Operation Ripper, Korean War Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Operation Ripper, Korean War - Essay Example tion involved the entire divisions of Eighth Army as well as the airborne troops of the 187th Regiment Combat Team and the 2nd and 4th Ranger companies. A number of the historical accounts on Operation Ripper identified it as offensive with an exclusive objective of capturing Seoul. However, there are accounts that Operation Ripper has a deeper goal than merely driving away the enemy from a specific location. Dorr and Thompson (2003) explained that throughout the Korean War, the American soldier did not have the killer mentality that would ensure efficacy in the battlefield: "A study showed that 27 percent balked, deliberately passing up a chance to aim and shoot their MI Garand rifles when an enemy soldier presented a target."2 So, the newly installed General Matthew Ridgway, planned Operation Ripper to remedy this problem and inflict as much casualty as possible. The operation was originally called Operation Killer, describing its ultimate objective. Soldiers were conditioned to kill. They were reminded that the job entailed killing and the destruction of enemy equipment. This is demonstrated in the standard pep talk delivered by sergeants to the UN troops: "Your job is to point that goddamned thing into the other guys face and shoot him deader than a doornail."3 The tactics involved included the coordinated offensives and strictly preserved lateral security that avoided immediate interdiction.4 After the operation, it was reported that the United Nation troops were able to kill 7,000 Chinese soldiers.5 While Operation Ripper did not decimate the enemy completely, it successfully drove them out of Seoul and further up north. In this respect, it was able to attain some degree of success for the United Nations efforts during the Korean War. The success of the operation was able to change the lackluster performance of the troops. There are those who argued that the outcome turned the tides of the war. In the political front, Operation Ripper convinced policymakers