Manchester (CL 83) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 104 text:

1 ' .: Left Newer field piecei ;uch as tht wen found in Sin Do cav and revetments Attei our bombardment, none ot them were m abli Below Another Sin Do mystery Russian word [minted on concrete walk oi thii hut tell w that officers ol -i Soviet combat engineer regiment were nun billeterl here. Inside were only dunk, empty rooms. Above: On nearby So Do Island where Captain Hansen and his reconnaissance party landed the following day, these World War II bombs were found. The Japs, who had operated planes from Wonsan airstrip, used So Do as a storage for tons of explosives, but when Allies advanced to Wonsan, Jap troops hastily pushed all the bombs into the harbor. At the beginning of this war, North Koreans tediously fished them out for use against South Koreans. Right: Manchester men set up station on So Do from which to observe gun positions on Kalma Gak that had fired on us again in the afternoon of February 24th. Landing on So Do had been no problem. It was nearly deserted. -T A

Page 103 text:

Within several hours, Captain Hansen reported to the Manchester by walkie talkie that Sin Do had been taken with no opposition. The Red crews who had manned guns on Sin Do had either evacuated, or become part of 94 civilians the marines found on the island an old change-of-clothes trick popular among North Koreans. Destruction was king on Sm Do. But in the shambles and twisted trees lay tin- remnant Id and new . . . Above. i long underground hunker that was used to store ammunition tor several 11-inch mortars HI one below. These Japanese-made guns once rendered Sm Do a near impasse to those who threatened Wonsan from thi

Page 105 text:

On February 25th, the Manchestei .mil d ind frigates thai constituted th group were firing back .it Kalma (i.ik. It wis soon evidenl thai guns on tins peninsul drawn oul oi theii obscure caves, fired, then pushed back in before our batterii el a1 them. Furthermore, the} usually fired in late afternoon, as the sun silhouetted the hills. The K.ihn.i G.ik problem would nol be easily solved — nor w.is there anj ■ mine thre.it Several tiny South Korean minesweepers had succeeded in clearii foi us only aftei previous days ol c ntinuous sweeping and check sweeping — and this tuted less than .1 tenth of the total numbei of mines reported still al large in the harbor. In spite of the harbor situation we began dealing with our priority objectives in dead earnest. Wonsan was beginning to receive severe wounds . . .