Recently, I have been reading the American War History website, especially the Korean War, because most of the information about the Korean War on the American side has been declassified, so many of the content on the website is supported by the historical materials or data of the American military.
Let's list a few of the things that I think are interesting, starting with the U.S. Air Force.
When looking at the materials of the US Air Force in the Korean War, there are two things that impress Yamato Island rather deeply.
At that time, the bomber units of the Chinese Air Force bombed Yamato Island three times and always the content of domestic propaganda, but they also admitted that the third bombing was attacked by the US Air Force and suffered heavy losses.
According to US records, on November 30, 1951, nine Tu-2 bombers of the Volunteer Army bombed Yamato Island for the third time and were intercepted by 31 F-86 Sabre fighters of the Fifth Air Force of the US Far East Air Force. According to the Chinese side, four Tu-2s were shot down and four were seriously damaged, but five U.S. F86 fighters were shot down and damaged, setting a record for a piston aircraft to shoot down a jet.
However, the US side recorded that eight Tu-2s were shot down on the spot, three of the 16 escort La-11 fighters were shot down, and one of the 24 MiG-15 fighters that arrived later was shot down, and a total of 19 pilots were killed. The United States had 4 F-86s injured but all returned to the airfield, and there was no record of being shot down.
As for this loss, the Chinese side believed that it was a mistake in coordination, and the bombers arrived at the rendezvous point early, resulting in the failure of the escorting MiG-15 fighters to accompany the escort to play an escort role. However, judging from the information disclosed by the US side, the actual reason was that the Chinese ground-to-air communications were intercepted and cracked by the US military intelligence department at that time, so that the US military knew the Chinese bombing plan in advance, so it arranged for planes to arrive in the bombed airspace ahead of schedule and set up an ambush on the Chinese side.
Although the island was subsequently conquered by the Volunteers, due to the lack of air and sea supremacy over the area, the Volunteers retreated back to the mainland after sweeping up the Korean anti-communist guerrillas on the island, where it became a desert island.
What follows is another story about the island
According to U.S. military records, during an air battle at the MiG corridor on May 1, 1952, the deputy commander of the U.S. Air Force fighter squadron, 33-year-old U.S. Air Force Colonel Col. Albert W. Schinz, was wounded.
Although the island was deserted, he found some supplies and food (a small amount of rice and corn kernels) that had been discarded by the original garrison during the retreat, and relied on these things to start a Robinsonian life on the island, which he did not expect to last for 37 days. Because at that time, the US Air Force defined him as missing, but did not conduct a large-scale search.
The colonel found some cotton in the discarded supplies, so he placed the cotton in the open space with the words "SOS" and "MAYDAY", and lit the cotton whenever he found an aircraft approaching, but apparently no pilot noticed his signal, and it was not until June 8 that a US fighter pilot passing through the airspace reported to his superiors that there was a fire on the island, so on June 9, the US military sent a South Korean anti-communist guerrilla force back to Yamato Island to reconnoiter and accidentally discovered him, When he was found, he had been out of food for some time and was about to starve to death.
The pilots of the U.S. Navy and Air Force in the Korean War each had a miraculous example:
First of all, a Navy carrier-based aircraft pilot flew the F9F aircraft back to the aircraft carrier and landed safely when he was injured and blind.
On September 17, 1950, Navy Second Lieutenant Edward Jackson led a team passing through the Han River when he spotted a ship crossing the river and dived and strafed. At that time, the North Korean army set up a blocking cable on the river in response to the fact that US planes often flew low against the water during attacks.
As a result, Jackson's plane crashed into the barrage as it flew low. First, the wing tripped over the arresting cable, the wingtip fuel tank was damaged, and then the scraped arresting cable flew in mid-air and hit the canopy, and the canopy fragments hit Jackson in the face, causing serious injuries to his nose and eyebrow bones, and Jackson himself was directly unconscious under the heavy blow.
Because he turned on the F9F's auto-pull function during the dive strafing, it happened that the plane was on autopilot during the time Jackson was unconscious. But when Jackson woke up, he found that his eyes were covered with blood and scalp, and he couldn't see anything, and his ears were full of the whirring wind after the broken canopy, and he couldn't figure out the state of the plane at all.
At this point, his wingman, Second Lieutenant Dayl Crow, desperately shouted to him in the headset to inform him of the damage to his plane and let Jackson fly side by side under his direction.
Jackson 回答说“看在上帝的份上，戴尔，我瞎了”（“For God’s sake, Dayl, I’m blind!” ）
Dayl 回答说“好的，兄弟，我带你回家”（“OK, Ed, I’m taking you home.” ）
Under Dayl's guidance, the two first flew over the Yellow Sea, and then flew towards the aircraft carrier Philippine Sea.
After learning the news, the aircraft carrier command center emptied the deck and prepared for the forced landing of the two of them.
Approaching the carrier, Lieutenant Bruestle, the landing signal officer on the carrier, began to take over Jackson's plane, directing Jackson directly to land by voice. So Jackson only relied on the voice command of the landing signal officer to make various corresponding operations, and finally landed successfully!
The U.S. Air Force is even more magical, the F-84 of the three-plane formation is on a mission at high altitude, and the pilot of the formation commander is in a coma due to lack of oxygen in the high altitude due to the failure of the oxygen equipment, and after his two wingmen find out, they will fly to the side of the long plane, close to the wing of the long plane, let the wingtips of their aircraft fly under the wingtips of the long plane, and guide the long plane that was originally flying flat to descend, until the pilot of the long plane wakes up from inhaling oxygen at low altitude!
Domestic media often say that the Korean War was a forgotten war in the United States. However, in fact, the United States has not forgotten, especially the Battle of Changjin Lake, and domestic propaganda says that the volunteers fought hard and inflicted heavy losses on the US army. In their view, a lone army was surrounded by several times the opponent's side, and the successful withdrawal of the formation and the removal of more than 100,000 civilians was a remarkable achievement, and the following are a few small stories of the US Air Force in the Battle of Changjin Lake.
Last year (2022), the United States also made a movie related to the Battle of Changjin Lake, called DEVOTION (translated as devotion or loyalty). The film is based on real events on the Korean battlefield at that time.
During the Battle of Changjin Lake, an F4U fighter was forced to land in the defense area of the Volunteer Army because the engine was hit while covering the retreat of the ground troops, although the successful forced landing was carried out, the pilot Brown was injured and trapped in the cockpit and could not come out, and his wingman Hardner also forced to land in a nearby open space to try to rescue Brown. However, without tools, Hadner was unable to rescue the injured Brown from the wreckage, and Brown died in the wreckage soon after. Hudner was then rescued by an arriving helicopter, and the commander, believing that it was too risky to try to retrieve Brown's body from the area controlled by the Volunteers, sent planes to destroy the plane with Brown's body.
At that time, the 1st Division of the United States built an airfield in the lower corner, brought in a large amount of supplies, and transported out more than 4,000 wounded. One of them, a C-47, made an emergency landing outside the U.S. battle line due to mechanical failure shortly after takeoff. But miraculously, all the more than 30 crew members on board returned to the airport on foot safely. The reason is that nearby F4U pirate fighters took off in turn, escorting more than 30 people all the way. The volunteers on the nearby hill were so overwhelmed by the air fire that they could not raise their heads and could not approach at all.
During the two days when the 1st Army Division withdrew south from Xiayuli, 1,000 yards on both sides of the highway retreat route was set up as a free bombing zone for aircraft, and the US forces bombed this area without interruption during the day, and the US troops built fortifications on the spot after dark, and waited for the US Air Force to cover it after dawn before marching. According to U.S. military records, a total of 140 Air Force sorties, 245 Navy sorties, and 83 Air Force sorties were covered by Air Force air support during the two-day retreat.
On land, the United States is most famous in the Battle of Changjin Lake for the following two people.
一个是陆战1师1团的团长Chesty Puller，他出名在于当其被告知该团已经被志愿军第九兵团包围后，他讲了句在美国后来广为流传的话，“All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us… they can’t get away this time.” （他们在我们的前后左右，现在他们跑不掉了）。 这个Chesty Puller此后被当做是海军陆战队里的军神，美国海军陆战队博物馆的前院还有他的铜像。
Another legend of the 1st Marine Division was Lieutenant John Yancey. He led the E Company of the 7th Marine Regiment to fight the famous 235th Regiment of the 1st Regiment of Jinan on the 1282nd Heights of Liutanli in Changjin Lake. Due to the injury to the upper jaw, the blood flows directly into the mouth, and you have to keep vomiting blood to clear your throat. The soldiers of Company E later recalled that he was bleeding profusely that night, screaming to boost morale while spitting blood, and his image was very crazy. What's even more terrifying is that later a bullet hit him in the face, knocking him to the ground, and the eyeball was squeezed out of the eye socket, he actually took off his gloves and carefully stuffed the eyeball back into the eye socket, and later miraculously saved the eye.
Yancey was awarded the Navy Cross for his bravery in the war, and he was originally nominated for the Medal of Honors, the highest honor medal in the U.S. military. But his superiors were all killed in the Battle of Changjin Lake, and there was no higher-ranking officer who could write a recommendation and certificate for him, so he could only receive the Navy Cross.
The words of James Claypool, a Medic of E Company, later about Yancey, were sobering. "Without Yancey, no one would have survived in the E-Company on the heights of 1282. No one could make the soldiers brave enough to stand up in the face of almost certain death-defying battles like Yancey. Sometimes I even feel that he turned the tide and saved everyone in Liutan. If the Chinese army captured the 1282 heights, they would enter Liutanli from there and go straight to the headquarters of the 5th and 7th Lu Regiments. I am sure that if it were not for Yancey, the 1282 heights would have been conquered. "But I still have something to say about Yancey, I won't let my children and grandchildren follow him into battle. His troops had greater results than others, but they also suffered higher casualties. Of course, that's how we in the Marine Corps operate...... Not at the expense of my children, though. ”
Finally, the U.S. Navy.
During the Korean War, the USS Wisconsin, an Iowa-class battleship, was ordered to reach the waters off Songjin off the northern coast of Korea in the early morning of March 15, 1952, and used its 406mm cannon to fire at the railroad lines inland.
Generally speaking, the caliber of the guns of the Korean coastal defense forces at that time was too small to be completely harmless to the heavy armor of the battleships, so the coastal defense forces generally did not react to the US fleet. U.S. warships are also clock-in, and they will not attack artillery on the shore unless the mission requires it.
However, on the afternoon of the day after the battleship was fired, a North Korean artillery unit located on the shore may have just received a batch of Soviet-made 152mm cannons and wanted to challenge the American ships, so it launched a counterattack against the American fleet still cruising near the shore, and one of the shells hit the foredeck of the Wisconsin, injuring three people by fragments.
The crew of the battleship thought it was an insult to be attacked by such small-caliber guns, and then the officers and men of the ship went into a state of rage, and the ship left the set course and queue, and fired several volleys of all the known artillery positions on the shore with all the large-caliber naval guns, completely leveling all the shore gun positions.
At that time, all the ships in the company signaled to Vesconsin to persuade her to calm down.
In addition, according to the military deployment map of the Korean War declassified by the United States, a small problem in our domestic propaganda was discovered.
During the Korean War, there was a sharpshooter Zhang Taofang in the Volunteer Army, and it has been advertised in China that he sniped and killed 214 American soldiers on the 797.9 heights of Shangganling from March to May 1953. However, according to the 1:250,000 allied front map made by the US 8th Army in March 1953, since the US 7th Division changed guards with the ROK troops on October 25, 1952, the ROK 9th Division was stationed opposite the 797.9 heights in Shangganling, and the closest US 3rd Division defense line to the position was five kilometers east of it, so the 214 people Zhang Taofang sniped were probably all South Korean soldiers of the South Korean 9th Division.
The memories of American soldiers do not shy away from talking about the pimping of the US military on the front line.
In 1952, the U.S. 7th Division confronted the Volunteer Army on the 38th parallel. The bunkers of the American troops on the front line were both firing points and homes for the four-person team, with beds and other living facilities. There was a bunker where four guys caught two men trying to cross the front line one night. When I searched my body, I found that it was a North Korean girl, saying that she wanted to go to Seoul.
The four guys started to think crookedly, decided to let them disguise themselves as men, stay in their bunkers, and then pimped them on the front line, 10 dollars for 15 minutes each time, and the income was split in half with the girls, and the two girls had no choice at all, so their bunker became the liveliest place in the company.
Although the pimp business is thriving, the people who come to patronize it are tight-lipped. However, the officers were not stupid, and it didn't take long for them to hear the news, so they ordered all the Korean servants on the front line to leave without leaving all, and let the four guys rotate back to the rear, but the two girls also earned enough money to follow the American GIs back to Seoul and disappear into the sea of people.
In 1952, the monthly salary of ordinary soldiers in the U.S. Army was 80 U.S. dollars, and for soldiers who had money and no land to spend on the front line, 10 U.S. dollars was certainly nothing, after all, it was difficult to say whether they could live to see the sun tomorrow on the battlefield, so the American GIs still remembered the scene at that time vividly. Moreover, after the war, the South Korean government actually regarded the erotic industry around the US military garrison as an important means of earning foreign exchange.
Finally, according to the archives published by the U.S. military, after the three sides resumed armistice negotiations at the end of April 1953, the Chinese volunteers launched a series of small-scale offensives from May onwards. On July 13, the battle-scale Jincheng counterattack was launched, gathering four armies to attack the front line of Jincheng held by the South Korean army, and severely damaged the South Korean army. In this case, the U.S. National Security Council made a judgment that the armistice talks could be a huge conspiracy by the other side, and even if the armistice agreement was signed, it was possible that the Chinese and North Korean forces would take advantage of the lax situation of the U.S. military to launch a large-scale offensive. At that time, the U.S. military believed that if the other side violated the armistice agreement, it would carry out tactical nuclear strikes on the Chinese heavy troop concentration sites on the Korean battlefield. To this end, in late July 1953, the US military asked Strategic Air Force Commander Li May to make arrangements to prepare for an air nuclear strike in the Far East. Although the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed on July 27, in early August 1953, the U.S. Strategic Command mobilized a B-36 wing to carry nuclear bombs to the Far East for nuclear deterrence.
In addition, the North Korean side created the following oil painting to show the scene of the signing of the armistice agreement, but it is a imaginary scene, in fact, the signatories signed on separate tables, and the signing process took only 10 minutes to end, a total of 18 signed documents, and the two sides did not greet each other, shook hands, did not speak, and did not even look at each other during the signing process.
The agreement was a purely military document, signed in the name of the armed forces, no country was a signatory, and no expiration date was specified. In accordance with the provisions of the agreement, hostile military acts between the belligerents were immediately ceased and a state of armistice was entered into after the signing of the agreement. However, the Republic of Korea army did not sign the armistice agreement. The full Chinese name of the agreement is "Agreement on the Military Armistice in Korea between the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and the Commander of the Chinese People's Volunteers and the Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Forces on the other."