Korean War North Koreans/Communist Chinese

[Thomaso827]

Are the GHQ WW2 Russians close enough to use for the Korean war? I'm hoping to work up a Task Force Smith scenario, and outside of Russians, I'm not sure what to look for. Thanks for the help.

Tom Oxley

[lekw]

you could go with the WW2 Soviet winter infantry. These look like they are holding AK47 and are in fur hats. I think they look okay for chinese.

[Thomaso827]

Thanks. I'll pick up a few packs and work them up.

Tom

[Muggy]

Would they have had AK47's in Korea? I know very little about the war but always imagined the North and Chinese using Ppsh's.

[kiasutha]

Would they have had AK47's in Korea? I know very little about the war but always imagined the North and Chinese using Ppsh's.

No.
The Chinese regulars started getting some soviet SKS 45's in the second year.
(China started making it's SKS copy around 1956)
At that time, the Russians were still short of AK's for their own front line units.

Aside from Nagant's & Russian smg's, left-over WW2 Japanese and western small arms captured from the Chinese Nationalists were most common.
At times even those were scarce enough that some "reds" went into action with nothing but grenades...
JimR.

[lekw]

They do look a bit like SMGs I guess more of how you paint them. They do not look much like WWII rifles. I have a picture on my blog of them painted as Chinese. Take a look and see if they will be of use. Also please keep us up to date as to what you decide to use. I kind of killed this project because I could not find troops to use as North Koreans.

Hope the pictures help:

http://myblog-lekw.blogspot.com/search? ... results=36

[Mk 1]

Would they have had AK47's in Korea? I know very little about the war but always imagined the North and Chinese using Ppsh's.

As noted by others, no Kalashnikov's in Korea.

However you are very close to the right combination with your supposition. Mosin Nagants for rifles and PPSh41s or PPS43s for sub-machine guns.

(For those who don't know, "Sh" is a transliteration of a single letter in the Cyrilic alphabet, so PPSh, pronounced something like "Pay-Pay-Shah" in Russian, is not just PPS with an "h" added.)

For the Mosins, there were probably a large number of M90/31s (the loooonnng rifle), but also a large number of M44s (the short and handy carbine with folding bayonet). An M44 should be almost indestinguishable from an SKS at this scale (both short, both with the short magazine extension beneath the stock, only visual difference is the blade bayonet beneath the barrel of the SKS vs. the spike bayonet on the side of the barrel for the M44.) The Soviets considered the M44 to be the better combat rifle, and it was eventually license-built in several Soviet client countries (including China).

The SMGs in particular are worthy of mention further. As common as the PPSh was in WW2, the Soviets considered the PPS to be the better gun, and so it was kept in production longer and seen in increasing numbers post-war. The PPS with it's folding wire stock was lighter, and had a more effective rate of fire than the PPSh (the PPS, at about 700rpm, did not consume it's ammo as quickly, and was more controllable, than the PPSh at about 900rpm). But the primary reason that the PPS was considered better was that it was cheaper and quicker to build (once production scaled-up).

Also, the 71-round drum that was so often the "trademark" of the PPSh-wielding Red Army soldier of WW2 was supplanted, and eventually replaced, by the 35-round bannana clip that was first introduced with the PPS. The bannana clip fit both SMGs, the PPS and the PPSh. Again, the primary advantage was low-cost contruction of the bannana clip, although it was also apperantly preferred by the soldiers, since the 71-round drums were awkward to carry loaded on the gun and inconvenient to re-load (as they could not be fed by stripper clips).

The Chinese communists, and many eastern european Soviet satellites, received large numbers of SMGs post-war. Most new production was the PPS and bannana clips (even in the last year of WW2), but the vast number of PPSh's already in service lasted a LONG time and were still seen as fully combat-worthy. However the drum magazines were fairly quickly replaced by bannana clips in the post-war years.

Accounts by UN soldiers in Korea often refer to the Chinese Communists using "burp guns". These were typically PPSh SMGs. The high rate of fire of the PPSh (vs. other more familiar SMGs) made it sound different, more like a "buuuurp" than a "rat-tat-tat", much as the sound of the German MG42 was likened to tearing cloth (riiiiiii-iiiiip!) in WW2. Most of the pictures I've seen from the Korean war show the PPSh41, but with the bannana clip.

So ... after all that blather ... if it looks like an AK47 to you, you should easily convince yourself it is a PPSh with a bannana clip.

However, the WW2 Soviet Infantry were actually modelled as carrying SVT-40 rifles according to GHQ, an odd choice that has been a bur under the saddle of many on this Forum, and that has led to many vigorous calls for new Red Army troopers with Mosin Nagant rifles.

(Oy, that was long-winded, wasn't it? I really oughta switch to decaf! )

[Thomaso827]

Thanks! I think I'll be safe enough for the players I'll be playing. TF Smith has always been a special item for me, and with the Tactiques ASL scenario I think I can pull it off well. The historical encounter seems to have had two phases (depends on which account you read, one account seems to lump them both togehter), with 30+ T-34s running through Smith's position with little damage from the single 105mm gun and the bazookas he had avalable. The interesting scenario is when the NK infantry comes along a bit later. The Tactiques scenario seems to have just a bit of the merged concept with the NK infantry coming on with a few T-34s. Nobody would want to play the all armor vs all infantry scenario very much, but I think this one will do well. I'm using Piquet's WW2 rules, Point of Attack: Blitzkrieg, and probably the platoon scale for the game. TF Smith became an interest when the then cheif of staff of the Army sent out a chain teaching event about '92 that started out with the line, "There will never be another Task Force Smith", and nobody around the Army Chaplain School had any idea what that meant. No idea if anyone else had a clue either, but I put a briefing together and used it in some of my training at the school. Now I am working on creating a set of scenarios to cover the battles in the book, America's First Battles (covers first battles from AWI to Vietnam). Can't miss a chance to get this on a table. Once I convert the scenario for my game, I'll mention it here and make it available.

Tom Oxley

[javelin98]

Now we just need GHQ to kick out some M44 and M75 APC's for use in the Korean War scenarios.

*cough*

[Thomaso827]

Only a handful of manufacturers make anything specific to the Korean conflict. Must be about the least gamed war in history. With Vietnam picking up over the last few years, maybe we will see more for Korea and the early 50s. They have to remember, this stuff was used for the rest of the 50s, so any game set in 50s Europe or Asia would include these models. Might even be appropriate for some of the '47 line considering much of it was at least in the planning stages if not in production by then.

Tom Oxley

[javelin98]

Might even be appropriate for some of the '47 line considering much of it was at least in the planning stages if not in production by then.

Yeah, that's actually what I was thinking about the M44. I realize you could just take some M18 tank killers and remove the turrets for those, though. The M75 would be harder to kitbash from other vehicles, which would make it a better candidate for the GHQ treatment.

[piersyf]

I think Korea has some nice options, if you don't mind large infantry actions. The Chinese intervention may not be a surprise, but there are still scenarios to be played from it. For once the US forces would be short on just about everything, retreating in disorder and with low morale at the start of a scenario. As a gamer, trying to keep the troops together and get them off the board would be a genuine challenge.

Inchon would be fun, I agree, but what about Kapyong? 118th Chinese Infantry Div vs 1 Brit infantry battalion (** CENSORED **), 1 Canadian (Princess Patricia light infantry) 1 Australian (3 battalion RAR), one artillery regiment (16 field, RNZA), and one tank company (A coy 72nd US heavy tank). If you like skirmishes, try playing the Australian rearguard after that action... 4 infantrymen held off three successive attacks of around 200 Chinese infantry (in each attack).

Then there's the sister battle at Imjin River...

After that, sure it's tanks and trench warfare... still challenging if the scenario is done right.

P