Korean War

[Rolling Thunder]

*snip*

Alright then, but what i don't get is that the Korean war, was, pretty much, a modern war. In theory inventions like tank's and aircraft, features of modern warfare, made trench war obselete. Unless one could argue that the situation in Korea (tough logistics, poor commications, rough terrain and dense forests) meant that airpower, artillery and heavy armour could not be used to its full potential. That could explain why the allies where driven back. I'm finding it pretty hard to understand how the allied armies, with modern equipment and training, backed up with air support and armoured divisions, where pushed back by a hoard of rather enfuastic but untrained, under equiped and under supported Chinese.

The chinese were not under equipped or under supported. Chinese had a direct land route into north korea, whilst the UN only had ship routes into the South. It should be noted that the allied forces were not only outmanned, but out gunned in pretty much everything except the fleet. Chinese had migs at this stage, and as I mentioned in my earlier post they outnumbered the UN and US aircrafts by a ridiculous ratio, also the chinese had ALOT of t34s. You gotta realize that modern equipment back then weren't so modern, and the soviet equipped chinese weren't too far behind.

Begging to differ here. The Chinese did not have that many MiGs, given the MiG was very much not the main Warsaw Pact fighter at the time, and even then, it was outclassed by the British Vampires and the American Shooting Stars, and, later, Sabres, as the pilots of these had actually been, y'know, trained. There is a reason why the UN basically owned the skies for most of the war. They also had vast superiority in artillery (given the Chinese had virtually no artillery, and certainly not the kind of heavy naval guns the UN could bring to bear).

They did, however, have a lot of men, and a lot of fairly obsolete tanks.


What you've failed to take into account, gents, is the terrain. Korea is, on the whole, very, very hilly, mountainous, cold, and generally pretty muddy and miserable. In essence, it is a land where the infantryman, and his old nemesis, the artilleryman, reigns supreme. It's not the kind of country you can fight a war of maneuvere in, nor can you bring armoured superiority to bear.

Basically, Nikolai, what happened was that the coalition overstretched itself, and then got caught by surprise and severely mauled, and was forced to retreat. After they retreated, the Chinese followed, and, with both sides having lost the initiative and being forced into a stalemate, the war could no longer continue. Put simply, while the Allies ruled the skies, could flatten positions with concentrated artillery fire, and generally enjoyed superiority in pretty much everything, all that counted for nothing, because the terrain forced them into an infantry battle where their foes superior numbers counted for more than all the creation-shaking power of their artillery, where their tanks couldn't be used, and their aircraft were nothing more that rather accurate light field guns.