Within Limits

The U.S. Air Force

and

the Korean War

Wayne Thompson

and Bernard C. Nalty

Air Force History and Museums Program

1996

i
Within Limits

The U.S. Air Force

and

the Korean War

Despite American success in preventing the conquest of

South Korea by communist North Korea, the Korean

War of 1950-1953 did not satisfy Americans who

expected the kind of total victory they had experienced

in World War II. In that earlier, larger war, victory over

Japan came after two atomic bombs destroyed the

cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But in Korea five

years later, the United States limited itself to conventional weapons. Even after communist China entered

the war, Americans put China off-limits to conventional bombing as well as nuclear bombing. Operating

within these limits, the U.S. Air Force helped to repel

two invasions of South Korea while securing control of

the skies so decisively that other United Nations forces

could fight without fear of air attack.

ii
Invasion

Before dawn on Sunday, June 25, 1950, communist North Korea

attacked South Korea, storming across the improvised border that

divided the peninsula into two countries. Some five years earlier,

when Japan surrendered, the United States had proposed that

American forces disarm Japanese forces in Korea south of the 38th

parallel and Soviet troops perform the same task north of that line.

Once the Japanese had been disarmed and repatriated, Korea was

at last to become independent after almost fifty years of domination

by Japan. This scenario depended on continued cooperation between

the Soviet Union and the United States, but the wartime alliance

soon collapsed. Instead of a unified nation, two rival states came to

share the Korean peninsula. The Soviet Union supported the

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea, under the

leadership of Kim Il Sung, a shadowy figure who had fought the

Japanese and fled to the Soviet Union where he apparently served

in the armed forces. The United States stood behind the Republic of

Korea, or South Korea, headed by seventy-year-old Syngman Rhee,

an implacable foe of the Japanese who had earned a doctorate at

Princeton University before World War I, returned to his homeland

only to be expelled in 1921 by the Japanese, and spent the next

twenty-five years in exile campaigning for Korean independence.

When the newly constituted national assembly elected Rhee president of South Korea in August 1948, the United States terminated

the military government that had ruled the South and began withdrawing its occupation forces.

Syngman Rhee and Kim Il Sung, headed opposing governments

on an arbitrarily divided peninsula. The 38th parallel did not conform to any natural feature that might have separated North from

South. In fact, the two Koreas complemented each other; in the

North were the industries developed by the Japanese, while in the

South, where two-thirds of the people lived, the principal activity

was farming. Given the interdependence of the two regions and the

ambitions of their leaders, some sort of clash was inevitable. Soon

insurgents directed from the North were challenging the authority

of President Rhee, who responded by trying to suppress all dissent

in the South, whether communist-inspired or not.

To maintain the independence of South Korea, American military advisers trained and equipped a lightly armed force, basically

a constabulary, believed capable of maintaining order and if necessary resisting an invasion, although too weak to embark on the liberation of North Korea. Confidence in the defensive ability of the

South Korean armed services later seemed hard to justify, for the

nation had only 100,000 soldiers, who lacked tanks and heavy

1
artillery; a small coast guard; and an air force that consisted of

fewer than 20 liaison aircraft or trainers, with just 36 of 57 pilots

fully qualified to fly them. In contrast, North Korea had an army of

at least 130,000 combat troops, who were supported by some 500

tanks and artillery pieces ranging in size to 122 millimeters. The

North Korean air arm possessed 132 combat airplanes supplied by

the Soviet Union, all first-line types during World War II, including

the Ilyushin Il–10 attack aircraft and the Yakovlev Yak–3 and Yak–7

fighters.

Although North Korea depended on the Soviet Union and South

Korea needed the assistance of the United States, both Kim Il Sung

and Syngman Rhee were capable of independent action. Rhee’s popularity stemmed in part from his denunciation of an American plan,

revealed in December 1945, for the creation of a provisional government under a five-year international trusteeship as a step toward

self-government. Rhee succeeded in marshaling demonstrations

against what he considered a new form of colonialism, and the

scheme collapsed, undermined as much by increasing hostility

between the United States and the Soviet Union as by the opposition of the South Korean leader. Similarly, Kim could ignore the fact

that his Soviet sponsors considered him a counterweight to the

influence of Chinese communism and turn to China when the Soviet

Union seemed lukewarm to his ambitions for unifying Korea.

As the decade of the 1940s drew to a close, Korea seemed less

important than several potentially dangerous areas that competed

for the attention of the American government. In the aftermath of

the Berlin blockade, the Truman administration had concentrated

on Europe, even though its basic national policy called for opposing

the spread of communism anywhere in the world. The United States

had already begun to invest heavily in the economic recovery of

western Europe and encouraging a military alliance against possible Soviet aggression there. Accomplishing these goals in Europe

while strengthening the American position in the Far East at the

same time seemed impossible, for the President was determined to

prevent the budget deficits that he believed would produce inflation

and economic dislocation. In Asia, therefore, the wisest course

seemed to be to avoid specific commitments, except to the defense of

Japan, in hope of creating uncertainty among the Chinese and

Soviet leaders as to how the United States might react in a crisis.

Unfortunately, American ambiguity did not cause hesitation, but

instead gave the clear impression of indifference to the fate of South

Korea.

Often singled out as being especially unfortunate in its probable

interpretation by North Korea and its allies is a speech by Secretary

of State Dean G. Acheson in which he declared that the Philippines,

2
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the Ryukyus, Japan, and the Aleutians formed the limit of the

American defensive arc in the western Pacific. Whether trying to

create uncertainty among the communist leaders or to emphasize

America’s belief in the possibility of a peaceful settlement of the friction between the two Koreas, he may well have given the impression

that South Korea would not be defended. Such a conclusion, however, might also have been drawn from the withdrawal of American

occupation troops and, afterward, from congressional indifference to

economic aid for South Korea.

Because of the strategic importance of Japan, the United States

maintained there a seemingly large occupation force, consisting of

four of the Army’s ten divisions, but all four were understrength,

only partially equipped with tanks and artillery, and poorly prepared for combat. These divisions formed the Eighth Army, under

Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker, who was directly responsible to the

Commander in Chief, Far East Command, General of the Army

Douglas MacArthur, who also served as Supreme Commander,

Allied Powers, in the continuing occupation of Japan. When North

Korea attacked the South, MacArthur’s Far East Command was

responsible for the defense of Japan, the Philippines, and the

Ryukyus. Since the withdrawal of the occupation troops from South

Korea, the general was concerned only with the administrative and

logistic support of the Korean Military Advisory Group and the

American embassy at the capital city of Seoul. To assist with the

mission of the Far East Command, the Navy provided the Naval

Forces, Far East, under Vice Adm. C. Turner Joy. The equivalent Air

Force organization was the Far East Air Forces, commanded by Lt.

Gen. George E. Stratemeyer.

Described as resembling a genial college professor, General

Stratemeyer bore responsibility for maintaining a mobile striking

force in support of Army and Navy operations throughout

MacArthur’s Far East Command. To accomplish this, he had available more than 400 combat aircraft assigned to air bases in Japan,

Okinawa, and Guam, and the Philippines. As was true of the ground

forces, the largest concentration of aerial strength was in Japan,

where the Fifth Air Force, under Maj. Gen. Earle E. “Pat” Partridge,

was flying eight squadrons of F–80s, two of B–26 light bombers

(known as A–26s during World War II), and three of F–82 Twin

Mustang all-weather interceptors. One squadron of F–51s from the

Royal Australian Air Force shared Iwakuni airfield on the island of

Honshu with Partridge’s B–26s, but the Australians reported directly to MacArthur as Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, and merely maintained liaison with Stratemeyer’s headquarters. Assigned to

the Far East Air Forces and located in Japan were a variety of rescue aircraft and three squadrons of transports. A group of B–29s,

4
equipped solely for conventional bombing, was based on Guam and

belonged to the Twentieth Air Force, also a part of Stratemeyer’s Far

East Air Forces.

Although the Fifth Air Force gave the impression of aerial might

located near the scene of the fighting in South Korea, this was largely an illusion. Most of its aircraft were F–80 jet fighters, which did

not have the range to intervene effectively from their normal bases

in Japan; and Partridge’s airmen had little practice supporting

troops in combat. This deficiency resulted from the recent emphasis

within the Air Force on strategic bombing; the merger of the tactical

and air defense missions in the Continental Air Command, which

greatly complicated training in the United States; and the lack of

space for large-scale exercises involving air and ground units on

Japan’s densely populated islands.

In Korea the kind of local attack anticipated by the framers of

NSC–68 had indeed occurred. Clearly the policy of the Truman

administration to resist the further expansion of communism

demanded intervention, regardless of the region and the possible

impact on the defense budget and the nation’s economy. Yet, even as

the President and his advisers drew a parallel between communist

aggression in the Far East and the Nazi conquest of Czechoslovakia

(where the western democracies had failed to take a stand that

might have prevented World War II), the administration realized

that other wars might erupt, possibly in western Europe, considered

the principal object of Soviet ambitions. Aggression in Asia had to be

stopped, though not at the risk of losing Europe to communism.

When news of the North Korean offensive reached Washington

on the evening of June 24, Secretary of State Acheson informed the

President, who was visiting his hometown, Independence, Missouri.

Mr. Truman agreed to invoke the principle of collective security and

try to internationalize the response to the North Korean attack by

appealing to the United Nations, then meeting in a temporary headquarters at Lake Success, New York. Because the Soviet delegate to

the United Nations Security Council had walked out in protest of

the refusal to accept a representative from communist China, he

could not exercise his nation’s right of veto, and in his absence the

United Nations called on North Korea to withdraw beyond the 38th

parallel. When that resolution was ignored, with the Soviet delegate

still absent, the Security Council on June 27 called on the members

of the United Nations to provide South Korea with whatever assistance might be required to repel the invasion and restore peace to

the peninsula. The resolution formed the basis for a United Nations

Command, activated on July 24, headed by MacArthur with the

assistance of the staff of the Far East Command. Even as United

Nations commander, however, he was responsible ultimately to the

5
President of the United States rather than to the Secretary General

of the United Nations or the Security Council.

By the time the Security Council had called for the United

Nations to join forces in defense of South Korea, American aircraft

already were flying missions over the embattled country. After

returning from Missouri to Washington on June 25, President

Truman approved the use of American air and naval forces to help

defend South Korea. The Joint Chiefs of Staff set up a teletype conference with MacArthur and relayed to him the President’s decision

to intervene. While the Chief Executive was reaching this decision,

the question of neutralizing Soviet air bases had been addressed.

Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the Air Force Chief of Staff, raised the possibility that atomic bombs might be necessary for this purpose, but

Truman saw no need to do more than draft plans for the eventuality.

The authorization to employ air power, even though armed only

with conventional weapons and limited to targets in South Korea as

the President directed, seemed to have a dramatic effect on General

MacArthur, at a time when Seoul, the South Korean capital was

about to be abandoned to the advancing enemy. General Partridge

found MacArthur to be “almost jubilant” and confident that vigorous

action by the Fifth Air Force would drive the North Koreans back in

disorder. MacArthur directed Partridge to attack tanks, troop concentrations, and other military targets south of the 38th parallel,

while also maintaining the aerial defenses of Japan in the event the

Soviet Union should extend the war there.

Partridge promised that light bombers would hit targets in

South Korea on Tuesday, June 27, the third day of the North Korean

attack, but he could not meet his self-imposed deadline. A half-dozen

of the B–26s were providing air cover for a ship pressed into service

to evacuate American civilians from the port of Inchon, and bad

weather forced those sent against enemy armor to turn back. Not

until Wednesday morning, June 28, after 1st Lt. Bryce Poe in an

RF–80 had flown the Air Force’s first jet combat reconnaissance mission, did twelve B–26s make the first American air strike since the

invasion. The bombers hit the railroad yard at Munsan near the

38th parallel and then strafed tracks and highways nearby. Later in

the day four B–29s patrolled the four main routes over which the

North Koreans were advancing, attacking targets of opportunity.

Despite weather that had forced the B–26s to turn back, on

Tuesday, June 27, Air Force transports, escorted by fighters, began

flying American civilians out of Kimpo airfield near Seoul. At about

noon, five North American F–82s encountered five Yaks over Kimpo

and downed three of the Russian-built fighters. A few hours later,

eight North Korean Il–10s tried to strafe the airfield, but four

F–80s, operating at extreme range to protect the evacuation,

6
destroyed four of the attackers. Some 2,000 Americans were evacuated, half by ship and half by air.

A few minutes before the F–82s had destroyed the first of the

Yaks over Kimpo, the commander of the Far East Air Forces, General

Stratemeyer, returned to Japan from a visit to Washington. Although

the initial victories of the Fifth Air Force in aerial combat over Kimpo

encouraged him, he believed that the airfields in North Korea would

have to be attacked as quickly as possible. The importance of airfields

was confirmed on June 28, when Yaks strafed Suwon airfield, some

fifteen miles south of Seoul, and destroyed or damaged a B–26, an

F–82, and a C–54. Despite the danger at Suwon, MacArthur was

determined to visit the place. It had become the command post for

the liaison group that he had sent to Korea to report on the situation;

and one member of the group, Air Force Lt. Col. John McGinn, had

improvised a tactical air control center to handle American aircraft

in the vicinity. En route to Suwon on Thursday, June 29, MacArthur

approved Stratemeyer’s request for authority to strike airfields north

of the 38th parallel. Late that same day, as MacArthur was driving

back to Suwon from the Han River where he had seen the flood of

South Korean troops and refugees streaming away from Seoul, eighteen B–26s dropped fragmentation bombs on the airfield at

Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. The B–26s returned without

loss, their crews claiming to have destroyed or damaged twenty-five

aircraft on the ground and one in the air. News of MacArthur’s decision and the resulting attack had not reached Washington several

hours later when Truman approved air strikes north of the 38th parallel. The authorization reached MacArthur on June 30 when he

returned from Suwon.

Naval aircraft soon joined in attacking the North. When the war

broke out, two aircraft carriers, the American Valley Forge and the

British Triumph, along with their supporting warships, were available in Far Eastern waters. The two carriers and their escorts met

at Buckner Bay, Okinawa, and steamed toward Korea as Task Force

77, commanded by Vice Adm. Arthur D. Struble of the U.S. Navy.

Admiral Joy, who had discussed possible future operations with

Struble, conferred with Generals MacArthur and Stratemeyer and

agreed to use carrier aircraft against targets in the vicinity of

Pyongyang, far beyond the battleline. Consequently, on July 3,

British and American squadrons based on the carriers raided the

airfield at Haeju and the airfield and rail facilities at Pyongyang;

and on the 4th, Struble launched a second day of strikes against targets near the North Korean capital. From the west coast of Korea,

Task Force 77 steamed by way of Okinawa to the Sea of Japan,

where on July 18 its aircraft blasted the oil refinery and storage

tanks at Wonsan, North Korea, touching off spectacular fires.

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Although these early naval air operations were largely confined

to the North, Partridge had the mission of attacking the enemy

throughout the Korean peninsula, and Stratemeyer set about providing him the necessary men and aircraft, drawing first on the

resources of the Far East Air Forces. While Partridge shifted his

F–80s—some fitted with locally manufactured jettisonable fuel

tanks to extend their range–to airfields in Japan nearer Korea,

Stratemeyer brought in other F–80s from the Philippines and took

steps to acquire F–51 Mustangs. The comparatively slow Mustang

with its liquid-cooled piston engine was vulnerable to ground fire

during strafing missions, but it could operate from the short,

unpaved airstrips in southern South Korea. The Australian government entrusted to Stratemeyer’s control a squadron of F–51s based

in Japan, the first military unit made available by a member of the

United Nations other than the United States for the defense of

South Korea, and the Far East Air Forces began taking Mustangs

from storage for assignment to the South Korean Air Force or to a

provisional squadron being formed by the Fifth Air Force in Japan.

Generals Stratemeyer and Partridge could not expect immediate

help from the United States, for no reserve of combat-ready aircraft

and trained crews was immediately available. General Vandenberg

was able, however, to send two groups of B–29s not scheduled for

incorporation into the Strategic Air Command’s atomic strike force

as reinforcements for the group that had deployed from Guam to

Okinawa to be nearer targets in Korea. Also at hand were some

1,500 F–51s, half in storage and half assigned to the Air National

Guard. On July 5, the first American ground unit sent to South

Korea, a reinforced battalion of perhaps 500 men, placed itself in the

path of an advancing North Korean division 20 times its size. By

that time, a total of 145 Mustangs had been retrieved from the Air

National Guard and prepared for shipment by sea to Japan where

Air Force pilots would undergo transitional training before flying

the aircraft in combat.

Strategic Bombers and Tactical Problems

Along with two groups of B–29s, Vandenberg sent to the Far

East a veteran of World War II, Maj. Gen. Emmett O’Donnell, who

had commanded B–17s during the unsuccessful defense of the

Philippines and later led B–29 strikes against Japan. After arriving

in Japan, he established the Bomber Command, Far East Air Forces,

consisting initially of three groups of B–29s. The mission of bomber

command encompassed long-range interdiction and destruction of

strategic targets, essentially the work done by a similar organization in World War II, and O’Donnell brought with him an appropri8
ate list of targets. Tactical air operations—air superiority, close air

support, and interdiction in the vicinity of the battlefield—were the

responsibility of Fifth Air Force under General Partridge.

The situation on the ground was becoming too dangerous to permit the division of labor between O’Donnell’s bomber command and

Fifth Air Force that Stratemeyer had approved on the basis of Air

Force doctrine. In the first ground combat of the war by American

soldiers, the reinforced battalion assigned to slow the North Korean

advance had been overwhelmed in a matter of hours, and a hardfought delaying action by an entire regiment might gain no more

than seventy-two hours. A race was developing between American

troops arriving in greater numbers and the advancing enemy.

MacArthur and his staff believed that every available aircraft

should be used to slow the North Koreans until a defensive perimeter could be established around the port of Pusan in southernmost

South Korea. On occasion the headquarters of the Far East

Command insisted that the B–29s attack areas close to the battlelines through which the enemy was advancing. Stratemeyer complied but objected to the use of the big bombers against targets better suited to fighter-bombers. Vandenberg, in the Far East on an

inspection, supported his subordinate, according to Stratemeyer,

“very explicitly and masterfully” explaining the difference between

tactical and strategic air operations. After listening to the Air Force

Chief of Staff, MacArthur conceded that it was indeed wasteful to

use B–29s against the hard-to-locate targets normally hit by fighter-bombers, but in the present emergency he felt he had to hit the

enemy with every available airplane. As a result, his headquarters

directed that the B–29s be dispatched in mid-July against bridges,

road junctions, and troop concentrations within sixty miles of a critical segment of the front lines.

The argument against using strategic bombers in this basically

tactical role was taken up by Maj. Gen. Otto P. Weyland, chosen by

Vandenberg to serve as Stratemeyer’s vice commander for operations. Weyland had earned a brilliant reputation for providing close

air support during World War II, when his XIX Tactical Air

Command functioned as a part of Vandenberg’s Ninth Air Force during the thrust through France in 1944. Confident that his job was to

“run the air war,” the new vice commander reached Japan in late

July 1950 and immediately began whittling away at the influence of

MacArthur’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond, in the

selection of targets for the B–29s. Like almost everyone else on

MacArthur’s joint staff, Almond was an Army officer. He had, however, attended the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field in the

1930s and therefore considered himself an expert in military aviation, and for him military aviation included the B–29s, which he felt

9
free to use as he deemed necessary. Since Almond’s principal concern was the ground forces fighting in Korea, he tended to ignore

the need to disrupt the flow of North Korean supplies and reinforcements, and he concentrated almost exclusively on the battlefield. Convinced that Stratemeyer’s discussions with MacArthur

and Almond were going nowhere, Weyland took matters into his own

hands. Without telling Stratemeyer, he sent a critique of target

selection to MacArthur’s deputy for operations. As Weyland expected, the memorandum was passed to Almond, who responded by

repeating the argument that he needed the B–29s to meet battlefield emergencies. Weyland countered by pointing out that, even

though the Pusan perimeter was taking shape and growing

stronger, “emergencies” were becoming almost routine. Perhaps, he

suggested, Almond needed an airman to determine how the B–29s

could be most effective. The army officer agreed that this sort of help

might be useful, but he would not give up his access to the bombers.

Instead he compromised, retaining control over one group of B–29s

while releasing the other two to attack targets chosen by Far East

Air Forces. As the North Koreans rushed supplies southward to sustain the offensive, MacArthur agreed that all three groups should be

used for long-range interdiction, and B–29s heavily damaged several railroad yards and bridges during August.

While Weyland was working in Tokyo to shift the focus of B–29

operations away from the battlefield to targets in North Korea,

Vandenberg was making preparations in Washington for a strategic

bombing campaign against the North that was modeled after similar operations in World War II. He persuaded the Joint Chiefs of

Staff to send to the Far East two additional groups of B–29s for

attacking industrial targets north of the 38th parallel, increasing

Bomber Command to five groups totaling more than 100

Superfortresses. The Joint Chiefs also provided a target list, prepared like the one already given General O’Donnell by intelligence

specialists of the Strategic Air Command. The principal targets on

the second list were the chemical plants at Hungnam, believed to

produce radioactive material (for the Soviet atomic energy program)

as well as conventional explosives and fertilizer; the munitions factories at Pyongyang; an oil refinery at Wonsan; and the oil storage

facilities at Rashin. Before his B–29s were diverted almost exclusively to targets closer to the battlelines, O’Donnell had bombed the

port of Wonsan and a nitrogen plant at Hungnam. Because of their

compact size—only the capital of Pyongyang, with a population of

500,000, had more than 100,000 inhabitants—and lack of fireproof

buildings, North Korean towns seemed almost as vulnerable to fire

bombs as the cities of Japan, which O’Donnell had helped reduce to

ashes during World War II. This time, however, the Truman admin10
istration would not let him use incendiaries against cities and

instructed him to minimize civilian casualties, depriving the enemy

of a propaganda issue. The use of fire bombs proved unnecessary

that summer, for in mid-September after about one month of systematic bombardment, Stratemeyer announced that practically all

the strategic industrial targets in the country had been destroyed by

high explosives alone. Since American fighters had wiped out the

North Korean air force and the enemy had few antiaircraft guns,

B–29 crews could concentrate on accurate bombing. The big problem

was weather, for clouds often closed in over the B–29 bases during

the course of a mission, and in such conditions, landing was the most

dangerous part of the flight.

One of the targets on the list approved by the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, Rashin, escaped destruction. Because the town, located in

northeastern North Korea, was within 20 miles of Soviet territory,

the Department of State insisted that any attack on the oil storage

tanks there be carried out in good weather using optical bombsights.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed, but word of the requirement for

visual aiming failed to reach General O’Donnell. When his B–29s

attacked on August 12, they attempted to bomb with radar through

a thick overcast but succeeded only in scattering their explosives on

11

A Boeing B–29 Superfortress takes off from Japan to bomb

a target in Korea.
the outskirts of town. A second mission, dispatched ten days later

after O’Donnell had been reminded of the restriction, found Rashin

again hidden by clouds and had to bomb an alternate target. At this

point, given the administration’s policy of trying to confine fighting

to the Korean peninsula, the State Department questioned the wisdom of retaining on the target list a city that close to the Soviet

Union. The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed to its removal, apparently

assuming that oil or other cargo shipped through Rashin could be

destroyed at some other point during its passage down the eastern

coast of Korea. The decision aroused no debate within military circles at the time, although in the late spring of 1951, after China had

intervened in the war and MacArthur had been replaced, critics of

the Truman administration learned of the immunity given Rashin

and denounced the decision as a flagrant example of political interference in military matters. In August 1951, a year after the first

raid, with an alarming volume of supplies stockpiled at the city’s

railyard, Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, MacArthur’s successor, obtained

permission from President Truman to bomb Rashin. After waiting

for clear skies, B–29s attacked on August 25, dropping 300 tons of

bombs, 97 percent of which struck within the rail complex.

While the arguments of Generals Stratemeyer, Weyland, and

Vandenberg that the proper missions for the B–29s were long-range

interdiction or strategic bombardment resulted in attacks on places

like Wonsan and Pyongyang, the danger persisted into August that

the North Koreans might mount a massive assault and break

through the Pusan perimeter. When the enemy crossed the Naktong

River at midmonth and threatened the important road junction of

Taegu, General MacArthur summoned Stratemeyer to his office and

directed him to carpet bomb an area totaling 27 square miles

through which reinforcements and supplies were passing to exploit

the Naktong bridgehead. O’Donnell’s planners divided the rectangle

into 12 squares and dispatched a squadron of B–29s to saturate

each one with bombs. In less than half an hour on August 16, from

an altitude of 10,000 feet, 98 B–29s dropped 960 tons of high explosives, raising blinding clouds of smoke and dust that prevented any

sort of damage assessment from the air. Enemy fire from both banks

of the river prevented patrols from entering the bombed area, but

hostile artillery fire slackened from within the heavily bombed area.

Prisoners captured later in the fighting revealed, however, that the

bulk of the North Korean force had already crossed the Naktong

when the bombs started falling. Despite a lack of immediate intelligence on the results of the August 16 attack, MacArthur wanted to

launch a second bombardment on the near shore of the river until

dissuaded by his subordinates. Generals Walker, Stratemeyer, and

Partridge all insisted that the B–29s be used only against known

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targets, no matter how serious the emergency; dumping bombs

blindly onto the countryside was not likely to do any good.

Joint Operations

During the successful defense of Taegu, fighter-bombers and

B–26s did more to check the enemy than did the massive carpet

bombing by B–29s. North Korean troops were strafed as they tried

to ford the Naktong. Air strikes destroyed underwater bridges built

to carry trucks and foot traffic and supported counterattacks

against the hostile lodgment east of the stream. Since air power first

intervened in Korea, interdiction and close air support by tactical

aircraft had helped gain time for the United States to rush troops to

the peninsula and stabilize the battlefront there. In support of the

early delaying actions, fighter-bombers and light bombers strafed

attacking North Korean infantry and destroyed Soviet-built tanks

approaching the battlefield or actually firing into American positions. On July 10, for example, a flight of F–80s descended beneath

the clouds and discovered a long line of North Korean tanks and

trucks halted before a demolished bridge. Responding to the sighting, the Fifth Air Force diverted every available aircraft—80s,

B–26s, and even F–82 interceptors—to batter the column with

bombs, gunfire, and rockets. This improvisation deprived the

advancing enemy of more than 150 badly needed vehicles, a third of

them tanks.

To control the entire spectrum of tactical aviation and make

sure that bombs and gunfire were delivered when and where they

were needed, the Fifth Air Force followed a doctrine that had

evolved during World War II but had been modified later to reflect

the emergence of the Air Force as a separate service. The principal

agency of coordination was the joint operations center, where representatives of the Army and Air Force received requests from the

commanders of ground units, matched targets with the available

aircraft and ordnance, and used the communications net provided

by an Air Force tactical air control center to arrange strikes. Routine

requests—for example, strafing and bombing in support of a counterattack the next day—were incorporated into operations orders

issued each day; but in an emergency, the center communicated

directly with pilots in the vicinity, with the headquarters of ground

units, or with nearby airfields. The center launched aircraft or

diverted those already aloft to new targets. It did not attempt, however, to control individual strikes but handed the aircraft to a tactical air control officer operating from a radio-equipped jeep and

assigned to a particular ground unit. This officer was an experienced

pilot familiar with the difficulty of locating a target from the air,

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with the characteristics of the supporting aircraft, and with the

munitions they carried. As a pilot, he was able to communicate with

other pilots in language they understood. Such in brief was the

mechanism for controlling tactical aviation that Partridge intended

to use in Korea.

Problems arose at the outset. Based on experience in World War

II, Partridge planned to establish an advance headquarters alongside Walker’s command post in Korea, but this could not be done

before the North Korean offensive had been slowed, if not stopped.

Not until July 24 did the two headquarters begin functioning side by

side in the comparative security of Taegu. During the first week of

August, however, the enemy threatened even that town, forcing the

Eighth Army to move its command post halfway to Pusan. Because

the site selected by General Walker was crowded and lacked adequate communications with Japan, the advance headquarters of the

Fifth Air Force continued all the way to Pusan.

Meanwhile, Partridge had opened in Korea a joint operations

center to take the place of the improvised tactical air control system

that had functioned at Suwon until the airfield there was overrun.

He placed the center at Taejon, site of the headquarters of the first

American infantry division sent to the peninsula. At the time, midJuly, the division was so desperate for officers in its battalions that

none could be assigned permanently to the joint operations center,

although the staff sections did share information with the airmen.

When the North Koreans overwhelmed Taejon, the center shifted to

Taegu, remaining there after higher headquarters had left the town.

While the joint operations center was being set up in Korea, the

Fifth Air Force sent a handful of radio-equipped jeeps to the peninsula for use by forward air controllers. To call in a strike, however,

the control parties had to drive far enough forward to see the target,

for the radios were too heavy to carry and lacked the equipment for

remote transmission. Since the sight of a jeep on the skyline was an

invitation for the enemy to open fire, the tactical air control parties

sustained heavy losses during the early fighting. To replace them,

the Fifth Air Force turned to airborne controllers in light aircraft.

When these observation craft proved easy prey for propeller-driven

North Korean fighters, the North American T–6 trainer, known as

the AT–6 during World War II, was pressed into service as a vehicle

for forward air controllers. This aircraft had the speed to escape the

Soviet-built Yaks and the maneuverability to enable the controller

to peer beyond ridge lines into valleys hidden from a control party

on the ground. The Mosquitoes, as the controllers in the T–6s were

called, came to provide the principal means of controlling close-in

air strikes, eclipsing the jeep-mounted control parties that had been

so successful during World War II.

14
A further complication not experienced by tactical airmen during the liberation of Europe was partnership with the Navy and

Marine Corps. Difficulties began on July 4, when Admiral Struble

continued for a second day his carrier-based attacks on Pyongyang.

Before the previous day’s bombing, the commander of Task Force 77

had advised Admiral Joy of the planned attacks at Haeju and

Pyongyang, and Joy passed the information to Stratemeyer, who

asked only that the naval aircraft confine activity on July 3 to the

vicinity of the capital and leave the rest of the peninsula to the Fifth

Air Force. Struble, however, decided on his own to hit Pyongyang

again, a decision that compelled Stratemeyer to cancel a B–29 strike

planned for that city on the same day. The incident convinced the Air

Force general that he needed tighter control over air strikes by the

Navy, especially those that might be delivered against targets close

to the front lines. Stratemeyer therefore asked MacArthur for operational control over the Navy’s carrier aircraft, in effect assigning

them a status similar to the squadrons of the Fifth Air Force.

Admiral Joy objected on doctrinal as well as practical grounds. He

did not believe that the recent agreements on roles and missions

would permit another service to exercise direct control over naval

aviation, especially when operating at sea, or that the joint operations center could maintain adequate control of Navy as well as Air

Force aircraft. From the Navy’s point of view, the joint operations

center seemed best suited to aerial operations scheduled in advance

and spread over a wide front. Granted that the center could juggle

assigned aircraft in an emergency, doubt persisted among naval aviators that it could funnel any large number of strikes into a small

area without overloading its communications channels. Although he

wanted no part of Air Force control and remained wary of the joint

operations center, Admiral Joy recognized the need for closer coordination of tactical aviation. Consequently, on July 15 he agreed to

place the carrier aircraft under the “coordination control” of the Far

East Air Forces, an ill-defined arrangement under which he did little more than provide Stratemeyer’s headquarters with Admiral

Struble’s plans for carrier strikes. He thus avoided Air Force control,

but naval aircraft approaching the battlefield had to report to the

joint operations center for assignment to a Mosquito controller.

Some of the Navy’s fears concerning the joint operations center

proved justified. The volume of radio traffic at times inundated the

system, and important messages intended for Task Force 77 sometimes failed to arrive in time. Moreover, the job of handling close air

support by naval aircraft fell to already overburdened controllers,

who might be trying to meld F–80 fighter-bombers, based in Japan

and already short of fuel, with longer range, propeller-driven attack

planes that despite their greater endurance had to return to their

15
carriers and land before dark. After this shaky beginning, cooperation improved. The carriers tried to send a more even flow of aircraft

over the battlefront, and naval airborne controllers in Douglas

attack aircraft joined the Air Force controllers in T–6s to direct air

strikes. Not until 1951, however, did Task Force 77 send pilots to the

joint operations center on a regular basis as liaison officers, and the

establishment of direct communications between the center and the

task force was similarly delayed. The war was within a month of

ending before the Navy in 1953 allowed its representative at the

joint operations center to make binding commitments on targets

and sorties.

Meanwhile, centralized control of tactical aviation as prescribed

in Air Force doctrine had also been challenged by the arrival early

in August 1950 of a Marine brigade and its supporting aircraft

group. The Marine Corps believed that its ground units, whether

regiments, a hurriedly formed brigade like the one sent to Korea, or

divisions, should operate in conjunction with an aircraft group or, in

the case of a division, an aircraft wing. Because of the nature of

amphibious warfare in which the marines specialized—a small

beachhead seized with the help of naval gunfire and air support and

then expanded to accommodate artillery—Marine Corps airmen had

extensive training in the close support of infantry. Pilots, air controllers, and commanders on the ground were accustomed to working together and understood the benefits and dangers of air strikes

16

General Douglas MacArthur (second from left) visits an air

base in Korea: Maj. Gen. Earle E. Partridge, commander of

Fifth Air Force, is second from the right.
in close proximity to friendly troops. Whereas Marine Corps aviation

thought in terms of supporting Marine ground units fighting on a

comparatively narrow front, the Air Force in Korea employed aircraft for interdiction, reconnaissance, and close air support from the

Pusan perimeter near the southern tip of the peninsula to the Yalu

River in the North and from one end of the battleline to the other.

In terms of interest and training—close air support had a lower priority in the Air Force than in the Marine Corps—as well as geographic concentration, Marine Corps pilots supported ground forces

better than their Air Force counterparts. Because the skills of

Marine airmen were so highly prized, General Partridge sought

close cooperation with the Marine squadrons, which at first were flying missions from aircraft carriers off the South Korean coast. He

requested and received a liaison officer from the aircraft group who

helped the joint operations center find suitable targets for any

Marine strike aircraft that were surplus to the needs of the brigade.

To the annoyance of Generals Stratemeyer and Vandenberg, the

American press lavished praise on Marine airmen for doing an

excellent job of close air support, as indeed they were, albeit on a

comparatively small scale. However skilled these first Marine Corps

pilots to fight in Korea were in their specialty of close air support,

they could not by themselves maintain control of the skies over the

peninsula or carry the weight of ordnance delivered by the much

larger Fifth Air Force over a much larger area. Like close air support, interdiction contributed to the defense of the Pusan perimeter,

sometimes spectacularly, as when a motorized column went up in

flames, at other times all but invisibly, as when downed bridges

delayed the arrival of badly needed ammunition or reinforcements.

General Walker, moreover, expressed satisfaction with the work of

the Air Force, declaring: “I will lay my cards right on the table and

state that if it had not been for the air support we received from the

Fifth Air Force we would not have been able to stay in Korea.”

From Inchon to Pyongyang

By mid-September the North Korean offensive had clearly

failed; the United Nations forces had survived savage blows and

grown steadily stronger. The first phase of the Korean fighting had

ended. MacArthur’s belief, expressed to Partridge in the early days

of the conflict, that American air power would prevail, turned out to

be mistaken. Fighting the North Koreans to a standstill required

the combined efforts of the air, land, and sea forces of several

nations, with South Korea and the United States making the greatest contributions. Air power did, however, provide essential help as

the United Nations Command stopped the enemy drive. The

17
burned-out hulks of hundreds of tanks destroyed by air strikes

marked the invasion route, and B–29s had damaged the North

Korean transportation network and destroyed whatever industry

the nation possessed. Although handicapped by primitive airfields

in South Korea, the Combat Cargo Command of Far East Air Forces

flew in men and cargo from Japan and evacuated almost a third of

the 13,000 American soldiers sent to Japan to recuperate from their

wounds. The Military Air Transport Service flew the transpacific

routes, delivering among other things a new and more powerful

rocket launcher used by American infantrymen against North

Korean tanks in the fight for Taejon during mid-July. In addition,

the transport service conducted weather reconnaissance, provided

weather forecasts for use by the Army and Air Force, and dispatched

rescue detachments that served under the operational control of the

Far East Air Forces. The Air Force had drawn heavily on the experience of the Army Air Forces in helping check the advance of a North

Korean army that fought with the weapons and tactics of World War

II. Establishing the Pusan perimeter was just the beginning, however; as early as the first week of July, MacArthur had been thinking of employing the basic tactics that had served him so well

against the Japanese in the South Pacific. He ordered that planning

begin for an amphibious landing in Korea well beyond the battlefront.

The objective that MacArthur selected to open the second phase

of the war was Inchon on Korea’s west coast, the ocean gateway to

Seoul. His amphibious spearhead was the 1st Marine Division, which

absorbed the brigade that had fought to defend the Pusan perimeter.

MacArthur placed his chief of staff, General Almond, in command of

the 40,000-man invasion force, designated X Corps, which included

the marines and an Army division from Japan. The attack at Inchon

cut off the North Korean forces retreating from the Pusan perimeter,

where the Eighth Army launched its own offensive on September 16,

the day following the assault at Inchon. Less than a third of a North

Korean force numbering 100,000 escaped from the trap and again

crossed the 38th parallel, this time in headlong retreat. So complete

was the enemy’s collapse that on September 27, not quite two weeks

after the Inchon landing, President Truman authorized MacArthur

to pursue the beaten enemy north of the parallel separating the two

Koreas, and South Korean troops promptly advanced into the North.

The United Nations never explicitly approved an invasion of North

Korea, however. The General Assembly, reflecting the concern of

some members that to advance northward was to invite the Chinese

to intervene, adopted an ambiguous compromise resolution to the

effect that “all appropriate steps should be taken to ensure conditions of stability throughout Korea.”

18
As the United Nations forces advanced beyond the 38th parallel, air power performed a variety of missions. Navy and Marine

Corps aviators had provided cover for the Inchon landings, while the

Fifth Air Force supported the Eighth Army throughout the advance

from the Pusan perimeter to the border with North Korea. Once

across the parallel, easily the most spectacular air operation was the

dropping of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team at two

road junctions north of Pyongyang to cut off a retreating North

Korean column and free a large number of American prisoners of

war traveling with it in two trains. A sharp fight occurred, but the

sudden appearance of the airborne force did not prevent the enemy

from murdering a hundred prisoners on one of the trains; the other

continued northward with its captives. Besides dropping the airborne infantry, the roughly 140 transport aircraft of the Far East Air

Forces parachuted supplies to the advancing United Nations troops

and flew men and cargo—as much as 1,000 passengers and 1,000

tons of supplies on a busy day—from Japan to airfields in Korea.

With the North Korean People’s Army straggling in small groups

into the northern mountains of Korea and town after town falling to

Walker’s advancing army, few worthwhile targets existed for the

fighter-bombers of the Fifth Air Force or for O’Donnell’s B–29s.

Aerial reconnaissance, so helpful in charting the defenses of Inchon,

now faced the infinitely more difficult task of locating the enemy

among the mountains of northernmost Korea.

19

For a short time in the fall of 1950, Fifth Air Force made its

headquarters here in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

Soon a Chinese offensive would force American units to

scramble southward.
The advance that carried the Eighth Army to Pyongyang and

beyond formed one arm of another pincers movement, planned as a

repetition of the assault at Inchon. While the Eighth Army pushed

northward, General Almond’s X Corps would reembark at Inchon

and Pusan, sail around the peninsula, and land at Wonsan on the

east coast. Once ashore it would cross the mountainous spine of

Korea to link up with the main body of the Eighth Army at Korea’s

narrow waist. The plan went badly awry, however. While resistance

before the Eighth Army was crumbling, minefields off Wonsan

delayed the landing of X Corps for two weeks; Almond’s troops did

not come ashore until November 4, after South Korean forces

advancing along the coast had captured the port. The planned pincers movement now became a race to the northern border of North

Korea, the Yalu River, by parallel columns with a rugged mountain

range between them.

The separation of the Eighth Army and the X Corps, which still

included the 1st Marine Division, brought about a change in the

relationship between the Fifth Air Force and Marine Corps aviation,

which had been reinforced to become the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing.

In October, General Weyland, still serving as Stratemeyer’s vice

commander for operations, raised the question whether the Marine

aircraft wing, when supporting X Corps in northeastern North

Korea, would come under the control of the Fifth Air Force. Initially

MacArthur’s headquarters said no, apparently intending to repeat

at Wonsan the arrangement at Inchon, where Marine Corps and

Navy squadrons supported the landing. Weyland thereupon argued

that the Fifth Air Force was responsible for supporting X Corps and

should control the Marine Corps aircraft, which would operate from

bases ashore during the advance to the Yalu. He proposed that

Partridge extend his coordination control over the 1st Marine

Aircraft Wing, agreeing, however, to commit the wing primarily to

the support of X Corp and to provide from the Fifth Air Force any

additional sorties that Almond’s command might require. During

the final advance by the United Nations Command to the Yalu, the

Navy’s carrier-based aircraft, like the B–29s of the Far East Air

Forces, would conduct general support. On October 16, when the

first elements of X Corps set sail for Wonsan, MacArthur’s headquarters approved the arrangement, which went into effect five

days later as the amphibious force was steaming offshore, waiting

for the minefields to be cleared.

The plan to have the Fifth Air Force exercise coordination control over the Marines did not work as well as Weyland had hoped.

Communications between the joint operations center and the X

Corps command post proved unreliable, and Almond declined to

assign officers to the center on a permanent basis. Partridge

20
imposed a further burden on the fragile communications net by

insisting that X Corps submit each day a formal request for air

strikes; this long and complicated message became the basis for a

detailed order directing the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing to fly missions

that it would have flown anyway. According to Robert Frank

Futrell’s history of the Air Force in Korea, this procedure “represented an unrealistic compliance with accepted air-ground doctrine.” In the middle of October, resistance in northeastern Korea

was light, and the cumbersome exchange of messages amounted to

little more than an inconvenience. At the end of November, however, China intervened in force, attacking the troops advancing from

Wonsan and those pushing toward the Yalu after capturing

Pyongyang, ending the pursuit of the defeated North Korean army

that had begun on September 15 and 16 with the landing at Inchon

and the counterattack from the Pusan perimeter.

Chinese Intervention

The Chinese intervention jolted a United Nations Command

that already had begun canceling requisitions for ammunition and

clearly was thinking of victory parades rather than further combat.

Indeed, two of the five groups of B–29s assigned to Far East Air

Forces returned to the United States in October. On the 15th of that

month, before the Wonsan invasion force had left port, General

MacArthur arrived at Wake Island where he assured President

Truman that “if the Chinese tried to get down to Pyongyang there

would be the greatest slaughter.” China had threatened to enter the

war if the United Nations forces drew too near to the Yalu, but these

warnings were dismissed as propaganda. Not even the sighting on

October 18 of 100 fighters parked on the airfield at An-tung (now

romanized as Dandong) in Manchuria caused alarm; Stratemeyer

interpreted their presence as an attempt to lend “color and credence

to menacing statements and threats of Chinese communist leaders,

who probably felt that this display of strength involved no risk in

view of our apparent desire to avoid border incidents.”

When the Chinese struck, they attacked piecemeal. On October

25 and 26, they hit South Korean troops who had probed as far as

the Yalu, and on the 29th the South Koreans who had captured

Wonsan reported encountering Chinese troops along the east coast.

Other more serious contacts occurred on November 1. When F–80s

attacked the airfield at Sinuiju on the southern bank of the Yalu,

they found 15 Yaks on the ground there and lost one of their number to antiaircraft fire, some of it believed to have come from Antung across the border in Manchuria. On that same day, also in the

vicinity of Sinuiju, Yak fighters of a reconstituted North Korean air

21
arm attacked a B–26 and a T–6 but failed to down either, and four

MiG–15 jet fighters bearing Chinese markings darted across the

Yalu and jumped four F–51s, all of which escaped. When night fell

at Unsan, some 75 miles east of Sinuiju, Chinese infantry attacked

both American and South Korean units, inflicting severe casualties.

The Chinese were not merely reinforcing the defeated North

Koreans but were taking over the war. Instead of some 17,000

troops, as MacArthur’s staff believed, as many as 180,000 had

already entered North Korea, traveling by night when American

aerial reconnaissance could not detect them and remaining hidden

during daylight.

American attention focused on Sinuiju, the bridges there, and

the other spans that crossed the Yalu elsewhere. Partridge wanted

to avenge the loss of the F–80 on November 1 by setting the town

ablaze with incendiary bombs, chasing back into Manchuria any

Chinese MiGs that might intervene, and attacking the airfields

from which the Chinese jets had come. Until the extent of the

Chinese involvement became clear, MacArthur was reluctant to

challenge the administration’s prohibition against attacking China,

and he vetoed the bombing of Sinuiju, which he hoped to capture

intact and turn over to the government of a unified Korea. With a

peacetime population approaching 100,000, many of whom had fled

22

F–51 Mustang pilots await debriefing after attacking

Chinese forces near Seoul, South Korea.
across the Yalu, the town would serve as the anchor of a defensive

line established along the river.

Even as he sought to spare Sinuiju for use by the new Korea’s

armed forces, MacArthur approved the destruction by aerial bombardment of the other towns and villages in the border region that

might harbor enemy troops or supplies. To compensate for the withdrawal of the two groups of B–29s, O’Donnell’s bomber command

relied on incendiaries to multiply the damage done by the remaining three groups. The administration apparently was no longer concerned by the propaganda advantage that might accrue to the government of North Korea if fire bombs were used. During the first

week of November, the bombers ignored Sinuiju in the west and

Rashin in the east but hit the other two large towns in the border

region, leveling Kangye and damaging Chonjin.

Although still confident that he faced a comparatively small

number of Chinese, MacArthur could not ignore the passage of additional troops over the bridges linking China with North Korea. On

November 5 he therefore directed Stratemeyer to devastate the area

between the front lines and the Yalu River, attacking the town of

Sinuiju, dropping the “Korean end” of all the bridges leading from

Manchuria, and then destroying every village, town, factory, or military installation, exempting only Rashin and the hydroelectric

plants that supplied current to China. Sent in a routine targeting

report filed a few hours before the B–29s were to take off on the first

of the missions, the directive might have gone unnoticed until after

the first strike had Stratemeyer not alerted Vandenberg that stray

bombs aimed at Sinuiju or the bridges might explode on Chinese

territory. The issue reached the desk of President Truman, who felt

an attack like this should be delivered only if the lives of American

soldiers were at stake. Thus far, the Chief Executive had received no

such justification. MacArthur was therefore asked why the series of

operations was suddenly so important. He responded by giving the

Joint Chiefs of Staff a vivid description of Chinese troops pouring

across the bridges in days to come. To delay the bombing, he warned,

would threaten the “ultimate destruction of the forces under my

command.” Despite the possibility of provoking China into broadening the conflict, perhaps by a move against Taiwan, the President

felt he had no choice but to approve the strikes against Sinuiju and

the bridges.

On November 8, 79 B–29s struck Sinuiju, nine trying unsuccessfully to drop the bridges and the other 70 saturating the city

with more than 500 tons of incendiary bombs, released in clusters.

“General O’Donnell indicates,” Stratemeyer recorded in his diary,

“that the town was gone.” Aerial reconnaissance found that about 60

percent of the city had been destroyed. No B–29s were lost on the

23
raid against Sinuiju and its bridges, and 1st Lt. Russell Brown, flying cover in an F–80, shot down a MiG–15 during the first all-jet

dogfight. Enemy antiaircraft artillery kept the B–29s above 18,000

feet, an altitude that made it impossible to hit the Korean end of the

two bridges, highway and railroad, between An-tung and Sinuiju. A

further complication was MacArthur’s insistence that the bombers

follow the course of the stream to avoid violating Chinese airspace.

At day’s end both bridges remained open, although the approaches

from the Korean side had sustained damage.

Throughout the rest of November 1950, the dozen bridges over

the Yalu proved to be durable targets. Navy aircraft managed to

destroy the highway span at Sinuiju, but seven other structures,

including the railroad bridge at Sinuiju, defied all efforts to destroy

them, even with radio-controlled bombs, relics of World War II that

had a guidance system prone to failure. Few B–29 bombardiers had

any experience using the bombs, which they had to track all the way

to the target, disregarding MiGs and antiaircraft fire. Even if

greater accuracy had been attained, the 1,000-pound guided bombs

lacked the explosive power to destroy these solidly built bridges.

Before heavier guided bombs could be sent to the Far East and

crews trained to use them, the Yalu froze, enabling men and supplies to cross without using the bridges. One of the first of the

12,000-pound guided bombs to arrive in the theater of operations

badly damaged a railroad bridge at Kangye, some 25 miles inside

North Korea. In March, after the ice had thawed, the B–29s

resumed their attacks on the bridges across the Yalu, damaging a

few but not the railroad span at Sinuiju.

During the early strikes against the Yalu bridges, fighters from

north of the river frequently climbed to high altitude over

Manchuria, dived into North Korea to make a firing pass at the

American bombers, and then fled back across the border. MacArthur

complained about allowing the enemy to enjoy this Manchurian

sanctuary, but the possibility that aerial incursions north of the border might trigger a violent response by China or the Soviet Union

had become a source of concern to America’s European allies.

American aircraft had already violated Chinese or Soviet airspace

three times: on August 27, two Mustangs had mistaken an airfield

at An-tung for one at Sinuiju and strafed the Chinese aerodrome; on

the night of September 22, a B–29 dispatched to bomb Sinuiju hit

the railyard at An-tung; and on October 8, two F–80 pilots became

lost and repeatedly strafed a Soviet air base in Siberia. Violations of

communist air space were considered potentially dangerous provocations of an enemy whose intentions were not yet clear. A Chinese

protest on August 28, which alleged five incursions, moved General

Stratemeyer to warn Partridge and O’Donnell that intervention was

24
a “distinct possibility,” but the American advance continued and

soon the concerns of the late summer were forgotten. After the

attack on Soviet territory, the commander of the fighter group

involved was reassigned to Fifth Air Force headquarters and the

offending pilots faced a court-martial that acquitted them.

Since the extent of Chinese involvement in Korea was only gradually becoming understood, the United States agreed with its allies

that extending the air war beyond the Yalu would be unwise, especially in light of rumors that the Soviet Air Force would respond to

American attacks against airfields in China. The Truman administration, although it almost certainly would have retaliated against

the air bases had the Chinese mounted an aerial attack on the

United Nations forces, did not want to provoke raids of that kind.

Never during the war were American flyers authorized to enter

Chinese or Soviet airspace. Pilots sometimes ignored this prohibition when in hot pursuit of a MiG seeking refuge over China, and on

at least one occasion they confused facilities across the Soviet border with targets in North Korea.

After the first attacks by Chinese troops in late October and

early November, quiet settled over the North Korean battlefields;

the new enemy seemed to have vanished as suddenly as he

appeared. After pausing two weeks to regroup, MacArthur on

November 24 launched an offensive that he believed would drive the

enemy across the Yalu and into China. He was confident that the

United Nations Command could rout the Chinese, now estimated to

number about 70,000, and the slightly larger remnant of the North

Korean People’s Army. In fact, some 300,000 Chinese, along with the

25

Marshal Peng Dehuai

commanded Chinese

forces during the

Korean War.
defeated North Koreans, opposed a United Nations force of 200,000

men, half of them South Korean troops.

The Chinese counterattacked on November 25, striking the

main body of the Eighth Army and then X Corps. After four days,

MacArthur ordered the forces north of Pyongyang to withdraw,

although he hoped that Almond could maintain a salient in the

flank of the advancing enemy. Marine Corps aviation and the Navy’s

carrier task force concentrated on assisting the troops in the northeast, who were falling back on Hungnam, a port about fifty miles

north of Wonsan. In the emergency, Partridge suspended the existing procedures for coordination and allowed the commander of the

1st Marine Aircraft Wing to direct air operations in that sector, acting independently of the joint operations center. In addition, the

Fifth Air Force placed varying numbers of sorties by fighterbombers and light bombers at the disposal of the Marine Corps officer. Partridge’s remaining aircraft, aided by the B–29s, tried to

relieve the pressure on General Walker’s Eighth Army. Commanded

by Maj. Gen. William H. Tunner, who had directed the recent Berlin

Airlift, the combat cargo element of the Far East Air Forces flew into

airfields that were about to be abandoned in the retreat and brought

out equipment and supplies that Walker’s troops would otherwise

have had to destroy. Along the east coast, Tunner’s airmen parachuted the components of a bridge that, when assembled, enabled

the 1st Marine Division to cross a gorge blocking the line of retreat

to Hungnam. Without the bridge, the unit might well have lost much

of its heavy equipment. After a gallant fight to reach the port,

Hungnam had to be abandoned, with the last of Almond’s troops

sailing safely from the harbor on December 24. The presence of the

marines and soldiers on the Chinese flank no longer made sense;

they were needed in South Korea to stabilize the front as United

Nations forces abandoned Pyongyang, retreated across the 38th parallel, and abandoned Seoul. Each successive retreat further complicated tactical air support by depriving Partridge of his advance airfields and reducing the time that fighter-bombers could harry the

enemy’s advance.

The bleak news from Korea deeply troubled President Truman

and his advisers. After a meeting at the White House on November

28, when the Chinese offensive was just beginning, the danger of

sustained air attacks from the sanctuary of Manchuria was discussed. The possibility of retaliation in the event of such attacks was

very much on the President’s mind, so much so that during a press

conference on November 30, he answered a reporter’s question

about the use of atomic bombs by stating that there had “always

been active consideration” of their employment. This offhand

remark, though clarified by a White House press release pointing

26
out that the President had not authorized the use of atomic devices

and that only when he did so would MacArthur “have charge of the

tactical delivery of the weapons,” produced two immediate effects.

General MacArthur, who had just approved a message requesting

B–29s capable of dropping atomic bombs, set his headquarters to

work on a list of potential targets in China and, should the conflict

spread, in the Soviet Union. At the same time, Mr. Truman’s words

upset America’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,

who initially supported the collective defense of South Korea as

proof of American determination to abandon isolationism and participate in the defense of nations threatened by communist aggression. The enthusiasm of the Europeans was fast abating, for they

feared that the war in Korea might at best absorb American

resources needed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or at

worst give the Soviet Union an excuse to attack western Europe.

Prime Minister Clement H. Atlee of Great Britain flew to

Washington seeking reassurance; the President provided it, telling

of his hope “that world conditions would never call for the use of the

atomic bomb.”

MiG Alley

While MacArthur planned, albeit tentatively, for atomic warfare

and Truman responded to the concerns of the European leaders who

recoiled at the prospect of such a conflict, the Air Force moved to

solve a tactical problem, countering the Soviet-built MiG–15, which

in terms of speed and maneuverability outperformed the F–51s and

F–80s in action over Korea. Even as the Chinese drive gathered

momentum, the Fifth Air Force received an aircraft, the North

American F–86 Sabre, that more than matched the MiG–15 in performance. Soon after Chinese MiGs (manned in the earliest days by

Soviet pilots) first intervened in the air war, General Vandenberg

ordered a wing of seventy-five Sabres ferried by aircraft carrier to

the Far East. They had their first encounter with the MiG–15 on

December 17, 1950, when Lt. Col. Bruce Hinton shot one down. Five

days later, the commander of the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, Lt.

Col. John C. Meyer, led eight Sabres against fifteen MiGs, downing

six of the enemy at the cost of one F–86.

During the next 30 months, F–86 pilots received credit for the

destruction of 792 MiGs and 18 other enemy aircraft. Of the 218

Sabres lost during the war, the Air Force attributed 76 to MiGs, 19

to ground fire, 15 to unknown enemy action, 13 to unknown operational causes, and the rest to mechanical failure or accident.

Although the lighter MiG could climb faster, the Sabre could outrun

it in a dive and was more responsive to the controls when approach27
ing the speed of sound. The Sabre’s canopy afforded better visibility

than that of the MiG, which suffered from a restricted field of vision

and an inferior defrosting system. Neither aircraft had really adequate armament. The Sabre’s six machine guns did not cause

enough damage, often hitting the enemy without bringing him

down, and the MiG’s cannon fired too slowly to be accurate against

a fast-moving jet. Modifications to the F–86 enhanced its performance against the MiG, which did not improve much during the

course of the war. To reduce drag during tight turns, engineers at

North American Aviation replaced the wing slats that extended

automatically at low speed with a fixed leading edge. Hydraulic controls also increased agility, but the greatest boon to maneuverability was the so-called flying tail, a horizontal stabilizer that moved as

a unit and was far more effective than the smaller elevators on the

early F–86. A more powerful engine and a radar gunsight also

helped make the later F–86 a more formidable fighter. The MiG,

however, still had better acceleration and enjoyed the sanctuary of

the Manchurian border.

Although the F–86 was a splendid fighter, its overwhelming success against the MiG in Korea resulted in large measure from its

superior pilots, many of them veterans of World War II. Colonel

Meyer, for example, was a leading ace in the European Theater of

Operations with twenty-four kills; he added two victories in Korea.

Similarly, Lt. Col. Francis Gabreski and seventeen other aces of the

previous war increased their totals in the Korean fighting. Ten men

who had at least a few victories in World War II became aces in

Korea, including Maj. James Jabara, whose fifteen kills earned him

second place among the aces of the Korean War. The leading ace,

with sixteen, was Capt. Joseph McConnell, who had been a B–24

navigator during World War II. He survived the air war over Korea

only to die while testing a new model of the F–86. Against experienced pilots like Gabreski, Meyer, and Jabara, the Chinese sent

class after class of trainees, and the Soviets also rotated inexperienced pilots into the theater. Each group began timidly and only

gradually made bolder forays across the Yalu as experience

increased. Only a few of the Chinese and Soviet pilots attained the

level of skill common among their opponents.

The F–86 pilots had to devise new tactics for jet combat along

the Yalu. The big offensive fighter sweeps of the last years of World

War II gave way to small defensive patrols. Since the Manchurian

airfields could not be attacked, the F–86s did not engage the enemy

over his bases as had been done in both World Wars. The initiative

thus passed to the Chinese, with the Americans reacting to the

enemy’s incursions by establishing barrier patrols or by scrambling

interceptors when warned by radar. Because of the short range of

28
29

An Air Force ground crew “unwraps” a North American

F–86 Sabre on a cold winter day in Korea; this F–86 will

soon fly north hunting for Chinese MiG–15s.

Maj. Frederick “Boots”

Blesse was one of thirty-eight USAF pilots

to become a Korean

War “ace” by shooting

down at least five enemy aircraft. Here he

is shown in 1952 with

eight stars on his F–86

indicating eight victories; he will get two

more. Soon after the

war, Blesse published

his pioneering essay

on jet air-to-air tactics: “No Guts, No Glory.” He retired from

the Air Force in 1975

as a major general.
the MiG–15 and the location of the Chinese airfields it used, the

heaviest fighting took place in “MiG Alley,” in northwestern North

Korea along the Yalu River from the Yellow Sea to the Sui-ho

Reservoir, an area that included the towns of Sinanju and Sinuiju.

The short range of the F–86, less than 500 miles with jettisonable

fuel tanks, meant that no time could be wasted in assembling large

formations. Patrols of four F–86s arrived in MiG Alley at fiveminute intervals and remained for about 20 minutes, less if they

engaged in combat.

Although American tactics proved successful, Chinese air power

remained an ominous threat throughout the fighting. Soviet support

had enabled China to increase its jet fighter strength to as many as

1,000 aircraft, three times the peak number of F–86s. MiGs occasionally penetrated the screen of F–86s along the Yalu, and U.S.

fighter protection disappeared entirely for several weeks. Early in

1951, the United Nations forces abandoned Seoul; and on January

2, about to be deprived of Kimpo airfield just outside the capital, the

F–86s withdrew to Japan. Not until they returned to South Korea in

February could the Sabres again reach MiG Alley; but in the interim, American bombers and fighter-bombers (including new Republic

F–84 Thunderjets) achieved varying degrees of success pounding

the enemy and his lengthening supply lines without the F–86

screen. B–29s cratered Pyongyang airfield after the enemy recaptured it and bombed towns suspected of sheltering Chinese troops.

In January a raid on the city of Pyongyang set raging fires but failed

to inflict the complete devastation that the bomber command

expected. More encouraging results were attributed to tactical aircraft. During the first five days of January, the Fifth Air Force

claimed that some 2,500 daylight sorties by fighter-bombers had

killed 8,000 Chinese, while B–26s, experimenting with flares provided by the Navy and dropped from Air Force C–47s, added to the

death toll with night attacks.

All in all, air support during the retreat was uneven, weakest in

the west during December, when airfields like those around

Pyongyang had to be abandoned and mountains of supplies and

equipment destroyed, but more effective in the east where aircraft

carriers were close at hand and the evacuation more orderly. Once

Marine Corps and Air Force fighter-bomber units reestablished

themselves in southern South Korea in early January, they

launched fiercer attacks than during the previous month. B–29s

remained a powerful element in the American air armada because

the recently evacuated airfields of North Korea were in no condition

for use by MiGs, whose short range kept them well to the north of

retreating United Nations forces.

30
31
Stalemate

The cumulative effect of attacks on the enemy’s logistics network, which intensified as December ended and January began;

stiffening resistance on the ground, to which close air support and

battlefield interdiction contributed; and the very speed of an

advance that outran its supply lines combined to slow the Chinese

advance beyond Seoul. By mid-January the long retreat had ended.

The front stabilized some forty miles south of the South Korean capital, and the Eighth Army prepared to counterattack under a new

commander, Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, who had taken over after

General Walker died in a jeep accident on December 23, 1950. Ready

to take part in Ridgway’s planned advance was X Corps, which had

rejoined Eighth Army after the withdrawal from Hungnam.

Since X Corps had returned to the battlefield in South Korea,

Partridge might have vigorously reasserted coordination control over

the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing through the joint operations center, but

he did not. As a result of the savage fighting in northeastern Korea,

he recognized that the Marine Corps air and ground components

formed a unified team. He therefore continued the practice he had

established during the retreat to Hungnam, exercising his authority

through the commander of the Marine aircraft wing, with the operations center rarely making other than minor adjustments to plans

submitted by wing headquarters. In an emergency Marine Corps aircraft could be directed to attack wherever they were needed, but

because Ridgway chose to advance methodically in successive stages,

emergencies were few. Indeed, by the end of June the Eighth Army

had recaptured Seoul and advanced a short distance into North

Korea. The war thereupon entered a new phase, a stalemate broken

by limited though vicious attacks, which lasted into 1953.

Air power proved invaluable in the limited United Nations

offensives that established an essentially permanent battlefront

generally along the 38th parallel north of Seoul. As the United

Nations Command fought its way northward, the Far East Air

Forces flew as many as 1,000 sorties in a single day. Marine Corps

airmen joined them in close air support, under the direction of airborne controllers, and in battlefield interdiction. In terrain that was

more open than along the Yalu, aerial reconnaissance kept track of

hostile activity, for instance, reporting the enemy’s withdrawal from

Chunchon just south of the 38th parallel, thus facilitating the

advance. B–29s of the Far East Air Forces bombed the road and rail

junctions through which supplies reached the Chinese and North

Korean units, and troop carrier squadrons dropped the 187th

Airborne Regimental Combat Team in the vicinity of Munsan-ni,

some 25 miles northwest of Seoul. Assessing the effectiveness of air

32
power in front of his unit, especially the strikes handled by airborne

controllers in their T–6s, Lt. Col. Gilbert J. Check, commander of the

27th Regimental Combat Team, said, “The close support and coordination between air and ground units . . . can well serve as a standard for future operations.”

The Chinese intervention struck a mortal blow to the administration’s lingering hope that the budget could be balanced by reining in defense spending. Amid the optimism of late October, plans

were being made to shift troops from the Far East to Europe once

the last spark of North Korean resistance had been extinguished.

The offensive designed to accomplish this goal began in late

November. “If successful,” MacArthur declared, “this should for all

practical purposes end the war.” Scarcely had he spoken before the

United Nations Command was everywhere retreating before a massive and well-trained Chinese army. On December 15, President

Truman declared a national emergency, committing the United

States to the expense of a continuing military buildup.

This marshaling of men and resources, however, was directed as

much toward the defense of Europe as toward the war in Asia, for

the Chinese offensive had persuaded the administration to settle for

less than victory in Korea. To launch another drive to the Yalu

against Chinese forces seemed far too costly, not only in terms of

American lives lost but also because it would require troops and

equipment that could better be used to bolster the defenses of a

more vital region, western Europe. Preserving the independence of

South Korea without allowing the conflict to spread replaced the

defeat of North Korea as the aim of the war. By the time the United

Nations troops had begun counterattacking after halting the

Chinese advance, the destruction of the enemy’s army seemed prohibitively expensive. A better solution appeared to be a negotiated

settlement that would end the fighting and ensure the continued

independence of South Korea.

General MacArthur, however, would accept nothing less than

victory. His concern that the Eighth Army would have to evacuate

the peninsula vanished by mid-February, and he denounced the

acceptance of a stalemate in Korea. By mid-March, after Ridgway’s

troops had dealt the Chinese several sharp blows, MacArthur told

reporters that the mission of his command was to unify the two

Koreas. Although the President in the discouraging days following

China’s intervention had issued a directive warning against unauthorized statements on the conduct of the war, MacArthur received

no rebuke. Since Ridgway’s Eighth Army was approaching the 38th

parallel, Truman hoped to capitalize on the reversal of Chinese fortunes, and possibly forestall an enemy counterthrust, by offering to

negotiate an end to the fighting. Learning in advance of the

33
President’s plan, MacArthur torpedoed it, issuing a ringing declaration that in effect invited China to choose between surrender and

defeat. On March 24, Truman reminded the general of the directive

against public statements on the conduct of the war, but by that

time MacArthur had engaged in an even more serious act of insubordination. Four days earlier he had replied to a request from

Representative Joe Martin, a Republican from Pennsylvania, for his

views on the military policy of the Democratic administration. On

April 5 Martin released MacArthur’s response, which clashed with

the views of the Truman administration on almost every point. The

Far East, the general insisted, was more important than Europe and

a negotiated settlement in Korea amounted to abject surrender. “If

we lose the war to Communism in Asia,” the letter warned, “the fall

of Europe is inevitable. . . . We must win. There is no substitute for

victory.” Differing publicly with the administration was serious;

interjecting those differences into domestic politics was outrageous,

especially since MacArthur had flirted with the Republican

Presidential nomination while serving in the Southwest Pacific in

1944. On April 9, after obtaining the concurrence of the Joint Chiefs

of Staff, the President directed the Department of the Army to recall

MacArthur.

Ridgway replaced MacArthur and Lt. Gen. James A. Van Fleet

assumed command of Eighth Army. Both Ridgway and Van Fleet

had great confidence in the Eighth Army. Indeed, Van Fleet hoped to

execute a landing similar to that at Inchon, this time on the east

coast, and repeat the success of September 1950. Ridgway shared

the belief that the Chinese in Korea could be defeated, although at

a great, perhaps prohibitive cost. The victory, moreover, might well

prove meaningless, for Ridgway supported the administration’s

view that western Europe was the decisive ideological and military

battleground in the fight against communism.

General MacArthur returned from the Orient at a time when

the Republican leadership, which resented the “loss” of China to

communism, was attacking the Democrats for becoming entangled

in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. His appearance seemed

a godsend, for here was a popular hero who rejected the idea of

Europe first and believed that the Chinese Nationalist armies,

although driven from the mainland to a refuge on the island of

Taiwan, had received sufficient training and equipment since that

debacle to defeat the more numerous Chinese communists. During

a hearing before the Armed Services and Foreign Relations

Committees of the Senate on the subject of American policy in the

Far East, MacArthur demanded that the administration choose

among three courses of action: surrender, stalemate, or victory.

Surrender was unthinkable. Stalemate, in effect continuing the kind

34
of limited operations begun by Ridgway in February, would kill

Chinese, but as time passed American casualties would inevitably

mount, making the war progressively less popular and harder to

sustain. The only alternative was victory, which could be won by

extending the war to mainland China, using Nationalist troops and

American air and naval forces.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff rallied behind the President. During

the retreat from the Yalu, they had considered a strategy similar to

MacArthur’s, but only as a last resort if the Chinese overran the

Korean peninsula. The Joint Chiefs did not share MacArthur’s confidence in the Nationalist forces. The danger of a Chinese triumph

had passed, the front had been stabilized, and the Eighth Army had

returned to the offensive. As a result, the uniformed leaders of the

armed forces were shifting their attention from a secondary theater

to the main task of protecting Europe against the Soviet Union, the

nation they considered the principal antagonist. The Joint Chiefs

were willing to accept a limited war in Korea because they believed

that extending the war into China would work to the advantage of

35

On a visit to Japan in 1951, the Chief of Staff of the Air

Force, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg (third from right)

inspects an airlift wing with the commander of Far East Air

Forces, Lt. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer (second from left);

the commander of Fifth Air Force, Maj. Gen. Earle E.

Partridge (fourth from right); and the commander of Far

East Air Forces Combat Cargo Command, Maj. Gen. William

H. Tunner (second from right).
the Soviet Union, tying down air, ground, and naval forces needed to

support and strengthen the American allies in Europe or to retaliate in case of Soviet aggression. Especially telling was the testimony of General Vandenberg, who combined subtle criticism of

MacArthur with a blatant appeal for appropriations when he

lamented the fact that his “shoestring air force,” though it could devastate the cities of China if directed to do so, would sustain losses

that would prevent it from simultaneously deterring or punishing

aggression by the Soviet Union.

The members of the two Senate committees, with a majority of

Democrats, voted along party lines to vindicate the administration’s

policy. Despite the acclaim that greeted MacArthur on his return

from the Far East, his proposal to expand the conflict aroused little

public support. The populace had grown disenchanted with the war

in Korea, however much it might admire the general who had

directed the advance from Australia to Japan during World War II,

served as viceroy over the defeated Japanese, and more recently

planned the masterful attack at Inchon. The administration seemed

correct in its belief that the best hope was a negotiated settlement;

the other side seemed willing to talk, for on June 23, 1951, the

Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations publicly called for

armistice talks.

Since neither the communist forces nor those of the United

Nations could win the war without bloody and dangerous escalation,

the idea of negotiations seemed attractive to both sides, but neither

would risk negotiating from a position of weakness. Consequently,

limited—but often ferocious—battles continued to be fought

throughout the process of fashioning a cease-fire. Three months of

preliminary discussions at Kaesong in North Korea resulted in the

establishment of a small demilitarized zone and the beginning of

formal truce negotiations in October 1951 at Panmunjom, a village

just south of the 38th parallel. When representatives of the two

sides first met at Kaesong, perhaps a million men were serving on

the Korean peninsula; when the talks finally ended at Panmunjom,

that number had doubled, largely the result of Chinese reinforcements and the formation of new South Korean divisions.

While tens of thousands of these troops battled along the 38th parallel, the cease-fire negotiations proceeded slowly. The principal

obstacle to progress was Chinese insistence that all prisoners held

by the United Nations be returned to communist control. Many of

the captured North Koreans preferred to stay in the South; former

Nationalist soldiers impressed into the communist ranks wanted to

join their friends and relatives on Taiwan; other Chinese were simply disenchanted with life under communism; and the hard core of

Chinese dissidents persuaded or pressured still others into refusing

36
repatriation. The governments of North Korea and China feared a

severe blow to their prestige if any sizable number of the 100,000 or

more prisoners should refuse to return to a homeland that propagandists celebrated as a paradise for peasants and workers. Both

nations therefore insisted that all prisoners be repatriated as a condition of any armistice. This was unacceptable to American authorities, including President Truman, whose collective conscience was

haunted by the memory of East Europeans forcibly repatriated to

Soviet-occupied territory after World War II.

The ensuing deadlock left some 12,000 prisoners—among them

7,000 South Koreans, 3,000 Americans, and almost 1,000 British—

in the hands of the enemy. The treatment they received varied

according to the time and circumstances of their capture. The North

Korean army, whether advancing arrogantly or in panicky retreat,

spared little concern for prisoners, at times taking none or shooting

those already in custody. Army Maj. Gen. William F. Dean, himself a

prisoner of the North Koreans, recalled that American pilots who

parachuted safely after bombing or strafing towns north of the 38th

parallel could expect no mercy from any civilians who might capture

them. Whereas the treatment afforded by the North Koreans fluctuated between cruelty and neglect, the Chinese saw the prisoners

as a valuable propaganda tool, especially the 200 Air Force pilots or

air crewmen among them. The Chinese exerted pressure on some of

these airmen, and on other prisoners as well, to confess that the

United States was practicing germ warfare by dropping insects or

infected materials on North Korea. In addition to discrediting the

United States, the confessions of germ warfare provided an expla37

In June 1951 Secretary

of the Air Force Thomas

K. Finletter visits the

new commander of Far

East Air Forces, Lt. Gen.

Otto P. Weyland, in

Japan. Weyland had just

replaced Lt. Gen. George

E. Stratemeyer, who was

recovering from a heart

attack. During the first

year of the war, Weyland

had been Stratemeyer’s

Vice Commander for

Operations.
nation of recent epidemics of typhus and other diseases that diverted attention from the possibility that the maladies had accompanied

the Chinese armies into North Korea. While preventing an international committee of the Red Cross from investigating the charge of

germ warfare, the Chinese used torture and starvation to break the

resistance of several Air Force prisoners.

The exploitation of captives by the Chinese was investigated by

the Department of Defense, which cooperated with Eugene

Kinkead, an American journalist, in the writing of In Every War But

One, a book that in effect blamed the victims as much as it did the

captors who abused them. The author argued that only in the

Korean War had Americans held prisoner by the enemy collaborated willingly, suffered a breakdown in discipline and morale, and

failed to effect a “respectable number” of escapes. He maintained

that prisoners of other nationalities had shown greater powers of

resistance than the Americans; of the American armed forces, he

was most critical of the Army and least so of the Marine Corps. As

for the Air Force, he charged that, of the fifty-nine individuals from

whom the Chinese had tried to extort confessions of germ warfare,

thirty-eight had cooperated to some degree, with twenty-three providing usable propaganda. Even as he condemned the overall conduct of the prisoners, he admitted that not enough recognition had

been given to those who had resisted. Kinkead’s solution, and that

of the Department of Defense, was a code of conduct that emphasized resistance and escape, backed by training and indoctrination

to achieve these ideals.

Albert Biderman, a sociologist employed for some years by the

Air Force, challenged the analysis by Kinkead and the Department

of Defense in his book, March to Calumny. With the perspective provided by the passage of almost a decade, Biderman compared the

behavior of the various nationalities imprisoned by the Chinese and

concluded that the Americans did about as well as the others. True,

lapses in discipline had occurred and morale had sagged, but much

of the so-called collaboration had consisted of cooperating to the

least extent possible, such as signing a peace petition or listening to

lectures, to avoid mistreatment or possibly death while the truce

talks proceeded to their ultimate conclusion. Biderman insisted that

the critics had overlooked the fact that many soldiers had been captured in the dead of winter and undergone a demoralizing and debilitating march to the prison camps along the Yalu. Nor had the investigators, in his opinion, understood the ruthlessness of the Chinese

in using terror to obtain what proved to be a short-lived harvest of

germ warfare propaganda. Given the lack of sympathy for the prisoners among a populace whose towns and villages had been bombed

and the inability of the average American to blend in with Korean

38
farmers or laborers, he was surprised that escapes had been

attempted and that at least three had succeeded. All in all,

Biderman’s analysis was less alarming, less of a condemnation, and

more accurate than the official view set forth by Kinkead.

Interdiction

While the truce talks dragged on, stymied over the issue of the

repatriation of prisoners, air power carried out three general missions: supporting United Nations forces engaged in frontline combat; preparing plans to attack restricted targets in North Korea,

such as the hydroelectric plants, in the event that the negotiations

collapsed; and preventing the Chinese from massing men and supplies in an attempt to break the stalemate. Essential to all these was

maintaining air superiority, the job of the F–86s that patrolled MiG

Alley. The missions were being carried out under new leadership,

however. General Stratemeyer suffered a heart attack in May 1951

and turned the Far East Air Forces over to Partridge, who served for

three weeks until Weyland took over for the remainder of the war.

Similarly, Maj. Gen. Edward J. Timberlake, Partridge’s vice commander, became interim commander of the Fifth Air Force pending

the arrival of Lt. Gen. Frank F. Everest. Command of the Fifth Air

Force thereafter became a one-year tour, with Lt. Gens. Glenn O.

Barcus and Samuel E. Anderson succeeding to the assignment. Once

responsibility for the operation of the combat cargo organization

passed in February 1951 from Tunner to Brig. Gen. John F. Henebry,

a recently mobilized reservist, that too became a year’s tour of duty.

Commanders of the Bomber Command were replaced at four-month

intervals after Brig. Gen. James E. Briggs took over from General

O’Donnell in January 1951.

The standardized tour for most senior commanders reflected an

Air Force decision that individuals should serve for a definite period or number of missions to maintain morale, efficiency, and aggressiveness. During 1950, a shortage of pilots and crewmen frustrated

this policy, but once personnel became available and the Army

adopted a fixed tour in Korea, the Air Force could put such a plan

into effect without running short of trained men or undermining

morale in another service. The actual length of time that an officer

or enlisted man spent in Korea depended upon his assignment and

the needs of the Air Force. The Strategic Air Command, for example,

usually required a six-month tour but beginning in 1952, an outstanding crew might be rotated a month early, whereas one that was

slow to achieve proficiency could be held for a seventh month.

Of the missions conducted under the umbrella of air superiority,

interdiction took on special significance in the spring of 1951. As

39
General Ridgway’s troops probed toward Seoul and beyond, the

enemy’s supply lines seemed to present an especially vulnerable target, for they stretched 150 miles or more from the Yalu to the vicinity of the 38th parallel. Designed to take advantage of this apparent

vulnerability was Operation Strangle, which shared the name of a

similar interdiction campaign conducted in Italy seven years earlier. The choice of this name, which promised so much, represented an

effort to stir the enthusiasm of certain senior ground officers who

had a jaundiced view of aerial interdiction and doubted that air

strikes and armed reconnaissance could achieve the announced goal

of paralyzing enemy transportation between the railheads of southern North Korea and the battlefield. In retrospect, a better name

might have been Operation Lasso, for air power hobbled the enemy

through interdiction without totally destroying his capacity to

resist, and to do even that required the combined exertions of both

air and ground forces.

In the Korean version of Operation Strangle, the Fifth Air Force,

assisted by the Navy’s carrier task force and the 1st Marine Aircraft

Wing (and to a limited extent by the Bomber Command, Far East

Air Forces), tried to deprive the Chinese and North Korean forces of

essential supplies. Air Force F–80s and F–84s flew most of the

strikes, conducting daylight armed reconnaissance against the

roads, bridges, and tunnels that carried truck convoys. The Republic

F-84 Thunderjets had arrived in late 1950 with the F–86s. Although

inferior to F–86s in air-to-air combat, the F–84s bolstered Fifth Air

40

This North

Korean railyard

at Hwang- ju,

had, by December 1951, been

repeatedly

bombed.
Force’s daylight ground attack capability. Meanwhile B–26s

patrolled the highway net during darkness. Strangle began on May

31 and extended through July without having a noticeable effect on

the enemy buildup in front of the Eighth Army. Several factors contributed to the disappointing results. The emerging stalemate on

the ground, which relieved tactical aircraft of the burden of providing a large volume of close air support, also reduced the enemy’s consumption of munitions and other cargo, thus undermining the effectiveness of aerial interdiction by leaving the enemy less dependent

on his motorized supply lines. Since the Chinese and North Koreans

neither mounted nor were forced to repel large-scale attacks, they

could adjust their supply effort to take advantage of the main weakness of Operation Strangle—an inability to conduct sustained

attacks by night or in bad weather. Traffic moved with near impunity through darkness or rain, for aircrews had to rely on flares or

moonlight to locate targets. Damaged roads and bridges were quickly repaired or bypassed, and the damage inflicted from the sky was

not as severe as hoped because intense antiaircraft fire reduced

bombing accuracy in daylight. Nevertheless, interdiction continued,

although against a broader range of targets, at times accompanied

by great fanfare and arousing unrealistic expectations.

Except for occasional attacks on bridges or segments of highway

in connection with Operation Strangle, the B–29s normally contributed to interdiction by conducting daylight raids on rail lines,

marshaling yards, or warehouses. After October 1951, when MiGs

slipped past patrolling F–86s and downed five B–29s in a single

week, the bomber command began attacking exclusively at night.

The change of tactics enhanced the safety of men and aircraft but

decreased bombing accuracy. Fortunately, because of the recurring

bad weather in Korea, the command had already set up a shortrange navigation system, the shoran network of radio beacons on

the ground. This aid to aerial navigation enabled the bombers to

locate and attack such area targets as large villages, rail complexes,

or warehouse districts. In response to shoran-guided night raids, the

enemy employed radar-controlled searchlights in conjunction with

antiaircraft batteries. Electronic warfare ensued, during which

B–29s, the underside of the wings and fuselage camouflaged with

black paint, relied on chaff and jamming transmitters to frustrate

radar operators on the ground.

When the change from day to night tactics occurred, the B–29s

were in the midst of another systematic interdiction effort. This

campaign, for a time also called Operation Strangle, began in

August 1951 and was directed against the rail net. Enthusiastic

advocates on the staff of Fifth Air Force believed that air attacks

could constrict the volume of rail traffic, forcing the enemy to rely on

41
trucks, which were in short supply and carried less cargo than

freight cars. Some of these officers went so far as to predict that

Chinese and North Korean troops, deprived of essential food and

ammunition, would have to retreat to shorten vulnerable lines of

supply. F–84s joined F–80s in attacking various rail choke points

and B–29s bombed bridges; but the big bombers had to attack at

night using shoran. As had happened in the earlier Operation

Strangle, antiaircraft fire affected the accuracy of fighter-bombers,

and work crews moved swiftly to repair damage or build bypasses.

Although the second Operation Strangle did not achieve its most

optimistic goal of forcing the enemy to retreat, the attacks prevented the accumulation of enough supplies to mount a major offensive.

As a result, rail interdiction continued into 1952 but without the illstarred title of Strangle. An intensified and redesignated program of

rail interdiction, Operation Saturate, began on February 25 and

became a race between American airmen trying to obliterate the rail

lines and Korean laborers trying to repair them. On a single mission, as many as forty B–29s hit a bridge, a mission that formerly

might have been assigned to eight of the bombers; and fighterbombers lavished 500 or more bombs on a single length of track.

This kind of work from both Air Force and Marine squadrons,

impressive though it was in terms of effort, could maintain no more

than six cuts on North Korea’s main rail lines, too few to do more

than inconvenience the enemy.

During Saturate, intelligence analysts found one segment of rail

line that seemed especially vulnerable to B–29s using shoran. The

target was a railroad overpass at Wadong on the main east-west

supply route. Here, deep in a gorge, the railway crossed a highway,

so that bombs missing the railroad viaduct might detonate against

the rock wall of the defile, causing landslides that would block both

the tracks and the road. Unfortunately the bridge proved hard to hit

and the rock sides of the gorge were all but impervious to the effects

of 500-pound bombs. After six weeks of effort, from January 26

through March 11, 1952, 1,000 tons of high explosives had produced

no landslides, and only one percent of the bombs hit either the

viaduct or the highway it crossed. American intelligence estimated

that during the attacks the road had been blocked for just seven

days and the rail line for four.

What was needed to improve the effectiveness of interdiction

was not more bombs dropped from high-flying B–29s but a low-altitude aircraft that could locate and destroy truck convoys and trains

moving at night. As early as the first Korean version of Operation

Strangle in the spring of 1951, Air Force B–26s and Marine Corps

night fighters had patrolled assigned roads or rail lines and

attacked traffic by the light of flares. To help the B–26s carry out

42
nighttime armed reconnaissance, Fifth Air Force tried to adapt a

Navy-developed searchlight used during World War II by airships

searching for submarines. Capt. John S. Walmsley was shot down as

he used the light to illuminate a train for another B–26; his heroism

in the face of antiaircraft fire resulted in the posthumous award of

the Medal of Honor. Because the light attracted fire from the

ground, B–26 crews came to rely on flares for night attack. Claims

of trucks destroyed mounted into the thousands, but verification of

the damage inflicted at night proved so difficult that no evaluation

of the effectiveness of nighttime interdiction was possible.

The difficulty of conducting demonstrably effective aerial interdiction gave ammunition to those critics who wanted the Air Force

to use more of its aircraft for close air support and use them more

effectively. The Fifth Air Force in Korea had come to emphasize

interdiction because the enemy seemed more vulnerable to attack

along his exposed lines of supply and communications than in his

bunkers on the battlefield. In contrast, Army commanders wanted

air strikes to supplement mortars and artillery in the battles that

flared suddenly and subsided throughout the period of stalemate. A

solution proposed by Army officers serving in Korea was to have a

Marine Corps fighter squadron assigned to each of the three Army

corps in Korea. General Weyland succeeded in blocking this end run

past the joint operations center, but he did change the allocations of

sorties between interdiction and close air support. During the two

Strangle operations, the Fifth Air Force flew ten times as many

interdiction as close support sorties, which declined to fewer than

500 a month. After the spring of 1952, Air Force close air support

sorties averaged about 2,000 per month, or nearly half the number

of interdiction sorties.

Moreover, an improved command and control network enabled

the Fifth Air Force to respond more quickly to calls for emergency

support than it had in the early months of the war. A request from

a tactical air control party assigned to a regiment could pass

through division and corps headquarters and reach the joint operations center at Seoul in as little as 10 minutes. From the joint operations center, which approved or rejected the requests, instructions

went next door to the tactical air control center, in effect the communications link that forwarded orders to the appropriate wing

headquarters or to aircraft already aloft. The responding pilot first

checked in with one of the recently established tactical air direction

posts, which were assigned to each American corps and equipped

with radar for handling night strikes. In daylight the pilot then proceeded to the forward air controller selected by the joint operations

center, reporting for instructions to a fellow aviator who might be

flying in a T–6 or on the ground with a tactical air control party. The

43
total time between initial request and the resulting fighter strike

was around 40 minutes, possibly less, depending upon whether the

aircraft was diverted from another mission or launched from an airfield where it had been standing alert. At night, instead of assigning

the strike to a controller on or above the battlefield, the joint operations center usually relied on a tactical air direction post located

about 10 miles behind the lines. This control agency used radar to

guide the attacking aircraft, usually B–26s or B–29s with radar

transponders for easier tracking, against some predetermined target, perhaps troops advancing through some previously plotted area

or a suspected Chinese command post. Close support of ground

forces remained an important mission throughout the war, one that

was carried out by dedicated airmen, none more so than Maj.

Charles Loring. On November 22, 1952, he flew his crippled F–80

into a gun emplacement that was firing on American troops. Major

Loring was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, and Loring

Air Force Base, Maine, was named in his honor.

Air Pressure

Beginning during the summer of 1952, after a year of stalemate,

the air war over Korea entered a new phase, an attempt to employ

air power to pressure the Chinese into accepting an armistice satisfactory to the United States. The arrival of a new United Nations

commander, Gen. Mark W. Clark, who replaced Ridgway in May

1952, signaled an expansion of the air effort, for Clark believed that

the deadlock at Panmunjom had to be broken and that “air pressure” afforded the least costly means of doing so. As a result, Clark

accepted Weyland’s recommendation to attack the hydroelectric

plants in North Korea, cutting off power throughout the country and

impressing on the leadership the consequences of delaying a settlement. The Fifth Air Force and Task Force 77, with Weyland as coordinating agent, drew up plans for such a campaign. So impressed

were the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that they persuaded

President Truman to include the Sui-ho power plant on the Yalu

River in the list of targets. With a general election to take place in

November, the President, too, was eager to achieve a cease-fire. Air

Force and Navy fighter-bombers attacked 17 hydroelectric generating plants in four separate complexes—Sui-ho, Chosin, Fusen, and

Kyosen—during the last week of June 1952. After more than 1,200

sorties, 11 of the generating facilities lay in ruins; North Korea

experienced a nearly total loss of electric power lasting two weeks

and did not achieve its former level of generating capacity before the

end of the war, some 13 months later. The destruction of the Sui-ho

power plant, one of the largest hydroelectric facilities in the world,

44
also reduced Manchuria’s supply of electricity by nearly a fourth.

During the attacks, antiaircraft fire succeeded in downing only two

aircraft, both flown by naval aviators who were rescued, and there

were no losses to MiGs. Indeed, on the first day of the raids, most of

the 250 MiGs based at An-tung, within 40 miles of Sui-ho, fled farther into Manchuria as though under the impression that their airfields might be the target. Although tactically successful, the disruption of the power grid did not bring progress in the talks at

Panmunjom.

When the bombing of the hydroelectric plants failed to break the

deadlock in the truce negotiations, the United Nations Command

launched air attacks against other targets. During the summer of

1952, Air Force and Navy aircraft carried out the two biggest raids

of the war, both against Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital. These

were the first major attacks on the city since January 1951, shortly

after Chinese forces had captured it, when more than a hundred

B–29s dropped incendiary clusters in an unsuccessful raid. The failure of the January attack to destroy more than a third of the city

was attributed to snow, which retarded the spread of the flames, and

an excessively tight bombing pattern. When attacking in 1952, Air

Force bombers did not drop incendiary clusters, judged less accurate

than high explosives and more likely to cause widespread collateral

damage. The Truman administration wanted accuracy against

Pyongyang, mainly to protect American prisoners of war believed

held there. Other towns harboring large concentrations of enemy

troops or stocks of supplies were attacked with incendiary clusters

or napalm, along with high explosives.

On July 11, 1952, United Nations fighter-bombers flew 1,200

sorties and B–29s flew 54 against the North Korean capital. Radio

Pyongyang attributed 7,000 casualties and the destruction of 1,500

buildings to this raid, and reports from intelligence agents indicated that a direct hit had destroyed the headquarters of the North

Korean Ministry of Industry. Despite the effects of this attack,

Generals Weyland and Clark decided to send 1,400 sorties by Air

Force and Navy fighter-bombers against surviving warehouses, barracks, and public buildings in Pyongyang. Delivered on August 29,

this additional blow satisfied a request by the Department of State

for some dramatic military action during a visit to the Soviet Union

by China’s premier, Chou En-lai (Zhou Enlai). The American ambassador at Moscow, George Kennan, suggested that if the Chinese

could be pressured into increasing their demands for aid from the

Soviet Union, the Soviet leadership might decide that the nation’s

resources would be strained and urge China to accept a truce.

Unfortunately, the August raid on Pyongyang was no more successful than the July attack in prodding the Chinese toward a truce.

45
The conflict in Korea had dragged on for more than twenty-seven

months and had become a political issue by November 1952, when

the United States held a Presidential election. The Republican candidate, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander

in Europe during World War II, faced a Democrat, Governor Adlai E.

Stevenson of Illinois, who lacked military experience. Eisenhower

called for greater South Korean participation in the fighting and

promised that if elected he would go to Korea, presumably to find a

solution to the impasse there. He was elected, went to Korea late in

November without waiting to take the oath of office, and returned

determined to break the stalemate in the talks at Panmunjom. The

likeliest means of doing so was through military pressure, but conventional air and ground operations had failed to force China and

North Korea to agree to an acceptable cease-fire. Consequently his

thoughts turned first to Nationalist China and then to the atomic

bomb.

Immediately after taking office in January 1953, President

Eisenhower announced that the United States Navy would no

longer patrol the waters separating the Nationalists on Taiwan from

46

During four days in late June 1952, the Air Force and the

Navy cooperated to destroy eleven hydroelectric power

plants and plunge North Korea into a power blackout for

two weeks. For the rest of the war, North Korea was left

with a fraction of its former power production capacity.
the Chinese mainland. Since the outbreak of war in Korea,

American warships had in effect neutralized Taiwan, preventing

Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) from trying to realize his dream,

however unrealistic, of invading the continent. Now Chiang was

unleashed, and those who joked about his prospects of reconquering

China missed the purpose of this action. By means of this essentially symbolic gesture, Eisenhower was showing his willingness to

widen the war if an armistice did not soon emerge.

Regarding the possibility of using atomic weapons in a wider war,

the new President moved more slowly. He consulted the Joint Chiefs

of Staff, who initially offered conflicting advice: Vandenberg suggested that atomic bombs, if used, be directed against Manchuria as well

as North Korea; Bradley warned that a renewed ground offensive

without atomic firepower would produce a staggering toll of American

casualties; and Gen. J. Lawton Collins, now the Army Chief of Staff,

said that recent tests in the Nevada desert indicated that Chinese

troops deeply entrenched along a 150-mile front would provide a poor

target for tactical nuclear weapons. The administration considered a

variety of options for increasing the pressure on China, but by the end

of May 1953 it had become obvious that any intensification of military

pressure would extend the war to China and that an attack on China

would require the use of atomic weapons.

Although willing to expand the conflict and use atomic bombs if

that became necessary, the President and his advisers tried first to

exert a more subtle form of pressure that might make it unnecessary to broaden the fighting. President Eisenhower and his

Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, saw to it that word reached

the Chinese government of America’s willingness to resort to

nuclear weapons to break the impasse, hoping that the threat alone

would persuade China to accept a suitable armistice.

As the Eisenhower administration was shaping this policy, other

events affected the future of the two Koreas. On March 4, 1953,

Stalin died, ending three decades during which the Soviet Union

conformed to the dictates of this one man. Georgi Malenkov, nominally the successor of Stalin, lacked the power to rule without the

consent of certain of his colleagues, notably Lavrenti F. Beria, the

head of the secret police. The struggle for control of the Soviet Union

took precedence over the conduct of an aggressive foreign policy, and

Malenkov called for an easing of tensions with the West. Indeed, he

may have pressured China and North Korea to end the war. By the

end of March, China displayed its willingness to compromise by

agreeing to an exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war.

Because of the humanitarian character of the action and the small

number involved—7,300 men, 90 percent Chinese and North

Korean, the rest soldiers of the United Nations Command, including

47
just 149 Americans—the issue of forced repatriation did not surface.

While the President and his advisers discussed the possible use of

the atomic bomb, the conventional air war against North Korea continued, as B–29s and Fifth Air Force fighter-bombers attacked a new

target—the nation’s irrigation dams. General Clark, in looking for

new ways to pressure the enemy, discovered twenty of these structures, none of which had yet been attacked. Early in 1953, the Far

East Air Forces concluded that breaching all of the dams would

utterly destroy an entire year’s rice crop. Both Clark and Weyland

viewed such a campaign as the ultimate form of aerial pressure, and

when the truce talks again stalled, they decided to go ahead. During

May 1953 air attacks shattered three dams, releasing impounded

water that not only swept away rice plants but also flooded roads,

rail lines, and even an airfield. Indeed, General Clark insisted that

the destruction of just the first of the three dams to be attacked “was

as effective as weeks of railroad interdiction.” Yet, as was true with

damaged rail lines, laborers quickly repaired the breaks, and the

North Koreans lowered the level of water behind the dams so a rupture would not release a wall of water like that which caused so

much damage in the first three attacks. However, reducing the volume of water behind the structures also reduced the water available

to irrigate the rice crop that fed the people of North Korea.

Aware of the threat of atomic war, unsure of the new leadership

in Moscow, and bled by sustained fighting, the Chinese in early June

1953 seemed ready to sign an armistice satisfactory to the United

States. But what Americans found suitable did not please South

Korean President Rhee, who balked at accepting a permanently

divided Korea. To demonstrate his displeasure, he permitted some

25,000 North Koreans in United Nations prisoner of war camps to

“escape,” actually drafting a sizable number into the South Korean

army. Perhaps to punish Rhee for his intransigence or merely to

gain the initiative before the fighting ended, the enemy launched

the most savage offensive since the first year of the war. In response,

Air Force close air support sorties increased by 40 percent to almost

7,500 during June, and MiGs appeared over North Korea in greater

numbers than before, but suffered their greatest losses—F–86 pilots

claimed more than 100, including 16 on June 30 alone. Meanwhile,

fighter-bombers and B–29s continued to batter North Korean airfields. Earlier, airfields had been hit to prevent the Chinese from

deploying the short-range MiGs close to the battlefield; now the purpose of the attacks was to prevent the communists from increasing

aerial strength in the weeks before the signing of an armistice that

would forbid the shipment of additional military equipment into

Korea. The Chinese succeeded, however, in hiding an estimated 200

aircraft in the countryside near Sinuiju.

48
Representatives of China, North Korea, and the United States

signed an armistice on July 27, 1953. South Korea refused to sign,

but threats to cut off American aid apparently persuaded the Rhee

government to honor the truce. As expected, the prisoner exchange

proved embarrassing to the communists, who had at last abandoned

their demand for forced repatriation. Of more than 20,000 Chinese

prisoners in the hands of the United Nations, two-thirds rejected

repatriation, whereas only 21 of the 3,000 Americans in enemy

hands chose to remain behind, along with 327 South Koreans and

one British serviceman.

There may be no single, unambiguous reason why the Chinese

and North Koreans finally relented on the prisoner issue and ended

the war. President Eisenhower believed in retrospect that his threat

to wage atomic war against China was decisive. Other factors contributing to a settlement may have included the death of Stalin and

the uncertainty that followed as his possible successors grappled for

power. Yet, had Stalin lived and Eisenhower not threatened to use

the atomic bomb, the cumulative cost of the fighting might nevertheless have forced China to yield. The United Nations Command,

which lost some 450,000 killed or wounded, estimated that Chinese

and North Korean military casualties were at least three times

greater. Of the four major participants, America’s losses of 35,000

killed and 100,000 wounded were by far the least. The South Korean

armed forces suffered some 300,000 casualties, but despite this toll

of dead or wounded, most of South Korea had been sheltered since

mid-1951 from the desolation of war. As a result of that period of

freedom from enemy occupation, along with the training and military assistance provided by the United States, when the fighting

ended South Korea’s army was twice as large as North Korea’s and

was growing faster.

The air war had been very destructive. Far East Air Forces estimated that it had killed nearly 150,000 North Korean and Chinese

troops and destroyed more than 950 aircraft, 800 bridges, 1,100

tanks, 800 locomotives, 9,000 railroad cars, 70,000 motor vehicles,

and 80,000 buildings. This damage was inflicted at the cost of 1,200

airmen killed and 750 aircraft destroyed by the enemy. For the first

time, air supremacy and the helicopter permitted the frequent rescue of aviators shot down behind enemy lines, thus reducing the

death toll. The Air Rescue Service retrieved 170 Air Force pilots or

crewmen from enemy territory, more than 10 percent of those who

went down there.

As General Bradley pointed out during Senate hearings into

American policy in the Far East, the existence of sanctuaries benefited both sides. Chinese air bases in Manchuria were not attacked,

but Chinese aircraft did not bomb or strafe the front-line positions

49
of the United Nations forces and made no effort to disrupt the enormous volume of cargo moving through South Korean ports to the

battlefield. Had the United States attacked Manchuria, however,

the Soviet Union might have given the Chinese long-range bombers

capable of striking targets in South Korea or even Japan from bases

north of the Yalu. Similarly, neither side attacked the other’s oceangoing shipping, although the Americans did wage war on the North

Korean fishing fleet. No communist power challenged the passage of

the ships and aircraft that carried a million tons of American military supplies across the Pacific each month, depositing their cargo

in huge depots in Japan, which themselves would have been vulnerable to air attack. American forces had worked a logistical miracle in supplying the United Nations Command, but they did so without air and naval opposition.

American airmen dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs during the war, all directed against targets in Korea. Far East Air

Forces, including Fifth Air Force, contributed two-thirds, an amount

that exceeded the weight of the conventional bombardment of Japan

in World War II. Yet, the weight of bombs expended in Korea was

less significant than the weapon not used, for the first country to

acquire nuclear weapons and use them in combat had this time

withheld them and engaged in a limited, conventional war.

The outbreak of fighting in Korea and the nature of the conflict

there caused the Air Force to separate the Tactical Air Command

from the Continental Air Command. Although the Air Force made

this concession to the needs of limited, conventional warfare, it did

not develop aircraft specifically for tactical operations. In spite of

the need for a higher performance aircraft to replace the T–6 and

operate from crude airstrips, none was forthcoming, nor was an

attempt made to develop special types for close air support or night

interdiction. The ideal tactical fighter was envisioned officially as a

multipurpose aircraft capable of strafing, dropping bombs, and

engaging enemy fighters. Even the F–86, which had proved so deadly against the MiG in aerial combat, appeared in a fighter-bomber

version that saw combat late in the war. The emphasis on versatility ran counter to the beliefs of Colonel Gabreski and like-minded

veterans of MiG Alley who were convinced that the air battles of the

future would be won by a fast day-fighter, stripped of all nonessential equipment, easy to fly, and simple to maintain. Clarence L.

“Kelly” Johnson, an engineer for Lockheed aircraft, designed the

F–104 to be just such an airplane; but it rapidly gained weight,

increased in complexity, and by the time production ended appeared

as a fighter-bomber.

In many ways the Korean conflict proved frustrating for the Air

Force. A combination of terrain and camouflage thwarted aerial sur50
veillance during the Chinese buildup south of the Yalu River in

October and November 1950. A fleet of aging B–29s destroyed

almost every vestige of industry in North Korea, but armaments

from nations whose factories could not be bombed satisfied North

Korea’s needs. Absolute control of the air did not ensure victory on

the ground, for the enemy’s transportation system survived sustained air attacks and provided the volume of supplies necessary for

an essentially static war, marked after the spring of 1951 by only

limited offensives. The emphasis should be placed, however, on the

accomplishments of air power: supplying the ground forces; eliminating the threat of aerial attack on the movement and logistical

51

Pilot ejects from downed MiG. The victor in this

combat was Edwin E. Aldrin, later one of the

first astronauts to walk on the moon.
support of the United Nations Command; and, in general, serving as

a means, less costly in American lives than a succession of even limited offensives, of maintaining pressure on the enemy in a war that

rapidly became unpopular in the United States. Perhaps the conventional bombing of North Korea gave the Chinese and Soviet

leadership a hint of the destruction that would result from the

atomic warfare that President Eisenhower was threatening.

The Air Force had entered the war committed to the heavy

bomber armed with atomic weapons; to a strategy of deterrence;

and, should deterrence fail, to a retaliatory strike designed, insofar

as aircraft and numbers of weapons permitted, to destroy the

enemy’s capacity for war. Far from undermining these principles,

three years of limited warfare had reinforced them, persuading the

leadership of the Air Force that the United States should stand

ready to attack the Soviet Union and not divert its strength against

aggression by proxy. As a result, during the Senate hearing that followed the relief of MacArthur, when Vandenberg complained about

his shoestring Air Force, bemoaning its inability to wage atomic war

against both the Soviet Union and China, he was more concerned

about worldwide deterrence or retaliation than tactical operations

in Korea. Moreover, in his opinion the North Korean invasion of the

South did not mean that deterrence had failed—after all, the Soviet

Union had not taken advantage of the war in the Far East by attacking elsewhere—but suggested that the deterrent force should be

made stronger. He saw the Soviet Union as the main enemy in any

future war, and the industrial base that supported it could be

destroyed only by using nuclear weapons. The threat of total devastation seemed the likeliest means to prevent aggression by the

Soviet Union and its satellite states, or so it appeared in 1953.

52

(Front cover) Maintenance men of the 49th Fighter Bomber

Wing test fire the guns of a Republic F-84 Thunderjet on an

air base in South Korea in August 1952.
Suggested Readings

Chen Jian. China’s Road to the Korean War. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1994.

Cooling, Benjamin Franklin, ed. Case Studies in the Achievement

of Air Superiority. Washington: Center for Air Force History,

1994.

Cooling, Benjamin Franklin, ed. Case Studies in the Development

of Close Air Support. Washington: Center for Air Force

History, 1990.

Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War. 2 vols. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1981–1990.

Fehrenbach, T. R This Kind of War. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Futrell, Robert Frank. The United States Air Force in Korea,

1950–1953. Washington: Center for Air Force History, 1991

(reprint).

Goncharov, Sergei N., John W. Lewis and Xue Litai. Uncertain

Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War. Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1993.

Goulden, Joseph C. Korea: The Untold Story of the War. New York:

Times Books, 1982.

Hallion, Richard P. The Naval Air War in Korea. Annapolis:

Nautical & Aviation, 1986.

Leffler, Melvyn P. A Preponderance of Power: National Security,

the Truman Administration and the Cold War. Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1992.

Mark, Eduard. Aerial Interdiction in Three Wars. Washington:

Center for Air Force History, 1994.

Moody, Walton S. Building A Strategic Air Force. Washington: Air

Force History and Museums Program, 1996.

Pape, Robert A. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Stueck, William. The Korean War: An International History.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Williams, William J. A Revolutionary War: Korea and the

Transformation of the Postwar World. Chicago: Imprint

Publications, 1992.

Winnefeld, James A. and Dana J. Johnson. Joint Air Operations:

Pursuit of Unity in Command and Control, 1942–1991.

Annapolis: Naval Institute, 1993.

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