Dark Earth: The Korean War
Jul 27, 2018 15:00:18 GMT
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 27, 2018 15:00:18 GMT
Background
The aftermath of World War 2 in the Far East was chaotic and violent and sowed the seeds for the single greatest conflict since the war. A prostrate Japanese Empire was occupied by American, British, Chinese and Soviet forces under the proconsular command of General MacArthur, Tartary was occupied by the Red Army, China was ripped by civil war, drought, plagues and rogue dragons and the European imperial powers were caught up in fierce insurgencies in Indochina, the East Indies, Siam, Malaya and Burma.
The Chinese Civil War ended in 1948, with the last rebel forces fleeing into Tartary, Mongolia, Tibet, Formosa and Burma and the Shaozhen Emperor ascending the Dragon Throne with a decidedly nationalist agenda. The tense days of the Shanghai Crisis of late 1948 saw the withdrawal of foreign naval forces from the rivers of China, but failed to alter the ongoing status of the international city and lead to increased naval reinforcements to the Far East from Britain and the United States. In early 1950, the eyes of the world were firmly focused on Formosa, Hainan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and the South China Sea, as the Imperial Navy began to flex its muscles.
The United States stood as the single greatest power in the world, with her enormous economic wealth, immense industrial power, vast air fleets and burgeoning atomic arsenal giving her the appearance and substance of unmatched strength. The pressure to demobilize and return to some sense of normalcy was considerable, particularly given the perceived relative bulwarks of Britain and France against Soviet aggrandizement in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The primary military priorities of the United States were the ongoing building up of strategic air forces, control of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, air defence of the Western Hemisphere, protection of its defensive perimeter in the Pacific and containment of the spread of Soviet communism. This left the United States Army as the arm of service most impact by defence economies.
By the end of 1949, the US Army had shrunk from its 1945 level of over 12 million men and 204 divisions to just over 2 million men in 20 divisions, with 5 in Japan, 2 in Germany, 1 in Austria-Hungary, 1 in the Philippines, 1 in Mexico, 1 in Panama, 1 in Alaska and 8 in the United States. In a world where the Soviet Union was suspected of being on the cusp of developing jet bombers, chemical rockets and atomic weapons and peace was still menaced by Werwolf submarines and Nazi sky pirates, the need for riflemen on the ground was not seen as truly pressing.
The United States was not alone in cutting back its armies in the field, with Britain fielding just 18 divisions (4 in Germany, 1 in Austria-Hungary, 2 in Japan, 2 in the Middle East, 2 in India, 2 in Malaya, 1 in Hong Kong and 4 at home), France 24 (4 in Germany, 1 in Austria-Hungary, 5 in North Africa, 5 in Indochina and 9 at home), Canada 5, the Netherlands 4 and Sweden 8.
The only American forces remaining on the Korean peninsula apart from advisors were a engineer regiment at Pusan and two US Air Force reconnaissance squadrons based at Kunsan Field.
The Korean Peninsula had been jointly occupied by the Soviet Union and the United States in the dying days of the Pacific War in late 1945, with the 39th Parallel dividing the two zones of influence. This decision caused substantial anger in Peking, with the Imperial Chinese government forced by necessity to put aside its designs on Korea in favour of the pursuit of national unity and tense negotiations over the fate of Manchuria.
By 1948, US and Soviet forces had departed, with North Korea ruled by a communist regime and South Korea controlled by a pro-Western capitalist republican government. The Imperial Family remained in exile in India with a moderate level of popularity in Korea. Both Korean states has achieved some level of relative stability by 1950.
Europe was wracked by the aftermath of war, with millions of displaced refugees and orphans, harsh weather, shortages of food and the disruption of international trade making 1946 and 1947 two bitter years for the Continent. The United States and Canada stood as the only states to come out of the war better off than they had entered it, with France bankrupted by Nazi occupation and Britain turning its resources towards national reconstruction, the Empire and the Middle East.
Some measure of recovery began in 1947 with the Marshall Plan delivering American financial aid and support to Europe and American, British and Canadian exports of manufactured goods providing relief. Communist backed revolts were suppressed in Yugoslavia, France and Spain, with British strategic air power and naval force was able to successfully oppose Soviet ambitions in Scandinavia and the Balkans without open conflict. SOE agents were heavily active in Poland, Romania, the Ukraine, the Baltic and Georgia against Soviet forces with varying degrees of success.
Japan had been under Allied occupation since their formal surrender in 1946, with the Red Army occupying Sakhalin and the remaining four islands controlled by the USA, the British Empire and France. The Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Air Force had been effectively disbanded and its ships divided among the victorious Allies, with the Imperial Japanese Army demobilised to an infantry force of 120,000 men under American control. Significant war industry had been eliminated and civilian economic activity was only slowly recovering. A new constitutional monarchy had been put in place with Anglo-American guidance, with Supreme Allied Commander General Douglas MacArthur taking the role of effective ruler of Japan.
The Middle East was largely under British occupation, with the Arab protectorates of Iraq, Jordan, Arabia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya all supported by British and Indian garrisons and RAF Bomber Command operating out of a number of key aerodromes as part of their strategic deterrence of Soviet expansion. Qajar Persia, Arabia and Ottoman Turkey were engaged in their own power struggle in Iraq and Syria in an effort to become regional hegemon. French occupation of Syria had ended in 1948, with the Lebanon continuing as a protectorate. Israel had perhaps the most powerful military in the Middle East and was certainly enjoying the strongest economic growth in the region in early 1950.
The Dutch Empire in the East Indies was crumbling, with the major island kingdoms breaking away as independent states in a series of rebellions across the Indonesian archipelago from 1945 to 1949. Only the Moluccas and the westernmost islands remained under Dutch rule, with the cost of waging a colonial war in Asia while opposed by the USA, China and the Soviet Union proving too great for the newly liberated Netherlands. There was significant support for a unified Indonesian state from various factions and the Americans, but strategic rivalry between the Sumatran and Javanese confederations, religious conflict and Communist backed rebellions had stymied this effort as of 1950.
France had been embroiled in an increasingly bitter counter-insurgency campaign in Northern Indochina since 1945. Their opponents, the Viet Minh, were a mixed group of communists and nationalists who enjoyed wide support among the peasantry of Tonkin and Annam. Vietnam had been liberated by British Empire forces in 1944/45, with the French Far Eastern Expeditionary Corps arriving in late 1945. Heavy fighting broke out in 1947, concentrated around forts on the Chinese border near Lang Son and in the Red River Delta between Hanoi and Haiphong, where the French Navy employed heavy use of airpower and naval gunfire. The deployment of French armour in 1949 lead to a localized victory at the Battle of Cao Bằng, but the Viet Minh could not be bought to a decisive battle as of 1950.
Communist insurgency also spread to Malaya in 1948, with the proclamation of a State of Emergency following on from attacks on British settlers and plantation manages by the Malayan National Liberation Army. Heavy reinforcements were moved to the colony from India, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, with a series of combined arms sweeps through rebel held jungle areas following over the next 6 months with little result.
The tempo of operations shifted in the second half of 1949 with the establishment of an interconnected network of 254 fortified fire bases (each manned by an infantry company supported by artillery, machine guns, mortars, tanks and engineers) and over 600 'New Villages', where the Chinese populace was forcibly resettled. Heavy aerial patrols by aircraft and helicopters kept the Malayan jungle under constant surveillance, with airstrikes from fighter-bombers, attack planes, strike fighters, medium and heavy bombers dealing out fearful damage as part of Operation Firedog. RN, RAN, RNZN and RIN fighters, attack bombers and strike aircraft from the three carriers of the Far East Fleet also saw frequent employment, along with long range gunfire strikes from the battleships HMS Vanguard, HMS Superb and HMAS Australia or the many cruisers and destroyers of the fleet.
Burma was also struck by insurgency in the jungles and mountains of Shan and Kaching State as part of the aftermath of the War. Heavy British and Indian troop deployments managed to suppress open rebellion, but the conflict continued to threaten to boil over in early 1950. Siam, under limited British occupation since 1944, was facing increased Communist guerrilla activity in Isan.
The Philippines had been granted independence by the United States of America in 1947 and faced an insurgency on Luzon and Mindanao by the Communist backed Hukbalahap and the Moros, with both being clandestinely supplied with arms by Soviet submarines. Increasing numbers of US advisors were deployed on operations with the Philippine Army by early 1950, along with air strikes by USAF planes out of Clark Air Force Base.
It was to the great surprise of the world when, on May 1st 1950, an army of 250,000 surged across the border into South Korea.
The aftermath of World War 2 in the Far East was chaotic and violent and sowed the seeds for the single greatest conflict since the war. A prostrate Japanese Empire was occupied by American, British, Chinese and Soviet forces under the proconsular command of General MacArthur, Tartary was occupied by the Red Army, China was ripped by civil war, drought, plagues and rogue dragons and the European imperial powers were caught up in fierce insurgencies in Indochina, the East Indies, Siam, Malaya and Burma.
The Chinese Civil War ended in 1948, with the last rebel forces fleeing into Tartary, Mongolia, Tibet, Formosa and Burma and the Shaozhen Emperor ascending the Dragon Throne with a decidedly nationalist agenda. The tense days of the Shanghai Crisis of late 1948 saw the withdrawal of foreign naval forces from the rivers of China, but failed to alter the ongoing status of the international city and lead to increased naval reinforcements to the Far East from Britain and the United States. In early 1950, the eyes of the world were firmly focused on Formosa, Hainan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and the South China Sea, as the Imperial Navy began to flex its muscles.
The United States stood as the single greatest power in the world, with her enormous economic wealth, immense industrial power, vast air fleets and burgeoning atomic arsenal giving her the appearance and substance of unmatched strength. The pressure to demobilize and return to some sense of normalcy was considerable, particularly given the perceived relative bulwarks of Britain and France against Soviet aggrandizement in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The primary military priorities of the United States were the ongoing building up of strategic air forces, control of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, air defence of the Western Hemisphere, protection of its defensive perimeter in the Pacific and containment of the spread of Soviet communism. This left the United States Army as the arm of service most impact by defence economies.
By the end of 1949, the US Army had shrunk from its 1945 level of over 12 million men and 204 divisions to just over 2 million men in 20 divisions, with 5 in Japan, 2 in Germany, 1 in Austria-Hungary, 1 in the Philippines, 1 in Mexico, 1 in Panama, 1 in Alaska and 8 in the United States. In a world where the Soviet Union was suspected of being on the cusp of developing jet bombers, chemical rockets and atomic weapons and peace was still menaced by Werwolf submarines and Nazi sky pirates, the need for riflemen on the ground was not seen as truly pressing.
The United States was not alone in cutting back its armies in the field, with Britain fielding just 18 divisions (4 in Germany, 1 in Austria-Hungary, 2 in Japan, 2 in the Middle East, 2 in India, 2 in Malaya, 1 in Hong Kong and 4 at home), France 24 (4 in Germany, 1 in Austria-Hungary, 5 in North Africa, 5 in Indochina and 9 at home), Canada 5, the Netherlands 4 and Sweden 8.
The only American forces remaining on the Korean peninsula apart from advisors were a engineer regiment at Pusan and two US Air Force reconnaissance squadrons based at Kunsan Field.
The Korean Peninsula had been jointly occupied by the Soviet Union and the United States in the dying days of the Pacific War in late 1945, with the 39th Parallel dividing the two zones of influence. This decision caused substantial anger in Peking, with the Imperial Chinese government forced by necessity to put aside its designs on Korea in favour of the pursuit of national unity and tense negotiations over the fate of Manchuria.
By 1948, US and Soviet forces had departed, with North Korea ruled by a communist regime and South Korea controlled by a pro-Western capitalist republican government. The Imperial Family remained in exile in India with a moderate level of popularity in Korea. Both Korean states has achieved some level of relative stability by 1950.
Europe was wracked by the aftermath of war, with millions of displaced refugees and orphans, harsh weather, shortages of food and the disruption of international trade making 1946 and 1947 two bitter years for the Continent. The United States and Canada stood as the only states to come out of the war better off than they had entered it, with France bankrupted by Nazi occupation and Britain turning its resources towards national reconstruction, the Empire and the Middle East.
Some measure of recovery began in 1947 with the Marshall Plan delivering American financial aid and support to Europe and American, British and Canadian exports of manufactured goods providing relief. Communist backed revolts were suppressed in Yugoslavia, France and Spain, with British strategic air power and naval force was able to successfully oppose Soviet ambitions in Scandinavia and the Balkans without open conflict. SOE agents were heavily active in Poland, Romania, the Ukraine, the Baltic and Georgia against Soviet forces with varying degrees of success.
Japan had been under Allied occupation since their formal surrender in 1946, with the Red Army occupying Sakhalin and the remaining four islands controlled by the USA, the British Empire and France. The Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Air Force had been effectively disbanded and its ships divided among the victorious Allies, with the Imperial Japanese Army demobilised to an infantry force of 120,000 men under American control. Significant war industry had been eliminated and civilian economic activity was only slowly recovering. A new constitutional monarchy had been put in place with Anglo-American guidance, with Supreme Allied Commander General Douglas MacArthur taking the role of effective ruler of Japan.
The Middle East was largely under British occupation, with the Arab protectorates of Iraq, Jordan, Arabia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya all supported by British and Indian garrisons and RAF Bomber Command operating out of a number of key aerodromes as part of their strategic deterrence of Soviet expansion. Qajar Persia, Arabia and Ottoman Turkey were engaged in their own power struggle in Iraq and Syria in an effort to become regional hegemon. French occupation of Syria had ended in 1948, with the Lebanon continuing as a protectorate. Israel had perhaps the most powerful military in the Middle East and was certainly enjoying the strongest economic growth in the region in early 1950.
The Dutch Empire in the East Indies was crumbling, with the major island kingdoms breaking away as independent states in a series of rebellions across the Indonesian archipelago from 1945 to 1949. Only the Moluccas and the westernmost islands remained under Dutch rule, with the cost of waging a colonial war in Asia while opposed by the USA, China and the Soviet Union proving too great for the newly liberated Netherlands. There was significant support for a unified Indonesian state from various factions and the Americans, but strategic rivalry between the Sumatran and Javanese confederations, religious conflict and Communist backed rebellions had stymied this effort as of 1950.
France had been embroiled in an increasingly bitter counter-insurgency campaign in Northern Indochina since 1945. Their opponents, the Viet Minh, were a mixed group of communists and nationalists who enjoyed wide support among the peasantry of Tonkin and Annam. Vietnam had been liberated by British Empire forces in 1944/45, with the French Far Eastern Expeditionary Corps arriving in late 1945. Heavy fighting broke out in 1947, concentrated around forts on the Chinese border near Lang Son and in the Red River Delta between Hanoi and Haiphong, where the French Navy employed heavy use of airpower and naval gunfire. The deployment of French armour in 1949 lead to a localized victory at the Battle of Cao Bằng, but the Viet Minh could not be bought to a decisive battle as of 1950.
Communist insurgency also spread to Malaya in 1948, with the proclamation of a State of Emergency following on from attacks on British settlers and plantation manages by the Malayan National Liberation Army. Heavy reinforcements were moved to the colony from India, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, with a series of combined arms sweeps through rebel held jungle areas following over the next 6 months with little result.
The tempo of operations shifted in the second half of 1949 with the establishment of an interconnected network of 254 fortified fire bases (each manned by an infantry company supported by artillery, machine guns, mortars, tanks and engineers) and over 600 'New Villages', where the Chinese populace was forcibly resettled. Heavy aerial patrols by aircraft and helicopters kept the Malayan jungle under constant surveillance, with airstrikes from fighter-bombers, attack planes, strike fighters, medium and heavy bombers dealing out fearful damage as part of Operation Firedog. RN, RAN, RNZN and RIN fighters, attack bombers and strike aircraft from the three carriers of the Far East Fleet also saw frequent employment, along with long range gunfire strikes from the battleships HMS Vanguard, HMS Superb and HMAS Australia or the many cruisers and destroyers of the fleet.
Burma was also struck by insurgency in the jungles and mountains of Shan and Kaching State as part of the aftermath of the War. Heavy British and Indian troop deployments managed to suppress open rebellion, but the conflict continued to threaten to boil over in early 1950. Siam, under limited British occupation since 1944, was facing increased Communist guerrilla activity in Isan.
The Philippines had been granted independence by the United States of America in 1947 and faced an insurgency on Luzon and Mindanao by the Communist backed Hukbalahap and the Moros, with both being clandestinely supplied with arms by Soviet submarines. Increasing numbers of US advisors were deployed on operations with the Philippine Army by early 1950, along with air strikes by USAF planes out of Clark Air Force Base.
It was to the great surprise of the world when, on May 1st 1950, an army of 250,000 surged across the border into South Korea.
