Because of the time our Navy
needed to clear 3,000 mines, the landing was
delayed two weeks while the Marines sailed around
in what they derisively called "Operation
Yo-Yo"
They would have been glad to get back aboard
again, soon enough ...
The ROKs had already taken Wonsan
and were headed for the Yalu, the USO had already
landed, and the amtracs seemed anticlimactic ...
but when the Chinese heard of it, they decided to
enter the war in force by destroying 8th Army and
all of X Corps. Nearly three years of bloody
fighting lay ahead.
An explanatory comment by Mike Sheehan (The
Chosin Few)
There were 2 kinds of amtracs,
and we Trackers always want to be certain about
the distinction between us. The above picture off
the Wonsan beaches is of the 1st type, the troop
carriers. The 2d type was mine, an amphibious
tank with a 75 howitzer on the front.
My group was attached to the
Amtracs - and was known as Armored Amphib Trac
Bn. If you find Hungnam pics of armored amphibs
with the 75 on top, that was us.
The amtracs that did all the work
after the Chosin fighting, coming out of Hungnam,
were the troop carriers, who worked extremely
long hours to get the men off the beaches. Us
amtrac tankers were assigned road-blocks with
infantry ground cover, and then just sailed out
to LSDs and loaded.
