Red Eclipse: Halting the Communist Drive on Seoul The massive Chinese offensive in 1951 aimed to destroy the U.S. Eighth Army and drive it from the Korean Peninsula. Here's What You Need to Know: The blunting of the Chinese spring offensive amounted to the most decisive defeat the Communists had yet suffered in the war. By mid-April 1951, the war in Korea was nearly 10 months old. United Nations forces had suffered a reversal of fortunes in late 1950 with the entry of Communist China into the war, losing the South Korean capital of Seoul but later regaining it. Now the U.S. Eighth Army, a multinational force that was dominated by American leadership and troops, found itself engaged in limited offensive operations near the 38th Parallel in the wake of General Douglas MacArthur’s removal by President Harry Truman as U.N. Supreme Commander and U.S. commander in chief in the Far East. The new supreme commander, based in Tokyo, was General Matthew B. Ridgway, who had led Eighth Army out of the dark period following its collapse the previous December. Lt. Gen. James A. Van Fleet was named the new commander of the Eighth Army and took charge on April 14. Facing the UN forces in Korea were some 700,000 Communist troops, with an additional 750,000 available in Manchuria. Against this, Van Fleet fielded 230,000 men on the front line and 190,000 more in reserve.