The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 3 Sep 2024The North Korean forces launch a huge new offensive against the entire Pusan Perimeter, hoping to break through at least somewhere along the line. They are aware that time is of the essence, for the UN forces grow in number daily, while they are losing a battle of attrition. Some new UN arrivals this week are the first British ground troops in Korea for the fight. Meanwhile, Douglas MacArthur’s plans for his upcoming surprise counteroffensive hit all sorts of snags thanks to Korean geography.
Chapters
00:51 Recap
01:26 The British Arrive
03:47 New KPA Strategy
06:49 The New KPA Offensive
12:26 More Incheon Issues
15:16 The US and China
17:12 Summary
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September 4, 2024
The Korean War Week 011 – Destroy the Perimeter! – September 3, 1950
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August 28, 2024
The Korean War Week 010 – MacArthur and the Incheon Meeting – August 27, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 27 Aug 2024Douglas MacArthur has a plan for an amphibious invasion of Incheon, and he thinks it will turn the tide of the war. This week comes his heavy pitch to be allowed to do it to the powers-that-be among American command. The war in the field continues as the UN forces win the Battle of the Bowling Alley, but an air force attack accidentally hits targets over the border in China. Mao Zedong is furious. Also, MacArthur gets flak this week from the President for outspokenly advocating actions counter to US official policy with regard to China, so the Chinese situation grows ever more tense.
Chapters
01:28 Battle of the Bowling Alley
04:14 U.N. Air Power
06:46 Supply Issues
09:05 The British are coming
10:55 Incheon Plans
14:52 The Incheon Meeting
17:06 MacArthur and the VFW
20:25 KPA Plans for Next Week
21:24 Summary
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August 21, 2024
The Korean War Week 009 – Bloody UN Victory at Naktong Bulge – August 20, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 20 Aug 2024The Marines are deployed to back up the UN forces facing disaster in the Naktong Bulge and by the end of the week the tide has turned, and the crack North Korean 4th Division has been shattered. There is also fighting around the whole rest of the Pusan Perimeter, and it is shrinking from all the attacks, though on the east coast the battle goes in favor of the South Korean forces this week at Pohang-Dong.
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August 14, 2024
The Korean War Week 008 – The First UN Counterattack – August 13, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 13 Aug 2024The first UN large scale counterattack goes off this week; this by the American Task Force Kean. It has both successes and failures, and it runs right into a new North Korean offensive. The fighting happens just about everywhere on the Pusan Perimeter this week, though. That’s the area into which the UN forces have been compressed, and it is particularly threatening at the Naktong Bulge. It is, plain and simple, a week of desperate and bloody fighting and that’s about it.
Chapters
00:47 Recap
01:27 The Pusan Perimeter
04:31 Task Force Kean
07:44 The Naktong Bulge
10:09 The Fight Around Daegu
13:45 Summary
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August 8, 2024
The Korean War Week 007 – The Pusan Perimeter – August 6, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published Aug 6, 2024The UN forces are withdrawn this week across the Naktong River into a new defensive zone in the Southeast corner of the Peninsula — the Pusan Perimeter, but already as the week begins they are in great danger from the right hook near the coast by the North Korean 6th Division, that threatens to upend everything, taking Chinju and aiming for Masan. There are also machinations afoot with the Chinese in Taiwan, and the fear that a larger war could erupt if things aren’t handled right concerning the Chinese; it’s a week full of tension.
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July 31, 2024
The Korean War Week 006 – Stand or Die! – July 30, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 30 Jul 2024The UN Forces have been pushed back ever further, but this week, US 8th Army Commander Walton Walker issues the order to “stand or die”; he sees no other options. American reinforcements are finally getting into the actual fight, though, and Britain has decided they will send in ground troops, so things might turn around … if they can hold out long enough for those troops to arrive, because a brilliant North Korean strategy might win the war and soon.
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July 24, 2024
The Korean War – The Allied Cluster f**k at Taejon – Week 005 – July 23, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 23 Jul 2024Taejon falls this week to the advancing North Korean steamroller, but the fight there is complete chaos that even sees the top American General fleeing into the local hills. However, two divisions of American reinforcements have arrived and perhaps they can turn the tide. The US also has decided to massively increase its defense spending and conscript tens of thousands of men, which may well help to do that.
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July 22, 2024
Chinese Type 50 PPSh: Founding “Gun City” in Manchuria
Forgotten Weapons
Published Apr 12, 2024One of the first new weapons adopted and used by the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army after the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war was the Type 50, a copy of the Soviet PPSh-41. The story of its manufacture begins at the Japanese-occupied Mukden Arsenal. It was briefly occupied by the Soviets in 1945 before coming under control of the CCP. It was a huge manufacturing complex at the time, making artillery, small arms, ammunition, and more. A Nationalist bombing raid in 1949 led to the production being distributed among three separate smaller facilities, and the small remote town of Bei’an was chosen to become the new small arms factory site.
The town became so heavily focused on weapons manufacture that it gained the nickname of “Gun City”. The factory was formally named #626, and given the cover name of Qinghua Tool Company. It initially began with production of the Type 38 Arisaka, Type 24 Mauser (the Chiang Kai Shek rifle), the M1 Carbine (a failed project), and the Type 50 copy of the PPSh. In the spring of 1951 in response to UN advances northward in Korea, production was ordered to scale up on the Type 50, to 7500-9000 per month. This took a couple of months to achieve, but in June 1951 the first large shipment of the guns left the factory, and by December 1953 a total of 358,000 had been made. At that point, production shifted to the Type 54, a copy of the PPS-43.
The Type 50 is a close copy of the Russian Shpagin, but differs in a couple of details. The Chinese used a rear aperture sight, and the sights were placed slightly farther forward than on Russian guns. They are also generally very well made — better than most Russia wartime examples.
For many more cool small arms stories, check out WWII After WWII:
https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com
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July 17, 2024
Americans Repeatedly Routed – The Korean War – Week 004 – July 16, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 16 Jul 2024Elements of the US 24th Division, the only American one that’s arrived in force in Korea so far, take on the North Korean forces aiming for Taejon, but they are badly — and easily — defeated each time. In the center and the east coast it’s the ROK- the forces of the South — that are reorganizing and getting into position to try to stop the enemy. And Douglas MacArthur is officially appointed commander of all UN forces in Korea.
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July 10, 2024
The Korean War – Never Fear, MacArthur’s Here! – Week 003 – July 9, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 9 Jul 2024American troops have arrived in Korea and engage the KPA — the forces of the North — in the field this week for the first time. It does not go well for them. In fact, it’s hard to imagine it going worse. The Americans are outnumbered and outgunned and are routed. In fact, the KPA are advancing all over the country, though they are taking heavy casualties themselves.
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July 3, 2024
The Korean War Week 002 – The Fall of Seoul – July 2, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 2 Jul 2024The North Korean forces are advancing all over, and this week they take Seoul, the South’s capital city, after just a few days of the war. There is another tragedy for the South when the Han River Bridge is blown while thousands of people are crossing it, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. The world responds to the invasion — condemning it everywhere, and the Americans decide to send in ground forces to help the South.
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June 26, 2024
The Korean War Begins – Week 1 – June 25, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 25 Jun 2024Despite the fact that there have been clear signs that they might soon invade South Korea, when the North actually does in force on June 25th, 1950, it comes as a complete shock to the world. But is this a full invasion, or just cross border raids such as there were in 1949? And is there something more behind this? Stalin’s Soviets? Mao’s Chinese? And how will the world react? Find out this week as our week by week coverage of the war begins!
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March 31, 2024
HMS Unicorn (I72) – Guide 367
Drachinifel
Published Dec 23, 2023The Unicorn, a fleet maintenance carrier of the British Royal Navy, is today’s subject.
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February 11, 2024
QotD: Learning and re-learning the bloody art of war
The values composing civilization and the values required to protect it are normally at war. Civilization values sophistication, but in an armed force sophistication is a millstone.
The Athenian commanders before Salamis, it is reported, talked of art and of the Acropolis, in sight of the Persian fleet. Beside their own campfires, the Greek hoplites chewed garlic and joked about girls.
Without its tough spearmen, Hellenic culture would have had nothing to give the world. It would not have lasted long enough. When Greek culture became so sophisticated that its common men would no longer fight to the death, as at Thermopylae, but became devious and clever, a horde of Roman farm boys overran them.
The time came when the descendants of Macedonians who had slaughtered Asians till they could no longer lift their arms went pale and sick at the sight of the havoc wrought by the Roman gladius Hispanicus as it carved its way toward Hellas.
The Eighth Army, put to the fire and blooded, rose from its own ashes in a killing mood. They went north, and as they went they destroyed Chinese and what was left of the towns and cities of Korea. They did not grow sick at the sight of blood.
By 7 March they stood on the Han. They went through Seoul, and reduced it block by block. When they were finished, the massive railway station had no roof, and thousands of buildings were pocked by tank fire. Of Seoul’s original more than a million souls, less than two hundred thousand still lived in the ruins. In many of the lesser cities of Korea, built of wood and wattle, only the foundation, and the vault, of the old Japanese bank remained.
The people of Chosun, not Americans or Chinese, continued to lose the war.
At the end of March the Eighth Army was across the parallel.
General Ridgway wrote, “The American flag never flew over a prouder, tougher, more spirited and more competent fighting force than was Eighth Army as it drove north …”
Ridgway had no great interest in real estate. He did not strike for cities and towns, but to kill Chinese. The Eighth Army killed them, by the thousands, as its infantry drove them from the hills and as its air caught them fleeing in the valleys.
By April 1951, the Eighth Army had again proved Erwin Rommel’s assertion that American troops knew less but learned faster than any fighting men he had opposed. The Chinese seemed not to learn at all, as they repeated Chipyong-ni again and again.
Americans had learned, and learned well. The tragedy of American arms, however, is that having an imperfect sense of history Americans sometimes forget as quickly as they learn.
T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness, 1963.
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January 23, 2024
The Korean War: The First Year
Army University Press
Published Jan 22, 2024Created for the Department of Command and Leadership and the Department of Military History at the US Army Command and General Staff College, The Korean War: The First Year is a short documentary focused on the major events of the Forgotten War. Designed to address the complex strategic and operational actions from June 1950 – June 1951, the film answers seven key questions that can be found in the timestamps below. Major events such as the initial North Korean invasion, the defense of the Pusan Perimeter, the Inchon landing, and the Chinese intervention are discussed.
Timestamps:
1. Why are there Two Koreas? – 00:25
2. Why did North Korea Attack South Korea? – 02:39
3. How did the UN stop the Communist invasion? – 06:30
4. Why did MacArthur attack at Inchon? – 10:24
5. Why did the UN attack into North Korea? – 14:27
6. Why did China enter the Korean War? – 18:51
7. How did the UN stop the Communist invasion … again? – 21:44
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