This 1957 U.S. Navy film about the Seventh Fleet shows the activities of the fleet since 1949, as part of the effort to contain the spread of Communism and support friendly nations such as Japan and Taiwan against Red China. The film shows the U.S. fleet’s operations during the Korean War and the Formosa Patrol Force which shielded Taiwan during the crisis. The film shows Corsairs, Skyraiders and jets including the F-86 Sabre making air strikes in Korea, and the support system that allowed them to stay on station. At 5:57 the film shows the settlement of the Korean War in a ceasefire. At 6:15 the film begins to concentrate on the post-war era, patrolling the coastlines of east Asia between the Philippines and Japan. Includes shots of USS Shangri-La CV-38 at 6:50. At 7:22, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, nationalist leader of Taiwan, visits the carrier Wasp at Formosa. At 8:00, the U.S. fleet evacuates refugees from North Vietnam to the South as part of Operation Passage to Freedom. At 8:30 the 1954 Second Taiwan Strait Crisis is shown.
The First Taiwan Strait Crisis (also called the 1954–1955 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Formosa Crisis, the Offshore Islands Crisis or the 1955 Taiwan Strait Crisis) was a brief armed conflict that took place between the governments of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC), which by then had fled and was based in Taiwan. The PRC seized the Yijiangshan Islands, forcing the ROC to abandon the Tachen Islands. The United States and the ROC Navies joined forces to evacuate ROC military personnel and civilians from the Tachen Islands to Taiwan. Though the Tachen Islands changed hands during the crisis, American news reports focused almost exclusively on the Kinmen and Matsu islands, which were the sites of frequent artillery duels.
The Chinese Civil War had receded in scale in 1949, with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) government and 1.3 million supporters abandoning the Chinese mainland and relocating the national government to the island of Taiwan (also known as Formosa). While hostilities in western and southwestern China continued, the territory under the jurisdiction of the Republic of China was effectively reduced to Taiwan, the Pescadores, and several island groups along the coast of southeastern China. Hainan island fell to the Communists in April 1950 and the Choushan islands were evacuated by the Nationalists in May 1950, even before the First Taiwan Strait Crisis.
The Matsu and Kinmen island groups, situated in the Taiwan Strait just off the coast of the Chinese mainland, were the Nationalists’ first line of defense against the Communist Party of China and were heavily fortified by Chiang. The islands off the shore of Zhejiang province were seen as a foothold to recover the mainland and housed the reduced provincial government of Chiang’s native province.
The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, also called the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, was a conflict that took place between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) in which the PRC shelled the islands of Kinmen and the nearby Matsu Islands along the east coast of the PRC (in the Taiwan Strait) to “liberate” Taiwan from the Chinese Nationalist Party, also called Kuomintang (KMT), and probe the extent of the United States defense of Taiwan’s territory.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
