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Thread: USMC small arms in the Korean War

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    Legacy Member smle-man's Avatar
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    USMC small arms in the Korean War

    Just finished reading "The Last Stand of Fox Company" about a USMC rifle company at the Chosin reservior. Fox company was surrounded and under attack for several days in weather that never went above -20F during the whole battle. From the book which used historical records and first person interviews with the survivors I gleaned the following information on the weapons carried by the Marines, at least at this time during the war. As you would expect M1icon rifles and M1 carbines were standard issue. 1911A1s seemed to be in plentiful supply but no submachine guns were mentioned as being issued to the Marines although several Thompsons and one M3 were taken from dead ChiComs and used by the Marines. 1919A4s and from the description at least one 1919A6 was on issue. Also attached were two 1917A1 HMGs. Initially one froze and was useless during the first night's battle. The next night and the rest of the battle both of these performed flawlessly. They were even used for reverse slope firing to clear out enemy troop concentrations. Two 'bazookas' were carried and only fired once. The severe cold seemed to reduce the range considerably and the Marines decided they weren't worth the effort to use. Two or three 60mm mortars and two 81mm mortars were with the company. BARs were on issue, some had the same problem as the M1s - they were so sluggish that many had to be worked by hand, they would not fire semi auto (M1) or full auto (BAR). There were no scoped rifles with the company which put them at a disadvantage to the Chinese who apparently had some sniper rifles as many Marines were shot at considerable distance by daytime enemy firing. the Marines were unable to locate most of these snipers. Scoped M1s or 03s would have been lifesavers. One of the airdrops to the Marines had a load of 03 rifles and clipped ammunition for the rifles. The authors wrote that the Marines were dumbfounded to see the rifles and ammunition for them. hand grenades had problems with the spoon freezing to the body and not releasing when the pin was pulled. At first the Marines thought the grenades were duds. Someone finally figured out what was going on. One Marine 1919A4 was captured by the Chinese after overrunning the Marine crew and then recaptured by the Marines the following day. The Marines also captured and used a Browning Automatic rifle, A Nambu MG, many Mauser rifles, Thompsons, an M3, and many stick grenades.

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    Legacy Member smle-man's Avatar
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    I forgot to mention that the Marines still had the 15 round magazines for their carbines while the Army had the 30 round magazines (and presumably M2 carbines). A 1LT in the Marine company met his brother (an Army LT) somewhere in Korea before the battle at Chosin. The Army LT handed over a couple 30 round magazines to his brother who commented that the Marines didn't have any of the 30 rounders. Also, after the first night the Marines pulled all of the tracers from their MG belts since the tracers enabled the Chinese to concentrate their fire on the Marine MG teams. The heavy combat happened at night, sniping during the day.

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    " BARs were on issue, some had the same problem as the M1s - they were so sluggish that many had to be worked by hand, they would not fire semi auto (M1icon) or full auto (BAR)."

    Could they have been talking about M1 carbines? I have read that the carbines were sluggish and and the M1s performed reasonably well in that cold weather.

    The carbine has a relativley weak recoil spring and I can see where the bolt may not have enough forward momentum to fully close under some conditions.

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    The M1icon Garands in general performed as advertised, with only an occasional malfunction. Some of the "non-issued" firearms, that were captured from the Chicoms, were ones that were lost in battle by the Armys' "Task Force Faith", which had gone up the East side of the Reservoir, when they were overrun by Chicoms.

    Task Force Faith had followed their orders and disbursed into company and battalion sized units, with far too much distance between them and the adjacent units. The Chicoms were trained to swarm over units as small as battalion in size, so the company sized Army units were absolutely no match.



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    some smallarms, notably BARs, had been overhauled in Japan using native labor. Springs were cleaned but not replaced. The inspection regimen was also native Japaneseicon, and was technically weak. The 2/38th Infantry had so many failures with these reconditioned BARs that they lost confidence in the weapon.

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    I believe that our Marine BAR's were maintained by Marine Corps personnel, as the standard operating procedure says. I kind of see it the same as packing our own parachutes, if you maintain them yourself, you have nobody to blame for malfunctions. Besides the US Marine Corps has been short of funds since its beginnings and always has to make do with what we had.

    During the 1950's when I was in the Corps, we ate C-rations, or K-rations the second half of each month in our mess-halls. I understand that the C-rations and K-rations were surplus US Army lefftovers from WWII, but when you are hungry, they are very good! They had Green Label Lucky Strike cigarettes, and Brown Label Phillip Morris cigarettes; If you lit one, you had better not inhale, because you would suck fire into your mouth (talk bout dried out tobacco).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gyrene View Post
    The M1 Garands in general performed as advertised, with only an occasional malfunction. Some of the "non-issued" firearms, that were captured from the Chicoms, were ones that were lost in battle by the Armys' "Task Force Faith", which had gone up the East side of the Reservoir, when they were overrun by Chicoms.

    Task Force Faith had followed their orders and disbursed into company and battalion sized units, with far too much distance between them and the adjacent units. The Chicoms were trained to swarm over units as small as battalion in size, so the company sized Army units were absolutely no match.



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    Dan Wilson
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    Armorkav, wow you must have a pretty thin skin.
    He aint blasting the Army.
    He basically just said that the chinks got any M1icon's they had when they overran the Army by pure numbers and any unit, Battalion or smaller, would get creamed by the pure mass of unwashed commie body's.
    Not much to get upset about over that.

    Dan

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    Armorcav - Some of those "Task Force Faith" soldiers (7th Army) found us and became pretty good "Marines" on our walk out of Chosin Reservoir. The philosophies of the US Army and US Marine Corps are quite different, and we need both.

    Task Force Faith was run by a pretty good officer (Col Faith), who unfortunately was killed in the Chicom attacks. The communications between units was poor because of the radios of the day, the terrrain, and they were spread out very thin. Had the Army units been closer together, they would have been better able to defend themselves.

    We had been capturing or killing Chicoms for several days and General Smith notified the Army General (Almond) who was in charge of the Corps area. The word came down from MacArthur that there were no Chicoms in Korea, so we were ordered to continue our advance. General Smith and some of our senior officers felt that we should deal with what we were finding, not what some rear echelons were saying. As a result we (Marines) were able to deal with the Chicoms better than the Task Force Faith troops, who were following their orders to disperse into the smaller units.

    Gyrene OFC

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    Legacy Member smle-man's Avatar
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    Many of the Marine's M1icon rifles failed to function and in some cases fire. The book describes an incident where a Marine was laying on his back trying to push the oprod open with his feet when the Company Commander came along and saw the struggle. The Marine was doing this under fire. Some of the M1 rifles would work as straight pull rifles and some wouldn't even fire a cartridge due to the mechanism being frozen. It seemed that only the Browning MGs and 1911A1s functioned pretty much all the time. The weapons captured from the Chinese were mostly foreign except for Thompson SMGs which were most likely military aid to the Nationalist Chinese. Some of the Chinese prisoners were ex-Nationalist Chinese soldiers and not all that enthusiastic about fighting the U.S. forces.

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