Battle of Osan 1950
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 4 July 1950 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1950 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | Post-1945 (1946 onwards) | derived from year |
| Location | South Korea | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Asia | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Korean War | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | North Korea, South Korea, United States | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 37.1850, 127.0525 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Osan (Korean: 오산 전투) was the first engagement between the United States and North Korea during the Korean War. On July 5, 1950, Task Force Smith, an American task force of 540 infantry supported by an artillery battery, was moved to Osan, south of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and was ordered to fight as a rearguard to delay the advancing North Korean forces while more US troops arrived to form a stronger defensive line to the south. The task force lacked both anti-tank guns and effective infantry anti-tank weapons and had been equipped with obsolete (60 mm) rocket launchers and a few 57 mm recoilless rifles. Aside from a limited number of HEAT shells for the unit's 105 mm howitzers, crew-served weapons that could defeat T-34/85 tanks from the Soviet Union had not yet been distributed to the US Army forces in South Korea.
A North Korean tank column equipped with ex-Soviet T-34/85 tanks overran the task force in the first encounter and continued its advance south. After the North Korean tank column had breached US lines, the task force opened fire on a force of some 5,000 North Korean infantry that were approaching its position, which held up their advance.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Osan (revision 1375327001), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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All 64 battles of the Korean War →
Browse more: battles in South Korea · Asia · Post-1945 battles