After watching the movie Red Cliff, I decide to find out more about the goose formation (known as "Yan Xing zhen 雁行阵").

I've drawn the formation out. It consists of two 'wings' shaped like the "V" shape. It's usually used for encircling the enemy.

When the formation is retreating, it is in the 'inverted' "v" shape with the formation trying to defend the other troops at the back.


Goose Formation (yan xing zhen 雁行阵)

Feel free to comments on the formation (if you think it's not correct, feel free to correct it)

What do you think of the formation?

I think the main weakness of this formation is that it is slow in movement..

This 'wild goose' formation is mentioned in Sun Bin's Art of War, a bamboo-slip copy of which was excavated from a Western Han tomb at Yinqueshan 銀雀山 in 1972. However, the only descriptions of it are in the following lines of the text:

雁行者，所以觸廁（側）應□〔也〕。

Roger Ames and DC Lau translate this as "The wild geese formation is for attacking the enemy's flanks and engaging [the rear guard]."

...便罷以雁行。

Ames and Lau translate this as "to make things easy for tired troops, use the 'wild geese formation'".

雁行之陳（陣）者，所以椄（接）射也。

Ames and Lau translate this as "The wild geese formation is for a rapid-release archer assault."

...此謂雁陳（陣）之任。前列若[有雍]（牖），後列若貍，三……闕羅而自存，之謂雁陳（陣）之任。

Ames and Lau translate this as "... This is called the function of the wild geese formation. The front lines are like..., and the rear are like wild cats... assuring your own survival by cutting through the enemy's net. This is what is called the function of the wild geese formation."


Ralph Sawyer published a translation of Sun Bin's Art of War in 1995, while Ames and Lau published theirs the following year:

http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Pin-Military-Met...0261&sr=1-1 (Sawyer)
http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Pin-Warfare-Clas...t/dp/0345379918 (Ames and Lau 1996 edition, now out of print)
http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Bin-Translation-...408&sr=11-1 (2003 re-issue of Ames and Lau by a different publisher)

Because the Yinqueshan text is the only known copy of a book that was lost after the Eastern Han period, and is a fragmentary copy at that, there are many uncertainties about the interpretation of the text. As with most other excavated pre-Qin and Qin-Han texts, many of the legible characters are unfamiliar and difficult to identify with modern-day versions (attempts at identification are found in the parentheses after particular characters). As a result of these problems and the lack of detail in the text itself, the exact shape and function of the wild goose formation remains impossible to ascertain.

GZ's diagram is based on the depiction of the formation in Red Cliff, but this depiction is only a hypothetical reconstruction based on the fact that flocks of wild geese normally fly in a V formation. Most other reconstructions of the formation work in a similar fashion, for example this one:



(source: http://www.ezgame.com/K3/Geese.htm)

The main problem with such reconstructions is that a real wild goose V formation looks like this:



Notice that the formation flies with the point of the V facing forward, i.e. led by the middle goose. But the usual reconstructed ancient Chinese V formation moves with the point of the V facing backward! That simply does not make sense.

I wonder if there was any other military manual besides Sun Bin that described the details of military formation. I've examined the different military philosophies of Song-Qing, and all of them were more concerned with strategy than tactics(most were written during the end of a dynasty for the purpose of driving the "barbarians" out of China). Chao Cuo and Li Jing were the only two other treatise I saw that talked about tactical engagement in length, but neither talked about the types of formation that exist.

I think the hardest thing about the formation (or formations in general) is the coordination needed. It seems most often they turn out to look like giant amoebas. But I like this Goose formation. These kinds of topics I find ineteresting.

Qi Jiguang's work talked about formations.... though it's pretty unorthodoxed relative to the traditional formations.

It could be that the Goose formation was a sort of wedge formation. where the elites lead a charge and others follow on the flanks? but the descriptions sounds more like a infantry formation...

what formation is this then

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please ignore the *, I use * b/c the forum doesn't recognize empty spaces prior to words, so I can't do the following
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The front several lines are infantry, while the latter are cavalry meant for flanking. i thought this is yan xing.

what is 鹤翼 then?

So, its in John Woo's Red Cliff eh? I remember it being mentioned by Takeshi Kaneshiro's Zhuge Liang character in the trailer. " Too bad it is outdated". How was the execution of the Wild Goose formation in the movie by the way? Was it cool?

Not particularly. It was only shown in the context of training drills, where the two wings of the V were made up of infantry armed with spears, and another much smaller group of spear-armed infantry acted as the enemy and ran into the space between the two wings, leading to a simulated spear-fight. Two things about the drill seemed wrong to me: 1) The soldiers were apparently carrying real spears, which seems to risk accidentally injuring or even killing one another; 2) At least one of the 'enemy' soldiers was knocked to the ground and shown bleeding from the mouth, which again seems to take realistic training too far.

More fundamentally, the very idea of a wild goose formation working by sandwiching the enemy between the two wings of the V is flawed, since a natural wild goose V formation does not fly that way.

The kakuyoku 鹤翼 (heyi in Chinese Putonghua) or 'crane's wing' formation was a Japanese tactical formation used in the Sengoku period, and supposedly looked like this:



(Source: http://www.readj.com/whg/bingfa.htm )

The front of the formation is at the top of the diagram. The black lines represent arquebusiers and archers, and the white blocks represent samurai. The aim of the formation is for the vanguard samurai to hold the enemy down while the two curved groups of samurai behind them spread out to envelop them.

Perhaps coincidentally, the Sengoku-period Japanese also had a tactical formation called the 'wild geese' 雁行, which they pronounced ganko. It looked like this:



(Source same as above)

Note that the front units of samurai form a shape similar to wild geese flying in V formation, although there is also a unit of samurai between the two wings of the V.

Another point of interest is whether 雁行 should be pronounced in Chinese Putonghua as yanxing or as yanhang. My dictionary says the latter is correct, while the dictionary website www.zdic.net seems to be in two minds:
http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/12/ZdicE9Zdic9BZdic81266519.htm

Unfortunately, there isn't; at least none has survived to later times, but we can always hope that another text like Sun Bin will be rediscovered. The reality is that although ancient Chinese warfare is associated with fancy formations in the popular imagination, these formations are the creations of Ming-Qing novelists rather than tacticians.

Yun, very well stated, and very true.

I have been resisting "commenting" on the formation " comments " because in the spirit of "know yourself" I am quite aware I would not have been as able to be as diplomatic and for that matter as precise and concise as you have been with your posting. ( as an aside, and as proof, with this posting I am doing exactly what I know I should not be doing, vowed I would not do, but doing anyway !).

I have been wondering if some members with formal college level training in military science would sally forth and speak to the issue. Surly there must be some here beside me that have completed 4 years of ROTC in a combat arm , or have had formal instruction in tactics through the army, marines, or similar place other than watching movies and reading novels.

It seems to me if some members with factual backgrounds were to start to discuss the issue, the subject matter would generate a great deal of interest.

Is "Sun Bin" the same as the Seven Military classics?

Sun Bin is not one of the seven. It was lost after Eastern Han, and the single copy that we have was excavated from a tomb in 1972.