Understatement is an expression of lesser strength than what the speaker or writer actually means or than what is normally expected.
[2] In April 1951, during the Battle of the Imjin River of the Korean War, 650 British fighting men – soldiers and officers from the 1st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment – were deployed on the most important crossing on the river to block the traditional invasion route to Seoul.
The Chinese had sent an entire division – 10,000 men – to smash the isolated Glosters aside in a major offensive to take the whole Korean peninsula, and the small force was gradually surrounded and overwhelmed.
After two days' fighting, an American, Major General Robert H Soule, asked the British brigadier, Thomas Brodie: "How are the Glosters doing?"
[3] During the Kuala-Lumpur-to-Perth leg of British Airways Flight 9 on 24 June 1982, volcanic ash caused all four engines of the Boeing 747 aircraft to fail.