T-34

But was there also the thought process, Anthony, that, you know, he wanted the factories running till the last possible minute, you know, that actually he couldn't afford to let people run away?

Well, the factories were important because, of course, one of them was actually producing, uh, tanks, T-34 tanks.

I mean, some of them were being rolled out, uh, and even simply being manned by factory workers, not even by soldiers.

Uh, and they were actually...

And, and it w- it tr- totally changed the paradigm of, okay, so this is, you go from a, you know, cookie, you know, a cookie baking exercise of just putting stuff in an oven, bringing it out, and it's done, to actually, like, oh, we're gonna do this from scratch.

Like you said, the individualness, and I think of moments of his naked desperation where he did the raw steel T-34.

There are some of those-

Mm

And the funny thing about recruiting at that time, and, and this coming from a former deputy commander of Navy recruiting, was that when you passed the AFOQT or the, uh, what we call the FAUFAR/PFAR testing, they would give you an airplane ride.

Each recruiting district, there were 41 of them at the time, had a T-34 Bravo or two.

And, uh, aviators on shore duty as recruiters were tasked with putting the, uh, young recruit in the back seat and seeing if he was aeronautically adaptable.

And so, uh, this guy put me in the back seat of this T-34, and to be fair, I had about 15 hours toward my private pilot's license at this point.

So w- I'm sitting in the back of this thing, and he squirrel caged the shiznit out of that thing.

I mean, it was, uh, loops, rolls, half Cubans, Immelmans.

The Soviet Union supplied much of the materiel for the NKPA.

Of primary importance was the T-34 medium tank, a mainstay of the Soviet armored force in World War II that weighed 32 tons and mounted an 85-millimeter gun.

The Soviets also supplied artillery support that resembled the weaponry of the older Soviet divisions of World War II, 76-millimeter and 122-millimeter howitzers, 45-millimeter anti-tank guns, and 82-millimeter and 120-millimeter mortars.

At the outset of the war, North Korea had about 180 Soviet aircraft, 60 Yak trainers, 40 Yak fighters, 70 attack bombers, and 10 reconnaissance planes.

The officers of the KMAG felt that an attack by North Korea was not imminent, and if it happened, they thought that the South Koreans could repel it.

Since the United States had no plan to counter an invasion, any debate about an American intelligence failure regarding the North Korean attack was academic.

Operations During 15 through 24 June 1950, the North Korean high command assembled some ninety thousand men, seven infantry divisions, one armored brigade, one separate infantry regiment, one motorcycle regiment, and one border constabulary brigade, supported by a hundred and fifty Soviet T-34 tanks near the 38th parallel.

At 400 hours on 25 June, the North Koreans launched a coordinated attack on South Korea that ran from coast to coast.

This is just the featured items.

The other one is a small plane, you know, single-engine propeller plane, T-34, if you're interested.

I guess the auction is underway and closes on October 1st.

So currently someone has bid $100,000 for this 1983 Beechcraft T-34C aircraft located in Tucson, Arizona.

I don't know.

Is that a bargain price for a 1983 Beechcraft? I don't think so.

And that ruthlessness is what made him indispensable when the theoretical intelligence war became a terrifying reality.

On Sunday morning, June 25, 1950, 90,000 North Korean troops, led by 150 Soviet T-34 tanks, roll across the 38th parallel.

The invasion that Nichols predicted?

The one will be ignored.

The South Korean army was collapsing.

American troops who were rushed over from soft occupation beauty in Japan were retreating in chaos.

And those Soviet T-34 tanks were essentially impervious to the bazookas and light artillery the Americans had on hand.

Right.

Yeah, there's a Kugelwagen.

Kugelwagen, T34s in the Ostfront.

Yeah,

T34, E5 and a 76, I think.