Roughstuff's Korean War Archive
book reviews and summaries, comments, analysis
Shrader, Charles Communist Logistics in the Korean War
DS 918 S515 1995
To an unschooled reader war consists of soldiers with small arms, artillery, air support and naval gunfire. Like all hasty generalizations, this one is misleading. Logistics: the science of delivering materiel in a timely fashion, is the unsung hero in many wars. By the way I say science of logistics: if you don't believe me pick up a graduate textbook on Linear Programming or Network Analysis. In any case, Shrader's book is a useful, if dry, explanation of communist logistics and the role this played in the korean war. Well illustrated, footnoted, with numerous charts and graphs, the book is an easier read than you might think.
The Korean climate and countryside imposed two important limitations on movement of materiel.
- Climate: Korea's climate, if I may say from experience, sucks the big one. Monsoon rains, stifling heat or both mar the summers; bitter damp siberian cold mars the winters. Weather is best in early spring and late autumn when you can travel the country (as I did, by bicycle) quite easily. Of course you will drink the water and get explosively ill: whoever coined the expression 'blow it out your ass' must have been a Korean vet. Kim Chee tastes awful on the way down; on the way back up its even worse. [To my Korean readers: only kidding. I like kim chee, Dog Soup, and even a bit of soju from time to time].
- terrain: The Taebek range hugs the eastern coast in South Korea and towers highest in the middle of North Korea. [No, I haven't cycled there yet: but i am working on it!!]. North of Hamhung/Sinanju te entire country becomes mountainous [the ranges are not the Taebeks, even though many authors refer to them as such]. Valley walls are incredibly steep, ridgelines more like knife edges. The mountains are heavily forested in many regions, but it is still a rocky, craggy terrain.
These two features, combined with the low quality and poorly maintained rail and roadway network, meant that the communists had to be creative and relentless in overcoming logistical obstacles.
Shrader breaks the Korean war into three periods, based upon the logistical factors that affected communist ability to fight sustain offensives.
- From June 25 1950 till July 1951, well prepared Communist offensives met with considerable success; but still were limited by inability to support long lines of communication, command and transport. For example if prisoners revealed they had six days rations, UN forces could tell the offensive would last six days.
- From July 1951 to December 1952, communists used improved anti-aircraft artillery and warnings, and better transport, to build a strong defensive line and mount occasional sustained offensives of greater length than before.
- For the war's final six months, improved road/rail maintenance left NKPA-CCF's with their best logistical prospects since the war began!!
Neither North Korea nor China were in good enough shape to provide the In-min-gun with raw materials and industrial supplies: most heavy industrial/armaments came from the Soviet Union. The USSR used its leverage as a supplier to manipulate the Chinese and protect its wider geopolitical interests. [These interests were not so much a victory in Korea as an opportunity to bog down UN forces and distract attention from the European theatre.] Still the north had some internal production, left over from the Japanese factories; the NK's used alot of captured materiel, especially in the early part of the war. Local populations often were induced or forced to provide food and labor, sometimes compensated with 'rice notes' that could bused to pay taxes.
Communist soldiers carried only half as much as UN forces did; mostly less field equipment.
Shafer believes UN air-interdiction efforts turned the tides of the war very early on; after July 8, 1950 (at Chonan] convoys and troop trains could only move at night. By mid July serious shortages of food and medicine had limited effectiveness of NK forces. Despite the ballyhoo about the Manchurian sanctuary, the author suggests immunity of bases in China proved to be only a minor constraint. Nonetheless, summing up, the author makes clear that Air Force and Navy sorties prevented the UN from losing the war; but they could not 'win' it for UN forces. Interdiction never succeeded in 'isolating' communists on the front lines. By sheer persistence and creativity, a manageable amount of materiel reached their combat zones.
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