Do you approve or disapprove of the way that Douglas MacArthur is handling his job as president?

  • Approve

    Votes: 199 72.6%
  • Disapprove

    Votes: 75 27.4%

  • Total voters
    274
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nbcman

Donor
A doubt: Weren't deployed to and/or fighting in Korea some National Guard units from the Northern States or Army Units which 'd has theirs bases on States with a more similar weather in North Korea?
I don't think so. 2nd ID was stationed in Washington but it was one of the closest units in CONUS. 3rd ID was GA. 40th ID was NG from California, Nevada, and Utah; again a close unit. 45th ID was from OK NG which hardly has Korean weather or terrain. The other 4 divisions that took part were from occupation duty in Japan: 1st Cav, 7th ID, 24th ID, & 25th ID.

EDIT: Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_Army_units_and_formations_in_the_Korean_War
 
Patton may have sided with MacArthur, but it looked like he was less hostile towards Truman than MacArthur was in the OTL. He was actually willing to listen to Truman, and offered alternatives that were actually logical.
 

marathag

Banned
The US Army doesn't care about the soldier's backgrounds like that when deploying large units. You'll either freeze or sweat when performing missions.
Like my Boss from many years ago, had flying experience, so they stuck him in Infantry in 1944 when he got drafted.
No magic College degree, he just finished High School.
So he was the FNG for two weeks before he got captured after Aachen was taken and theHürtgen mess started.
 
My family was from the Midwest (Indiana, Illinois and Ohio) and for those who served, even by thier standards, Korea was frigid.

If memory serves, part of that was that winters those first few years in Korea were unusually colder than normal. And mind you, normal for Korea can still get around Siberian temperatures at times.
 
When I was young, after school, one of the three TV channels would run black and white movies until the grownups came home from work. This time line reminded me of one. If my memory is correct, it was set during Korean War and the problem was that the Army field units did not have a way to call in air support from the new jets. A couple of pilots got the idea to take an old small Cessina or Cub and load a powerful radio in the back. They would fly close to the Army units and talk to them on a regular radio. They then talked to the jets on the more powerful radio.

The question that I have is was there any truth to the this? Did the individual Army and Marine combat units in the field have problems calling in air strikes from the new jet fighters?
 
I don’t mind the giant font if it helps others, but some breaks between paragraphs would help :).
Unfortunately that one was probably the longest paragraph I've ever written :) I put line breaks in whenever there's a time gap, but we wouldn't really want to break up the meeting between the president and America's two biggest egos, now would we?

That Murat quote.
He'll be back later :)

The die is cast indeed, the North can't hold on much longer and for their armed forces its all over bar the singing really but now its how the PRC will react.
That's going to be the focus of Part III

Allo-Patton is probably trying to determine the interrelationship between Classical Chinese history and classical Korean history right now so he can read their book.
Yeah unfortunately for us it doesn't look like Patton paid a lot of attention to Chinese, or really Asian history at all IOTL - there's no mention of it in his book whatsoever. And seeing as the only really famous plan to invade China through Korea was the Imjin war (which went terribly for Japan!), there's not a lot of classical stuff for me to work with. Still I think it fits Patton's character to just find a way to reference Caesar and Napoleon in Korea - he did it just about everywhere else he went!

Would it be possible to just send people that would be used to that kind of weather, or would that kind of sorting be too hard?
Well, North Korea in late November 1950 got down to -40C. There's places in Antarctica that never get that cold. It might have been possible to get a bunch of units out of Idaho or Washington if the demobilisation hadn't taken so many men out of the army, and even they wouldn't be fully prepared for it. Under the limitations of something close to OTL? It would be a struggle and a half, at a minimum.

The question that I have is was there any truth to the this? Did the individual Army and Marine combat units in the field have problems calling in air strikes from the new jet fighters?
I haven't heard about this before, and my instinct says "probably not". Apart from the Corsairs and Mustangs, basically all of the fighters in Korea were jets, and the USAF had been using them for years. A problem like that should have been solved by 1950.
Maybe in July when most of the equipment hadn't even made it into Korea, it might have happened? After that it sounds quite silly TBH.

- BNC
 

bguy

Donor
When I was young, after school, one of the three TV channels would run black and white movies until the grownups came home from work. This time line reminded me of one. If my memory is correct, it was set during Korean War and the problem was that the Army field units did not have a way to call in air support from the new jets. A couple of pilots got the idea to take an old small Cessina or Cub and load a powerful radio in the back. They would fly close to the Army units and talk to them on a regular radio. They then talked to the jets on the more powerful radio.

The question that I have is was there any truth to the this? Did the individual Army and Marine combat units in the field have problems calling in air strikes from the new jet fighters?

Harold K. Johnson, commander of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, had a particularly memorable rant about close air support during the Korean War.

"If you want it, you can't get it. If you can get it, it can't find you. If it can find you, it can't identify the target. If it can identify the target, it can't hit it. But if it does hit the target, it doesn't do a great deal of damage anyway."
 
Korea suffers extreme of weather - hot in summer, freezing cold in winter. The winds howl down from Siberia where they are superchilled. The Korean people are a hardy bunch and have survived these weather conditions for thousands of years and developed the means to stay warm. The old Warrant Officer who I served with who was a Korean War veteran often spoke about how cold it got in Korea. He was from the south-west of Western Australia that has relatively mild winters. He said that it was cold enough to freeze the knackers off a brass monkey. I believed him. It was also mildly hot in summer, much like he was used to in Western Australia. The Australian Army was highly reliant on the American Army for winter clothing, not having packed any nor having any available for it's soldiers. It was where the Rum Ration per man, per day was reinstituted, after having originated on the Western Front in WWI. It kept men alive.
 
One butterfly of a shorter/different Korean War is that Mao Anying could survive. My guess is that the Kim Dynasty won’t last long after the war but we could see a Mao Dynasty in China.
 
There was a fairly sizable population of Koryo-saram (Koreans in the Soviet Union) that started fleeing to the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union after Korea was conquered by Japanese. However, Stalin believed that these ethnic Koreans could be a front for Japanese spies and signed an order exiling them en masse to modern Uzbekistan. Beyond that it seems that Korean advisors and immigrants would arrive after the war was over.

As for the Zainichi (Koreans in Japan) many of them were ignored throughout the war, once it was over however it was actually North Korea that did a better job of reaching out to them than South Korea did. Even today many of their schools and cultural institutions maintain a closer relationship to the North Korean identity than the South Korean one, although this is slowly changing as North Korea continues to struggle.
Thank you for sharing this information with me.
 

marathag

Banned
Korea suffers extreme of weather - hot in summer, freezing cold in winter.
Seoul, SK middle of country, coastal
1607529443098.png

St. Cloud MN middle of Minnesota
1607529530150.png


Kujang-up North Korea, north of country
1607529731870.png

Thief River Falls , MN northern Minnesota

1607529872936.png


And what some in North Minnesota call the 'Banana Belt'
Keokuk, IA, southern Iowa

1607530357142.png


Average Temp graphs show Iowa to be similar in Temps as North Korea, and Minnesota worse,
But as my Uncle said, no Mountains

So how about wind and Snow?
Thief River Falls , MN
1607530641498.png

1607531008792.png


Kujang-up North Korea
1607530728494.png

1607530921014.png

Huh, Monsoon in Summer? didn't realize that.

Hmm, Minnesota has colder Winters, Summers Just as hot, and windier. More snow.

North Korea needs to up their tourism. 'Better Climate than Minnesota'
 
Seoul, SK middle of country, coastal
View attachment 606387
St. Cloud MN middle of Minnesota
View attachment 606389

Kujang-up North Korea, north of country
View attachment 606392
Thief River Falls , MN northern Minnesota

View attachment 606393

And what some in North Minnesota call the 'Banana Belt'
Keokuk, IA, southern Iowa

View attachment 606399

Average Temp graphs show Iowa to be similar in Temps as North Korea, and Minnesota worse,
But as my Uncle said, no Mountains

So how about wind and Snow?
Thief River Falls , MN
View attachment 606400
View attachment 606404

Kujang-up North Korea
View attachment 606402
View attachment 606403
Huh, Monsoon in Summer? didn't realize that.

Hmm, Minnesota has colder Winters, Summers Just as hot, and windier. More snow.

North Korea needs to up their tourism. 'Better Climate than Minnesota'

As pointed out, the winter of 1950 and the few after it were particularly bad. Temperatures more akin to Siberia and Antarctica than Korea.
 

marathag

Banned
As pointed out, the winter of 1950 and the few after it were particularly bad. Temperatures more akin to Siberia and Antarctica than Korea.
1607539034204.png

METAR Reports

Aiport weather stations throughout the world routinely issue METAR weather reports . Such reports are used by pilots, air traffic controllers, meteorologists, climatologists, and other researchers. They are published via radio transmission and on the internet. We have been collecting and archiving published METAR reports since 2011, and have found third-party sources for archived reports from years prior to that.

weatherspark.com has all kinds of Weather Data.
Just not seeing Weather that extreme, just estimates, No doubt, say Chosin saw Thirty plus Below, but so did Minnesota that same Month

What's not disputed, was the lack of Winter Gear.
If all you had was your summer uniform and an Ike Jacket, Zero degrees is just as bad as -30 for getting Frostbite. -30 just means it happens 20 minutes sooner

For a Period look at the matter


Volume 30, Issue No. 6 of LIFE magazine (February 5, 1951)

New Treatments for Frostbite
They Save Limbs of Korean Casualties


In the military hospitals of Japan and the U.S., there are several thousand casualties of the Korean War who bear no scars from enemy weapons. These men are victims of frostbite, a trivial-sounding but terrible affliction in which the flesh freezes solid, then dies and scars.

Frostbite is caused by cold, but almost never by cold alone. The 25-below-zero temperature in the North Korean mountains did little harm to the U.N. troops as they moved northward in an orderly advance. But when the same men turned in desperate retreat through the same ice-bound region, the Korean winter struck them down by the hundreds. They were often immobilized, pinned down by enemy fire. There were no replacements. The wounded lay too long on the frozen ground. It was the military situation rather than the harsh climate that produced most of the 5,300 frostbite casualties listed so far for the U.S. Army and Marines.
 
Part II, Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15

Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy's field I lay.

September 24, 1950


Major General William F. Dean had been promoted. Many officers seemed to hold the belief that a general’s spot was behind the lines, fighting the war with a telephone and a map. He had fought in Taejon with a rifle and a bag of hand grenades. To many, such a display would have been an act of utter foolishness. Patton had quite the opposite idea. He had gotten Dean a Bronze Star, and given Washington a recommendation for his rank to go from one star to two. Officially, he had described it as a case of “inspired and effective leadership that played a key role in the maintenance of our position in Taejon”. Unofficially, he said it was just because Dean had been “a brave son of a bitch”. Then everyone forgot about the recommendation until the Inchon operation sparked a new interest in finally organising Eighth Army’s now seven divisions into corps. He was the first to be appointed, and one half of his new IX Corps was made up of his old division. Now he hoped to lead the first American units over the old border.

Well… not exactly lead.

As the twilight turned to dawn, he stood atop a small hill a couple of miles behind the 38th parallel, where the 24th Division’s artillery was lined up in preparation for the attack across the border. Every gun in the division was supposed to be trained on a location not far from here. Probably every gun in the Eighth Army was. Except in the west, the front hadn’t moved in the American sector for three days or more. Artillery shells hadn’t been bound by the same restrictions that men were (or if they were, Patton had neglected mentioning it). Neither had the spotting planes. A lot of North Korean strongpoints, manned by those units that had escaped the first assault, were known. In this sector, the mightiest one was Yongpyong.
“Let ‘em rip.” General Barth said into a radio, and within seconds shells were beginning to fall into Yongpyong. Through his field glasses, Dean saw the men and tanks follow them shortly afterwards. That was until they stalled somewhere just short of the town.

By 1000, he could see Yongpyong was going to be a major problem. It was only a short spit across the border, but the radio and Barth’s telephone were giving no indication that the battle was going to end soon. He drove back to his command post in Mansedariri and got on the line to General Church, who had his old division.
“What’s gone wrong up there?” he asked.
“Looks like the Koreans have Yongpyong fortified to a fare-thee-well. Could be anything from a battalion to half a division in there that needs digging out.” Church said. “We can’t advance towards Wonsan without it. If they have any anti-tank guns in there, which I’m not aware of yet, they would have the range to hit any trucks on the Kumhwa road.”
“Tell you what, I’ll get General Kean to give you some of his artillery. I want that town silenced today.” Dean said. “If you can, get a regiment on the west side of the town too. Encircle them, starve them out if they don’t give up.”
“I’ll do it.” Church said.
General Kean’s 25th Division reported better news: Majonni had already fallen and a bridge had been found over the Imjin.
“Yonchon is giving us a little trouble, sir. A Red blocking force of some sort is there. I can give you the artillery, but we’ll want it if we’re going to get through Yonchon today.” Kean said.
“Good. Bypass Yonchon.” Dean ordered. “Leave a regiment or so to watch it, no more than that. We need to secure those mountain passes before the Koreans have a chance to fortify them.”
And everyone thought the NKPA was finished by now. Dean thought as he put down the phone. So much for that.

***

September 25, 1950

“Good morning, Ambassador.” President Harry Truman said as he picked up the phone. “What can I do for you today?”
“Good morning, Mr President, and thank you for agreeing to receive my call so soon.” Kavalam Madhava Panikkar said. Panikkar was the Indian ambassador to Peking, and the unofficial messenger between the United States and Red China. “I have been asked to pass on a message by the Chinese Foreign Minister.”
“And what might that be?” Truman asked. If Red China wanted something from him, it wasn’t going to be good.
“Minister Zhou would like to inform the United States that the Chinese people will not tolerate foreign aggression, nor will they supinely tolerate seeing their neighbours being savagely invaded by imperialists.” Panikkar said.
“Is that so?” Truman asked. “Very well, thank you. Is there anything else?”
“Not right now, Mr President. Unless you are in need of India’s good offices to negotiate an end to the conflict in Korea.”
“That won’t be necessary at present.” Truman said. “Thank you again.”

As he put down the phone he said to Averell Harriman “That was Panikkar in Peking. He reckons Red China’s not going to be happy if we cross into North Korea.”
“Patton crossed it yesterday.” Harriman noticed. “He’s probably twenty or thirty miles past it by now. And Mao’s only just woken up, has he?”
“It’s late evening in Peking right now.” Truman said, before he realised what Harriman meant. “Yeah, he must have. What do you make of it?”
“Not much.” Harriman said. “Panikkar’s at least pink, if not outright Red himself. I’d say its a bluff to keep us out of North Korea.”
“Well, we’re in now, and we’ll have a devil of a time trying to pull Patton out even if we wanted to. MacArthur too for that matter.” Truman said. “The timing is odd too. We were sitting on the 38th for most of a week. If Red China wanted us to stay out, why wait until now?”
Harriman snapped his fingers. “They’re not ready.”
“Red China?” Truman asked.
“Yeah.” Harriman said. “If their leaders only just found out we’re able to cross the line, their army can’t be ready to do anything about it.”
“MacArthur said yesterday that he thinks Patton will be in Pyongyang in ten days, and the ROKs are getting close to Wonsan.” Truman said.
“In that case, I’d say we’re likely to beat North Korea before Red China is even ready.” Harriman said. “Why would they enter a war they’ve already lost?”
“I don’t know.” Truman said. “The Red Chinese have proven quite stubborn in the past, so I’ll see what Acheson and Marshall have to say about it too.” Need to warn His Majesty as well.

September 27, 1950


The new Eighth Army headquarters in Haeju didn’t have half as good a conference room as the ones in Seoul or Taejon had boasted. It didn’t have half as good an anything as those had. This building was cramped, smelly and had suffered more bomb damage than was really appropriate for an army headquarters. It reminded Patton of a stable, a far cry from the French chateaus that Third Army had frequently operated out of. But it was an hour closer to the front than Seoul was, at least for two of his corps. The staff could make do for a couple of days.
“Sariwon.” Oscar Koch said, using a long stick to point at a location on the western part of North Korea. “Sariwon.” he said again. “Flanked on two sides by the Chaeryong river, and by mountains on the third. It sits on the best route, the only good one, into Pyongyang. This is where the North Koreans intend to make their last stand.”
“How sure are you?” Patton asked. He had the utmost confidence in his intelligence chief, but the North Koreans had already proven themselves much better at hiding themselves than the Germans had ever been. No fewer than four towns along the border had been turned into small citadels, slowing I and IX Corps down far longer than he would have liked.
“Very.” Koch said confidently. “I am aware we have been fooled before, but I’ve never seen someone hide a force this large completely before. King Kong is there too.”
“Bastard.” Patton muttered. Kang Kon was easily the most capable North Korean general, and Patton’s chief opponent since he arrived in Asia. At some point early in the war, someone had claimed that he had stepped on a mine, which wasn’t a likely story as most of Eighth Army’s mines remained in crates or boxes back in Pusan. More recently he had been thought to have been captured in Seoul, only for the prisoner in question to merely be an unfortunate private with a similar name. Evidently he had slipped through the net once more.
“Our radio intercepts indicate the presence of no fewer than four North Korean divisions. The 1st and 4th, which are hardened veteran units. The latter has been nicknamed the ‘Seoul’ division for their success in the first week of the war. I expect both units will be among the best Kim Il-sung can offer. The others are the 19th and 27th, which we have never encountered before and do not believe to have been a part of the initial invasion.” Koch said.
“They’ll be tough bastards then.” Patton said, before anyone could dismiss them as green or rear-area units. The communists had terrible equipment, no food and not half the manpower they really needed. Too many of them fought like the damned Waffen SS nonetheless.
“We must be prepared for anything.” Koch agreed. “The question now is, what are we going to do about them.”
“What’s the status on the bridges over the river?” Abrams asked.
“Doubtful.” Koch said. Stratemeyer had kept his promise not to bomb any more of them deliberately, but unfortunately the Koreans got a say in whether the bridges still stood. “Sariwon’s their best chance at keeping us out of Pyongyang, and they’ve little left south of the Chaeryong. Only a fool would leave them up in those circumstances.”
“Were they up last week?” Patton asked.
“I believe so, some of them at least, sir. But that won’t help us at Sariwon. Why do you ask?” Koch said.
“The engineers can handle Sariwon, just as they got us into Seoul. I have full confidence in them.” Patton said. “But fighting through Sariwon is going to take time, and the time we waste there is time that the Reds will be using to fortify Pyongyang. Pyongyang sits behind a river too. They know I got held up by fixed fortifications on the Siegfried Line, so they put them here to stop me again.”
“And if the bridges over the Chaeryong were still up last week, you think the bridges over the Taedong might still be?” Abrams said.
“Precisely.” Patton agreed. “And I intend to capture them. Sit down, Oscar.” As the intelligence chief sat down, Patton got up and began pointing at the map himself. “Right now, thanks to those bunker cities on the border, I Corps has only made it to here.” he pointed to Pyongsan, about eighteen miles north of the border. “There’s only one good road in the area, and it goes to Sariwon. X Corps will be able to attack the river line tomorrow morning, and I expect that the Koreans will expect me to make a pincer attack on their position there.”
“That’s what we had been planning to do.” Abrams agreed.
“Exactly. The Germans had a fellow who had the job of researching me. Told Rommel what he thought I would do. I expect the Koreans have someone like him now. I used Rommel’s book to defeat Rommel. Those bastards must have translated my book by now – I’ll bet anything they want to use it against me.” Patton said.
“You’re going over to the defensive?” Abrams joked.
“Nonsense.” Patton said, chuckling. “They expect to meet me on the plains. That’s the good tank country. Therefore I propose we send I Corps up the Suan road. Use it to bypass all of their defences. Drive a great column right through the heart of North Korea, and strike Pyongyang from the east.”
“It’ll never work.” Colonel Landrum warned. “We already know there’s four Korean divisions waiting in Sariwon. That road we were going to use is one they could use to cut Milburn off. The last time a force that size struck out and created a bulge in the line, we chopped it off. Shouldn’t we put something on the flank?”
“The hell with the flanks.” Patton said. “Instead of worrying about them ourselves, we make the enemy worry about his. In four days King Kong won’t give a damn about the bulge near Sariwon. He’ll be pissing himself trying to hold on to Pyongyang.”

- BNC
 
Patton learning lessons from his past and trying new tactics. He may just get a trick play in and throw off the NK defensive line.

Though this could also trigger an earlier, messier response from China.
 
I served in South Korea between 1986 and 1987, and I have been to some of the locations mentioned in the TL.

I will be following this story with interest.

Here's hoping that Major Hugh Casey survives, this time around.

I have to wonder how the Battle of Chipyong-Ni is going to work out...
 
CHAPTER 15
September 24, 1950


Major General William F. Dean had been promoted. Many officers seemed to hold the belief that a general’s spot was behind the lines, fighting the war with a telephone and a map. He had fought in Taejon with a rifle and a bag of hand grenades. To many, such a display would have been an act of utter foolishness. Patton had quite the opposite idea. He had gotten Dean a Bronze Star, and given Washington a recommendation for his rank to go from one star to two. Officially, he had described it as a case of “inspired and effective leadership that played a key role in the maintenance of our position in Taejon”. Unofficially, he said it was just because Dean had been “a brave son of a bitch”.

Hmm, that is a very charitable way to describe his behavior. I'm going to let Bill Dean have my last word on the issue:

"Very few of the things I did in the next 24 hours (Taejon July 20 OTL) could not have been done by any competent sergeant, and such a sergeant would have done some of them better"*

*Blair, Clay "The Forgotten War", page 135
 
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