Both Communist and UN forces fought
the Korean War largely with surplus World War II
weapons.
A sometimes unappreciated fact is
that, at the start of the Korean War, the US
actually had no new conventional weapons due to a
complete cessation of procurement for ground
warfare following WWII. Harry Truman had been
convinced that nuclear weapons meant the last major
ground wars had been fought. Truman's
Secretaries of Defense, James Forrestal and Louis
Johnson, not only forced a change in Army training
methods, shaping it to produce Garrison
peace-keeping troops, but virtually stopped the
development of new infantry arms and
communications.
The Marine Corps was reduced to a
poorly equipped skeleton of its supposed strength,
a total of about six fighting battalions. Two
Marine Divisions from WWII would have crushed the
entire North Korean Army, but Truman hadn't
left the United States even one.
5th Marines, (LtCol Ray Murray), were
the troops carrying the colors of the entire First
Marine Division in July of '50. Six rifle
companies of about 7 officers and 255 men each,
equipped with worn out WWII weapons. They
didn't get the third companies in their rifle
battalions, the elements of maneuver!, until
after the 1st Battle of the Naktong, 17-18 August
of '50. Until the Marine Battalions had their
third company to outflank the enemy while the two
attacking companies held them in combat, they
suffered many unnecessary casualties in the
desperate fighting.
The Communist bloc, fighting
through its secondary powers, were armed with newer
weapons than the American and ROKs in 1950, but
they were also obsolescent. For example although
the "burp
gun" was very effective in the close
infantry assaults of the Korean War the AK-47,
already a Soviet standard in 1949, would have been
far superior. Although newer series of infantry
weapons, radios, and vehicles had either been
developed or were in production on both sides, they
were all largely withheld, along with nuclear
weapons. From the infantry point of view, the KW
was an anachronism.
Ready or not Truman sent our
civilians in uniform, inadequately prepared and
with obsolescent weapons, into one of the most
vicious infantry wars our nation has fought since
the slaughter and devastation of our own Civil
War.
Bert Kortegaard,
2/19/2012
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