The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Daily Notes, Canonsburg, PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
9 September – 15 September 1951
The Daily Notes, Canonsburg PA
The Marines drive forward.
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Allied officers who investigated a Communist charge that a UN airplane machine-gunned the Kaesong cease-fire zone said they could not confirm that an air attack really occurred or that a UN plane was involved. The UN team spent four hours inspecting the area indicated by the Communists. They found bullet marks and a dozen .50 caliber slugs in and around a group of tile-roofed stone houses about ¾ of a mile from the conference site itself. Investigators said the bullets appear to have been fired from several directions and a different angles. This, they said, disproved Communist claims that the plane made only one pass over the house during the alleged attack. There still was no move by the Reds to end their suspension of truth talks as they made the new charge against the UN, the 12th in the long series made since cease-fire talks first started exactly 2 months before. The next day, General Ridgway’s Supreme HQ admitted that a UN plane had indeed attacked the cease-fire city of Kaesong Monday as the Communists had complained, and officially expressed regret. A part of the 3rd Bomb Group attacked the city through an error in navigation, a statement by the headquarters said, and “appropriate disciplinary action” had been taken.
US Marines, backed by a booming artillery and mortar barrage, drove forward Tuesday through Red lines in the deepest thrust into North Korea by American ground forces in 1951. The First Marine Division was known to be on the eastern front where it had participated in the Punch Bowl and Bloody Ridge victories the previous week but Army censorship would not permit identification of the point of attack on Tuesday. The next day Peiping [Beijing] radio complained bitterly that the US Eighth Army was openly inviting full-scale war by its vigorous “killer” attacks on the Korean front. Peiping complained that the Army openly admitted that American forces were taking advantage of the breaks they’ve forced in truce negotiations to launch attacks with the hope of grabbing more Korean territory. The broadcast strengthened the belief of many officials in Korea that despite all their blustering and their incessant allegations that the US was trying to wreck truce negotiations, the Reds really needed and wanted peace.
Late in the week, waves of screaming Communists failed to halt the US Marine advance on the eastern front as United Nations forces drove relentlessly into North Korea. Fighting was heaviest on the eastern sector where the Marines had sparked the drive which carried American troops deeper in North Korea than any other push in 1951. In the dusk till dawn battle the Communists tried to crack the Marine lines and stop their steady advance. Shoulder to shoulder, the Reds poured in against the leathernecks in one attack after another. But barbed wire and murderous concentrations of mortar, artillery, machine-gun and rifle fire chopped them to pieces. The Marines counted 40 enemy dead hanging in the barbed wire on Friday morning. There was no estimate of how many dead and wounded the enemy had hauled away under cover of darkness. Marine casualties were “extremely light.”
UN troops closed in on a Communist stronghold commanding Red supply lines to the central front as they burned and blasted their way up to 5 miles deeper into North Korea. The central front drive gained 1½ miles and swept up four hills while US Marines on the eastern sector burned stubborn Reds off the key ridge line and two hills with flamethrowers and point-blank tank fire. A five mile advance was made on the Western front. The capture of the four hills brought UN troops close to a strong enemy concentration guarding main Communist supply routes from supply areas to the front. There was no estimate of Red strength in the mountain area controlling routes south from the enemy supply bases of Pyonggang and Kumsong.
Perfect weather brought the war’s greatest night assault, ending on Thursday, and the Reds threw their Russian-made jets against UN fighters again for the six consecutive day. A propeller-driven UN P 51 Mustang was shot down by three Communist jets in Thursday’s first air combat. The Air Force said there was no chance the pilot survived.
From the central front there came a report that troops wearing uniforms believed similar to those one by Russians had been seen about 7 miles behind the Red lines. A UN officer said the soldiers could be Russian advisers to the Communists. A United Press correspondent described the soldiers as speaking “Mongolian” and described a mixture of uniforms and weapons which made positive identification impossible.
The commander of the US Fifth Air Force said that he would assume that an all-out Communist aerial attack would mean the lifting of recent restrictions against bombing Red air bases in Manchuria. There were increasing signs that such an attack may be imminent. It was estimated that the Communists had more than 1,100 planes, predominantly jet fighters, including twin engine light bombers of an improved World War II type.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Canonsburg Daily Notes)