The List 6142
Good Saturday Morning June 25
I hope that you all are having a great start to your weekend.
Regards,
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On This Day in Naval and Marine Corps History
June 25
1859 Though the U.S. is neutral in the Spanish Opium War, Capt. Josiah Tattnall offers the use of the U.S. steamer Toey-Wan to the British and French during the Battle of Taku Forts to receive wounded and dead troops.
1917 During World War I, the first Navy convoy of troopships carrying the American Expeditionary Forces arrives in France. The 14 troopships depart on June 14 from New York, which includes the 5th Marine Regiment.
1942 USS Nautilus (SS 168) sinks the Japanese destroyer, Yamakaze, southeast of Yokosuka, Japan.
1950 North Korea invades South Korea, beginning the Korean War. Two days later, President Harry S. Truman supports the United Nations call and authorizes US naval and air operations south of the 38th Parallel, Korea.
1956 Fleet Adm. Ernest J. King dies at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in New Hampshire.
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Today in History June 25
841 Charles the Bald and Louis the German defeat Lothar at Fontenay.
1658 Aurangzeb proclaims himself emperor of the Moghuls in India.
1767 Mexican Indians riot as Jesuit priests are ordered home.
1857 Gustave Flaubert goes on trial for public immorality regarding his novel, Madame Bovary.
1862 The first day of the Seven Days' campaign begins with fighting at Oak Grove, Virginia.
1864 Union troops surrounding Petersburg, Virginia, begin building a mine tunnel underneath the Confederate lines.
1868 The U.S. Congress enacts legislation granting an eight-hour day to workers employed by the federal government.
1876 General George A. Custer and over 260 men of the Seventh Cavalry are wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Little Bighorn in Montana.
1903 Marie Curie announces her discovery of radium.
1920 The Greeks take 8,000 Turkish prisoners in Smyrna.
1921 Samuel Gompers is elected head of the American Federation of Labor for the 40th time.
1941 Finland declares war on the Soviet Union.
1946 Ho Chi Minh travels to France for talks on Vietnamese independence.
1948 The Soviet Union tightens its blockade of Berlin by intercepting river barges heading for the city.
1950 North Korea invades South Korea, beginning the Korean War.
1959 The Cuban government seizes 2.35 million acres under a new agrarian reform law.
1962 The U.S. Supreme Court bans official prayers in public schools.
1964 President Lyndon Johnson orders 200 naval personnel to Mississippi to assist in finding three missing civil rights workers.
1973 White House Counsel John Dean admits President Richard Nixon took part in the Watergate cover-up.
1986 Congress approves $100 million in aid to the Contras fighting in Nicaragua.
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ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED Thanks to the Bear … Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER (1965-1968)…
From the archives of rollingthunderremembered.com post
… For The List for Saturday, 25 June 2022… Bear 🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER (1965-1968)
From the archives of rollingthunderremembered.com post for 25 June 1967… The American Summer of 1967: a history lesson for the ages…
This following work accounts for every fixed wing loss of the Vietnam War and you can use it to read more about the losses in The Bear's Daily account. Even better it allows you to add your updated information to the work to update for history…skip
Vietnam Air Losses
Access Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady's work at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
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Thanks to Admiral Cox and the NHHC
H-Gram 050: 70th Anniversary of the Korean War—The Initial Naval Actions
25 June 2020
Defense of the Pusan Perimeter, 1950: PFC Harold R. Bates and PFC Richard N. Martin of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade rest atop the third objective that U.S. Marines seized overlooking the Naktong River, South Korea, 19 August 1950. Photographed by Sgt. Frank C. Kerr, USMC (NH 96991).
This H-gram covers the first two month of naval action in the Korean War, which started on 25 June 1950. Sometimes referred to as the "Forgotten War," I plan to give it pretty thorough treatment because some of the amazing U.S. Navy action has indeed largely been forgotten.
Download a pdf of H-Gram 050 (5 MB).
Before dawn on Sunday morning, 25 June 1950, Communist North Korea launched a massive surprise attack across the border into South Korea, smashing through the inadequate South Korean defenses. Within three days, the North Korean People's Army (NKPA) had captured the South Korean capital of Seoul and kept on going south, with little to stop it, while also overrunning the airfields that might have been of use to the U.S. Air Force. The attack not only took the South Koreans by surprise, it caught the United States unprepared for war.
To the extent that the United States was planning for war in 1950, it was almost exclusively focused on a potential Soviet invasion of Europe, which was to be deterred or won (on the cheap, relatively) by U.S. Air Force intercontinental bombers armed with atomic bombs. The U.S. Navy had repeatedly lost the budget and service roles and missions battles of the late 1940s; the size, capability, and readiness of the Navy was a pale shadow of what it had been at the Japanese surrender only five years before.
As it turned out, the U.S. Army was in even worse shape than the Navy, and the first combat actions between the U.S. Army and the NKPA were humiliating defeats for the Americans, with several thousand U.S. soldiers killed and captured as they were steam-rollered by superior NKPA armored forces and sheer numbers. It was also apparent that the massive U.S. Air Force investment in long-range nuclear bombers was useless in a war in which the object was to stop North Korean aggression, without getting into a full-scale war with the Soviet Union—i.e., a "limited war." And, without airfields in Korea, the ability of Air Force tactical aircraft to affect the battle from bases in Japan was severely constrained.
The U.S. Navy presence in the Western Pacific in 1950 had been reduced to one aircraft carrier (Valley Forge, CV-45), two cruisers, and a handful of destroyers, which were severely short of ammunition and underway logistics support. Nevertheless, it was this naval force, augmented by a smaller British carrier (HMS Triumph) and other Allied ships under a (U.S.-led) United Nations command structure that played a key role in establishing command of the air and of the sea that prevented the U.S. Army from being thrown out of Korea. Without control of the vital sea lanes, there is little doubt that, by August 1950, the North Koreans would have been in possession of the entire Korean peninsula. It was U.S. Navy amphibious capability—as enfeebled as it was by budget cuts—that got a well-trained U.S. Marine brigade into Korea just in time to stiffen the defense of the Pusan Perimeter and prevent the last UN toehold in South Korea from being overrun.
The miniscule Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) acquitted itself well, particularly in a small battle with major strategic consequences, when the largest warship in the ROKN (a submarine chaser) sank a North Korean transport with 600 troops embarked that were attempting a surprise seizure of the port of Pusan on 26 June 1950.
The U.S. and Allied navies were in the action almost immediately, with two U.S. destroyers covering the evacuation of U.S. and friendly foreign nationals from Seoul on only the second day of the war. On 2 July 1950, light cruiser Juneau (CL-119) and two Allied ships sank three of four North Korean PT-boats and two of two motor gunboats in the Battle of Chumonchin Chan. This was the first and last surface engagement between the U.S. and North Korean navies, as it convinced the North Koreans to never try that again (at least until the Pueblo—AGER-2—incident in 1968).
On 3 July, Valley Forge and Triumph (both in Task Force 77) caught the North Koreans by surprise with a strike from the Yellow Sea right into their capital of Pyongyang. The action that resulted in the first air-to-air kill by a U.S. Navy jet fighter, when an F9F Panther flown by Lieutenant (j.g.) Leonard Plog downed a piston-engine North Korean Yak-9 fighter. This was also the combat debut of the Panther and the new AD-4 Skyraider attack aircraft. Although hampered by lack of underway ammunition resupply and refueling, the two carriers bounced back and forth between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, so the North Koreans could never be sure from which direction they would be hit.
U.S. Navy aircraft played a critical role in interdicting North Korean troop movements and supply lines, which became increasingly vulnerable the farther the NKPA advanced. This forced increased North Korean resupply via small coastal craft, which the ROKN (beefed up with several more sub-chasers) proved very adept at catching and destroying. On the other hand, close air support procedures between the .U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Army proved to be completely bolloxed up, in need of urgent fixing.
First Korean War carrier air strikes: A North Korean railroad train is attacked just south of Pyongyang by planes from the joint U.S.-British Task Force 77, 4 July 1950. The carriers involved were USS Valley Forge (CV-45) and HMS Triumph (80-G-417148).
Bombardment by Allied ships on the west coast (especially challenging given the extreme tidal conditions) and by (primarily) U.S. ships on the east coast made the North Koreans pay a heavy price for their advance. Naval gunfire on the east coast became even more effective when the heavy cruisers Helena (CA-75) and Toledo (CA-133), with their 8-inch guns, arrived within a month to augment Rochester (CA-124). U.S. surface ships ranged far to the north along the Korean coast shelling key North Korean ports. The destroyer Mansfield (DD-728) put a raiding party ashore in North Korea to blow a key tunnel on the railroad bringing supplies in from Vladivostok, Soviet Union. This was followed by submarine transport Perch (ASSP-313) putting a British commando party ashore in a similar operation. U.S. and UN warships played a key role in keeping the northern end of the Pusan Perimeter from collapsing.
The arrival of a second U.S. carrier (Philippine Sea, CV-47) enabled near-continuous carrier strikes on North Korean targets. The arrival of two escort carriers, Badoeng Strait (CVE-118) and Sicily (CVE-116), each with a Marine Corsair squadron embarked, provided critical air support that enabled the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade to repel North Korean breakthroughs of U.S. Army divisions attempting to hold the hard-pressed Pusan perimeter.
Compared to the massive casualties being suffered by the U.S. and ROK armies, the cost to the U.S. Navy in the first months of the war was relatively light, with only a handful of aircraft shot down (and even more lost to operational causes than the enemy).
However, the first Navy Cross went posthumously to Commander Raymond Vogel, the commander of Air Group 11 (CVG-11), who was shot down while dropping a span on the Han River Bridge in Seoul on 19 August 1950.
Although Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps aircraft inflicted massive losses to North Korean troops, tanks, and supply lines, the North Koreans just kept attacking. At the end of August 1950, the issue was still very much in doubt as to whether the Pusan Perimeter would hold.
That the U.S. Navy accomplished anything at all was a testament to the leaders and sailors who hadn't forgotten how to win, despite shortfalls in just about everything. In 1949, the general consensus in the new unified Department of Defense was that the Navy was obsolete, and the Secretary of Defense cancelled the next-generation aircraft carrier (United States, CVA-58) and gave orders to reduce the number of operational fleet carriers from eight to four. An additional draconian budget cut in mid-1949, if implemented, would have meant putting every aircraft carrier into mothballs, along with the last battleship that wasn't already in reserve. Upon the outbreak of the Korean War, the Truman administration suddenly discovered that a navy really truly can come in handy, and can do things that strategic bombers and atomic weapons can't. So, in some respect, the U.S. Navy can thank Kim Il-sung (grandfather of today's "Dear Leader") for showing the rest of the Defense Department the error of their ways.
For more on the U.S. Navy's role in the first months of the Korean War, please see attachment H-050-1.
As always, you are welcome to forward H-grams in order to spread these stories of U.S. Navy valor and sacrifice. Back issues of H-grams enhanced with photos may be found here.
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Thanks to GM ! and Dutch
Before it is disappears
-----Original Message-----
From:
Subject: Great music video
Oh God Help Us All, by Five Times August
🙏🏾🇺🇸🆘 🎶
Tam
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Thanks to Brett
Geopolitical Futures:
Keeping the future in focus
Daily Memo: Where the Cold War Began
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman
June 24, 2022
I stood on a balcony in Warsaw this past week to gaze at the Vistula River. The Vistula runs wide and deep, the guardian of Warsaw from the east. Poland has seen existential threats from all directions. In the 20th century, the danger came from Germany to the west and from Russia to the east. Poland was once an empire, but for much of its recent history, it has been a victim. And the Vistula is where we must remember an episode that may not have resulted in the most Polish deaths but that nonetheless exemplifies the brutality and betrayal that was visited upon the country not so long ago.
In 1945, Germany was collapsing. A quasi-government in Poland called the Lublin Committee was emerging from the ashes, preparing to build a free Polish government and allow Poland to take control of its destiny. The future of Poland had been discussed extensively at the meetings of the big three – Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. Roosevelt and Churchill favored the Lublin Committee. Stalin was appalled. For Stalin, a pro-Soviet or at least a Soviet-controlled Poland was essential. Then as today, the Russian objective was strategic depth. Moscow had nearly fallen to the Germans, saved only by winter and distance. Controlling Poland was a simple matter of safety. Moscow therefore wanted the Lublin Committee replaced by a communist government under Russian control.
Roosevelt and Churchill opposed this, but they had a different sense of Stalin and how to handle him. Churchill saw Stalin as the moral and strategic danger to their plan to spread liberal democracy to the east. Roosevelt believed that whatever Stalin might be, he had to be persuaded that the Lublin Committee would not pose a threat to Russia. Roosevelt believed deeply in the power of personal relations to the point that it might overwhelm geopolitical imperatives. I don't think he was naive, but he believed Stalin had the upper hand militarily and that the only viable option was trying to convince him that the U.S. and Britain had no bad intentions. What was benign to them was a mortal threat to Stalin. Even so, Stalin indicated vaguely that the Lublin Committee would be respected.
During World War II, as the Russians approached Warsaw from the east, the Polish Home Army, a resistance force inside Warsaw, rose up against the Germans. At this moment, Stalin halted the Russian advance. His explanation was that Russian forces needed to regroup and be resupplied. Warsaw was Stalin's for the taking. Some reorganization might have been needed, but the Russian army stopped for weeks. The Germans carried out the slaughter they were famous for, decimating the Home Army and allowing Russia to enter Warsaw as the only force capable of governing. The Lublin Committee was brushed aside, and a communist party subservient to Russia was imposed, remaining in power until the Soviet Union fell. In other words, Stalin stopped to give Hitler time to slaughter Stalin's Polish enemies, and once completed, Stalin advanced into a devastated city.
This is where the Cold War began. Stalin did not trust Churchill or Roosevelt. In his view, Russia paid the price for crushing Hitler – in spite of the fact that he had allied with Hitler to invade and divide Poland in 1939. Roosevelt believed he could forge personal trust with Stalin to avoid conflict, which was perhaps the only course possible since a Western military insertion into Poland was impossible. The deep doubts about Russia were frozen into a long-term distrust and created 46 years of conflict.
When I stepped out on that balcony in Warsaw, a cocktail in hand, I did not know that this was the river behind which Stalin halted, and to my rear was the city where he welcomed Hitler's slaughter of the Poles. I saw a deep and deceptively calm river but could not see the blood that had been spilled to assure Russia's strategic depth. The irony was that I was in Warsaw to address the strategic challenge posed in 2022 by Russia in Ukraine, the massive Polish effort to sustain the Ukrainian resistance, and my own country's presence in Poland, supplying weapons to Ukraine and with the 82nd airborne deployed.
Russia continues to seek strategic depth all these years later, and continues the contest it began on the banks of the Vistula. Russia lost Poland, and now it's fighting a war to take hold of Ukraine. It no longer has a Germany to do its dirty work. But it is important we remember the manner in which Russia pursues imperatives: What Moscow must have generates its operating principles. It cannot give up the search for strategic depth, nor can it obtain it without the ruthlessness reality demands. But history has a great sense of humor and demands patience. How much patience Ukraine can muster is, of course, unclear. How many times Russia must play the same game is even more so.
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Thanks to Dale
This is a repeat from an old List about the battle of Saipan
one Crazy Marine,
June 25th
The Pied Piper of Saipan
On his first night on the island of Saipan in June 1944, Marine Private Guy Gabaldon slipped out of camp on his own and returned with two Japanese prisoners. His commanders told him that if left his post again, he'd be court-martialed. But the next night he disappeared again and came back with 50 prisoners. After that, his superiors let him go on his "lone-wolf " missions whenever he wanted.
Gabaldon wasn't simply after prisoners. He was trying to save lives. American troops had stormed Saipan, in the Marianna Islands, to break the Japanese defense line in the Pacific and secure a site for an air base. The Japanese tried to hold the island with desperate suicide charges. Gabaldon figured that more prisoners meant fewer casualties.
Just eighteen years old, Guy Gabaldon had learned street smarts from growing up in East Los Angeles barrios. He also knew some Japanese, thanks to a childhood friendship with a Japanese-American family. His strategy was simple. Working alone, he would creep up to an enemy-held cave or bunker, call out that the Marines were nearby, and assure the Japanese that they would be treated with dignity if they would lay down their arms.
"I must have seen too many John Wayne movies, because what I was doing was suicidal," Gabaldon later said. But his plan kept working.
One day Gabaldon persuaded some 800 Japanese soldiers to surrender and follow him back to the American lines. His astounded comrades nicknamed him the "Pied Piper of Saipan." Before being wounded by machine-gun fire, he captured perhaps 1,500 prisoners.
Gabaldon's bravery earned him the Navy Cross, and Hollywood made a movie, Hell to Eternity, about him. But his greatest reward was knowing that, in the midst of a bloody Pacific battle, he had single-handedly saved many American lives.
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Thanks to DR and Rich
Subject: Let the riots (er, ah, I mean peaceful protests) begin...
Hi to all -
Supreme Court
The long expected announcement has happened. The court decided by a 6-3 vote to end Roe v. Wade. Each state can make its own rules on the subject of abortion, there is no longer a national mandate. The original decision was made by the Supreme Court years ago, and now the court has reversed itself.
The pro life crowd is very happy.
The abortion industry is very unhappy, along with the democrat party. Nancy got up with a sad face and cried about what a bad day this has been. AOC joined the 'peaceful protesters', led by the military arm of the democrat party, BLM and Antifa, in calling for violence against this ruling, the court and all others who oppose them. They no longer even pretend to support the law of the land.
The Babylon Bee had a headline: 'The January 6 Committee suspended its deliberations to call for insurrection'. While local police are out in force in DC and elsewhere, the Justice department is far too busy seeking to arrest conservatives to even notice the violence, the assassination attempt on a supreme court justice, and the illegal protests at their homes, etc. etc. etc. No one has noticed all those pre-printed signs, and all the organized violence being staged for the 'night of rage'. Ever notice how the left is always filled with rage, but never solutions, nor any thing that might improve the lives of their neighbors?
There is even speculation that gay marriage is now in the sights of the court. No wonder democrats want to pack the court. This will last more than one night, and will be ugly.
The Court also struck down a NY law on gun control. NY demanded that anyone who wanted a carry permit demonstrate 'proper cause' for needing the permit. That is classically vague and subject to whatever whim of the moment decides is proper cause. This is a major win for the Second Amendment, and a major setback for the communists who want to disarm us.
Israel
They have been taking action against Iran, while not cutting Biden and his team into the loop of what they are doing. After all, Biden has sided with Iran, against Israel and the west. A number of targeted assassinations of military leaders and others involved in the nuclear programs of Iran have taken place, and more will follow. You can bet that there will be other attacks, including cyber attacks, in the near future. Israel will protect itself, regardless of what Biden and his Bozos want.
NetFlix
They are falling on hard times. More than 200,000 subscribers have quit their service. To make up the lost revenue, NetFlix is going to ads on their programing, just like TV did. As I recall, having no ads was one of their selling points. Cable TV did the same years ago. Remember they sold us on paying for TV by offering more varied programming, without those six minutes of ads that broadcast TV had. More than one third of all broadcast time now is ads. Blocks of a dozen or more are commonplace. And, even with that, the viewers keep going elsewhere.
Speaking of Biden...
Old senile Biden had troiuble reading his cue cards. He actually turned them to the camera, so we can all read his stage directions. What to say, how to move, when to sit and when to stand. It would be funny, if it were not so pathetic.
And, the first studies of his multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better spending spree have shown that there was almost no effect on the economy as a whole, but each job 'saved' cost about $850,000, or about ten times the cost of actually hiring people to work. Classic left wing economics and government.
We have so much to look forward to in the days to come. Hope you have plenty of ammunition.
Rich
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This day in US Military History
June 25
1876 – Determined to resist the efforts of the U.S. Army to force them onto reservations, Indians under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse wipe out Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and much of his 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Sioux Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had been successfully resisting American efforts to confine their people to reservations for more than a decade. Although both chiefs wanted nothing more than to be left alone to pursue their traditional ways, the growing tide of white settlers invading their lands inevitably led to violent confrontations. Increasingly, the Sioux and Cheyenne who did try to cooperate with the U.S. government discovered they were rewarded only with broken promises and marginal reservation lands. In 1875, after the U.S. Army blatantly ignored treaty provisions and invaded the sacred Black Hills, many formerly cooperative Sioux and Cheyenne abandoned their reservations to join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in Montana. They would not return without a fight. Late in 1875, the U.S. Army ordered all the "hostile" Indians in Montana to return to their reservations or risk being attacked. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse ignored the order and sent messengers out to urge other Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe Indians to unite with them to meet the white threat. By the late spring of 1876, more than 10,000 Indians had gathered in a massive camp along a river in southern Montana called the Little Big Horn. "We must stand together or they will kill us separately," Sitting Bull told them. "These soldiers have come shooting; they want war. All right, we'll give it to them." Meanwhile, three columns of U.S. soldiers were converging on the Little Big Horn. On June 17, the first column under the command of General George Crook was badly bloodied by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse. Stunned by the size and ferocity of the Indian attack, Crook was forced to withdraw. Knowing nothing of Crook's defeat, the two remaining columns commanded by General Alfred Terry and General John Gibbon continued toward the Little Big Horn. On June 22, Terry ordered the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer to scout ahead for Indians. On the morning of this day in 1876, Custer's scouts told him that a gigantic Indian village lay nearby in the valley of the Little Big Horn River. Custer dismissed the scouts' claim that the village was extraordinarily large-certainly many thousands of Indians-as exaggerated. Indeed, his main fear was that the Indians would scatter before he could attack. Rather than wait for reinforcements, Custer decided to move forward immediately and stage an unusual mid-day attack. As the 7th Cavalry entered the valley, Custer divided the regiment of about 600 men into four battalions, keeping a force of 215 under his own command. In the vast Indian encampment (historians estimate there were as many as 11,000 Indians), word quickly spread of the approaching soldiers. Too old actually to engage in battle, Sitting Bull rallied his warriors while seeing to the protection of the women and children. The younger Crazy Horse prepared for battle and sped off with a large force of warriors to meet the invaders. As Custer's divided regiment advanced, the soldiers suddenly found they were under attack by a rapidly growing number of Indians. Gradually, it dawned on Custer that his scouts had not exaggerated the size of the Indian force after all. He immediately dispatched urgent orders in an attempt to regroup his regiment. The other battalions, however, were facing equally massive attacks and were unable to come to his aid. Soon, Custer and his 215 men found themselves cut off and under attack by as many as 3,000 armed braves. Within an hour, they were wiped out to the last man. The remaining battalions of the 7th Cavalry were also badly beaten, but they managed to fight a holding action until the Indians withdrew the following day. The Battle of the Little Big Horn was the Indians' greatest victory and the army's worst defeat in the long and bloody Plains Indian War. The Indians were not allowed to revel in the victory for long, however. The massacre of Custer and his 7th Cavalry outraged many Americans and only confirmed the image of the bloodthirsty Indians in their minds, and the government became more determined to destroy or tame the hostile Indians. The army redoubled its efforts and drove home the war with a vengeful fury. Within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne would be confined to reservations. Crazy Horse was killed in 1877 after leaving the reservation without permission. Sitting Bull was shot and killed three years later in 1890 by a Lakota policeman.
1950 – Armed forces from communist North Korea smash into South Korea, setting off the Korean War. The United States, acting under the auspices of the United Nations, quickly sprang to the defense of South Korea and fought a bloody and frustrating war for the next three years. Korea, a former Japanese possession, had been divided into zones of occupation following World War II. U.S. forces accepted the surrender of Japanese forces in southern Korea, while Soviet forces did the same in northern Korea. Like in Germany, however, the "temporary" division soon became permanent. The Soviets assisted in the establishment of a communist regime in North Korea, while the United States became the main source of financial and military support for South Korea. On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces surprised the South Korean army (and the small U.S. force stationed in the country), and quickly headed toward the capital city of Seoul. The United States responded by pushing a resolution through the U.N.'s Security Council calling for military assistance to South Korea. (Russia was not present to veto the action as it was boycotting the Security Council at the time.) With this resolution in hand, President Harry S. Truman rapidly dispatched U.S. land, air, and sea forces to Korea to engage in what he termed a "police action." The American intervention turned the tide, and U.S. and South Korean forces marched into North Korea. This action, however, prompted the massive intervention of communist Chinese forces in late 1950. The war in Korea subsequently bogged down into a bloody stalemate. In 1953, the United States and North Korea signed a cease-fire that ended the conflict. The cease-fire agreement also resulted in the continued division of North and South Korea at just about the same geographical point as before the conflict. The Korean War was the first "hot" war of the Cold War. Over 55,000 American troops were killed in the conflict. Korea was the first "limited war," one in which the U.S. aim was not the complete and total defeat of the enemy, but rather the "limited" goal of protecting South Korea. For the U.S. government, such an approach was the only rational option in order to avoid a third world war and to keep from stretching finite American resources too thinly around the globe. It proved to be a frustrating experience for the American people, who were used to the kind of total victory that had been achieved in World War II. The public found the concept of limited war difficult to understand or support and the Korean War never really gained popular support.
1996 – At least 23 Americans were killed at a US base near Dhahran and another 105 suffered serious injuries from a truck bomb estimated at 5,000 pounds at the Khobar Towers apartment complex adjacent to King Abdul Aziz Air Base. About 5,000 US troops served in Saudi Arabia. US, French and British aircraft resumed flying 100 missions per day over southern Iraz from Saudi Arabia. In 1997 intelligence information tied a senior Iranian intelligence officer to Hani Abd Rahim Sayegh, a man who fled Saudi Arabia shortly after the bombing. In 1999 the US threatened was set to deport Hani al-Sayegh to Saudi Arabia. Sayegh feared torture and asked for US asylum. Sayegh was deported Oct 10. In 2000 Ahmad Behbahani told a 60 Minutes journalist from a refugee camp in Turkey that he proposed the Pan Am operation and coordinated the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. In 2001 13 Saudis and one Lebanese man were indicted for the bombing that killed 19 American airmen and wounded nearly 400 others.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
*EPPERSON, HAROLD GLENN
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Born: 14 July 1923, Akron, Ohio. Accredited to: Ohio. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, 2d Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on the Island of Saipan in the Marianas, on 25 June 1944. With his machinegun emplacement bearing the full brunt of a fanatic assault initiated by the Japanese under cover of predawn darkness, Pfc. Epperson manned his weapon with determined aggressiveness, fighting furiously in the defense of his battalion's position and maintaining a steady stream of devastating fire against rapidly infiltrating hostile troops to aid materially in annihilating several of the enemy and in breaking the abortive attack. Suddenly a Japanese soldier, assumed to be dead, sprang up and hurled a powerful hand grenade into the emplacement. Determined to save his comrades, Pfc. Epperson unhesitatingly chose to sacrifice himself and, diving upon the deadly missile, absorbed the shattering violence of the exploding charge in his own body. Stouthearted and indomitable in the face of certain death, Pfc. Epperson fearlessly yielded his own life that his able comrades might carry on the relentless battle against a ruthless enemy. His superb valor and unfaltering devotion to duty throughout reflect the highest credit upon himself and upon the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.
*KELLY, JOHN D.
Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant (then Corporal), U.S. Army, Company E, 314th Infantry, 79th Infantry Division. Place and date: Fort du Roule, Cherbourg, France, 25 June 1944. Entered service at: Cambridge Springs, Pa. Birth: Venango Township, Pa. G.O. No.: 6, 24 January 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. On 25 June 1944, in the vicinity of Fort du Roule, Cherbourg, France, when Cpl. Kelly's unit was pinned down by heavy enemy machinegun fire emanating from a deeply entrenched strongpoint on the slope leading up to the fort, Cpl. Kelly volunteered to attempt to neutralize the strongpoint. Arming himself with a pole charge about 10 feet long and with 15 pounds of explosive affixed, he climbed the slope under a withering blast of machinegun fire and placed the charge at the strongpoint's base. The subsequent blast was ineffective, and again, alone and unhesitatingly, he braved the slope to repeat the operation. This second blast blew off the ends of the enemy guns. Cpl. Kelly then climbed the slope a third time to place a pole charge at the strongpoint's rear entrance. When this had been blown open he hurled hand grenades inside the position, forcing survivors of the enemy gun crews to come out and surrender The gallantry, tenacity of purpose, and utter disregard for personal safety displayed by Cpl. Kelly were an incentive to his comrades and worthy of emulation by all.
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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for June 25
FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS FOR June 25
THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
25 June
1934: Richard C. DuPont set a glider distance record of 158.299 miles from Elmira, N.Y., to Basking Ridge, N.J., in a DuPont Bowlus sailplane. (24)
1937: Richard Archbald made first nonstop transcontinental amphibian flight in a PBY-1 Catalina from San Diego to New York. (24)
1943: Eighth Air Force sent B-17s to attack enemy convoys off Wangerooge and Juist Islands in the North Sea. (4) In the heaviest single attack made to date by the Northwest African Air Forces, 130 B-17s dropped more than 300 tons of bombs on Messina, Sicily. (24)
1947: First flight of the Boeing B-50. (12)
1950: KOREAN WAR BEGAN. The North Koreans moved their army along the 38th parallel, and at 0400 hours they launched a sudden and all-out attack against the Republic of Korea. The USAF took its B-29s from "mothballs" and pressed them into service along with current combat-ready fighters, bombers, and cargo aircraft. (1) (12) (17) Boeing flew its B-47A Stratojet for the first time. (31)
1951: President Truman dedicated the Arnold Engineering Development Center at Tullahoma for testing and evaluating aircraft and guided missiles. (24) Edwards AFB became the AFFTC.
1961: Four months after reaching combat readiness, the 702 SMW at Presque Isle AFB inactivated as SAC phased the obsolete Snark out of the Air Force inventory. (6)
1965: SAC inactivated the last Titan I units: the 724 SMS and 725 SMS and 451 SMW at Lowry AFB, and the 569 SMS at Mountain Home AFB. (6)
1968: President Johnson reappointed Gen John P. McConnell as CSAF for one year beginning 1 August 1968.
1975: The USAF conducted the first of two jettison vehicle flight tests on Boeing's ALCM from a B52 SRAM rotary launcher. (6)
1986: Lt Gen James Abrahamson, Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization announced the selection of Falcon Station as the site of the SDI National Test Facility. (16)
1991: The 60 MAW delivered 80 tons of food to Nairobi, Kenya, to relieve a drought-induced food shortage. (16)
1996: Terrorists bombed Khobar Towers near King Abdul-Aziz AB, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Air Force personnel and injuring 300 others. It was the worst terrorist attack against American military personnel since the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Lebanon. USAF personnel were in Saudi Arabia to support Operation Southern Watch. (26)
1999: An all-Air Force crew flew the V-22 Osprey for the first time in a 20-minute sortie from Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico, Va., to NAS Patuxent River. (AFNEWS Article 991306, 8 Jul 99)
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