Stop 'Em At The 38th Parallel Part 6

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Stop ‘Em At The 38^th Parallel:

The Soviet Intervention In Korea

By Chris Oakley

Part 6

1952(April-June)

April 3rd--Turkey formally declares war on the Soviet Union.

April 4th--U.S. Army Ranger detachments in Norway blow up a Red Army armored vehicle depot near the town of Vadsø.

April 6th--Soviet warplanes bomb NATO bases in eastern Turkey.

April 7th--NATO jets raid Soviet military outposts in Armenia in retaliation for the previous day’s Soviet air strikes against Turkey.

April 9th--The Red Army begins what will turn out to be its last major offensive operation in the Norwegian theater, launching a three-pronged infantry and tank assault against NATO forces near the village of Andselv.

April 10th--Turkish tanks cross the Armenian border just before dawn near the village of Artashat and attempt to drive towards the Armenian regional capital Yerevan but are turned back by the Red Army with heavy losses.

April 11th--NATO infantry and armored units in Norway begin a counterattack against Soviet positions outside Andselv.

April 13th--A Reuters dispatch out of Stockholm reports that that the last pockets of Communist resistance in Dresden have been overrun by U.S. troops.

April 14th--Norwegian anti-Communist partisans and British SAS commandos ambush a Soviet supply convoy near the town of Andslimoen. This attack will later be credited by some Western military historians as having sealed the fate of the besieged Red Army troops near Andselv.

April 16th--The official Soviet news agency TASS acknowledges the capture of Dresden by NATO forces but pledges that Red Army divisions will soon retake the city; as a last resort, the TASS bulletin warns, the Soviet government is prepared to obliterate Dresden with nuclear weapons to prevent NATO units in Germany from advancing any further.

April 17th--Soviet and NATO warplanes clash in the skies over Istanbul as Red Air Force bombers attempt to raid key command/ control and industrial targets in and around the ancient Turkish city. While most of the bombers in the Soviet attack force are shot down, some of them succeed in scoring a number of hits on the city’s main electrical and gas plants.

April 18th--The Red Army pocket near Andselv begins to collapse under relentless pressure from NATO ground troops.

April 20th--NATO fighter jets bomb Soviet supply and defensive positions on the eastern edge of Andselv.

April 22nd--U.S. and Norwegian mountain troops encircle the last remaining pocket of Soviet resistance near Andselv.

April 23rd--A Soviet air force Tu-4 bomber is sent into German airspace to drop a nuclear bomb on NATO forces occupying the city of Dresden; although mechanical troubles and serious local air turbulence cause the bomb to be released four miles short of its intended target, it still manages to inflict substantial casualties among NATO troops and German civilians when the bomb detonates.

April 25th--The last remaining Red Army detachments at Andselv are captured by U.S troops.

April 27th--The second-highest ranking officer for what remains of the Soviet expeditionary force in Norway resigns his post in disgust with what he regards as the incompetence of many of the field commanders tasked with prosecuting the Norwegian campaign as well as his political superiors’ insistence on going forward with their continuing attempts to make the “Norwegian People’s Republic” puppet state function even though the puppet state has turned out to be an unqualified fiasco.

April 28th--A detachment of British SBS commandos blow up a hydroelectric generator near the village of Yongampo, further undermining the already seriously damaged North Korean national electrical grid.

April 30th--NATO ground troops in Norway liberate the town of Fleskmoen from Soviet occupation forces.

May 1st--Members of the New Awakening movement stage a rally in Belarus calling upon the Soviet government to end the war with NATO before the USSR suffers further nuclear attacks.

May 3rd--Three NKPA infantrymen are executed near the town of Yongchon for refusing to comply with a direct order from their company commander to execute a group of refugees alleged to have spread “defeatist” propaganda among Yongchon’s residents.

May 4th--NATO fighter jets destroy a critical Red Army supply facility in the Norwegian village of Serreisa; that same day the town of Moen is liberated by NATO ground troops.

May 8th--Forced at last to concede that the Soviet position in Norway is untenable, new CPSU general secretary Leonid Brezhnev orders the withdrawal of all remaining Red Army combat troops from Norway within seven days. Brezhnev, former head of the Red Army’s Political Directorate, emerged as CPSU leader in the wake of Suslov’s death after cutting a deal with one of his rivals in the CPSU hierarchy, fellow ex-Red Army political officer Nikita Khrushchev.

May 9th--Soviet combat forces begin withdrawing from Norway. In response, NATO Supreme Headquarters in Brussels directs U.S. and allied ground troops on Norwegian soil to pursue and isolate the retreating Soviets in order to deny them any chance of escaping back to Soviet territory.

May 11th--In a daring pre-dawn raid, Norwegian anti-Communist guerrillas seize the headquarters of the “Norwegian People’s Republic” puppet regime and capture the surviving leaders of the Soviet-backed pseudo-government. The next day, after being convicted of treason by a hastily convened special tribunal, the “People’s Republic” council members are all sentenced to death by firing squad.

May 14th--Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean torpedo a British destroyer en route to Malta; just minutes later, the submarines themselves are sunk by U.S. carrier jets.

May 17th--10,000 Soviet combat troops attempting to evacuate Norway are trapped by NATO ground forces in a pocket along the Norwegian-Soviet border.

May 18th--Soviet jets based in Bulgaria raid the NATO airbase at Izmir, Turkey; in retaliation, U.S. warplanes bomb Soviet airfields in Bulgaria later that same day.

May 20th--NATO armor and infantry units begin to collapse the Soviet pocket on the Norwegian border.

May 22nd--Alger Hiss, a former U.S. State Department official who had been serving a five-year prison sentence for perjury after being convicted of giving false testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee regarding allegations that he was once a spy for the Soviet Union, is shot and fatally wounded while trying to escape from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. He dies in the prison hospital wing the next day.

May 23rd--Two high-ranking Soviet naval officers are arrested on suspicion of spying for NATO after the submarine K-51 falls into NATO hands during a patrol operation off the Danish coast. Just three weeks after their arrest, these officers will be convicted of espionage on (at best)questionable evidence and executed; the executions will trigger a morale crisis within the Soviet navy.

May 25th--The CIA station chief in Tokyo cables President Truman with a report indicating that Soviet civilian morale is steadily and inexorably deteriorating in the face of the recent setbacks the Red Army has suffered in Germany and Norway. The report also suggests discipline among Soviet ground forces stationed in the Korean Peninsula is in a state of decline as UN troops continue to pound away at the beleaguered Communist expeditionary forces in that region.

May 26th--The last remaining Soviet combat soldiers in Norway are captured by Norwegian ski troops as they attempt to break out of the NATO pocket surrounding them.

May 27th--CIA director Gen. Walter Bedell Smith receives a cable from the agency’s station chief in Saigon suggesting that Viet Minh founder and leader Ho Chi Minh has opened negotiations with North Korea aimed at forming an alliance between the Vietnamese Communist insurgency and the North Korean government. Gen. Smith sends a reply ordering further investigation of the matter.

May 29th--The chief of staff for the Soviet Navy’s Pacific fleet commits suicide after being informed his son’s Red Army platoon has been wiped out in action against U.S. ground forces in East Germany. In spite of the Soviet defense ministry’s best efforts to conceal the suicide, word leaks out via a disgruntled aide at the late chief of staff’s office; the news has further damaging effects on the already much-blighted morale of the Soviet armed forces in general and the navy specifically.

June 1st--Five Polish dissidents are arrested after trying to hold an antiwar meeting in Poznan.

June 5th--Associated Press reports “intense fighting” between NATO and Communist infantry detachments southeast of the ruins of Berlin.

June 7th--Turkish commandos raid a Soviet border defense post near the Georgian town of Dzhakismani.

June 8th--The chief military advisor for the provisional East German government confirms that Communist ground units are in combat with NATO detachments southeast of what’s left of Berlin but describes it as “a minimal skirmish” which will be over in a matter of days if not hours. This assessment contrasts very sharply with the views of most intelligence analysts on both sides of the Iron Curtain; the NKVD in particular expects the fighting in that sector to drag on for weeks.

June 10th--In retaliation for the Dzhakismani raid three days earlier, Soviet warplanes bomb and strafe a Turkish army truck convoy south of the town of Kars, killing 18 and wounding 37.

June 11th--CIA deep-cover agents in central Europe report to Washington that Communist losses in the fighting southeast of the ruins of Berlin are much heavier that acknowledged by the Soviets or East Germans. At least one dispatch to the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia hints there have been isolated cases of mutiny within the East German army.

To Be Continued

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