Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, “Hearts and Minds”, and propaganda. The term is used “to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people”.
Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audience’s value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior. It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator’s objectives, and are sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics. It is also used to destroy the morale of enemies through tactics that aim to depress troops’ psychological states.
Psychological warfare was still in its rudimentary stages when war broke out on the Korean Peninsula in 1950. Back then, military commanders understood the importance of fooling the enemy as a means of gaining the upper hand, even if the resources to pull off such a ruse was basic at best. Operation Ripper (March 6th-31st, 1951), as it was known, represented the UN’s attempt to liberate Seoul, South Korea’s capital, from North Korean occupation and push back the combined communist forces to their starting positions along the 38th Parallel. The Chinese Volunteer Army (CVA), who entered the war on the side of North Korea after it was attacked by UN forces in the latter half of 1950, did not possess any tanks and was largely an infantry-based formation that relied heavily upon human wave attacks to seize their objectives. The North Koreans, on the other hand, had lost most of their tanks during the fighting in 1950, and therefore posed little in the way of a threatening force as it had once been a year earlier.
For this offensive, the US Army employed a bit of psychological warfare against the Chinese forces who were supposedly very superstitious, and whose culture feared both the tiger and dragon. Interestingly, the tiger is considered to be brave, cruel, forceful, stately and terrifying, the symbol of power and lordliness. In ancient times, the Chinese people usually compared emperors to the tiger. So, in an effort to boost the morale of the UN troops facing them and instill fear in the Chinese troops opposing them, it was decided that US tank crews were to paint their tanks with tiger heads/faces, bloody sharp teeth and claws on the front of their vehicles. These schemes were the most elaborate and colorful markings ever applied to US tanks and it was hoped these tiger faces would help to strike fear in the hearts of the Chinese troops ahead of any advance.
Unfortunately, this colorful plan might have worked a year earlier but due to some misinformation regarding the dates of the Chinese New Year, never achieved its stated aim of forcing the Chinese to flee. In 1951, The Year of the Tiger as it was known by the Chinese, actually ended on February 5th, 1951, one month prior to the start of the UN attack. On the other hand, February 6th, 1951 ushered in the Year of the Rabbit, which had no detrimental effect on the average Chinese soldier. Changing the painted images of the tiger to a rabbit on many of the Allies’ tanks was obviously a moot idea so the tiger faces that adorned the tanks were left as is. After the offensive ended in late March, the elaborate guise was no longer needed so the paint schemes were either left to fade or were painted over to their original schemes.
Never one to shrink from a daunting task, Dragon, under their Neo Dragon Armor brand, plans on re-producing these battle wagons with not one but five different iterations of the famed “Tiger Face” Sherman. Each has been painstakingly researched based upon information obtained from actual photos and other historical documents. Look for the entire collection to roll out sometime this fall.