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5 JULY 1950 - BATTLE OF OSAN (Task Force Smith) - Korean War 

On 27 June, President Harry S Truman announced he had ordered American air and naval forces to give cover and support to the South Korean troops, initiating the UN Defensive-27 June to 15 September 1950 Campaign. On the 28th he authorized the Commander in Chief Far East to use certain supporting ground units in Korea, and authorized the U.S. Air Force to conduct missions on specific targets in North Korea. On the 30th the President further authorized the Commander in Chief Far East to use all forces available to him to repel the invasion, and ordered a naval blockade of the entire coast of Korea. Task Force Smith was the first U.S. ground combat unit to arrive from Japan as an advanced element of the 24th Infantry Division.

Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith, commander of the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, of the 24th Division, led a 500-man delaying force, called Task Force Smith in the first ground combat of U.S. forces in the Korean War. After most of his task force was airlifted from Japan on 2 July , with the rest to follow, they immediately moved north. On 5 July Colonel Smith established a defensive position three miles north of Osan, assisted by elements of the 52d Field Artillery Battalion. Task Force Smith took on two regiments of the North Korean 4th Division and thirty-three T34 tanks. Badly outnumbered and without armor, effective antitank weapons, or air support, the task force was overrun. The next day, Colonel Smith assembled only 250 men, half his original force. #Armyhistory #KoreanWar

DID YOU KNOW

The Battle of Osan is sometime better known as the engagement Task Force Smith fought.

As a product of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States divided Korea into two sovereign states in 1948 with the border set at the 38th parallel. A socialist state was established in the north under the communist leadership of Kim Il-sung and a capitalist state in the south under the anti-communist leadership of Syngman Rhee. Both governments of the two new Korean states claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea, and neither accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into warfare when North Korean military (KPA) forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—crossed the border and advanced into South Korea on 25 June 1950.[52]The United Nations Security Council authorized the formation of the United Nations Command and the dispatch of forces to Korea[53] to repel what was recognized as a North Korean invasion.[54][55] Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel.

The Korean War was among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era, with approximately 3 million war fatalities and a larger proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War. It incurred the destruction of virtually all of Korea's major cities, thousands of massacres by both sides (including the mass killing of tens of thousands of suspected communists by the South Korean government), and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war by the North Korean command. North Korea became among the most heavily-bombed countries in history.

e Indochina Wars (Vietnamese: Chiến tranh Đông Dương) were a series of wars fought in Southeast Asia from 1946 until 1989, between communist Indochinese forces against mainly French, South Vietnamese, American, Cambodian, Laotian and Chinese forces. The term "Indochina" originally referred to French Indochina, which included the current states of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In current usage, it applies largely to a geographic region, rather than to a political area. The wars included:

• The First Indochina War (called the Indochina War in France and the French War in Vietnam) began after the end of World War II in 1945 and lasted until the French defeat in 1954. After a long campaign of resistance against the French and the Japanese, Viet Minh forces had claimed a victory (the August Revolution) after Japanese and Vichy French forces surrendered in the North on 15 August 1945. In the War in Vietnam (1945–46), British forces temporarily occupied the South, starting from 13 September 1945, only to restore French colonialcontrol in 1946. In the United Nations and through their alliance with the United Kingdom and the United States, the French demanded return of their former Indochina colony prior to agreeing to participate in the NATO alliance (founded in 1949) opposing Soviet expansion beyond the countries of the Warsaw Pact (founded in 1955) in the Cold War. 
• The Second Indochina War (called the Vietnam War in the West or the American War in Vietnam) began as a conflict between the United States-backed South Vietnamese government and its opponents, both the North Vietnamese-based communist Viet Cong (National Liberation Front) and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), known in the West as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The conflict began in 1955 and lasted until 1975 when the North Vietnamese conquered South Vietnam. The United States, which had supported France during the first Indochina war, backed the South Vietnamese government in opposition to the National Liberation Front and the Communist-allied NVA. Cambodian Civil War, 1968–1975) and in Laos between the US-backed government, the NVA, and the Communist-backed Pathet Lao (known as the Laotian Civil War or Secret War, 1959–1975).

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed attempt by US-sponsored Cuban Exiles to reverse Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, beginning with a militaryu invasion of northern Cuba.

A Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored rebel group, Brigade 2506, attempted an invasion on 17 April 1961 that lasted just three days. Brigade 2506 was a counter-revolutionary military group made up mostly of Cuban exiles who had traveled to the United States after Castro's takeover, but also included some US military personnel.[6]Trained and funded by the CIA, Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro. Launched from Guatemala and Nicaragua, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, under the direct command of Castro.

The coup of 1952 led by General Fulgencio Batista, an ally of the United States, against President Carlos Prio, forced him to take exile in Miami. Prio's exile was the reason for the 26th July Movement led by Castro. The movement, which did not succeed until completion of the Cuban Revolution (December 1958), severed the country's formerly strong links with the US after nationalizing American industrial assets (banks, oil refineries, sugar and coffee plantations) along with other American owned businesses.

It was after the Cuban Revolution that Castro forged strong economic links with the Soviet Union, against which the United States primarily engaged in the Cold War. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower was very concerned at the direction Castro's government was taking, and in March 1960 he allocated $13.1 million to the CIA to plan Castro's overthrow. The CIA proceeded to organize the operation with the aid of various Cuban counter-revolutionary forces, training Brigade 2506 in Guatemala.

On 28 January 1961, President Kennedy was briefed, together with all the major departments, on the latest plan (code-named Operation Pluto), which involved 1,000 men landed in a ship-borne invasion at Trinidad, Cuba, about 270 km (170 mi) south-east of Havana, at the foothills of the Escambray Mountains in Sancti Spiritusprovince. Kennedy authorized the active departments to continue, and to report progress.

At about 00:00 on 17 April 1961, the two CIA LCIs Blagar and Barbara J, each with a CIA 'operations officer' and an Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) of five frogmen, entered the Bay of Pigs (Bahía de Cochinos) on the southern coast of Cuba. They headed a force of four transport ships (Houston, Río Escondido, Caribe and Atlántico) carrying about 1,400 Cuban exile ground troops of Brigade 2506, plus the Brigade's M41 Walker Bulldog tanks,[97] and other vehicles in the landing craft.[136] At about 01:00, Blagar, as the battlefield command ship, directed the principal landing at Playa Girón (code-named Blue Beach), led by the frogmen in rubber boats followed by troops from Caribe in small aluminium boats, then LCVPs and LCUs with the M41 Walker Bulldog tanks.

On 19 April 1961, at least seven Cubans plus two CIA-hired US citizens (Angus K. McNair and Howard F. Anderson) were executed in Pinar del Rio province, after a two-day trial.

Havana gleefully noted the wealth of the captured invaders: 100 plantation owners, 67 landlords of apartment houses, 35 factory owners, 112 businessmen, 179 lived off unearned income, and 194 ex-soldiers of Batista.

— Life magazine

By 1964, there were 23,000 US advisors in South Vietnam. In

August, the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred, in which a U.S. destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. in response, the U.S Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson broad authorization to increase U.S. military presence. He ordered the deployment of combat units for the first time and increased troop levels to 184,000.[70] Past this point, the People's Army of Vietnam (known also as the NVA) engaged in more conventional warfare with U.S and South Vietnamese forces. Every year onward, there was significant build-up of U.S forces, despite little progress. U.S Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, one of the principal architects of the war, began expressing doubts of victory by the end of 1966.[74] U.S. and South Vietnam forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The U.S. also conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam and Laos.

The Tet Offensive of 1968 showed the lack of progress with these doctrines. With the NLF and PAVN mounting large-scale urban offensives throughout 1968, U.S domestic support for the war began fading. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) expanded following a period of neglect after Tet and was modeled after U.S doctrine. The NLF sustained heavy losses during the Tet Offensive, losing over half its strength in a matter of months,[75] which combined with subsequent U.S.-ARVN operations in the rest of 1968, nearly wiped out the southern insurgency. The CIA's Phoenix Program further degraded the NLF's membership and capabilities. By the end of the year, the NLF insurgents held almost no territory in South Vietnam, and their recruitment dropped by over 80% in 1969, signifying a drastic reduction in guerrilla operations, necessitating increased use of NVA regular soldiers from the north.[76] In 1969, North Vietnam declared a Provisional Revolutionary Government in South Vietnam in an attempt to give the reduced NLF a more international stature, but the southern guerrillas from then on were sidelined as PAVN forces begun more conventional Combined arms warfare. Operations crossed national borders.

American Revolutionary War
(1775–1783)

Location: Eastern North America, Gibraltar, India, Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic

Cherokee–American wars
(1776–1795)

Part of the American Indian Wars

Location: Old Southwest

Northwest Indian War
(1785–1793)

Part of the American Indian Wars

Location: Northwest Territory

Shays' Rebellion
(1786–1787)

Location: Massachusetts

Whiskey Rebellion
(1791–1794)

Location: Western Pennsylvania

Quasi-War
(1798–1800)

Location: Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean

Fries Rebellion
(1799–1800)

Location: Pennsylvania

19th-century wars

First Barbary War
(1801–1805)

Part of the Barbary Wars

Location: Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Tripoli

1811 German Coast Uprising
(1811)

Location: Territory of Orleans

Tecumseh's War
(1811)

Part of the American Indian Wars and the War of 1812

Location: Northwest River Ohio

War of 1812
(1812–1815)

Location: Eastern and Central North America

The Bosnian War (Serbo-Croatian: Rat u Bosni i Hercegovini / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Following a number of violent incidents in early 1992, the war is commonly viewed as having started on 6 April 1992. The war ended on 14 December 1995. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and Herzeg-Bosnia, which were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia, respectively.[10][11][12]

The war was part of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Following the Slovenianand Croatian secessions from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina – which was inhabited by mainly Muslim Bosniaks (44 percent), as well as Orthodox Serbs (32.5 percent) and Catholic Croats(17 percent) – passed a referendum for independence on 29 February 1992. This was rejected by the political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs, who had boycotted the referendum. Following Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of independence (which gained international recognition), the Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadžić and supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), mobilised their forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure ethnic Serb territory, then war soon spread across the country, accompanied by ethnic cleansing.

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started in late February 1998[48][49] and lasted until 11 June 1999.[50] It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with air support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) from 24 March 1999, and ground support from the Albanian army.

The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million[68] to 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians.[69] After the end of the war in June 1999, numerous Albanian refugees started returning home from neighboring countries. By November 1999, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 848,100 out of 1,108,913 had returned