The Korean War, 70 Years Ago, The Daily Notes, Canonsburg PA
Korean War Weekly Front Pages
29 April – 6 May 1951
The Daily Notes, Canonsburg PA
The first wave of the spring offensive had ended.
*****
By Monday, Chinese Communist troops had tightened a 30-mile siege ring around Seoul and began moving up massive reinforcements to assault the city. At one point they were within four miles of the capital. UN tank and infantry patrols struck out from the ruined city, fighting brief skirmishes with the Reds in the no-man’s-land between the lines. An estimated Chinese battalion – about 800 men – was engaged in one sector north of Seoul, but for the most part the Allies only encountered slight to moderate resistance. More than 400 UN guns, hundreds of Allied planes and the eight-inch batteries of the US heavy cruiser Toledo on the west coast also pummeled the Reds throughout the day. On the next day, it was reported that the Chinese Reds had abandoned their assault on Seoul and had shifted east for an apparent attempt to bypass the ruined city and strike deep into the heart of South Korea. Communist columns were souring southeast toward the deep V-shaped salient in the UN line near the junction of the Han and Pukhan rivers, 15 to 20 miles east of Seoul.
But the commander of the American Eighth Army said that the first phase of the Communist spring offensive in Korea had ended in a “great victory for the United Nations.” The Communists, bloodied by the loss of 70,000 men in the first round of their offensive had pulled back up to 20 miles in some sectors to regroup for the second round. They were expected to renew the attack in three to five days. “We have punished the Communist forces severely,” he said.
On Thursday four UN tank columns smashed deep into Communist lines around Seoul and reported that the Reds seemed to be massing troops for the next phase of their spring offensive. The tanks ran into Communist concentrations ranging up to regiment size in areas where patrols Wednesday found few if any Reds. The Communist buildup was found in an arc north of Seoul and in the Pukhan river valley on the west-central front where the main blow of the next Red offensive was expected.
Republican Senators had asked for a secret report by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to determine whether it showed approval of General Macarthur’s proposal for carrying the Korean War into Red China. Another secret report, drafted in 1947, was scheduled to be released to the public. The report was thought to make a recommendation against withdrawing troops from Korea. On Thursday, MacArthur testified before Congress on subjects ranging from Russian troop buildups in Siberia to the level of cooperation among the armed services. The next day he strongly defended his right to speak out publicly against Washington policies with which he disagreed. At the same time he declared that he always carried out “to the very best of my ability” orders from his superiors even though he disagreed with them.
The American delegation to the United Nations defended UN policy in Korea against MacArthur’s charges by saying the UN wants “not conflict without limit but peace without appeasement.” Delegation members said the declaration could be considered the most authoritative reply so far to MacArthur’s charge that UN forces were fighting in a “political vacuum.”
President Truman asked Congress to approve $40.5 billion [$412.6 in 2021 dollars] in military spending to help prevent “another and more frightful global war.” The president said that if Russia starts World War III, his proposed budget would enable the nation’s armed forces to “halt the enemy’s forces and strike back decisively at the center of the enemy’s power.”
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Canonsburg Daily Notes)