Re: New tactics, equipment, or doctrine

[Mike Davino <mdavino@yahoo.com>]

How about the "Van Fleet load?"  GEN James Van Fleet,
the 8th US Army Commander during most of the war,
believed in using massive amounts of indirect and
direct fire instead of fire and maneuver.  During one
of the numerous Chinese offensives, he directed his
commanders to "expend steel and fire, not men."  The
ordnance and transportation units were driven to the
maximum to keep the artillery supplied.  Van Fleet
told his commanders "I want so many shell holes that a
man can step from one to another.  That is not an
overstatement.  I mean it."

Van Fleet also worked with the Air Force to employ
medium bombers in close support of ground operations
at night using MPQ radars to direct the missions.

This notion of firepower instead of manpower is still
in effect today during the current war.  Instead of
massive firepower, we are much more reliant on
precision firepower although the USAF still rolls out
the B-52's to drop large quantities of dumb bombs when
required.

Mike Davino





 This was massive use of firepower instead of manpower
--- Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net> wrote:
> At 10:57 AM 11/26/01 -0600, Ed Evanhoe wrote:
> >I'm afraid you are looking in the wrong war for new
> tactics or equipment 
> >since we basically used WW2 equipment and tactics. 
> 
> WHOA!  The Korean War was vastly different than the
> Second World War and
> there was a significant evolution both in doctrine
> (operational and
> tactical processes) and in equipment.  The US and
> its allies began the War
> with WWII stuff but soon re-evaluated and developed
> an entirely new
> approach to the mobile warfare of the Second World
> War.  (Yes, I would love
> to have seen the Eighth Army of 1945 deployed in the
> Korea of 1950 and I
> expect they would have done a bit better than the
> Eighth Army of 1950 --
> but the earlier version had become accustomed to
> dealing with that most
> Protean of enemies, the Japanese.)
> 
> The doctrinal and logistics lessons of the Korean
> War were rich and were
> readily adapted by the US military to their heart,
> to the subsequent regret
> of the Viet-Nam-era US military ...
> 
> Marc
> 
> msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
> Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir!
> 


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