Patton in the Korean War

[swerve]

It just wasn't on the "to do list" to study China. The US was war weary in '50 and political signals were "no fighting" in Korea.

more later...

 

This is baffling. Note that I'm not disputing that the US military had ignored China, but wondering why. How could they completely ignore a war involving millions of troops, in which the USA had actually been involved, to the extent of supplying one of the participants with arms, advisors, & logistical & financial support? How could they be ignorant of the capabilities of an army which US officers had seen in action only months before, as it defeated their allies?

 

Note that the end of land fighting in China wasn't until May 1950, when the PRC successfully attacked Hainan, & the USA was facing down China in the Taiwan strait months before Chinese intervention in Korea.

[Old Tanker]

This is baffling. Note that I'm not disputing that the US military had ignored China, but wondering why.

 

It's possible that the U.S. military believed that the defeat of the KMT was do to it being corrupt as opposed to the PLA's skill in warfare.

The corruption of the KMT was a sore point with Stilwell.

[Guest aevans]

Because he got lucky.

 

As noted previously; the logical, responsible move would have been either to land with more favorable tides, or land somewhere else. The first wave or two landed and was promptly isolated thanks to nothing but hydrology. Had the Northies attacked with some coordination and/or earnest the Marines probably would have been thrown back into the sea.

 

Because that didn't happen, Macarthur was hailed as a genius.

Shot

 

Oh, please. The "first wave" that got "isolated" was a single battalion landing team that assaulted Wolmi-do Island. The only route of reinforcement/counterattack was along a narrow, open causeway. Had the NKs had an entire regiment ready to go at the base of the causeway, they still wouldn't have stood much of a chance, given the available air and NGFs support that would have made maneuvering on the causeway suicide.

[Mote]

But the China of WW2 was not the China of 1950. WW2 China was divided, with both sides lining up for the civil war they expected as soon as Japan was out of the way. It had been weakened in advance by Japanese occupation of prime parts of the country during the late Empire & the warlord period. It had not been unified under a single government since about 1912, & even then Manchuria was outside its control.

 

China in 1950 was unified under the winners of the civil war, who'd beaten an army armed, equipped & directly aided by the USA. The victorious army was still intact, packed with veterans who knew how to fight & defeat technologically superior opponents. The war had been over only a few months.

 

How could any sane US general not know that?

 

Could it have been related to expecting that any war would be a 30 day nuclear wonder?

[Kensuke]

It's possible that the U.S. military believed that the defeat of the KMT was do to it being corrupt as opposed to the PLA's skill in warfare.

The corruption of the KMT was a sore point with Stilwell.

 

This is true. However....it's flawed because the PLA successfully waged a two front war against the KMT and the Japanese, while they KMT was stubbornly concerned with fighting the PLA. So even if you take into account the massive corruption of the KMT and the fact that they didn't give a good effort, you would ignore the successes of the PLA against both enemies. This should be been a good indication that the PLA was, at the very least, not to be taken lightly. They should have been studied.

 

Also, to those that say the DPRK Army was "third rate" obviously ignores the fact that US Army was basically getting its ASS KICKED repeatedly in the months leading up to Incheon. 24th ID had its guts torn out. Mac made the best decision given the situation faced by the UN. There was no honest belief that 8th Army and the ROK could manage to break free from Pusan without having the pressure taken off them.

 

- john

[Yama]

By what measure? How do you even know what resources the centrally controlled Nat. China had (IOW excluding resources commanded by warlords who only paid lip service to Chiang Kai Shek)? China at that stage was a mess. You are kind of saying the Russians military potential is a joke based on what happened in Russia during 1918-1921 (when foreign powers were able to land on and occupy Russian territory with impunity).

 

Well, but isn't that pretty close to how USSR was perceived? Certainly I remember reading pre-WW2 comments that Soviet Union would be hindrance rather than help to Allies in case of war against Germany. Soviet fighters delivered to Republican Spain were called "Boeings" and "Curtisses" because nobody thought Soviets would be able to design their own warplanes. Then came Winter War which hardly served to dispel the notion.

Edited September 26, 2007 by Yama

[Guest aevans]

Well, but isn't that pretty close to how USSR was perceived? Certainly I remember reading pre-WW2 comments that Soviet Union would be hindrance rather than help to Allies in case of war against Germany. Soviet fighters delivered to Republican Spain were called "Boeings" and "Curtisses" because nobody thought Soviets would be able to design their own warplanes. Then came Winter War which hardly served to dispel the notion.

 

You're talking about sub-optimal present capability, which is a consequence of unnecessary social/political/institutional inefficiencies. Potential is an entirely different thing. Eliminate or mitigate (1) the inefficiencies that lead to less than optimum exploitation of potential, and the level of capability increases towards optimum, both in quantity and quality.

 

1. or shift into the future, by way of taking the whip to the economy, as communist governments were fond of doing

Edited September 26, 2007 by aevans

[Kensuke]

Well, but isn't that pretty close to how USSR was perceived? Certainly I remember reading pre-WW2 comments that Soviet Union would be hindrance rather than help to Allies in case of war against Germany. Soviet fighters delivered to Republican Spain were called "Boeings" and "Curtisses" because nobody thought Soviets would be able to design their own warplanes. Then came Winter War which hardly served to dispel the notion.

 

The I-16 was called a "Boeing" in some publications because there was an improper assumption made that it was based off the P-26 or actually was a licensed copy of the same. Not because the Russian planes were thought of as inferior and they were trying to bury their head in the sand. Indeed, the I-15 before it was well known to be a Russian design. The Spanish Civil War was woefully underreported in the west.

 

I just got done reading a book which dealt with the aerial portion of the Spanish Civil War, and the I-15 and I-16 of the Republican Air Force were considered by foreign mercenaries pilots as the best aircraft in the war that wasn't the Bf-109. Only the best got to fly the latter of the two.

 

For what it's worth the Soviets were always admired for one thing: Manpower, and lots of it. Until the Winter War, I don't think the extent of Stalin's purges were that well known.

 

- John

[JOE BRENNAN]

Because he got lucky.

 

As noted previously; the logical, responsible move would have been either to land with more favorable tides, or land somewhere else. The first wave or two landed and was promptly isolated thanks to nothing but hydrology. Had the Northies attacked with some coordination and/or earnest the Marines probably would have been thrown back into the sea.

 

Because that didn't happen, Macarthur was hailed as a genius.

As was mentioned the KPA had nothing in the area capable of defeating that landing, but what's more the UN command knew that. IOW a distinction can be made between two pieces of staff work that were MacArthur's ultimate responsibility, Inchon where itelligence about the enemy (numbers, beside the whole question of quality) was reasonably good and the November offensive when it wasn't.

 

The real risk to Inchon landing itself was that the NK's would mine the channel before the landing. The UN intel network on scene knew they hadn't when the landing went ahead, so it wasn't a risk of sudden heavy losses of ships in general to mines so much, but risk of what happened some weeks later at Wonsan, where an administrative landing was delayed for days while mines, including magnetic ones, were swept by a marginally adequate minesweeping force which suffered losses.

 

Joe

[Junior FO]

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Edited September 19, 2024 by Junior FO

[Junior FO]

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Edited September 19, 2024 by Junior FO

[jakec]

This is true. However....it's flawed because the PLA successfully waged a two front war against the KMT and the Japanese, while they KMT was stubbornly concerned with fighting the PLA. So even if you take into account the massive corruption of the KMT and the fact that they didn't give a good effort, you would ignore the successes of the PLA against both enemies. This should be been a good indication that the PLA was, at the very least, not to be taken lightly. They should have been studied.

 

Also, to those that say the DPRK Army was "third rate" obviously ignores the fact that US Army was basically getting its ASS KICKED repeatedly in the months leading up to Incheon. 24th ID had its guts torn out. Mac made the best decision given the situation faced by the UN. There was no honest belief that 8th Army and the ROK could manage to break free from Pusan without having the pressure taken off them.

 

- john

And UN/US intel should have known that the DPRK army was largely demobbed from the PLA. This should have given a sense of the potential toughness of the PLA. But, as someone pointed out earlier, its likely MacArthur expected to nuke any Chinese intervention not fight it on the peninsula.

[Yama]

Never heard of that one. I don't know enough to have an opinion, however considering the size of the operations the Red Army showed itself to be capable of, f.e. in Poland in ?1921?, I would be surprised if this was a widespread opinion.

 

Well, Soviet armies were defeated in that war...

[Yama]

The I-16 was called a "Boeing" in some publications because there was an improper assumption made that it was based off the P-26 or actually was a licensed copy of the same. Not because the Russian planes were thought of as inferior and they were trying to bury their head in the sand. Indeed, the I-15 before it was well known to be a Russian design. The Spanish Civil War was woefully underreported in the west.

 

In fact, I-15 was indeed called 'Curtiss' by aforementioned foreign sources, and Tupolev SB was called 'Martin' (apparently thought to be B-10 knock-off). I agree with the SCW being underreported - that was kinda the point. Lots of countries turned blind eye to the experiences of that war - including some which participated in it...

[JOE BRENNAN]

And UN/US intel should have known that the DPRK army was largely demobbed from the PLA. This should have given a sense of the potential toughness of the PLA. But, as someone pointed out earlier, its likely MacArthur expected to nuke any Chinese intervention not fight it on the peninsula.

The UN command knew a lot about the KPA. By the fall of 1950 much of that original force had been captured and lots of POW interviews held and being assembled into quite detailed descriptions division by division; the process wasn't finished at the time but OTOH had started when the fighting started in July (for the US), to some degree.

 

But again another key aspect was determining enemy numbers not just quality. The KPA was recognized as a pretty tough force, and was in fact better equipped on average than the CPV units of late 1950. But it had just been crushed in Oct 1950. If it had been twice or more as large (as the CPV was in late 1950) that would have been a lot harder. So it wasn't just a matter of off the cuff, or even carefully considered, generalizations about quality but accurate estimation of opposing numbers, positions etc., which the UN command always wasn't bad at, but was bad at in Oct-Nov 1950 period.

 

Three of the approx dozen division eq.'s of the KPA at the start of the war were built around PLA Korean Volunteer Army divisions transferred to the North Koreans in 1949-early 50: 5th, 6th and 12th. Other KPA units also had Korean PLA veterans (and a few Soviet-Korean Red Army vets too) but it wasn't most. In theory per their own (including POW) accounts, the NK's retrained the PLA based divisions according to Soviet/NK doctrine.

 

I don't know any evidence MacArthur based his plans on nuclearizing the war if the Chinese intervened, although nuclear weapons were never totally off the table either. Mainly it was just a very poor estimation of own and opposing capabilities around Nov 1950. And besides any nitpicking I agree the main point: setbacks just experienced in the early KW facing another broadly similar Asian army (the KPA) make that harder to explain.

 

Joe

[Guest aevans]

I think one of the things that people are missing here is that the decision making environment was influenced by more than just less than adequate intelligence -- it was also influenced by a desire at all levels to judge the Chinese based on false readings of intention. If the UN command (1) had actually thought that they were facing a real possibility of Chinese intervention, it would have tightened up the tactical posture of UN forces regardless of the perceived capabilities of the Chinese, instead of behaving like the only prospect for the future was pacification and reorganization of North Korea.

 

1. I put it that way because there is enough blame to spread around on this one; MacArthur is far from the sole or in some ways even most egregious offender.

Edited September 27, 2007 by aevans

[JOE BRENNAN]

I think one of the things that people are missing here is that the decision making environment was influenced by more than just less than adequate intelligence -- it was also influenced by a desire at all levels to judge the Chinese based on false readings of intention. If the UN command (1) had actually thought that they were facing a real possibility of Chinese intervention, it would have tightened up the tactical posture of UN forces regardless of the perceived capabilities of the Chinese...

The prediction of a Chinese intervention at all is an important KW topic, but I'm really focusing on MacArthur's renewed offensive in late November when Chinese intervention was already a known fact of some weeks. The Chinese made a spoiling attack with limited forces in the last week of October 1950, what they called their First Phase Offensive. It resulted in some sharp setbacks along the front, for example US 1st Cavalry Div and some ROKA units were significantly roughed up, but not a general disaster. Then the Chinese broke off. Also, direct Soviet intervention became a fact in that period, Soviet AF MiG-15 units entered combat Nov 1. We may still eventually learn that at very high security classification level their identity was known too, although secret-level documents initially described them as NK or Chinese a/c as did public releases. In any case MacArthur resumed the offensive in late Nov with only a vague idea of the specifics of a Chinese force known to exist and already shown effective in combat, *in Korea*. The CPV Second Phase Offensive which quickly met the UN November offensive is what resulted in disaster, which could easily have turned to catastrophe, UN retreat back to SK, and eventual shift of the basic war aim back to just ousting Communist forces from SK, again. So that IMO is the key episode of the Korean War: consideration, and misestimation, of the CPVA between the 1st and 2nd phase offensives, and where we reasonably speculate somebody else might have done better than MacArthur.

 

Joe

[redcoat]

Stolen from another board but still a good question I think

 

How would the Korean War have been affected if General Patton had not died and was given command of a US Field Army?

If Patton had not died, he wouldn't have been given command of a US field army in Korea, he would have been at home, as a retired officer.

After Ike had relieved him of command of 3rd Army over his comments over the employment of Nazi's in the post war administration of Germany, Patton had decided to retire, and at the time of his accident he was on a hunting trip before returning to the USA to do so.