Find old Korean War articles here. We have great newspaper articles from the Korean War check them out today!
The toughest fighting was in a three-mile beachead at the chewed-up port of Hungnam. There the U.S X Corps had escaped from a Chinese trap and was piling aboard a fleet of Victory and Liberty ships.
The U.S. Navy had a strong presence off shore to cover the American withdrawal.
Sitting before a senate committee convened in order to understand what went wrong in Korea, Lieutenant General Edward M. Almond (1892 – 1979), U.S. Army, was not shy to point out that it was the the back-seat drivers in Washington who interfered in their ability to fight the war.
Senator Welker: Could we have won the war in 1951…?
General Almond: I think so.
General Matthew Ridgway experienced the same frustration – click here to read about it.
On June 25, 1950 ten divisions of North Korean infantry invaded South Korea. In its narrowest sense, the invasion marked the beginning of a civil war between peoples of a divided country. In a far larger sense, it represented a break in tensions between the two dominant power blocs that had emerged from the Second World War. These well-illustrated pages appeared in Quick Magazine two weeks after the hostilities commenced and serves to summarize the events in Washington and at the United Nations. Within the first twelve hours of the war President Truman committed U.S. air and naval forces to the defense of South Korea and signed a bill to widen the draft pool.
The Korean War ended in 1953. Click here to read about the military results of that war.
In every engagement with the enemy during the Second World War, only 12 to 25 percent of American riflemen ever fired their weapons. This was an enormous concern for the brass hats in the Pentagon and they got right to work in order to remedy the problem. Five years later, when the Korean War rolled around, they found that the situation was somewhat improved: 50% of the soldiers were now able to return fire. This article tells the story of U.S. Army General S.L.A. Marshall (1900 – 1977) and his research in addressing this issue. A good read.
The first surprise attack came at night. It was mounted by reckless fighters, who swarmed into battle on horseback and afoot after [American] bugles had morbidly sounded ‘taps’. The Reds pounced on two combat regiments of the American First Cavalry Division and the South Korean First Division. Hundreds of civilians, caught by the flaming machine gun and mortar fire, were mowed down. In U.N. casualties, it was the one of the costliest engagements of the war.
The Chinese foray into Korea resulted in the coming together of numerous politicians in Washington in order to boost Army spending by $41.8 billion dollars, with an additional $1 billion designated for nuclear warfare preparedness. Assorted branches of the military increased the draft pool and lowered their admission standards. New Jersey Representative Charles Eaton(R) gravely stated:
We face the greatest danger of extinction since the nation was founded.
When General James Van Fleet let it be known that much of the previous two years in Korea had been plagued by a shortage in ammunition, tempers flared in the Senate as both parties talked of convening an investigative committee.
Attached is an article concerning a page from American Military History and it outlines the losses and gains of the Korean War (1950 – 1953). In five sentences this article gives the number of American dead and wounded, the number of U.N. dead and wounded and the amount of ground lost to the Chinese and North Korean military; a map of the stabilized front is provided.
The United Nations defense ‘line’ in Korea was more like a rubber band. It gave with Red punches, then snapped back. But last week the strain on the elastic was terrific… Neat shifting by the out-numbered defenders met and tossed back each of the blows – first along the southern coast toward Pusan…
With no other seafaring nation afloat to oppose them, the United States Navy directed it’s attention entirely to land-based targets on the Korean peninsula. Navy jets pelted the mountainous terrain in support of UN operations ashore while battleships, cruisers and destroyers served as floating artillery batteries:
The miracle-man most responsible for this rejuvenated navy is brilliant, 53-year-old Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, the first air officer to serve as CNO…
