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Human wave attack, also known as human sea attack,[1] is an offensive infantry tactic, in which an attacker conducts an unprotected frontal assault with densely concentrated infantry formations against the enemy line, intended to overrun the defenders by engaging in melee combat.
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According to US Army analyst Edward C. O'Dowd, the technical definition of a human wave attack tactic is a frontal assault by densely concentrated infantry formations against an enemy line, without any attempts to shield or to mask the attacker's movement.[2] The goal of the human wave attack is to maneuver as many men as possible into melee range, hoping that the shock from a large mass of attackers engaged in melee combat would force the enemy to disintegrate or fall back.[2]
The human wave attack's reliance on melee combat usually made the skills of individual soldiers irrelevant, but it requires either great physical courage, coercion, or esprit de corps for the attackers to advance into enemy fire.[3] However, when matched against modern weaponry such as automatic firearms, artillery and aircraft, human wave attack is an extremely dangerous and costly tactic in the face of devastating firepower.[2] Thus for the human wave attack to succeed on the modern battlefield, it is imperative for the attackers to charge into the enemy line in the shortest time and in the greatest number possible, so that a sufficient mass can be preserved when the attackers reached melee range.[2] But this solution usually meant that the attackers must sacrifice concealment and covers for numbers and speed.[2] Because of this trade off, human wave attack tactic is normally used by an attacker with a lack of tactical training, or one who lacks firepower and the ability to maneuver, but whose main advantage is in motivating and controlling their men.[4]
The term "human wave attack" has been used to describe the infantry assault tactics used by several armed forces around the world. These included European armies during World War I,[5] Imperial Japanese Army and Soviet Red Army during World War II,[6][7] Chinese People's Liberation Army during the Korean War,[8] Vietnamese insurgents during the Indochina Wars,[9] and Iranian Basij during the Iran–Iraq War.[10]
The term "human wave attack" was often misused[11] to describe the Chinese short attack — a combination of infiltration and the shock tactics employed by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) during the Korean War.[12] A typical Chinese short attack was carried out at night by small fireteams on a narrow front against the weakest point in enemy defenses.[12] The Chinese assault team would crawl undetected within grenade range, then launch surprise attacks against the defenders in order to breach the defenses by relying on maximum shock and confusion.[12]
If the initial shock failed to breach the defenses, additional fireteams would press on behind them and attack the same point until a breach was created.[12] Once a penetration was achieved, the bulk of the Chinese forces would move into the enemy rear and attack from behind.[13] During the attacks, the Chinese assault teams would disperse while masking themselves using the terrain, and this made it difficult for UN defenders to target large number of Chinese troops.[7] The attacks by the successive Chinese fireteams were also carefully timed to minimize casualties.[14] Due to the primitive communication systems and the tight political controls within the Chinese army, short attacks were often repeated indefinitely until either the defenses were penetrated or the attacker's ammunition supply were exhausted, regardless of the chances of success or the human cost.[12]
This persistent attack pattern left a strong impression on UN forces that fought in Korea, thus the description of "human wave" was born.[8] US Army historian Roy Edgar Appleman observed that the term "human wave" was later used by journalists and military officials to convey the image that the American soldiers were assaulted by overwhelming numbers of Chinese on a broad front, which is inaccurate when compared with the normal Chinese practice of sending successive series of five men teams against a single narrow portion of the line.[1] S.L.A. Marshall also commented that the word "mass" was indiscriminately used by the media to describe Chinese infantry tactics, and it is rare for the Chinese to actually use densely concentrated infantry formations to absorb enemy firepower.[15] In response to the media's coining of the term, a joke circulated among the US servicemen was "How many hordes are there in a Chinese platoon?"[8][12][16]
Although abandoned by the PLA by 1953,[17] the human wave attack tactic was adapted by the Viet Minh, and later by the Viet Cong and the Vietnam People's Army during the Indochina Wars.[9] Due to the stagnation of the Chinese military modernization programs during the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese army re-adopted this tactic during the Sino-Vietnamese War.[18] Their use in the Sino-Vietnamese War is a rare example of an army with superior firepower, in this case the PLA, throwing away its advantage.[19]