On this day in 1950 it was some 2,000 days since the end of World War 2 – but on this December 15th it was about a new war. One which began as a “Police Action” but which quickly turned into a white-hot conflict – one that threatened to ignite a Third World War.
The Korean War was escalating at an alarming rate. A sustained assault by Chinese horsemen and Infantry on the narrow Hamhung-Hungnam sector in teh northeast posed the Immediate serious threat. Reds swarmed from snowmantled foothills onto the flats Sinsong, six miles southeast of Hamhung. They attacked in pre-dawn darkness in estimated regimental strength. “The assault raged throughout the day and continued into the night. “We fired about 300 rounds of 76mm shells and about 15,000 rounds of machinegun ammunition the Chinese,” a tank officer told AP Correspondent Tom Lambert after his force tried to rescue the lost platoon.
“I couldn’t begin to estimate how many we killed.” Break From Mountains, Correspondent with the U. S. Third Division, reported the Chinese broke through the outlying mountain barrier onto the plains, Lambert said the Red “advance onto the beachheads’ flat plain posed a serious threat Allied forces backed against the sea.” A security blackout shrouded Allied activities elsewhere within the beachhead. The U. S.
First Marine and Third and Seventh Infantry Divisions and elements of two South Korean divisions, British Commandos and Puerto Ricans retreated into the beachhead the previous week end. The major attack at week’s end came after two lighter, probing thrusts were beaten off Thursday. Reinforcing Chinese still were swarming down the valleys. American artillery and” planes pounded at the Red forces. The Chinese warmed up for battle in a drum-beating, bugle blowing and singing mass rally at Oro, a town six miles northwest of Hamhung abandoned by Allied forces 24 hours earlier. Allied troops heard the racket and steeled themselves for attack.
To the north another dogfight between 10 Russian-built sweptwing jets and four American F-80 ShootIng Stars was further evidence of Red intentions to wage an air war.The latest was a dogfight 25,000 feet over Namsi, about 20 miles southeast of Sinuiju in extreme northwest Korea. One enemy plane was reported hit. No U. S. planes were damaged, the Air Force said.
Twenty-four Red jets had flashed Into battle Thursday. The action was described by an Air Force spokesman in Washington as the beginning of a Korean “all-out air war.”
Those stories and harrowing reports became a daily occurrence in the American media. So disturbing was the nature of this “new” war that a draftboard in Helena Montana went on strike. Gov. John W. Bonner asked the entire Roosevelt county draft board to resign today for action “akin to mutiny” in expressing “unwillingness” to induct men until the government uses the men atomic bomb in Korea. Bonner charged that the board’s three members “signally failed” in the duty to their country and inadvertently gave “aid and comfort to the enemy.” However, State Draft Director Brig Gen. Spencer H. Mitchell said he “fully agreed” with the board’s position but added “we have to follow the directives from national headquarters.” The board, which meets at Wolf Point. Montana, passed 8 resolution saying the government “seems disposed to send troops too poorly equipped and too few in number to cope with the present fighting in Korea “We are unwilling to draft any more men into the armed services until such time as the government of the United States is willing to use entire resources of the United these States, including the atomic bomb, in support of these men.”
And while the war in Korea was heating up, there was a lot more news happening for this week in December 1950, as reported by Edward R. Murrow for the premier broadcast of the CBS Radio News Program “Hear It Now”.
