North Korea Issues Threat of Annihilation

Defense Update ^ | APRIL 24, 2012 06:00 | RICHARD_DUDLEY

[Eric in the Ozarks]

During the Korean War, General Curtis LeMay ran the bombing campaign over NK. Nearly ever city in NK was flattened.

[mkjessup]

You are correct, I stand corrected. In fact, General Curtis LeMay (one of my heroes in fact) said "We burned down every town in North Korea, we grounded our bombers only when there were no more targets to hit anywhere north of the 38th parallel!"

(my memory of LeMay's actions in Korea were clearly faulty)

I was thinking of General MacArthur's push to use nukes against both North Korea and Red China, which in fact led to his sacking by Truman, what Mac did not know (and Truman as Commander-in-Chief DID know) is that at the time of the Korean War, the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal consisted of 13 and ONLY 13 'Fat Man' style atomic bombs which had to be hand assembled and transported to the theatre of operations where they were to be used against whatever enemy was unlucky enough to draw the short straw.

Truman knew that we did not want to get bogged down in a land war in Asia when our small nuclear arsenal was the only thing preventing a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

In retrospect, one of those 13 atomic bombs should have been dropped on Pyongyang, the residents of South Korea should have been told to stay under cover for a few weeks, and the political landscape would possibly look vastly different today.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Who can say if this was the right approach in the Korean campaign ?

[mkjessup]

Hindsight is always 20/20.

There are those who say that providing Lend Lease to the Soviets after Hitler invaded Russia was the worst thing we could have done, that it would have been preferable to let the Nazis and the Communists devour each other somewhere between Leningrad and Vladivostok.

Moscow’s Communist subversion of the West and their obtaining America’s atomic technology via the Rosenbergs, which enabled the Soviets’ post-War aggression would seem to validate the view that aiding them was a strategic mistake.

Quite frankly, if Communism had collapsed in the old Soviet Union following the Nazi invasion of 1941, it becomes questionable if Mao tse Tung would have risen to power in China, which would have resulted in no Communist puppet regimes in Korea OR Vietnam. Without aid from the West, Stalin would have been hanging from a lamp post, he was at best one of the stupidest (although violent) individuals to ever lead a nation. (example: even in the hours prior to the German invasion of Russia, Stalin directed that train loads of iron ore and other minerals continue to be shipped to German as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, despite hard evidence that an invasion was imminent)

A reasonable student of history would conclude that Communism was the baby rattlesnake in the baby’s crib. The failure to kill the little rattler resulted in untold global tragedy.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

My dad was a commercial pilot for China National Airlines Company, owned by American Airlines and later by PAA. He was an old timer, born in 1906 and was a bit old to join up in 1942, but he volunteered anyway and was accepted for C-46 Hump duty in the China-Burma-India Campaign. His impression of the Nationalist Chinese was that they were completely corrupt and did more to drive the Chinese public into the arms of the Reds than anything else.
He always believed that the Chinese would not remain Communist for more than a couple of generations. In his view, they were expert bankers, businessmen and traders and I guess we're seeing this talent exhibit itself today. He passed away in 1966 while I was still in high school and didn't live to see the changes.

[mkjessup]

Sounds like your Dad was not only a courageous aviator, his view of the future was prophetic and astute. Thanks for sharing that.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Seeing as how the last underground test was in 1992, I think the folks involved would have hoped to live longer.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

He was a civilian pilot in the AAF. He often referred to this theater as the “bump on the butt” of the Allied campaign because they would take just about anyone.
He wore an officer’s uniform with the CBI patch but without rank insignia. He was referred to as “captain.”

[whd23]

I would seriously like to see a somewhat small nuclear device dropped on North Korea. No warning. No UN resolution. Just do it.

Not me. I'm not much for big cities, but I like having Seoul exist. Your proposal would certainly doom Seoul to devastation by the Nork's artillery; no thanks!

[vmivol00]

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/04/26/u-s-nuclear-warheads-face-more-uncertainty-as-scientists-retire/

“In about five years, the United States will not have a single active engineer with actual nuclear weapons testing experience, defined as “a key hand in the design of a warhead that’s in the existing stockpile and who was responsible for that particular design when it was tested back in the early 1990s,” according to Thomas D’Agostino, the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.”