In the Australian Parliament, in Canberra, the Minister of Defence read out a signal from Korea. It was supposedly captured from the North Koreans. It read, "see the two hills in front of you. One is well lit. It is noisy. The troops are lax in their discipline. It is where the puppet Koreans reside. The other, is dark, it is quiet, it is where the Australians reside. Attack the first, do not attack the second. The Australians are fierce imperial lackeys. They will fight you every inch of the way as you attack them. They will cause you horrendous casualties." No doubt apocryphal but it proved a point. The Australians were masters at waging war. They had learnt it in South Africa against the Boers, the Turks in Gallipoli and the Germans on the Western Front. The Germans faced them again in North Africa and then the Japanese in New Guinea. They impressed them all. The Koreans were children. The Americans slightly more adult. Let the Australians loose and you will see them in P'yong Y'ang before you can say, "lickedy-split!"
Patton in Korea/MacArthur in the White House
- Thread starter BiteNibbleChomp
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Patton, Truman and Mac could all say their hands were forced by Rhee. "If he hadn't crossed it we were planning to stop at the 38th. By continuing past it he forced our hand and we had no other choice".
Patton and MacArthur: If only we had a convenient scapgoat-
*Rhee cross the 38th Parallel.*
Patton and MacArthur: A suprise. But a welcomed suprise.
I think Truman would have wanted to make a point of having MacArthur salute him. Even MacArthurs attire, meeting his commander in chief, spoke volumes. I’m sure many eyes were on this meeting, and gauging every nuance. Truman would have to show he was calling the shots, so knowing his stubbornness, I think Truman would have stood in front of MacArthur all day until the salute was given (and I’m sure Patton would have enjoyed every second of it).
ric350
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Patton is a cavalier. MacArthur is a politician. Truman is the cudgel they each want to wield against the other.
Thing is Patton has a somewhat better ability to show respect to those who are his superiors, at least publicly.
I read it as MacArthur did salute, but it was delayed and was changed from a handshake to a salute at the last minute. So he did do what he was supposed to, but it was clearly done grudgingly. I have a feeling that Patton will be leaving this meeting with a promotion.
Edit: @BiteNibbleChomp would it be possible to use a larger font size for those of us with old eyes and trying to read it on a mobile?
He's also willing to follow orders a lot better then Mac. He'll still try and find a loophole but if there us none he'll follow it even if it pisses him off.
If only the ROK's move into NK the Chinese won't intervene. The NKPA could regroup, and still have the advantage over the ROK's, at least in the OTL. In this TL however for some reason it's completely collapsed, so I don't know what would happen. Why is the NKPA is so much weaker then in the OTL?
Just a theory, but when you suffer a sudden reversal of fortune, it has a disproportionate effect on you when compared to suffering the same reversal, but spread out over time allowing you the opportunity to adjust and compensate. Look at Enron. They went from reporting great profits, to collapsing overnight. That cause massive effects on the stock market and investor confidence. Yet Enron is far from the first major corporation to collapse and those collapses did not effect the stock market or investors the way Enron did. Why? Because the collapse happened slowly and allowed people time to adjust to the new reality and alter their plans accordingly.
I suspect that the same applies here. In the original timeline, the NKPA had some time to adjust and find ways to regroup. In this timeline, they have gone from an almost uninterrupted winning streak to getting steamrolled almost overnight. The leadership has not had the time needed to adjust to the new reality of being forced onto the defensive yet.
marathag
Banned
The same could have happened with Singapore, the IJA was at the end of their logistical trail. That, its, with near anyone else other than Percival.
I agree with your logic Susan, but in this case the NKPA simply stalled out after the first 30 days of fighting. They never even took Taejon, let alone reached the Naktong River. All it took was for the UN forces to stop retreating, and attack. In the OTL the deficiencies of the UN forces were so great that would've been suicidal. The U.S. 24th Division would've been trapped, and destroyed at Taejon. The 1st Cavalry Division would've been destroyed piecemeal along the roads to the south east trying to reach Taejon. The NKPA would've followed up with a rapid thrust to Taegu, and ended the war right there. The loss of the logistical hub of Taegu would've made a stand at the Naktong impractical, and the fall of Pusan would quickly follow.
The U.S. would salvage what they could of 8th Army, and try to reorganize in Japan. Whether they decided to reinvade somewhere else in Korea sometime in the Fall would be a political decision to be decided in Washington. 8th Army was fighting for it's life from July-September 1950, in this TL they never worked up a sweat. The KKPA suffered heavy losses along the Naktong River, and after the Inchon landings beat a hasty retreat back to NK, and lived to fight another day. It wasn't that brittle of a force. They fought with great skill, and ruthless determination, here they were at best a third rate army.
I do not know how many American officers are embedded with the ROK units but of the South Korea army is going to continue to advance, they will need air support and logistic support. Also Patton and others will need to know what is going on. I hate to say this but an American officer calling and saying that the PLA is attacking the ROK units will be believed while an ROK officer may not.
This happened in OTL, too. The ROK 3rd division crossed the 38th parallel in force on Oct 1, a full week before the UN offensive began. The 1st Cav crossed the 38th parallel in force on the 9th.
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Mac wants to cross the parallel almost as much as Patton does. He just wants to be the one on the front page seen doing so
Well... some of the time at least.
Yeah no worries
Can't promise that I'll remember to do it on all the discussion posts in the future, but I'll edit the main TL when I next get a chance. How's this post?I've discussed Taejon a few times now (and if you're not convinced of my explanations about it by now, I doubt you'll accept anything else I can say about it
), and afterwards it has been a case of death by a thousand cuts. I think it is worth pointing out that between the "stall" in front of Taejon and Patton's big attack to pre-empt Inchon, there was heavy fighting along the entirety of 8th Army's front, so the NKPA has been ground down throughout August in a similar way to OTL, just with a more aggressive commander leading it, so they slowly get pushed back, instead of going forward. TTL isn't just "Patton shows up, NKPA rolls over" - although I will admit that I didn't want to spend too much time dwelling on the hard August battles - Patton would want to be seen as stopping the NKPA by his mere presence after all!So... the NKPA. From about mid-August IOTL, they were outnumbered and outgunned in every category imaginable but one, and often by very great, even excessive, margins. Lots of their men were living off captured American stocks - rations, weapons, you name it. The one advantage they had was morale, courage, elan, whatever you want to call it. Every account of the Korean War that I have read conveys a feeling that the UN forces were scared or intimidated by the NKPA pre-Inchon, and it makes a lot of sense: armies shouldn't win battles with a third of their enemy's manpower, but they can if their enemy's morale is low. Singapore is a striking example, but there are innumerable others.
Patton understood this very well too. There's a lot of quotes in his book that make this clear - he says that scaring the enemy is the key to winning battles; that a leader's job is primarily to inspire his men; that commanders should be seen driving to the front because this raises morale and to avoid being seen leaving it because this lowers it. He attacked so much because he knew that soldiers prefer to be moving forwards, and an army on the receiving end of an attack will spend a lot of time worrying about what the enemy will do next: and this is exactly what happened to Walker! Just about everything Patton did as a commander was an effort to raise the morale of his troops: he's not going to let them get stuck in the same vicious cycle that Walker did, and that changes a lot in Korea's early days - suddenly the NKPA doesn't have any advantages at all (Patton is known to have had a very keen instinct when it came to reading reports about enemy strength too, so he's less likely to be caught in the trap of "we are outnumbered four to one or more" that caused a lot of Walker's panic). Are the NKPA still a fine, if small, army? Sure. But without advantages in manpower, equipment, or morale, they are going to be defeated given time. By late September, that time has passed.
All that said, the NKPA isn't finished just yet...
I have plans for the Chinese...
- BNC
Perfect. Thank you. And even just enlarging the timeline posts would be much appreciated.Yeah no worries
Been following this for awhile now, glad to see it continue. Its an exception for me too follow Post 1900 TLs but you have two of my favorite subjects for the 20th century here, the colorful WWII era generals; the Koreas and the Korean War.
Thank you for the enjoyable experience.
Thank you for the enjoyable experience.
The NKPA was a tight 10 division army. Well trained. They had wanted another tank division but fraternal relations only went so far. They lacked strategic reserves. They had also been fooled by their politicians that a revolutionary movement in the south was capable of directly seizing major objectives independently
The early NKPA advances were an example of the culminating point of victory. They burnt through their supplies and reserves historically. They were highly motivated well trained and ready, but fragile.
The early NKPA advances were an example of the culminating point of victory. They burnt through their supplies and reserves historically. They were highly motivated well trained and ready, but fragile.
Yo I missed this . Awesome timeline so far!
. Awesome timeline so far!If you have an iPhone the accessibility setting include global enlarging the font size.
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