[PDF] Artillery In Korea Massing Fires And Reinventing The Wheel eBook

Author : D. M. Giangreco
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
Page : 48 pages
File Size : 24,66 MB
Release : 2015-11-06
Category : History
ISBN : 1782899634

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[Includes 10 photos illustrations] The first 9 months of the Korean War saw U.S. Army field artillery units destroy or abandon their own guns on nearly a dozen occasions. North Korean and Chinese forces infiltrated thinly held American lines to ambush units on the move or assault battery positions from the flanks or rear with, all too often, the same disastrous results. Trained to fight a linear war in Europe against conventional Soviet forces, field artillery units were unprepared for combat in Korea, which called for all-around defense of mutually supporting battery positions, and high-angle fire. Ironically, these same lessons had been learned the hard way during recent fighting against the Japanese in a 1944 action on Saipan, not Korea, aptly demonstrates. Pacific theater artillery tactics were discarded as an aberration after War World II, but Red Legs soon found that they “frequently [have] to fight as doughboys” and “must be able to handle the situation themselves if their gun positions are attacked.” A second problem with artillery in Korea was felt most keenly by the soldiers that the artillery was supposed to support — the infantry. Commanders at all levels had come to expect that in any future war, they would conduct operations with fire that equaled or even surpassed the lavish support they had recently enjoyed in northwest Europe. It was clear almost from the beginning, however, that this was not going to happen in Korea because there was a shortage not only of artillery units but also of the basic hardware of the cannoneers craft: guns and munitions. Until the front settled down into a war of attrition in the fall of 1951 (which facilitated the surveying of reference points and positioning of “an elaborate grid of batteries, fire direction centers, [and] fire support coordination centers”), massed fires were achieved by shooting at unprecedented speed.

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Trained to fight a linear war in Europe against conventional Soviet forces, field artillery units were unprepared for combat in Korea, which called for all-around defense of mutually supporting battery positions, and high-angle fire. Pacific theater artillery tactics were discarded as an aberration after War World II, but Red Legs soon found that they?frequently [have] to fight as doughboys? and?must be able to handle the situation themselves if their gun positions are attacked.? A second problem with artillery in Korea was felt most keenly by the soldiers that the artillery was supposed to support?the infantry. Commanders at all levels had come to expect that in any future war, they would conduct operations with fire that equaled or even surpassed the lavish support they had recently enjoyed in northwest Europe. It was clear almost from the beginning, however, that this was not going to happen in Korea because there was a shortage not only of artillery units but also of the basic hardware of the cannoneers? craft?guns and munitions. Until the front settled down into a war of attrition in the fall of 1951 (which facilitated the surveying of reference points and positioning of?an elaborate grid of batteries, fire direction centers, [and] fire support coordination centers?), massed fires were achieved by shooting at unprecedented speed. This tactic, in turn, exposed the fact that the huge surplus of World War II munitions was actually deficient in some calibers, and strict ammunition rationing became the norm until production caught up with demand in the last days of the fighting.

Author : Keith D. McFarland
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 728 pages
File Size : 12,84 MB
Release : 2009-12-04
Category : History
ISBN : 1135223947

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The Korean War is the most comprehensive and detailed bibliography compiled to date on the American involvement in "The Forgotten War." In this revised and expanded second edition, Keith D. McFarland’s clearly written annotations provide concise descriptions of more than 2,600 of the most important books, articles, and documents written in English on the conflict in Korea. Key topics include origins of the war; the political and military roles of North and South Korea, the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Turkey, and other United Nations members; campaigns and battles; weapons and uniforms; and the military and diplomatic aspects of the war. Specific subjects are easy to find using the index organized by topic and author, making The Korean War a necessity for every academic or research library.

Author : Alan H. Smith
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 33,17 MB
Release : 2011-06-30
Category : History
ISBN : 1921941650

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Since 1899, the significant role Australian gunners have played in supporting the Australian Military Forces' campaigns has been well-documented. They have gallantly and whole-heartedly supported Australian, British, New Zealand and Indian armies in both World Wars, the Korean and Borneo Confrontation Wars and most recently the Vietnam War. Do Unto Others is a comprehensive account of the history of counter bombardment, including the development of Australian techniques, equipment and procedures through the campaigns up until Vietnam, with references to the techniques and actions of the British and American artillery included where appropriate to place the Australian experience in perspective. It is also the story of the brave men behind the artillery and their outstanding efforts and results across these varied campaigns.

Author : Thijs Brocades Zaalberg
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 29,48 MB
Release : 2022-07-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1501764152

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In Empire's Violent End, Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis, along with expert contributors, present comparative research focused specifically on excessive violence in Indonesia, Algeria, Vietnam, Malaysia, Kenya, and other areas during the wars of decolonization. In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and rape in the margins. The editors describe how such comparisons mostly focus on the differences by engaging in "guilt ranking." Moreover, the dramas that have unfolded in Algeria and Kenya tend to overshadow similar violent events in Indonesia, the very first nation to declare independence directly after World War II. Empire's Violent End is the first book to place the Dutch-Indonesian case at the heart of a comparison with focused, thematic analysis on a diverse range of topics to demonstrate that despite variation in scale, combat intensity, and international dynamics, there were more similarities than differences in the ways colonial powers used extreme forms of violence. By delving into the causes and nature of the abuse, Brocades Zaalberg and Luttikhuis conclude that all cases involved some form of institutionalized impunity, which enabled the type of situation in which the forces in the service of the colonial rulers were able to use extreme violence.

Author : D. M. Giangreco
Publisher : Zenith Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 32,14 MB
Release : 2009-09-10
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780760332092

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Harry S. Truman was Commander-in-Chief at one of the (if not the) critical moments in American--and global--military history: when the decision had to be made to drop the Bomb. As to his military credentials, however, he is often dismissed as little more than a weekend warrior, the Kansas City haberdasher. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth, as this book makes clear. Revealing the little-known facts of Truman’s remarkable military performance--as a soldier and as a politician--The Soldier from Independence adds a whole new dimension to the already fascinating character of the thirty-third president of the United States. Author Dennis Giangreco shows how, as a field artillery battery commander in World War I, Truman was already making the hard decisions that he knew to be right, regardless of personal consequences. Giangreco describes how Truman saved a neighboring infantry regiment from a surprise German attack, only to be rebuked by his regimental commander. Truman would have been court martialed, which certainly would have derailed any future career in politics, but for the intervention of commander of American forces in France General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing. The book also recounts Truman’s activities as head of the Senate Armed Forces Committee during the build-up to and early years of WWII--activities that made him the most powerful man in military affairs next to President Roosevelt. Truman oversaw the end of the war, stood up to Stalin, and met the test of North Korea’s invasion of the south. He also had the fortitude to stand up to General Douglas MacArthur, one of America’s most revered wartime leaders, and ultimately fired the Far East commander who has been characterized as the American Caesar. Filling in the details behind these world-changing events, this military biography supplies a heretofore missing--and critical--chapter in the story of one of the nation’s most important presidents.

Author : D. M. Giangreco
Publisher : Naval Institute Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 18,8 MB
Release : 2017-10-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1682471667

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Two years before the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped bring a quick end to hostilities in the summer of 1945, U.S. planners began work on Operation Downfall, codename for the Allied invasions of Kyushu and Honshu, in the Japanese home islands. While other books have examined Operation Downfall, D. M. Giangreco offers the most complete and exhaustively researched consideration of the plans and their implications. He explores related issues of the first operational use of the atomic bomb and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war, including the controversy surrounding estimates of potential U.S. casualties. Following years of intense research at numerous archives, Giangreco now paints a convincing and horrific picture of the veritable hell that awaited invader and defender. In the process, he demolishes the myths that Japan was trying to surrender during the summer of 1945 and that U.S. officials later wildly exaggerated casualty figures to justify using the atomic bombs to influence the Soviet Union. As Giangreco writes, “Both sides were rushing headlong toward a disastrous confrontation in the Home Islands in which poison gas and atomic weapons were to be employed as MacArthur’s intelligence chief, Charles Willoughby, succinctly put it, ‘a hard and bitter struggle with no quarter asked or given.’ Hell to Pay examines the invasion of Japan in light of the large body of Japanese and American operational and tactical planning documents the author unearthed in familiar and obscure archives. It includes postwar interrogations and reports that senior Japanese commanders and their staffs were ordered to produce for General MacArthur’s headquarters. This groundbreaking history counters the revisionist interpretations questioning the rationale for the use of the atomic bomb and shows that President Truman’s decision was based on real estimates of the enormous human cost of a conventional invasion. This revised edition of Hell to Pay expands on several areas covered in the previous book and deals with three new topics: U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the war against Imperial Japan; U.S., Soviet, and Japanese plans for the invasion and defense of the northernmost Home Island of Hokkaido; and Operation Blacklist, the three-phase insertion of American occupation forces into Japan. It also contains additional text, relevant archival material, supplemental photos, and new maps, making this the definitive edition of an important historical work.

Author : Army University Press
Publisher :
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 11,32 MB
Release : 2018-09
Category :
ISBN : 9781692633462

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Lethal and Non-Lethal Fires: Historical Case Studies of Converging Cross-Domain Fires in Large Scale Combat Operations, provides a collection of ten historical case studies from World War I through Desert Storm. The case studies detail the use of lethal and non-lethal fires conducted by US, British, Canadian, and Israeli forces against peer or near-peer threats. The case studies span the major wars of the twentieth-century and present the doctrine the various organizations used, together with the challenges the leaders encountered with the doctrine and the operational environment, as well as the leaders' actions and decisions during the conduct of operations. Most importantly, each chapter highlights the lessons learned from those large scale combat operations, how they were applied or ignored and how they remain relevant today and in the future.