United States uses more bombers in the Korean War

Will everybody stop talking about Vietnam? Vietnam was a guerrilla war. Guerrilla wars aren't fought by the same set of rules as conventional wars. Therefore, the outcome of the Vietnam War is irrelevant.
 
Will everybody stop talking about Vietnam? Vietnam was a guerrilla war. Guerrilla wars aren't fought by the same set of rules as conventional wars. Therefore, the outcome of the Vietnam War is irrelevant.

except that Vietnam wasn't just a guerilla war... particularly after the Tet Offensive, the fighting involved companies and battalions of regular North Vietnamese light infantry fighting companies and battalions of US, Allied (including South Korean), and ARVN infantry and mechanized forces.

The bigger battles of the war, starting with Ia Drang in 1965 were always between regular forces on both sides fighting in built up, swampy, or jungle mountain terrain.

Incidently, for a large part of the Korean War, a good part of the ROK Army was in the rear dealing with large numbers of NKPLA guerillas and stragglers.. in other words, fighting a guerilla war.
 
Will everybody stop talking about Vietnam? Vietnam was a guerrilla war. Guerrilla wars aren't fought by the same set of rules as conventional wars. Therefore, the outcome of the Vietnam War is irrelevant.

Guess what?

It doesn't matter. War is war. Name one single war where airpower alone won the war. There is none, none in the 90 or so years that planes have graced our skies have they won a war without troops. Planes can't hold territory.

You don't understand that bombers alone don't win wars. The reason why we "lost" against North Koreaa is because China launched about a million more people at us. Korea didn't need anymore bombers the same way Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and every war since WW2 didn't need an assload of bombers. The most important fighting, like in any way, was on the ground.

Look at Japan during WW2. We had bombers bombing the hell out of them, in the end, we still needed troops to get up on the island and root them out for their trenchs.

Look at Germany and their superiority over the skies of Moscow during Stalingrad, still lost.
 
Towards the end of the Korean War South Korea started making some very angry noises when they realized the north/south separation would continue, apparently under the delusion that South Korea survival was for some reason other than the massive US/UN effort.

They made a few moves which Beijing took exception to, seeing them as a possible prelude to South Korea continuing the war or renewing it at a later date.

The result was an offensive which killed almost 30,000 ROKs. CHINA suffered over 80,000 dead just to make a point clear. That's nearly as many dead as the US suffered in Korea and Vietnam, just to make a diplomatic point clear to Seoul. The idea that a government comfortable with that is going to be frightened by an increase in an already huge amount of bombing...
 
Will everybody stop talking about Vietnam? Vietnam was a guerrilla war. Guerrilla wars aren't fought by the same set of rules as conventional wars. Therefore, the outcome of the Vietnam War is irrelevant.

it doesn't matter, if this is a Gurrilla war, a trench war, Panzers chasing each other around, or everyone's marching around shooting Muskets at each other, you don't have troop on the ground, you're not gonna win.
the Nazis thought they could do it to the Brits, they failed.
We thought we could do it to the Japanese, we failed.
 
It doesn't matter. War is war. Name one single war where airpower alone won the war. There is none, none in the 90 or so years that planes have graced our skies have they won a war without troops. Planes can't hold territory.

Well, Kosovo War in 1999 was practically an air war (KLA operations had just nuisance value), although there was the threat of a ground operation. It was also perhaps most amazingly one-sided war ever, with Allied forces seeing two deaths in accident (or was it accident?) and three soldiers taken POW. But this was a case of extremes. I would estimate that 3/4 of the world's air power (US forces and major NATO nations) were taking part in the operations with Serbia alone. Serbia also didn't have 1999 level IADS available.
 
Well, Kosovo War in 1999 was practically an air war (KLA operations had just nuisance value), although there was the threat of a ground operation. It was also perhaps most amazingly one-sided war ever, with Allied forces seeing two deaths in accident (or was it accident?) and three soldiers taken POW. But this was a case of extremes. I would estimate that 3/4 of the world's air power (US forces and major NATO nations) were taking part in the operations with Serbia alone. Serbia also didn't have 1999 level IADS available.

3/4 of the World's Air Power to deal with the relativly minor Kosovo War?
 
3/4 of the World's Air Power to deal with the relativly minor Kosovo War?

Exactly. I don't mean that 3/4th of world's combat aircraft were there, but air arms represented in operation had probably even mightier share of world's air power in 1999. (One must remember that in 1999 Russian Air Force was in even more dire straits than nowadays + Indian and Chinese Air Forces had not yet started their shopping spree yet.)

All air arms represented sent their finest to the war (In case of USAF B-2, in case of Luftwaffe and RAF their best jamming gear etc.).

Despite ROE limitations the destructive capability of this force was far mightier than any Korean War era air force, bar use of atomic bombs.
 
And at a tactical level, all that bombing didn't work. Most of the Serb army in Kosovo survived.

It took attacks on "strategic targets" and population centers to force the Serbs to capitulate.
 
And at a tactical level, all that bombing didn't work. Most of the Serb army in Kosovo survived.

It took attacks on "strategic targets" and population centers to force the Serbs to capitulate.

Yup, although one must remember that Serbian Army did not get hammered due to fact that it took hiding. If there had been major movements they would have been mostly likely hammered. But this was with help of UAV's, SAR's, thermal imagers, LGB's, JDAM's and other acronyms which did not exist during the Korean War when one of the most sophisticated night vision devices was to keep the observer in a very dark room for a day before the mission in order to get him used to darkness...
 
One of the small ironies of the war against Serbia was that Wesley Clark somehow came out of it a hero in the Democratic Party.

You would think that an officer openly disobeyed by his subordinates on the grounds that they thought he wanted to risk a war with Russia and then relieved by President Clinton would not be considered presidential material, least of all in the Democratic Party. The GOP had an infatuation of sorts with MacArthur...
 
Yup, although one must remember that Serbian Army did not get hammered due to fact that it took hiding. If there had been major movements they would have been mostly likely hammered. But this was with help of UAV's, SAR's, thermal imagers, LGB's, JDAM's and other acronyms which did not exist during the Korean War when one of the most sophisticated night vision devices was to keep the observer in a very dark room for a day before the mission in order to get him used to darkness...

True. The fact NATO aircraft weren't allowed to play below 10,000 feet to avoid the possibility of being shot down didn't help matters.

(They used decoy tanks to spoof aircraft, they used burning oil drums to divert heat-seeking missiles, etc)

Thing is, the majority of the ethnic cleansing--the expulsion of the 1,000,000 Albanians as opposed to the earlier 10,000 refugees in the woods as winter approached--took place during the bombing.

If the Serb Army was hiding, who was rounding up the Albanians and dumping them over the border?
 
If the Serb Army was hiding, who was rounding up the Albanians and dumping them over the border?

Rounding up civilians and dumping them over the border did not require use of large military units or even specialized military vehicles (tanks, APC's, artillery etc) which could have been more easily identified. Many of these units used normal SUV's or pick-up trucks and were just platoon sized or smaller. Normal military operations (ie. delay, offensive, defensive) would have required large scale movements.
 
Rounding up civilians and dumping them over the border did not require use of large military units or even specialized military vehicles (tanks, APC's, artillery etc) which could have been more easily identified. Many of these units used normal SUV's or pick-up trucks and were just platoon sized or smaller.

Ah.

(filler)
 
Top