events that took place during actual operations in Grenada. The 2004 South Korean film Tae Guk Gi (released in the US as Brotherhood of War) also features this battle as the final battle of the film and the climax (this is evidenced when a South Korean commander, briefing his men, mentions that their objective in the attack is to take Hills 931 and 851). Crèvecœur (Heartbreak) is a French combat documentary by Jacques Dupont, released in 1955 featuring the battle and using actual war footage. It was nominated for the Academy Award in the Best Documentary category for 1955. Heartbreak Ridge (단장의능선) is a map for the RTS (real time strategy) computer game StarCraft. It was released in South Korea in 2009 and has since then been used in many leagues in the professional StarCraft scene, as well as in non Korean leagues and in amateur play. In M*A*S*H Heartbreak Ridge is mentioned in episode 9B01 "Trick or Treatment" (Season 11, Episode 2) as the location where the soldiers' buddies named "Bertleson, Wooster, Greenwade" were killed in an empty foxhole during an "early Thanksgiving". French writer Jean Lartéguy fought in the French Battalion and was wounded by an enemy hand grenade during the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge. His novel Les mercenaires (1963) is a highly fictionalized description of the battle.