
A $60k Patrol Boat and a Single Deck Gun Changed the Course of Korean War - vinnyglennon
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-lone-60000-patrol-boat-and-its-single-deck-gun-changed-course-korean-war-78871
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mc32
That’s amazing fortune!

The officers and enlisted men and their families scrounged up enough money to
get the govt to pony up the rest to purchase a decrepit ship in need of
repair.

It was repaired in New York with one mounted gun. They bought one hundred
rounds on the way back in Hawaii. Two months after beginning maritime ops in
Busan Harbor it sighted a DPRK ship with approx 1000 enemy soldiers who tried
to fire on and swim to the patrol boat. The patrol boat fired back and sunk
the ship staving off an invasion force which, once the war would start two
months hence, would have denied UN forces the toehold they eventually
leveraged to a stalemate on the peninsula and save SK from falling into
communist hands.

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sushid
I was the most surprised by the crowdfunding aspect. South Korea and its
citizens were destitute yet managed to raise over $200,000 adjusted for
inflation.

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danso
The Wikipedia page features photos of the ship:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_PC-823](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_PC-823)

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benj111
"at that stage a training ship of the United States Merchant Marine Academy.
Fifteen naval officers spent two months in the U.S. to fix her. The ship was
in such poor condition that the only thing working was the engine"

Wouldn't you want to be instilling your cadets with the importance of a well
maintained ship?

The Academy seems to have been headed by a rear admiral, so I would have
expected a military type approach to these things.

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simonh
Have you ever been in the Military?

Making do with what you have is the number 1 skill you need to learn. Those
cadets would have gained 10x more experience from getting that ship back up to
operational readiness than they would have from working on a brand new ship in
perfect condition.

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benj111
I don't follow. Are you saying each class of cadets repaired then destroyed
all the parts of the ship?

But no I've never been in the military.

I would have thought preventative maintenance would be a big thing,
particularly for the big expensive thing that you're relying on to keep you
alive.

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simonh
The cadets took a mothballed ship in poor repair and commissioned it back into
service. Sounds like a pretty good exercise.

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benj111
Korea bought it from the United States Merchant Marine Academy, then had to
spend time repairing it because it was in such a bad state of repair. I don't
know what state it was in when the Marine Academy received it, but when it
left only the engine worked.

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Stratoscope
If you're reading this in Chrome on mobile and many of the words are cut off
on the right, try the Desktop Site option on the Chrome menu.

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pkamb
The article says the ship was purchased via "crowdfunding" in 1948. How
retroactive is that word?!

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cafard
Or maybe it just led to a battalion getting slaughtered at sea rather than in
the port. Direct attacks on harbors had a pretty sorry record in WW II.

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jeffrallen
War is stupid.

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polotics
Indeed: Some poor NK peasants trying to save their lives by climbing onto that
boat, getting gunned down...

