Korea Finder 06-09

Tags: Korea Finder, Korean War

• Mark
  1:00 pm on March 3rd, 2009 1

  2ID because they were there the longest?

• Leon LaPorte
  2:56 pm on March 3rd, 2009 2

  The Second Infantry Division suffered the largest number killed overall: 7,094.

  It seems to be the 2ID way. 2ID's nearly 15000 combat deaths in World War I, World II, and Korea are the greatest combined total of all U.S. divisions and equal its average combat strength.

  I suspect it was because they were all wearing road guard vests and had their vehicles festooned with colorful lights.

• Leon LaPorte
  4:21 pm on March 3rd, 2009 3

  Ok, I guess it wasn't the road guard vest policy. Perhaps one reason 2ID had so many KIA's was it lost nearly 1/3 of its strength at Kunu-ri.

• Hamilton
  8:56 pm on March 3rd, 2009 4

  ROK 1st Division, They were in for the full fight but were poorly equipped in terms of artillery and had no Armor. nK Divisions were small so I doubt even the ones that were wiped out took as many overall causalties but I could be wrong.

• GI Korea
  10:58 pm on March 3rd, 2009 5

  Hamilton sorry I guess I should have specified a US division.

• GI Korea
  11:03 pm on March 3rd, 2009 6

  Mark and Leon are correct that it is the 2nd Infantry Division but they haven’t named the main reason why their casualties were so high.

• Leon LaPorte
  11:22 pm on March 3rd, 2009 7

  I think 2ID was also the first unit to have KATUSA’s.

• Hamilton
  2:54 am on March 4th, 2009 8

  2ID, I suspect the high causalties were tied to their long contact and the fact that they went all the way from Pusan through North Korea and back down again during the Chinese Offensives. They were involved in pretty much every major operation execept Inchon.

• GI Korea
  6:48 am on March 4th, 2009 9

  Bingo! The 2ID was nearly completely wiped out in North Korea after the battle of Kunu-ri. Take a look at these stats:

  A count rendered on 1 December listed 2d Division battle casualties at 4,940 for the last half of November. Of these, 90 percent, or about 4,500, had been incurred since the 25th. Officer casualties alone numbered 237 and touched most grades and branches. These losses represented one-third of the division’s actual strength of 15,000 on 15 November, and when reconciled with nonbattle casualties, replacements, and returnees, left the division 8,662 men short of authorized strength, Equipment losses were equally heavy. In addition to hundreds of trucks and trailers, the major losses included 64 artillery pieces, almost all of the 2d Engineer Combat Battalion’s equipment, and between 20 and 40 percent of the signal equipment carried by the various division units.

  You can read about the battle here:

  http://rokdrop.com/2008/03/10/heroes-of-the-korean-war-general-tahsin-yazici-part-1/

• gerry
  12:56 pm on March 5th, 2009 10

  The reason was because MacArthur refused to believe the Chinese would enter the war, regardless of the intell to the contrary. His syncophants only fed MacArthur what he wanted to hear, and did their best to squelch anything that differed with the "Emperors" assessment of the situation. As a result, the troops were far to strung out, poorly equipped, and most importantly, uninformed as to the true nature of what was about to happen.

  MacArthur was the reason for the high US death count in the 2ID.

• Bones
  3:21 pm on March 5th, 2009 11

  I agree with Gerry, Ridgeway did what he had to do….keep Mac in Japan, Mac went Hollywood, Ridgeway was about winning the war…you can't do that when you have camera's on the battle field.

 

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