Voödoo 6 von Inyanga Profile picture
Jul 26 26 tweets 9 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
1/ People tend to believe past success and a bias towards the status quo alone predicts the future. If victors don't continuously develop, train, and improve then their next battle might be a humiliating failure like Task Force Smith at the Battle of Osan. Image
2/ In June of 1950 the United States was caught with its pants around its ankles in the Far East for the second time in less than a decade as a heavily armed and trained North Korean (DPRK) Army steamrolled across the 38th Parallel and invaded US ally South Korea (ROK). Image
3/ Despite the newly created CIA having seen the North Korean Army moving towards the border, the CIA assusred everyone the move was "strictly defensive in nature". The invasion and the speed at which the Communists rolled over their southern cousins surprised everyone. Image
4/ Especially stunned was General William Roberts (the man responsible for training South Korea’s Army) who had claimed that any invasion from the north would be “target practice” for the ROK army, Neither the ROK Army nor their US allies were in a position to defend South Korea. Image
5/ While the Soviet Union had provided the North with hundreds of modern T-34-85 tanks, the US had provided South Korea with precisely 0 tanks or anti-tank weapons.

As the unarmed and untrained ROK Army fled before the onslaught, the United States decided to intervene. Image
6/ The state of the new ROK Army could be excused, but the state of the United States military, who less than five years before had won the Second World War could not. The peacetime Army was a disaster. Convinced future war was nuclear, they had cannibalized conventional forces. Image
7/ The National Security Act of 1947 had created the Air Force, the NSC and the CIA, but had relegated Army ground combat units to second priority in acquisitions and funding. Nearly every division hovered around 60% strength, with most of the enlisted men being raw recruits. Image
8/ Equipment was often obsolete WW2 vintage, and most of the leaders were connected officers who had been spared the rigors of prolonged combat assignments in WW2 and were now being given box check time in Command. Image
9/ Commander of the Far East Theatre Douglas MacArthur demanded an “arrogant display of strength” and selected the “most ready” unit in the Far East: 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment. Except they were in fact, not ready. They had lied on their readiness reports.
10/ Their commander, LTC Charles Smith, a West Pointer who hadn’t seen combat since Guadalcanal in 1942 knew his battalion was in trouble. They cannibalized one infantry company to add bodies to the remaining two, and shanghaied officers from other regiments to fill their ranks.
11/ Armed with little more than small arms and bazookas that had proven useless against tanks in WW2, Task Force Smith grabbed two days of food, a handful of hope, big giant brass balls, and flew into Korea to slow the communist tide. Image
12/ Luckily, TF Smith was joined by Battery A, 52nd Field Artillery and their six 105mm howitzers. Going into battle against a modern armored formation, the artillerymen knew they needed anti-tank rounds if they were to have any hope at all. Image
13/ Sadly the US Military, logistical masters of the world, had only 18 anti-tank artillery rounds in the entire Far East Theatre. TF Smith was given six. The US Army went into battle with a wheel gun’s worth of rounds. Image
14/ TF Smith took their positions alongside a road outside of Osan on July 4, 1950 in a beautiful defensive position, with two hills overlooking a flat road and miles of open wet ground that could funnel the communist tanks into a narrow kill box where the column could be… Image
15/ …stopped and then massacred. Except the Americans had no anti-armor mines to stop anything, and only 6 rounds to stop scores of enemy tanks. But try the young Americans did. Flinging their rounds at the Communist tanks, they managed to knock one out, and disable another. Image
16/ Great news, except the remaining Soviet built tanks rolled through the rest of the American line like it wasn’t even there. Young Lieutenant Ollie Connor personally grabbed a bazooka, and at a range of 15 yards tried to fire into the weak rear armor of the T-34-85. Image
17/ The young officer fired 22 times, with absolutely no effect. As the hopelessness of the endeavor sunk in, the discipline of the untrained Americans started to buckle. Artillerymen fled their guns, but were shamed into returning when their officers and NCOs took their place. Image
18/ But the battle was lost. Following the tanks came and entire division of North Korean infantry. At first the 500 Americans held against the 5,000 men of the 4th North Korean Infantry Division. Image
19/ But as the 120 rifle rounds per man the Americans left Japan with began to dwindle, the need to retreat became apparent. LTC Smith ordered the line to pull back by section, trying to replicate young Lt Godfrey’s fighting retreat at the Little Bighorn.
20/ But Task Force Smith had never trained as a unit and despite being “ready” on paper, they were a fucking clown show. Platoons were forgotten, wounded men and equipment left behind to the North Koreans, and the retreat quickly became a shameful rout.
21/ As the wounded Americans who could not walk were tied up and executed by the North Koreans, everyone on that battlefield knew the Army of the United States of America was no longer a serious fighting force. Image
22/ While propagandists might call it a heroic delaying action against superior numbers it was an embarrassing disaster. The US Army’s TF Smith hadn’t even lasted half a day against a North Korean Army that hadn’t even existed five years prior.
23/ In the span of 5 years the US Army had allowed themselves to degenerate from the masters of the known world, to an abomination that couldn’t even equip a handful of men in the field properly. The following weeks saw the North Korean Army smash more American units. Image
24/ The North Koreans captured a General and beclowned the US Army again and again all the way to Pusan. It was the Army’s most humiliating hour since the fall of the Philippines at the beginning of WW2. (the Japanese had captured 18 generals and 100,000 men in the Philippines) Image
25/ They hadn’t planned, they hadn’t thought, they hadn't rehearsed, and they hadn’t prepared, and for a few months in 1950, less than five years after their greatest triumph, the role of the United States as a super-power looked like it hung in the balance.
26/ And this ladies and gentlemen, is why you don't wait until Thanksgiving morning to turn on your WiFi grill like @HardPass4 . You do rehearsals, you plan and prepare, and you do better. Image

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More from @6Voodoo

Jul 12
What your favorite Cold-War Aircraft says about you.

An exhaustive and complete list.

Pre-80's Joel Only

No Helicopters, Helicopters are dumb.
1. You prioritize beauty. When people close their eyes and picture perfection they see you. Sure, maybe you aren't super amazing at lots of things, but boy howdy are you pretty to look at





2. You went almost your entire life not getting into the game but they finally gave you a shot and you crushed it. Like Arnold in some old Sheriff movie who finally gets to kick some ass, you made the absolute best out of your one chance late in life. Good on you





Read 17 tweets
Jun 29
Life is full of things "everyone knows". They tell you something can't be done and often are right. Those things however are often facades, true only sometimes and can be broken by determined men who refuse to lose. Like the King's German Legion at the Battle of Garcia Hernandez.
1/ By the summer of 1812, the Napoleonic Wars were reaching their climax after over two decades of fighting. Things looked bad for the anti-Napoleon Coalition. Napoleon was at the gates of Moscow and Prussia and Austria had been either knocked out of existence or into neutrality.
2/ The British were holding on by their fingernails in the Spanish peninsula and about to go to war in America. Up until this point the war on the peninsula had been a seesaw affair, but under the Duke of Wellington the Allies were determined to strike a blow against the French.
Read 25 tweets
Jun 17
Look, I haven’t heard all that much CWII talk, but the “you don’t want that” takes tell me it’s out there. The people telling you “you don’t want that” are men I know and respect. Men who know war, and they are men who absolutely would fight if they believe the time called for it
The people telling you “you can’t vote your way out of this” and all the other tropes are rightfully sick of some of the things they see: a two tiered Justice system, a willingness to sacrifice children, an ever expanding deep state, but what they don’t offer is a solution.
Sure there is the Cincinnatus crowd, but I don’t see a Cincinnatus anywhere.

The pleas of common men are understandable, even forgivable, and it is unreasonable to expect their anger to be assuaged by the fact that the US Gov has always been corrupt and full of moral iniquity.
Read 13 tweets
Jun 15
1/ In war, like life, the strong and rich generally overpower those who stand against them. Throughout history this has been the case, but every so often a group of citizens band together and topple Goliath. This is how Flying Columns twice defeated the greatest Empire on Earth. ImageImage
2/ By the turn of the 20th Century, no nation on earth projected power across the globe's vast expanse better than the mighty British Empire. Queen Victoria and her progeny’s military dominated from China to Canada, had defeated Napoleon, withstood the Czar, and broke the Kaiser. Image
3/ While the life blood of British power was the Royal Navy, red coated and later Khaki clad Infantry were the tip of her majesty’s spear. British infantry were masters of firepower. Standing in line they poured torrents of fire into their enemy, turning them into bloody charnel. Image
Read 27 tweets
Jun 2
1/ We know to “Shoot until the threat changes shape or catches fire” but there is a great historical allegory to the dangers of procrastination and ensuring an enemy is completely destroyed. Gather round, take a knee and let's do a re-mix thread on the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. Image
2/ Insurgencies and rebellions are nothing new in warfare. Some 200 years after the Northern Crusades (no, not all crusades were in the Middle East) died down in what is today the Baltics, the last Crusader Kingdom, the Teutonic Order, still stood strong. Image
3/ Having subdued most of the region for Christianity, only a few pagan holdouts remained. One of these, the province of Samogitia, was secured by the Teutonic Order to connect the Prussian and Livonian halves of the Crusader state. Image
Read 24 tweets
May 30
There is a strange inflection between soldiers of the historical past, recent historical veterans, and modern veterans that I can't exactly put my finger one. We accept that Caesar, Alexander and their troops loved war, yet the veterans of early-mid 20th Century Wars are always
depicted to have been broken by it. Perhaps it is the media, or the society at the time, but this shift became so engrained in our psyche that most GWOT veterans tried to define themselves by their PTSD, despite most never having left the wire. This too I think is a way to attach
oneself to the intimacy of actual combat, to say "Look I did something", but society has turned it into a pity party. I've seen society talk lump the suicide of men who never chambered a round in with those who saw the depths of wars depravity.
Read 5 tweets

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