Picture of the Day: Remembering the Battle of Osan

The actual battle plan called for a Regimental Combat Team with armor, artillery, and air support. Instead, they sent half a battalion of improperly trained and under-equipped infantry with an under-equipped battery of 105mm howitzers with only 6 HEAT rounds.

The terrible thing is that was what they thought they could deliver by air; but the rest of the Division got to Pusan just as fast. And Bloody Mac send them in piecemeal anyway…

Given how little the troops had trained in Japan, it might be assumed that the generals thought that using them as “ablative material” instead of giving them a ghost of a chance to survive was the right way to delay the norks; but it might as easily have been gross incompetence, dereliction of duty, and/or a false belief that these green kids were the same troops who stormed Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Okinawa. They were not. And neither were most of their NCOs or junior officers. And the norks heading south in ’50 were better trained and equipped than most of the Japanese holding islands in ’44 and ’45.

From Wikipedia:

Two-hundred fifty of Task Force Smith’s force had returned to the American lines before nightfall, with about 150 more of the force killed, wounded or missing. Most of the other stragglers found their way into the American lines over the next several days. The last stragglers from 2nd Platoon, B Company, reached Chonan five days later, only 30 minutes ahead of the North Korean army.

Upon the initial count, Task Force Smith suffered 20 killed in action, 130 wounded in action or missing in action, and around 36 captured. After the end of the war this figure was revised to 60 dead, 21 wounded and 82 captured, 32 of whom died in captivity. This casualty count accounted for 40 percent of Task Force Smith.

U.S. troops advancing northward during the Pusan breakout offensive would later discover a series of shallow graves containing the bodies of several soldiers of the 24th Infantry Division. All had been shot in the back of the head, their hands bound behind their backs with communications wire.

North Korean casualties were approximately 42 dead and 85 wounded, with four tanks destroyed or immobilized. The North Korean advance was delayed approximately seven hours.