"We were poorly armed with hand me down World War Two weapons".
I'm so tired of hearing this absolutely absurd myth being repeated, including (dare I say it?) by Korean War veterans that, yes, I'm going into a rant.
One of the persistent myths about the Korean War that's repeated in books and on television shows, and which has become so accepted as accurate that its repeated by veterans as well (and has long been, I heard it from a civics teacher in junior high who was a Korean War veteran) is that when the US sent troops in Korean to fight in the Korean War, they were poorly armed as they were all "armed with World War Two weapons." I heard this most recently on the tail end of This Week recently when it was repeated by some veteran of the war in their Veterans Day interviews, which focused on the Korean War.
World War Two ended in 1945.
The Korean War started in 1950.
Most (but not all by any means) of the weapons were World War Two weapons. D'uh! The prior massive war had only been over five years! It would be been completely absurd if most of the weapons the US had in Korea weren't World War Two weapons.
And those weapons were amongst the absolute best in the world at the time. They were far, far from obsolete. Quite a few were creations that arose in that war and were nearly new.
The assertion that they were antiquated and obsolete is, frankly (dare I say it) stupid.
Let's run through those "obsolete" weapons, shall we.
The M1 Garand. It was the best battle rifle in the world from the point of its adoption and at least up through the Korean War. It likely retained that status until the FAL, G3 and M14 became common in the late 1950s and it remains in use in some places even today. It was far better than anything the Chinese or North Koreans were equipped with.
The basic rifle was the M1 Garand. The Garand is widely regarded as the best rifle of the Second World War. In its basic model (models actually) it remained in use as the regular issue rifle for U.S ground troops well into the late 1950s at which time the M14, which is a modified, improved, Garand quite frankly, started to replace it. The M14, for reasons we've already discussed never succeeded in doing that fully, and in the Guard and Reserve the M1 remained in use all the way into the mid 1970s before being replaced by the M16A1. Having said that, nothing has managed to completely replace the M14 either, so a direct evolution of the Garand remains in use to this very day in the US military.
Why did the Garand serve so long? Well, compared to other US longarm its service life wasn't all that long, but it lasted a long time in relative terms as it was such a good rifle. It was not obsolete in the 1950s by any means. Indeed, at that time it was probably the best battle rifle in the world. It was so good that it had replaced the rifles used by many nations around the globe immediately after World War Two and it equipped most of the armies that fought for the United Nations in South Korea as their principal weapon and equipped all of them to some extent.
And, worth noting, most of the North Korean and most of the Chinese troops who served in the Korean War were armed with Mosin Nagants, a bolt action that had been in service since the 1890s.
Hmph.
The sniper variant of the M1, by the way, last saw combat service in US hands in the 1990s. That's right, the 90s. M1s keep on keeping on in the hands of guerrillas in the Philippines to this very day, along with some M14s.
In the 1950-54 time frame, US troops were carrying the best military longarm in the world. The only serving longarm at that time which perhaps could claim to contest that title would have been the AK47, which was just entering Soviet service at that time. The archetype of the assault rifle, plenty of experienced soldiers will tell you even now that they'd rather carry the M1 than the AK47. The Garand did see action against the AK in the Vietnam War in the hands of the ARVN and there didn't seem to be a lot of complaints about it being inferior to the AK at that time.
Marines holding Chinese prisoners in Korea. These Marines are armed with M1 or M2 carbines. Only the post war rebuilt carbines, or the M2 carbines, can take a bayonet like the carbine on the left is sporting.
U.S. soldiers who didn't carry M1 Garands carried M1 or M2 Carbines. I do feel that those weapons are far from great, but the M2 was a new variant of the M1 and neither was regarded as being obsolete in any fashion. The M2 would serve into the Vietnam War in large numbers in US hands and in ARVN hands. I don't like it, but it wasn't regarded as obsolete in any fashion. If it wasn't good, it wasn't very good when it entered US service at the start of World War Two.
Marine firing a M1911 in 2006. Contrary to the official caption, this is not the version of the M1911 adopted by the Marines for close combat and manufactured by Colt, but rather an example of a Springfield Armory manufactured conventional M1911A1 production pistol purchased by the Marine Corps prior to that to replace older stocks of M1911A1s. Obsolete? Not hardly.
The Carbine entered service as an alternative to the handgun for guys who didn't need to carry a rifle for one reason or another. It never replaced the official service pistol however, and that pistol in the Korean War was the M1911A1. The M1911 entered service in 1911. Whenever people talk about "World War Two hand downs" they don't mean the M1911, which is universally regarded as a great pistol, maybe the greatest military pistol of all time. It's so good that subsequent efforts to replace it fully, which started in the 1980s after the supplies of World War Two manufactured M1911s was growing long in the tooth, have failed. The M1911 is still in service, in a special role, with that special role being the Marine Corps close combat pistol. The M1911 practically dominates the civilian large pistol market today and is hardly regarded as obsolete by anyone who is knowledgeable on the topic.
BAR man of the U.S. Army engaged Chinese troops with a BAR while shielded by a M4A3E8 Sherman tank. Like most examples of BARs in combat in the 1940s and 1950s, this BAR has the bipod removed.
So let's turn to the US machineguns of the period then and take a look at them.
The US had not adopted a general purpose machine gun by 1950 and would not until the late 1950s, when it adopted the M60. During the Korean War the light machine gun role, or squad section machinegun if you prefer, was filled by the Browning Automatic Rifle, the medium role by the M1919, and the heavy machine gun role by the M2HB. The M2HB has proven to be so perfect in design that its still the heavy machine gun, with subsequent efforts to replace it proving to be a failure.
Captured German MG 42 in Normandy, 1944. Yes, this weapon was better than the BAR and probably the M1919 Browning. But no nation had developed a weapon like this other than the Germans by the start of the Korean War. The first nation that would do so, Switzerland, didn't introduce one until 1951 and its basically a copy of the MG42, a task made easier, arguably, for the Swiss by the fact that the Swiss were highly familiar with German automatic weapons designs. France would introduce a GPMG in 1952. The US and the UK would not follow suit until the late 1950s.
A GPMG, a gun that filled the role of the squad and light machinegun, like the German MG42 would have been a better solution to the remaining machine gun roles than the M1919 and the BAR but no nation outside of Germany had fielded a GPMG by 1950. The Communist opponents were fielding (big shocker here) World War Two vintage Soviet light machineguns and the giant Soviet PM1910 which had been in service, complete with wheeled carriage, since 1910. The British were still using the Vickers. The US M1919 was actually a more modern gun than about anything else being used in the real world, save for MG42s which had been used by the recently defeated Germans. The BAR was not a good light machine gun in the squad role (it was a great automatic rifle however), but it had acquired cult status in the US forces by that time, and was particularly so regarded by the Marines, who clung to it as late as the Vietnam War. If it wasn't good in that role, it is true that it had never been, but US troops didn't seem to realize that for some reason, probably as they tended to use it in its intended role of automatic rifle, which did mean that the US basically lacked a squad support machinegun.
U.S. soldier firing a M1919 in Korean in 1953. Yes, it isn't as modern as the MG42 was, but it was better than anything anyone else in the world was using at the time the war started. Note the backpack this soldier is equipped with, which is a post World War Two design.
Infantrymen using the M1919A6 in Korea. This was a stop gap or adapted version of the M1919 into a GPMG role and it really wasn't all that good.
If any real criticism of US machineguns can be made in regards to the obsolescence or just quality, therefore, it comes in at the squad level. And a World War Two solution to that problem, the M1919A6, which really wasn't a very good weapon in terms of a solution.
The M1919A6 came about specifically because the United States lacked a GPMG and because the BAR wasn't a great light machinegun even if it was a really good automatic rifle. The thought was to make a GPMG variant of a gun that was really good, that being the M1919, but putting a stock and bipod on it.
If that idea sounds suspect, it's one that actually had been done before, and by the Germans. The Germans had made a ground "light" version of the Maxim macheingun during World War One. Indeed, that weapon has a stock that looks practically identical to the one used on the M1919A6, and its really hard not to conclude that the designers of the M1916A6 simply copied it entirely from the earlier German design. Anyhow, you really can't make a tripod mounted light machinegun into a stocked light machinegun and it just wasn't all that much.
So, you might ask, why not just come up with a GPMG, darn it?
Well, I've answered some of that already. It took every nation but the Germans into at least the early 1950s to do that. In the case of the US and UK, moreover, a lot of work was going on at the time to come up with a new cartridge that would be used in a future NATO adoption and, it was thought, might result in NATO standard weapons. As it would happen, that would take until 1953 to accomplish and that's not really surprising as the US had distinctly different ideas about what that cartridge should be, as it wanted to be basically equivalent to the .30-06 it was already using. If it seems odd that France would be the first nation to field a GPMG outside of the Germans, well the French never adopted the NATO round and they rushed ahead with their own new design in part because they were deep into a series of colonial wars and had immediate arms requirements that had to contemplate reviving their domestic arms industry.
Anyhow, it can't really be said that the US light and heavy machineguns were in any way obsolete. Two of them were great weapons, the third, the BAR, was not so much but it was something that was well liked in the field and given where things were headed, ti wouldn't have been possible to replace it prior to 1950, and it in fact proved impossible to replace it until the 1960s in the regular forces, with it hanging on in the reserves all the way into the 1970s.
Submachineguns are, quite frankly, not a terribly significant weapon in the context of the U.S. military, contrary to the way they are portrayed in film. they really reached the zenith of their use by the US during World War Two and only then because they received combat use that was outside of their officially sanctioned role. Some of that continued on into the Vietnam War, but in an ever diminishing way for a variety of reasons, one simply being that the wars following World War Two were smaller wars and the Army was able to keep better tabs on the Table of Organizational Equipment (TOE) for various units.
During the Korean War the US was in fact still using two submachineguns that it had used during World War Two. Everyone at the time was still using submachineguns they had made during World War Two. New submachineguns would come on after the war, but it wasn't really until the mid 1950s that there were any developments in the submachinegun that were even worth noting.
U.S. Marine Sgt. John Wisbur Bartlett Sr. fires a M1 Thompson submachine gun on Okinawa in 1945. The Marine next him carries a Browning Automatic Rifle.
During the Korean War, the US was still using the two variant of the Thompson Sub Machinegun. The Thompson, the famous Tommy Gun, was such a good close combat submachinegun that it fit into he category of weapons that just refused to go away for that particular role, which is a role that hte United States didn't want a submachinegun for. The Thompson continued to fall into this role as late as the Vietnam War, by which time the US really really didn't want a submachinegun in this role, but it kept falling into it anyway. Even today, if you had to go into combat armed with a submachinegun, the Thompson would be a really good choice.
The US, however, never officially used submachineguns in that role and actually only officially issued them as emergency weapons for vehicle crewmen. The basic thought is that if you have to flee your tank, it's a screaming emergency, and maybe a submachinegun gives you a fighting chance of doing that. That's the only real role the US wanted submachineguns for. As the Thompson is a big gun, and expensive to make, the US introduced the M3 "Grease Gun" during World War Two to fill that role.
US soldier guarding German POWs in France in 1944, armed with a M3 submachinegun.
Cheap to make and very compact, the M3 filled that role all the way into the 21st Century, ti was so good at it. It doesn't (I think) today, but only as there haven't been any made since World War Two and the old ones likely finally were sufficiently banged around so as there to be a need to field something else. Like the Thompson, however, some examples of it always ended up getting actual field close combat use by soldiers who acquired them in one fashion or another. While the M3 gets little love in print for some reason, truth be known its pretty good in its role and about as good as any other submachinegun made along the lines of the German MP38, which introduced the stamped steel/wire stock type of submachine gun.
The Chinese and North Koreans, on the other hand, did use a lot of combat machineguns, unlike the United States.That wasn't a strength of their TOE but rather a weakness in their training, as they followed the Soviet mass conscript model which emphasized low, or no, training. A submachinegun is an easy weapon to issue to soldiers whom you don't really want to bother training much as its easy to use, if not usually terribly effective. The submachinegun nearly universally used by the communist forces in the Korean War was the PPSh.
All of the variants of the PPSh are great submachine guns. There can be no doubt of that. Were they better than the US ones? No, they weren't. They were probably roughly equal in some ways. Chances are they really weren't quite as good as the Thompson and were somewhat better, as a combat weapon, than the M3, but the real difference is that the communists issued huge quantities of submachine guns while the US issued rifles. The US doctrine was much more solid.
Unusual photograph of US Marines fighting in Seoul. I'm uncertain of what sort of section this is, but two of the Marines are carrying M1 or M2 Carbines (probably M2s), one of which has a bayonet affixed to it. The Marine in the background is carrying a M1 Garand. Another has another Carbine. The Marine taking aim is carrying a belt of M1919 machinegun ammunition and is also equipped with a M1911A1 pistol with the holster partially cut away. My guess is that this is a machinegun section as they aren't equipped like regular riflemen.
So, in terms of small arms, obsolete? Not hardly.
M2HB in current use. This gun could have been made all the way back to World War Two. Most of them in US use today were made then, and they aren't obsolete. They've outlasted the guns that were supposed to try to replace them.
Indeed, with at least three of these weapons, the M1 Garand, the M1911 and the M2HB, you can make cases that efforts to replace them later would have been better left untried, although I think that argument would clearly fail as to the M1 Garand. It wouldn't be incorrect as to the M1911 and the M2HB. Efforts to replace the M2HB have been a total failure. Efforts to replace the M1911 with popguns have resulted in various popguns, but none which are actually better than the M1911 which won't go away.
Okay, so that must be true of heavy arms, right?
Nope.
It's often noted that the Korean War was an artilleryman's war and the U.S. artillery in the Korean War was fully modern. Some of the guns in use during the Korean War would not be fully replaced in the US inventory until the 1990s and many of the same models introduced by the United States during World War Two remain in use around the globe. Artillery advances very slowly and frankly any single model of artillery piece in use in the Korean War would be fully useful today in the US inventory except the trailed 8in gun, which was replaced by a self propelled gun in the late 1950s and ultimately by rockets in the 2000s. Advances have allowed for subsequent designs to be fielded which are better, but some of those designs were not fielded until much later.
105 mm howitzer in action in Korea.
The US went into World War Two with the 75mm field piece being the primary U.S. Army gun but, while they remained in use throughout the war, by the war's end the 105mm field gun had come to dominate. Following World War Two the 105 became the basic U.S. gun, augmented by 155mm guns. This remains the case today. The M101 105 mm howitzer that was developed by the United States during World War Two, from a carriage that was used for the 75mm pack gun that dated to prior to the war, remained in use in the U.S. Army up until the 1980s when it was replaced by a newer model. It was far from obsolete during the Korean War.
The 155 gun, the M114 came into service before World War Two and continued on uninterrupted until the late 1960s, when a replacement was designed. The replacement wouldn't fully replace it until the 1980s, however. Here too, the M114 was far from obsolete during the Korean War.
US self propelled howitzer firing in Korea. This is a really heavy howitzer and it appears to be a an 8in, although it might be a somewhat lighter gun. The carriage isn't fully visible but it would have been one of the carriages based on the chassis of the M4 Sherman.
The US also fielded some very heavy field guns during the Korean War, and the war would be their last. The reason for that is that super heavy guns became more common following the war once good self propelled chassis were developed for them. They were hugely resource intensive in their trailed form. But during the Korean War they were used and remained as fully modern as they had been during World War Two.
Munitions wise, our artillery projectiles and fuses (something armchair historians don't get into much) were leagues superior and vastly more technologically advanced than anyone elses on the planet. The Soviet stuff used by our opponents relied upon the blaze away and hope to hit something approach. US artillery is super deadly, and it was at that time. When it became an artilleryman's war, it became one that had one team in the major leagues, the US, and another that was playing t-ball.
And in terms of direct fire artillery, the US in fact was fielding weapons so new that they had not been used by the US during World War Two, or perhaps had been used very little.
During the Second World War the Soviets and the Germans both deployed large numbers of direct fire artillery pieces in the form of anti tank guns. The US and the UK came to look upon that as rather obsolescent and during the course of the war began to put quite a few of the same glass of guns, which were really large in at least the US's case, on tracked or half tracked vehicles. By the time of the Korean War that was passing from our practice as we rocketed, literally, ahead. During the Korean War we fielded the latest in shoulder fired rocket weapons, bazookas (our idea, not the Soviets nor the Germans) and we introduced in large numbers recoiless rifles.
Recoiless rifle being fired in Korea, BAR in foreground.
Recoiless rifles wouldn't really last all that long in U.S. service but they did have their day in the Korean War and worked really well. They had seen next to no use in World War Two. They were practically brand new. Hardly a hand me down.
The late 1950s would see new carriages come in for self propelled artillery, but here to that's hardly much of a big deal. The new carriages that came in after the Korean War were a lot more modern, but they would not have been ready in the early 1950s and no credible historian can maintain that gun motor carriages in use dating back to the late World War Two period hampered our efforts in Korea. Indeed, those same gun motor carriages continued to be used by other nations for decades after the Korean War.
So it must be tanks. That's it, right? Our tanks were ancient antiquarians and were bad. Right.
Well, before you think a silly thing like that, watch this:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?433629-2/design-history-m4-sherman-tank-world-war-ii
Okay, now here's the one area where I will credit, somewhat, those who complain about US equipment in Korea.
But before I go into that, note that in this discussion, and I don't think there's a military expert in the world who will disagree with anything I've said so far, I went through every other ground system before I came to one where criticism can be made.
Okay, what about US armor in Korea.
M4A3(76)W HVSS Sherman being used a a field piece during the Korean War.
Well, most of that armor was, no matter what a person thinks of it or no matter what is claimed, the M4 Sherman And the story is that it was obsolete compared to the Soviet T-34. I think I agree with that, but as anyone listening to the podcast above will have to note, this story isn't nearly as clear as it might seem. Perhaps it wasn't obsolete, so much as obsolescent.
But the thing there is that the Sherman was never as good, in my view (there are those who will contest this) as the T-34, even though the T-34 was slightly older. Be that as it may, the design environment for the T-34 was considerably different than it was for the M4, so that isn't really a viable criticism of the M4, in and of itself. And in Korea, given the model of Sherman in use, the story isn't really what it might seem.
The T-34, based on the American Christie system of tanks, was designed for the Russian environment. It was made to be made in the Soviet Union, shipped by rail, and deployed (at least initially) in the Soviet Union. The M4 was designed to be produced in the United States, shipped by ship to anywhere in the world, and then be used and repaired far from its place of manufacture. In its own way, the M4 was a masterpiece. It was much more reliable and nearly as good as the common German tanks and even it it wasn't as good of combat weapon as the Tigers and Panthers, it worked almost all the time, which the Tigers and Panthers usually did not.
The T-34 worked almost all the time as well and it was good enough that it was about as good as the Tiger and Panther (when they were working), which says a lot for it. The T-34 is the best of the common tanks of World War Two.
But if the M4 was obsolete in 1950, frankly so was the T-34/85, the last and best version of the T-34. Was the T-34/85 better than any common version of the M4. Yes. But was the M4 hideous, not.
Indeed, during the Korean War only late model Shermans with high velocity 76mm guns were used, and frankly their combat record against the T-34 was better than the T-34s against it. Some features of the T-34 were better, but only very marginally so, and some features of the Sherman were better. All in all, whether it be attributed to equipment or crews or both, the Sherman more than gave an good account of itself in the Korean War, and if results are all that should be considered, and indeed in real combat perhaps that''s what should be considered, it did better better than the T-34.
Well, at any rate, enter the M26 and the M46.
Marine Corps M26 Pershing in action in Korea.
By the end of World War Two the US had produced, and just started to field, the M26, a new heavy tank that would become a new main battle tank and the father of all American tanks up until the M1 Abrams. The M26 was a better tank than the best of the German tanks and it was a better tank than the T-34. It should have been, as it was an entire generation newer. It was massively superior to the Communist tanks used in Korea.
Marines take cover behind a M26 Pershing. The Marine on the left has picked up a Mosin Nagant rifles as a souvenir. The tanks target can be seen smoking in the distance.
The M26 however has few fans, which is largely because it was mechanically unreliable. It was frankly probably not needed in Europe when it was introduced late war, but it was the first of what would become a new generation of American tanks, so the US is lucky it was produced. In the Korean War it has a fan base that noted that it was impervious to about anything. It served only briefly, however, as its mechanical unreliability caused them to be with drawn in favor of M4A3E8 Shermans and the M46 Patton.
Marine Corps M46 Patton in Korea.
The M46 was a much improved M26 and had a good record in Korea. It grossly outmatched the T-34/85, showing that in a very short span of time, indeed already by the end of World War Two, the common American tank could in fact go toe to toe with the T-34/85 and the new American heavy/medium tanks were far better than it.
The only US tank that did really poorly during the Korean War was the M24 Chafee, which is not a surprise, and it may be the one piece of equipment where the "World War Two hand me downs" is actually somewhat true. But only somewhat.
Grossly outmatched M24 Chafee light tank waiting for a T-34/85 assault early in the Korean War.
Light tanks aren't supposed to engage other tanks in combat. They're really a scouting vehicle and in the US Army they came on as the sort of the slow motion reluctant replacement for armored cars that hadn't worked out when Jeeps hadn't worked out in a role that had last really worked out for the horse. Early US light tanks of World War Two were way too light to engage another tank in combat, but in Operation Torch, commenced just eleven months after Pearl Harbor, they were pressed into that role as there was nothing else to really do it until sufficient numbers of M4 Shermans were available. They were bad at that role.
As the war went on, they proved to light in general, as every light tank is always too light. The M3 came on to address that, then ultimately the M24 Chafee, named for the late cavalry officer who had been a vehicle proponent.
The M24 had been all well and good for late World War Two but following the war the US went to replace it with a heavier light tank. It had adopted the replacement, the M41 Walker Bulldog, in 1949, but that was too close to the war for production to have started. The design requirement for the tank had just been put out in 1946, shortly after the M24 had been adopted, so it's hardly anyone's fault that it wasn't readily available in 1950 for Korea. It did see use in Korea, however.
M41s in use by the ARVN in Vietnam.
The fault, if it could be put that way, for the M24 being the only tank available at first was that the Army had not placed M4s or M26s in Japan. But that's understandable. There was very low need for armor in post World War Two Japan, at first. The only threat to Japan was the Soviet Union and it was logically presumed that if the Soviets attempted to launch a seaborne invasion of Japan, it would be pretty obvious, and pretty obvious that it would result in nuclear war. Nobody thought the US was going to go to war to defend South Korea until the US in fact went to war to defend South Korea. So the M24s were hastily thrown into action against T-34/85s, just like M2s had been against Panzer IIIs and IVs, with much the same results.
But the M24 was the exception that proved the rule. By and large all of the armor the US fielded in the Korean War was fully contemporary at worst or the very best in the world at best. Soviet tanks like the T-55 didn't yet exist. Tanks like the M46 were a full generation ahead of the T-34/85. The M26 was heavier than any tank that the communist deployed except for a couple of IS 2s that were basically armored curiosities in context. American armor in the war wasn't made up of "hand me downs" at all.
In 1954 the military did an after action survey of tank combat that took place during the Korean War and found that there were 119 such engagements, almost all very early in the war. The US took out 97 T-34/85s for sure, and likely took out another 18. Of such tank action, the M4A3E8 was involved in 50s percent of the actions. The military found that the M4A3E8 was perfectly capable of destroying the T-34, keeping in mind that this version of the M4 was firing new 76 HVAP rounds that were not available during World War Two, but that the T34/85 was also capable of destroying the M4. So they proved to be an even match. M26s were involved in 32% of the tank engagements and M46s another 10%. The 90mm rounds fired by the M26s and the M46s were so stout that they'd go completely through the front glaces of the T34/85 and end up in the back of the tank, a devastating shot. T34/85s were largely unable to do anything to the Pershing and Patton's however.
Well, we've covered all the significant ground weapons, so we'll move to the air. But before we do, we'll take on non weapons. Maybe when vets and others complaint about World War Two "hand downs" they mean uniforms, or maybe trucks, or maybe other equipment, right?
Well, if so, they're off the mark.
Classic photograph of the early Korean War, infantryman in grief over a friend who has just been killed. While analyzing this for uniforms might seem odd, this photograph provides a really good example of Korean War uniforms. The infantrymen are wearing all cotton uniforms, all of which are post World War Two issue and design. The soldier in grief is wearing field pants of a pattern that had just been adopted (probably over a second pair of cotton "fatigue" pants. The field pants are based on the World War Two paratrooper pattern. These soldiers are equipped with World War Two vintage M1943 combat boots, which would be phased out quickly during World War Two in U.S. service, but which set a pattern worn by many armies throughout the remainder of the 20th Century.
During World War Two the United States bought millions of sets of combat uniforms. Given that, we would suppose that millions of those sets remained on hand and were issued during the Korean War. But if we imagined that, we'd be frankly in error. The reasons are a little complicated, but they also strongly counter the "hand me down" myth.
The US Army, followed by the Marine Corps, actually began to strongly experiment with uniforms just prior to the US entering the war. After World War One, in the 1920s, the Army and Marines revamped the service uniform to make it appear more modern, but actually made it less serviceable than it had been during the Great War, reflecting some odd cultural trend that was going on at the time. They were both aware of that by the 1930s and in the second half of the 1930s both services began to strongly experiment with highly practical additions to field uniforms. This resulted in the series of uniforms that were worn during the Second World War and, in fact, the service never really stopped experimenting with new and better uniforms during the war. By the war's end, the US had more or less determined that its paratrooper series of uniforms were the best that it had developed. Indeed, by the end of the war the US had started issuing one of the items developed for paratroopers, the M1943field jacket, to everyone, reflecting that it had determined that the paratrooper line of uniforms was the best it had developed for all but the hottest climates and that all soldiers were best served by being attired like paratroopers were. At the same time it made the same determination about the M1943 combat boots, which were not a paratrooper item but which it started to issue to paratroopers. The uniforms weren't made 100% universal but they were headed that way.
General Douglas MacArthur inspecting troops in Korea who are equipped with early cold weather gear. The Army would dramatically improve cold weather gear during the war. The unit being inspected is remarkable as it appears to be all black even though the Army had been integrated just shortly before the Korean War. The impact of Truman's order integrating the services would fully take place during the war.
You'd think, therefore, that following the war the Army would have simply standardized with the patters it had on hand. But it didn't. It actually continued the developments and came out, in the period between World War Two and the Korean War, with a new set of uniforms reflecting what it thought were the best developments during World War Two. Impressed with the serviceability of cotton uniforms during the war, for the first time a cotton field uniform became year around issue, replacing the wool uniform that had been worn year around as the base layer in Europe and the winter uniform in most other places. The Army hadn't been happy with the color of the M1943 uniform after it faded, and therefore replaced the M1943 field jacket with the M1947 field jacket, which was a darker color that didn't fade to the whitish color the M1943 did. The paratrooper style field pants were brought over to general issue for "field pants" at the same time. The M1943 combat boot, which had been an improvement over the shorter boots requiring leggings, were replaced with a new combat boot using the Munson Last and superficially resembling paratrooper boots. The U.S. Army may look somewhat like the Army of World War Two, but frankly the resemblance is largely superficial as the uniform was in fact a new one. This doesn't mean that it was perfectly suited for the cold Korean climate, it wasn't. But the service did adapt rapidly to the extreme cold of Korea even if it didn't have fully suitable winter uniforms at first.
The field gear of the Korean War was also largely of new patterns, replacing the old style ones that the Army had gone into World War Two with which dated back prior to World War One. I'm not savvy enough on these to really comment on them, but the large voluminous packs that American soldiers are associated with really came in at this time, rather than earlier.
One item that crossed categories from clothing to field equipment was body armor. The US first issued "flak jackets" to ground personnel during the Korean War. It has done so every since.
"Flak jackets", or armored vests, existed during World War Two, but they were issued only to air crewmen. Given their weight, it's doubtful that the World War Two type could have been issued to anyone else. But by the Korean War they could be, and they were. They've been issued ever since. Their introduction was revolutionary in that it meant that the service was attempting to protect more than just the head from combat projectiles on a wide scale for the first time in history. Hardly a World War Two "hand me down" approach.
One item that crossed categories from clothing to field equipment was body armor. The US first issued "flak jackets" to ground personnel during the Korean War. It has done so every since.
"Flak jackets", or armored vests, existed during World War Two, but they were issued only to air crewmen. Given their weight, it's doubtful that the World War Two type could have been issued to anyone else. But by the Korean War they could be, and they were. They've been issued ever since. Their introduction was revolutionary in that it meant that the service was attempting to protect more than just the head from combat projectiles on a wide scale for the first time in history. Hardly a World War Two "hand me down" approach.
Finally, let's talk vehicles.
Jeep with POW on hood. Is it a World War Two Jeep or a post war Jeep? Only a real expert can tell.
The US had developed a great series of vehicles during World War Two and, as I've claimed here before, it was the 6x6 truck that was the greatest single battle implement of the war, hands down. And there were a host of other vehicles that were absolutely great that the US manufactured during the war. Given this, we'd think that the US would have sat on its hands and just kept using what it had on hand, and it partially did use what it had on hand.
But here too, the US wasn't content with the situation. In part it couldn't be as it had sold and distributed a lot of vehicles post war, but in part it was because it wasn't really content with the World War Two vehicles and the fact that there were various versions of the same thing. By 1949 the US had a new 6x6 truck designed to replace all of the World War Two variants and while that model had just been adopted, it would be put in production during the war. The basic model of new 6x6 truck served all the way into the 21st Century.
World War Two GMC trucks in Korea, 1950.
Many people regard the Jeep as the archetypal American military vehicle, but even here the World War Two model had been modified and adopted as a new model by 1949. The M38 went into service that year and started replacing the World War Two Jeeps, although it so strongly physically resembled it that only a person really familiar with Jeeps can tell the difference at a glance. Unhappy with that, the Army introduced yet another model in 1952, the M38A1, which is the Jeep that became the iconic CJ5 in civilian usage.
South Korean Army in retreat, 1950. They're moving a 75mm gun with a World War Two Dodge truck. The South Korean Army had been equipped as a light army lacking armor or heavy weapons prior to the war. It still retained horse cavalry early in the Korean War.
In 4x4 Dodge trucks the Army left World War Two with a fantastic series of vehicles that had entered service just prior to the war. During the Korean War it introduced the very best version of that series of Power Wagon military trucks that dated back to the 1930s. The M37 was such a good truck that it was ultimately done in, decades later, by the expensive of manufacturing it, but was only fully replaced by the equally expensive series of Hummer trucks that came in.
So, when people talk about the ground war and "World War Two hand me downs" they're frankly wrong.
Way off the mark, in fact.
So what about the air? We haven't covered that.
Navy Skyraiders engage a ground target in Korea. The Skyradier was such a good plane that, while it was really a late World War Two design, it'd serve all the way through the Vietnam War and its arguably at least as good as any ground combat aircraft today, the A10 excepted.
Well, we hardly need to.
At least in regards to the air war the changes between 1945 and 1950 are so evident that the myth makers haven't really tried to make this claim stick, except to occasionally note that there were piston engined aircraft still in use. And there were. P-51 Mustangs and Corsairs were still in use. They practically had to be as the process of coming up with a workable jet fighter had only just barely been accomplished, but that it was accomplished was quite a technological feat.
The United States Army Air Corps had been working, as had every air force in the world, on developing jet aircraft since the early 1940s. Indeed, every air force had managed to come up with something, almost, by the wars end. The Germans certainly had, with the ME262. The British had with its Meteor. The Japanese fielded a prototype by the wars end, bearing a superficial resemblance to the ME262. And the US had adopted the P59, making a handful of the jet fighter during the war.
The P59 in fact reflected the progress of fighter aircraft during the war, or at least American fighter aircraft, as the technology was advancing so fast that enter generations of aircraft became obsolete nearly overnight. The P59, a jet, didn't have superior performance in any sense when compared to the P51, let alone late war fighters like the Typhoon. Indeed, its performance wasn't as good. The first really serviceable US jet fighter was the P80, which was introduced but not used in World War Two. It was still around for the Korean War but it had already been made obsolete by the F-84 and then the F-86.
The F-86 is the unquestioned champion of the skies of the Korean War. The Mig15, used by Red pilots, was a very good plane, but it wasn't the plane the F-86 was.
Mig 15s. Good, but not good enough.
And one area, in the air, which impacted the ground, really can't be questioned in terms of technology.
The helicopter.
Helicopters existed during World War Two, but they were clearly in their infancy. They came on strong between the wars however and they were a life saver, literally, during the Korean War. Medivac helicopters made a life and death difference to thousands of servicemen during the war. And the use of of helicopters wasn't limited to that role alone. Nothing like it existed in actual use during World War Two or any prior war.
So why the absurd myth?
I don't really know. It has no basis in fact whatsoever, which doesn't keep it from being repeated again and again. But it's far from true.
But I think I might have an inkling of what the source is, but just an inkling.
World War Two U.S. propaganda poster depicting a Soviet sniper. It turned out that this guy was not, in fact, our friend and while he was fighting evil, to be sure, and was our ally as well, he wasn't exactly fighting for freedom.
One thing I recall hearing from a Korean War veteran who made this claim is that "when I got home, I was surprised by how modern the Army was". He likely was. And likely a lot of other guys who served in 1950-51 were as well. The observation was real, but the conclusion drawn from it off the mark.
The observation itself may sound odd. What could that really mean? Well, what they meant is that when they got back to the US after their tour of a little over a year in Korea, the Army the found back home was a modern professional one. It seemed to them that the Army had been holding out on them. It wasn't. Indeed, that army was using the same equipment that they were using in Korea.
What was different is that the Cold War army, that large, conscripted, and well trained Army that we used in most of the Cold War came into being while they were gone. They drew the wrong conclusion from that.
Following World War Two the U.S. reverted to its traditional military posture. While that posture is often criticized, up until that point it had largely served the country well. And what that posture was, was a small Army (very small) and a large professional Navy. The country reasoned, and correctly, that we were unlikely to be attacked by a land force at any one time and, if we got into a war requiring a major ground commitment, we likely had time to built that army up, using as its core the small professional army and the state militias. Up to, and through, World War Two, that's how we did things.
Following the Second World War we naturally enough stood down. There was no plan to maintain a large standing army, let alone a conscripted one, and there was no understanding that the Soviet Union was going to be an enemy. There was no history of conscription into the national army at all during peacetime, save for the emergency 1940 example.
Now, somewhat differently from after every prior war, a new service, the Air Force, received a lot of the treatment that the Navy traditionally did, along with the Navy, as it was readily grasped that developments during World War Two had meant that air power could extend American power, and hence defense, well beyond our borders. So the Air Force and the Navy received preferential treatment, and rightly so, right after the war. The Army, as we have seen, wasn't neglected, but what exactly the Army would do in a future war wasn't really well grasped. The Army assumed that all future wars would be nuclear and that the US was not likely to get into small wars. The Marine Corps, on the other hand, made the polar opposite assumption.
And part of what the Army did, or rather the military, was to continue to imagine the reserves in the old pre World War Two fashion. They old Guard units were brought back in on the pre war pattern, close to the Army, but locally trained. Newly recruited Guardsmen, like those before World War Two, were unit trained. They didn't attend basic training in the Army or serve in the Army in basic and Advanced Training. The Korean War was to change that.
Starting in 1948 things really began to change for the Army as the Cold War suddenly became a real and present emergency. The draft was brought back in and the size of the Army expanded. But that Army was only two years old when the Korean War broke out.
And when it broke out the Army had to rely on the call up of a large amount of the National Guard and to deploy units that were immediately nearby, like those in Japan, which lacked the proper equipment to fight a war against a Red Army trained armored opponent. Neither of these forces did poorly by any means, but they didn't quite resemble the Army that the same soldiers would find being trained when they returned to the US a little over a year later.
Which had nothing to do with the equipment. Nor even with "World War Two hand me downs". It had everything to do with a miscalculated defense posture in 1945-1950 and the resumption of a pre World War Two mobilization/defense needs posture. It was a hand me down of sorts, but not in terms of equipment.
The equipment was excellent.
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