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Korea
May 11, 2015 17:50:51 GMT -6
Post by montrose on May 11, 2015 17:50:51 GMT -6
Can we move the Korea discussion to this thread?
Mac has been trying to discuss LBH on the Military Ways thread. I would like to respond, but that thread became a Korea thread.
Just trying to focus my limited mind.
Respectfully,
William
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Korea
May 11, 2015 18:22:12 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 11, 2015 18:22:12 GMT -6
Will Korea is on Military Plays, not Military Ways. It is not my thread, rather it was started by Herosrest, where it is for the purpose I suppose of talking Korea. I agree though it should be campfire or some other place, but I think he has to move it, and he will be tied up on other business he tells me by PM for some good little time.
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Korea
May 11, 2015 18:34:39 GMT -6
Post by montrose on May 11, 2015 18:34:39 GMT -6
QC, Roger, Wilco.
So please discuss Korea here.
We started with a bad Army, designed for a nuclear war we never fought.
But if you want to have incompetent leadership from Brigadier General to Chief of Staff, have a few million WW2 veterans waiting in the wings. The Army fixed itself by luck, not plan.
Just a reminder, Al Quaida was after the WTC 15 years before they got it. They nearly dropped it in 1993. Their bomb was 16 feet from where it should have been to drop the tower.
So we had a threat with published goals, and youtube videos discussing their goals and methods. And yet the Army was totally unprepared for GWOT, not just when the war started, but a decade later. Rumsfeld gets a lot of grief. He was instrumental in firing the clowns who led the Army to failure, and bringing in SHoo, Pet, etc.
GAC was a pretty good Civil War commander, as long as a better general supervised him. He was useless in the Indian wars. Can we afford a Rinni like fanboy Army of pretty boys, vice competence?
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Korea
May 11, 2015 19:27:08 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 11, 2015 19:27:08 GMT -6
Not only general officers Will. Of all the Colonels commanding regiments that they took to Korea in 1950, all but five were fired, and two of those five were killed. It was the custom in 8th Army to give a soon to be retired Colonel a farewell tour as a regimental commander. Same with division commanders. Only one served a full tour - Kean - the rest caught colds if the Army wanted to keep them for something, and if not they were urgently required at Fort Swampy, Nebraska
I am not so sure we started with a bad army "designed" for the nuclear age. We started with a bad army. Had Congress listened to Truman (wait a minute don't faint) and passed Universal Service that the Army set themselves up for by activating several training divisions all over the country, then having to close them down after 11 or 12 months, we would have been much better off as far as a trained but needs to be refreshed manpower pool went. We had a Bozo SEC DEF in Johnson, who could not get out of his own way. Those were bad things but I don't think the Army was too worried about its role in a nuclear conflict until post 1953, which ultimately led to Pentomic, and a perceived requirement for the Army to justify their existence by whiz bang instead of sticking to the fundamentals
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Korea
May 11, 2015 20:25:59 GMT -6
Post by dave on May 11, 2015 20:25:59 GMT -6
Ah 1953, the smell of napalm and the gentle glow from the mushroom cloud of Atomic Annie's shell hitting down range. Sorry for the quip, it just came out. Regards Dave
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 12, 2015 3:30:29 GMT -6
Would it be fair to say that the British, US, Canadian Australian and New Zealand forces had a core of combat veterans when hostilities broke out in Korea? The Second World War had only ended five years earlier and I know for a fact that my Father plus a lot of his friends stayed on after 1945 in a training capacity.
I don’t know how it worked in the states but we had national service in Britain which was really a form of conscription, this meant that men between the ages of 18 to 40 could be called up to do a couple of years in the forces.
My dad trained these conscripts, so I would have thought that our army was in good shape and ready for war, we actually had a good main battle tank for a change.
Now I would have thought that these same principles would have been the norm in the other nations too, as not all the vets would have cashed in their chips and gone home.
But I think that you guys are talking about the brass at the top and not the units from battalion down to squad, but there again how many of these officers who did stay on, would have had experienced in fighting the Germans and Japanese, the Japanese were just as crazy as the North Koreans and the Chinese, and attacked in a similar fashion with no considerations to casualties.
Ian.
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Korea
May 12, 2015 7:07:58 GMT -6
fred likes this
Post by jodak on May 12, 2015 7:07:58 GMT -6
I once saw it postulated that a difference between Korea and Vietnam was that we went into Korea with a bad army and came out with a good one, while we went into Vietnam with a good army and came out with a bad one.
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Korea
May 12, 2015 8:03:12 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 12, 2015 8:03:12 GMT -6
Jodak: I believe that to be a fair and accurate statement of fact.
Ian: I am not going to address your question. To do so would take a tome the size of Gone With The Wind to accurately do so, and it has already been done, far better than I could ever hope to do.
The ESSENTIAL reading on the U S Army in the Korean War is " This Kind of War" by T. R. Fehrenbach. Fehrenback was an officer, as I recall a platoon leader in the 72nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division during the war and in 1963 he published this his work as "This Kind of War - A Study In Unpreparedness" He gives a broad view of the state of affairs, but then keys in throughout the book on a couple of individuals whose story is typical of the Army at the company and battalion level. Of particular interest is the story of Captain Frank Munoz, 9th Infantry, 2nd ID.
Another ESSENTIAL is Clay Blair's "The Forgotten War" which will give you a complete picture at a somewhat higher level, to include a critique of nearly every battalion commander and above that served in Korea from June of 50 until the maneuver phase of the war ended about mid-50 and the stalemate reminiscent of the Western front of 1917 set in.
Between the two of them they will give you a true and very unvarnished picture of what transpired.
I trust every one knows that there were actually to phases of the Korean Conflict, the maneuver war of 50-51, and the outpost war of 51-53.
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Korea
May 12, 2015 8:23:05 GMT -6
Post by fred on May 12, 2015 8:23:05 GMT -6
I once saw it postulated that a difference between Korea and Vietnam was that we went into Korea with a bad army and came out with a good one, while we went into Vietnam with a good army and came out with a bad one. Yep. Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 12, 2015 8:23:46 GMT -6
No problem Chuck, I only written that post in response to some of the other posts saying that the US army was in bad shape and not ready for war.
At first I was going to write that the US army may have gone into this war with the same idea as Sheridan, Terry, Crook and Gibbon and thought that North Koreans would simply melt away when faced with a modern US army.
Ian.
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Korea
May 12, 2015 8:59:59 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 12, 2015 8:59:59 GMT -6
In June of 1950 the United States Army only had two full up combat divisions Ian, the 1st Infantry Division in Germany, and other than the U S Constabulary that is all we had there, and the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, ticked with a world-wide contingency mission. The other eight were at half or less in strength, and equipment levels were equally miserable.
In August 1950, the 3rd Infantry Division, in total was around ninety personnel assigned.
There was some aspect of melt away in the face of olive drab. That existed in the mind of MacArthur who was being fed this crap by his G-2, who did not know and could not find his way to the men's room. Task Force Smith (1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, minus one company, augmented by an FA battery) found out the hard way that this was not so at Osan.
The United States Army went from scratch farmers to combat hardened first rate soldiers on the Naktong River Line or died. Inchon gets all the press due to MacArthur's propaganda machine, but it was on the Naktong, and particularly in the Naktong Bulge that the Immun Gun died, and they never recovered.
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Korea
May 12, 2015 10:23:43 GMT -6
Post by Yan Taylor on May 12, 2015 10:23:43 GMT -6
Chuck its funny you mentioned the Naktong River, as the British 27th Brigade set up shop along there. They were assigned to the US 1st Cavalry Div. they held the line which stretch around 8 km and this had to be patrolled. When the link up with the Inchon landings was proposed they placed with the US 24th ID as reserve.
I know you would have heard of the two hills (Pudding Hill and Hill 282) which they were ordered to take. The first hill was assaulted by the 1st Middlesex and they were supported by a platoon of US tanks. They took the hill by bayonet charge. The second hill was taken by Argyll’s with a similar charge. The battle to hold these hills is legendary, the Argyll’s suffered 40% casualties due to friendly fire caused by bombing raids by the USAF. Ian.
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Korea
May 12, 2015 10:41:16 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 12, 2015 10:41:16 GMT -6
You set me back for a moment Ian. The brigade is referred to in most U S reference material as The Commonwealth Brigade having been reinforced by the Princess Pats and the RAR, plus some Kiwis and if memory serves there was an Indian Army unit attached as well. Coad, the brigade commander was well thought of by everyone he worked with.
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Korea
May 12, 2015 11:27:35 GMT -6
Post by dave on May 12, 2015 11:27:35 GMT -6
QC What kind a shape do you believe the Immun Gun to be in today? Are they an effective force or more like the vaunted Republican Guard? Regards Dave
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Korea
May 12, 2015 12:11:23 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 12, 2015 12:11:23 GMT -6
Very brittle. Open a bag of Snyder's pretzels and when you take a pretzel in your hand it seems hard to the touch. Place it in the palm of your hand and make a fist and it crumbles.
In 1950 the NKPA (Immun Gun) had one good fight in it and by the time they started attacking trying to get across the Naktong they were logistically spent, and spent the next six weeks bleeding to death. I think they are materially stronger today, but the inner core is rotten, and their logistics are still questionable. Can they do a lot of damage? I think that is true, but I don't think they can win a war and their leadership knows it. Of course the country is run as a cult of personality, and fat boy's grandson Chubby Cheeks is weird as a three peckered goat. One day you will wake up and see that his own military has knocked him off. The question is will that be better or worse. North Korea is like Jonestown on steroids.
Never underestimate a man or and army with a gun Dave. Some may be better than others, indeed much better, but they all can kill you.
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