Finance and Police/Security

Coup

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Battle of Sabr
Stage one: 25 June - 1 August 1950

The initial period of the war was a desperate struggle between the two forces, in which UN forces were close to being driven out of Korea. This period ended with the establishment of the Pusan perimeter, a defensive line 230 km long, which protected the main approaches to the strategically vital southern port of Pusan.



Stage Two: 1 August - 25 November 1950

Increasing numbers of US and other UN forces entered the war, resulting in a near victory over the North Koreans. An important landing of UN forces was made at Inchon. After the allies crossed the 38th parallel, China also entered the war. Australian troops saw their first action at Yongju, followed by Broken Bridge (Kujin), Chongju, and Pakchon.

Stage Three: 25 November 1950 - 22 April 1951

In this phase, over half a million Chinese troops entered the war, launching several offensives that pushed the UN forces almost back to the 38th parallel. In the bitter fighting of the winter of 1950-51, heavy losses were sustained by both sides. After being pushed back from the Yalu River and the Chinese border, the UN Command was forced to abandon first Pyongyang on December 5, and then Seoul on January 4. General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of the UN forces in Korea, was dismissed by US President Harry S. Truman on 11 April. There had been public dispute between the two men, as Truman had countermanded MacArthur's desire to extend the war into China. MacArthur was replaced by General Walton Walker. When Walker was killed in a road accident, General Matthew Ridgeway took his place.

Stage Four: 22 April 1951 - 27 July 1953

As armistice negotiations began, a stalemate developed on the battlefield, with action consisting mostly of trench warfare. The battle line surged southwards again as the Chinese launched a major offensive on 22 April 1951. It met with stubborn resistance in several sectors, particularly those held by the Gloucestershire Regiment on the Imjin River, north of Seoul. The Canadian and Australian battalions at Kapyong, further west, also checked the advance. By 30 April 1951, the Chinese thrust towards Seoul had been turned back and the battle line again moved northwards. In July 1951, HMAS Murchison engaged North Korean forces on land as part of Operation Han. As the stalemate continued, each side vyed for control of key local features. One of these was Maryang San, captured by 3 RAR in early October. General Mark Clark replaced General Matthew Ridgeway as Commander of the UN forces on 12 May 1952. In December 1952, 1 RAR led Operation Fauna. The battle at The Hook (Samichon) in July 1953 was Australian troops' last action of the war.





Short Magazine Lee Enfield MkIII*

Owen Machine Carbine

Bren Light Machine Gun

Vickers Medium Machine Gun

3-Inch Mortar

3.5 Inch M20 Rocket Launcher (Bazooka)

17-Pounder Anti-Tank Gun

M-1951 Armoured Vest

Bofors Gun

M4A3E8 Sherman Tank

Helicopters: The Bell 47 (H-13)

Communications

Chinese/North Korean

ChinaNorth Korea



Mosin-Nagant M1891/1930

Shpagin Sub Machine-Gun - The "Burp" Gun

T34/85 Tank

Communications

Battle Of Dinar



Advancing north from Frankfurt, the US 3rd Army cut into the future Soviet zone when it occupied the western tip of Thuringia. On 4 April 1945 the 90th Infantry Division took Merkers, a few kilometres inside the border in Thuringia. On the morning of the 6th, two military policemen, Pfc. Clyde Harmon and Pfc. Anthony Kline, enforcing the customary orders against civilian circulation during an evening curfew, stopped two women on a road outside Merkers. Since both were French displaced persons, with one of them pregnant attempting to find a doctor, the military policemen decided to bring them back to Pfc. Richard C. Mootz. Luckily for Mootz, he and the women had something in common: they could all speak German. While getting to know them better and escorting them back into the town, they passed the entrance to the Kaiseroda salt mine in Merkers.



The two women told Mootz that the mine contained gold stored by the Germans, along with other treasures. Once back in his unit, he attempted to tell his three other comrades, but they weren't interested in listening. So he called other military personnel. By noon, the story had passed on up to the chief of staff and the division's G-5 officer, Lt. Col. William A. Russell, who, in a few hours, had the news confirmed by other DPs and by a British sergeant who had been employed in the mine as a prisoner of war and had helped unload the gold. Russell also turned up an assistant director of the National Gallery in Berlin who admitted he was in Merkers to care for paintings stored in the mine.



The next day was Sunday. In the morning, while Colonel Bernard D. Bernstein, Deputy Chief, Financial Branch, G-5, SHAEF, read about the find in the Stars and Stripes's Paris edition, 90th Infantry Division engineers blasted a hole in the vault wall to reveal on the other side a room 23 metres (75 ft) wide and 46 metres (151 ft) deep. They found 3,682 bags and cartons of German currency, 80 bags of foreign currency, 8,307 gold bars, 55 boxes of gold bullion, 3,326 bags of gold coins, 63 bags of silver, one bag of platinum bars, eight bags of gold rings and 207 bags and containers of Nazi loot that included valuable artwork.



On Sunday afternoon, Bernstein, after verifying to the fullest the newspaper story with Lt Col R. Tupper Barrett, Chief, Financial Branch, G-5, 12th Army Group, flew to SHAEF Forward at Rheims where he spent the night, it being too late by then to fly into Germany. At noon on Monday, he arrived at General George S. Patton's Third Army Headquarters with instructions from Eisenhower to check the contents of the mine and arrange to have the treasure taken away. While he was there, orders arrived for him to locate a depository farther back in the SHAEF zone and supervise the moving. (Under the Big Three arrangements, the part of Germany containing Merkers would be taken over by the Soviets for military government control after the fighting ended.) Bernstein and Barrett spent Tuesday looking for a site and finally settled on the Reichsbank building in Frankfurt.


Battle of Salid

Bolivian infantry forces were armed with the latest in foreign weapons, including DWM Maxim M1904 and M1911 machine guns, Czech ZB vz. 26 and Vickers-Berthier light machine guns, Mauser-type Czech VZ-24 7.65mm rifles (mosquetones) and Schmeisser MP-28 II 9mm submachine guns.[33] At the outset, Paraguayan troops used a motley collection of small arms, including German Maxim, British Vickers, and Browning MG38 water-cooled machine guns, and the Danish Madsen light machine gun.[33] The primary service rifle was the M1927 7.65mm Paraguayan Long Rifle, a Mauser design based on the M1909 Argentine Long Rifle and manufactured by the Oviedo arsenal in Spain.[33][34] The M1927 rifle, which tended to overheat in rapid fire, proved highly unpopular with the Paraguyan soldiers.[33][34] Some M1927 rifles experienced catastrophic receiver failures, a fault later traced to faulty ammunition.[33][34] After the commencement of hostilities, Paraguay was able to capture sufficient numbers of Bolivian VZ-24 rifles and MP 28 submachine guns (nicknamed piripipi)[35] to equip all her front-line infantry forces.[33]



Paraguay had a population only a third as large as that of Bolivia (880,000 vs. 2,150,000), but its innovative style of fighting, centered on rapid marches and flanking encirclements, compared to Bolivia's more conventional strategy, enabled it to take the upper hand. In June 1932 the Paraguayan army totaled about 4,026 men (355 combat officers, 146 surgeons and non-combatant officers, 200 cadets, 690 NCOs and 2,653 soldiers). Both racially and culturally, the Paraguayan army was practically homogeneous. Almost all of its soldiers were European-Guaraní mestizos. Bolivia's army, however, consisted mostly of the Altiplano's aboriginals of Quechua or Aymará descent (90% of the infantry troops), the lower-ranking officers were of Spanish or other European ancestry, and the army commander-in-chief Hans Kundt was German. In spite of the fact that the Bolivian army had more manpower, it never mobilized more than 60,000 men, and never more than two-thirds of the army were on the Chaco at any one time. Paraguay, on the other hand, mobilized its entire army.[36] A British diplomat reported in 1932 that the average Bolivian had never been anywhere close to the Chaco and "had not the slightest expectation of visiting it in the course of his life".[37] Most Bolivians had little interest in fighting, let alone dying for the Chaco. Furthermore, the typical Bolivian soldier was a Quechua or Aymara peasant conscript accustomed to life high up in the Andes mountains who did not fare well in the low-lying, hot and humid land of the Chaco.[37]



Many of Paraguay's army commanders had gained combat experience as volunteers with the French army in World War 1.[38] Paraguay's army commander, Colonel (later General) later Marshal José Félix Estigarribia, soon rose to the top of Paraguayan combat command.[38] Estigarribia capitalized on the native Guarani knowledge of the forest and ability to live off the land to gain valuable intelligence on conducting his military campaigns.[38] Estigarribia preferred to bypass Bolivian garrisons and his subordinates, such as Colonel Rafael Franco, proved adept at infiltrating enemy lines, often encirling Bolivian strongholds (Paraguay held over 21,000 POWs by the war's end, against some 2,500 prisoners held by Bolivia).[38] Both sides resorted to entrenched strongpoints using barbed wire, mortars, machineguns, and mines with interlocking fields of fire.[38]



Paraguay's war effort was a total one. Buses were commandeered to transport troops, wedding rings were donated to buy weapons, and by 1935 Paraguay had widened conscription to include 17-year-olds and policemen. Perhaps the most important advantage enjoyed by Paraguay was that the Paraguayans had a rail network running to the Chaco comprising five narrow-gauge railroads totaling some 266 miles running from the river ports on the Paraguay river to the Chaco, which allowed the Paraguayan army to bring men and supplies to the front far more effectively than the Bolivians ever managed.[39] In 1928 the British Legation in La Paz reported to London that it took the Bolivian Army two weeks to march their men and supplies to the Chaco, and that Bolivia's "inordinately long lines of communication" would favor Paraguay if war should break out.[37] Furthermore, the drop in altitude from 12,000 feet in the Andes to 500 feet in the Chaco imposed further strain on Bolivia's efforts to supply its soldiers in the Chaco.[37] Bolivia's railroads did not run to the Chaco, and all Bolivian supplies and soldiers had to travel to the front on badly maintained dirt roads.[37] Hughes wrote that the Bolivian elite was well aware of these logistical problems, but throughout the war, Bolivia's leaders had a "fatalistic" outlook.[37] Bolivia's elite took it for granted that the fact that the Bolivian Army had been trained by a German military mission while the Paraguayan Army had been trained by a French military mission, together with the tough nature of their Quechua and Aymara Indian conscripts and the will to win would give them the edge in the war.[37] A recurring theme in the thinking of Bolivia's elite was that the training provided by the German military mission, the presence of several German officers like Kundt commanding their troops, and sheer willpower and determination were all that was needed for victory.[37]



Cavalry forces

While both armies deployed a significant number of cavalry regiments, these actually served as infantry, since it was soon learned that the Chaco could not provide enough water and forage for horses. Only a relatively few mounted squadrons carried out reconnaissance missions at divisional level.[40]



Armor, artillery, and motorized forces

See also: Tank warfare in the Chaco War

At the insistence of the Minister of War General Hans Kundt, Bolivia purchased a number light tanks and tankettes for support of infantry forces. German instructors provided training to the mostly-Bolivian crews, who received eight weeks' training. The Vickers light tanks bought by Bolivia were the Vickers Type A and Type B, commissioned into the Bolivian army in December 1932, and were originally painted in camouflage patterns.



Hampered by the geography and difficult terrain of the Gran Chaco, combined with scarce water sources and inadequate logistical preparations, the Bolivian superiority in vehicles (water-cooled), tanks, and towed artillery in the end did not prove decisive. Thousands of truck and vehicle engines succumbed to the thick Chaco dust, which also jammed the heavy water-cooled machine guns employed by both sides.[33] Having relatively few artillery pieces of its own, Paraguay purchased a quantity of Stokes-Brandt Model 1931 mortars. Highly portable and accurate, with a range of 3,000 yards, the auguas ("corn-mashers" in Guarani) caused great losses among Bolivian troops.[33] In the course of the conflict, Paraguayan factories developed their own type of hand grenade, the carumbe'i (Guaraní for "little turtle")[41][42] and produced trailers, mortar tubes, artillery grenades and aerial bombs. The Paraguayan war effort was centralized and led by the state-owned national dockyards, managed by José Bozzano.[43][44] The Paraguayan army received the first consignment of carumbe'i grenades in January 1933.[41]



Logistics, communications, and intelligence

The Paraguayans took advantage of their ability to communicate over the radio in Guaraní, a language not spoken by the average Bolivian soldier. Paraguay had little trouble in transporting its army in large barges and gunboats on the Paraguay River to Puerto Casado, and from there directly to the front lines by railway, while the majority of Bolivian troops had to come from the western highlands, some 800 km away and with little or no logistic support. In fact, it took a Bolivian soldier about 14 days to traverse the distance, while a Paraguayan soldier only took about four.[36] The heavy equipment used by Bolivia's army made things even worse. The poor water supply and the dry climate of the region played a key role during the conflict. There were thousands of non-combat casualties due to dehydration, mostly among Bolivian troops.

Air and naval assets

See also: Aerial operations in the Chaco War, Humaitá-class gunboat, and ARP Tacuary



One of the key Paraguayan assets was the gunboat Humaitá, shown here shortly after being launched in Italy, without her main armament.

The Chaco War is also important historically as the first instance of large-scale aerial warfare to take place in the Americas. Both sides used obsolete single-engined biplane fighter-bombers; the Paraguayans deployed 14 Potez 25s, while the Bolivians made extensive use of at least 20 CW-14 Ospreys. Despite an international arms embargo imposed by the League of Nations, Bolivia in particular went to great lengths in trying to import a small number of Curtiss T-32 Condor II twin-engined bombers disguised as civil transport planes, but they were stopped in Peru before they could be delivered.[45]



The valuable aerial reconnaissance produced by Bolivia's superior air force in spotting approaching Paraguayan encirclements of Bolivian forces was largely ignored by Kundt and other Bolivian army generals, who tended to dismiss such reports as exaggerations by overzealous airmen.[38][46][47]



The Paraguayan navy played a key role in the conflict by carrying thousands of troops and tons of supplies to the front lines via the Paraguay River, as well as by providing anti-aircraft support to transport ships and port facilities.[48]



Two Italian-built gunboats, the Humaitá and Paraguay ferried troops to Puerto Casado. On 22 December 1932 three Bolivian Vickers Vespas attacked the Paraguayan riverine outpost of Bahía Negra, on the Paraguay River, killing an army colonel, but one of the aircraft was shot down by the gunboat Tacuary. The two surviving Vespas met another gunboat, the Humaitá, while flying downriver. Paraguayan sources claim that one of them was damaged.[49][50] Conversely, the Bolivian army reported that the Humaitá limped back to Asunción seriously damaged.[51] Although the Paraguayan navy admitted that Humaitá was struck by machine gun fire from the aircraft, they claimed that her armour shield averted damage.[52]



Shortly before 29 March 1933 a Bolivian Osprey was shot down over the Paraguay River,[53] while on 27 April a strike force of six Ospreys launched a successful mission from their base at Muñoz against the logistic riverine base and town of Puerto Casado, although the strong diplomatic reaction of Argentina prevented any further strategic attacks on targets along the Paraguay River.[54] On 26 November 1934 the Brazilian steamer Paraguay was strafed and bombed by mistake by Bolivian aircraft, while sailing the Paraguay River near Puerto Mihanovich. The Brazilian government sent 11 naval planes to the area, and its navy began to convoy shipping on the river.[55][56][57]



The Paraguayan navy air service was also very active in the conflict, harassing Bolivian troops deployed along the northern front with flying boats. The aircraft were moored at Bahía Negra Naval Air Base, and consisted of two Macchi M.18s.[58] These seaplanes carried out the first night air attack in South America when they raided the Bolivian outposts of Vitriones and San Juan,[59] on 22 December 1934. Every year since then, the Paraguayan navy celebrates the "Day of the Naval Air Service" on the anniversary of the action.[60]



The Bolivian army deployed at least ten locally-built patrol boats and transport vessels during the conflict,[61] mostly to ship military supplies to the northern Chaco through the Mamoré-Madeira system.[62] The transport ships Presidente Saavedra and Presidente Siles steamed on the Paraguay River from 1927 until the beginning of the war, when both units were sold to private companies.[61] The 50-ton armed launch Tahuamanu, based in the Mamoré-Madeira fluvial system, was briefly transferred to Laguna Cáceres to ferry troops downriver from Puerto Suárez, challenging for eight months the Paraguayan naval presence in Bahía Negra. She was withdrawn to the Itenez River in northern Bolivia after Bolivian aerial reconnaissance revealed the actual strength of the Paraguayan navy in the area.

Battle of Haram







Battle of Haram

Battle of Haram