Schematic plan · Korean War

Battle of Chan River

3 April 1951
Korea
Victory for USA

A schematic plan, generated from the statistics of the CAA Database of Battles: the armies' size and width, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome are as recorded; the ground and the positions are not.

USA (US Div, 26,000 men under unrecorded commanders) attacked North Korea (Nkor Army, 12,500 men under unrecorded commanders) in Korea. The CAA Database of Battles records 48 hours of fighting on a front of 24 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that USA won. Losses: USA 150 (1%), North Korea 1,560 (12%).

This plan is generated from those figures. It shows the shape of the battle the database describes: the size and width of the armies, the plan of attack and the outcome. It does not show where the units actually stood.

The armies

USA

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	5,723
USA centre	Infantry	7,630
USA right wing	Infantry	5,723
USA reserve	Infantry	4,769
USA artillery (72 guns)	Artillery	1,080
USA armour (215 tanks)	Armour	1,075
USA command	Commander	—
In this plan		26,000

North Korea

Unit	Arm	Men
North Korea left wing	Infantry	2,550
North Korea centre	Infantry	3,400
North Korea right wing	Infantry	2,550
North Korea reserve	Infantry	2,125
North Korea artillery (288 guns)	Artillery	1,875
North Korea command	Commander	—
In this plan		12,500

What the sources report

	USA	North Korea
Strength, this plan	26,000	12,500
Losses, this plan	150	1,560

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 632, “Chan River”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 48 hours
Winner: the attacker
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 24 km (attacker), null km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	26,000	150	0	72	Frontal attack; Penetration
North Koreadefender	12,500	1,560	0	288	Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages none recorded

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.

Notes

On this reconstruction

Generated automatically from the statistics in CDB90. Frontages, depths, distances, the order of events and the terrain are schematic: they follow the recorded strengths, front widths, hours of fighting, tactical plan and outcome, not maps or accounts of the battle. The sources give no hours; the timing is conjectural.

Sources

US Army Concepts Analysis Agency; tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold, CAA Database of Battles (CDB90), no. 632 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.

Facts gathered from Wikidata (CC0), Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikimedia Commons (licence per file); the plan and its text are timeastra’s own.