The United States initially considered Korea to be of little strategic importance; American interest in the peninsula grew more by happenstance than by plan. However, at the end of World War II, Japan was of critical importance to U.S. interests, and Korea was too close geographically to ignore. With the Soviets poised to enter the Japanese colony, action to protect those interests had to be taken quickly. This led to the decision in 1945 to divide the country at the 38th parallel, with the Soviets disarming the Japanese forces north of that line, and American troops disarming those to the south of it. This division was to be temporary. As in Germany, however, the Cold War led to the formation of two mutually antagonistic governments: a militantly Communist government in the north and an authoritarian, although less organized, one in the south.
The American policy was “Europe first.” In Washington, the dominant view was that Europe was more important to American interests and more threatened, a position hammered home by the recently concluded Berlin Blockade of 1949. Moreover, the United States thought the next Communist move in Asia would most likely be an invasion of what was then known as Formosa (now Taiwan). Most American military leaders considered South Korea indefensible.
The United States did not want to engage in a land war on the Asian continent. Despite increasing cold war tensions, it withdrew its troops in 1949, leaving only a military advisory team of less than five hundred personnel to help the South Koreans build a lightly armed force intended (at least by the Americans) only to provide internal security. Washington feared that a better armed military might tempt the South Koreans to seek to unify the peninsula by force, as their president threatened. As a result, the Republic of Korea (RoK) was left with a mere constabulary: its army consisted of less than ninety-eight thousand troops; it had no tanks, no antitank capability, and no artillery heavier than 105 mm; and its aviation component consisted of three trainer and thirteen liaison aircraft.
In contrast, the Communists trained and equipped a conventional army in the north that numbered approximately 135,000 troops. About one-third of these had fought with the Chinese Communists during China’s civil war and were well equipped with World War II Soviet artillery and about 150 T-34 tanks, as well as 132 Soviet prop-powered combat aircraft. Thus, the north had a tremendous military advantage, which was greatly enhanced by striking the first blow.1
Some lay blame for the conflict on a speech by Secretary of State Dean Acheson in January 1950 in which he excluded Korea from the sphere of U.S. interests. Even if this statement had never been made, however, the Communists would probably have attacked because of the weak American military position in South Korea and the fierce determination of North Korea to unify the peninsula as a Communist state. We now know that the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, made the decision to invade and maneuvered both the Soviets and the Chinese into supporting him, despite the lukewarm backing of the much more conservative Soviets and the reluctance of the Chinese, who were indeed planning to invade Formosa.
Early on 25 June 1950, the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel and quickly crushed the South Korean Army.
Much to the surprise of just about all, the United States quickly and directly responded. On 26 June, Washington authorized U.S. air and sea forces to assist the South Koreans to stem the invasion. When these forces proved inadequate, President Harry Truman ordered U.S. ground troops in on 30 June. (He was able to do this under the UN flag, because the Soviets were boycotting the international body at the time.)2
Truman was an avid and serious student of history who had been in Washington when German and Japanese aggression plunged the United States into World War II. He and other key decision makers in Washington feared that the North Korean invasion was only the first Communist move, and he well remembered the disgraceful sellout of Czechoslovakia at the 1938 Munich Conference that did not preclude but only postponed World War II. The ghosts of Munich haunted this generation of leaders. They believed that the United States and the “Free” World had to make a stand here or worse would ensue.
Much to the surprise of most Americans, the introduction of U.S. forces, hastily flown in and committed to action piecemeal, hardly slowed the Communist advance. By 5 August, the North Koreans had pushed the remnants of the RoK army and growing numbers of American forces into the southeastern corner of the peninsula around the port of Pusan, an area that became known as the “Pusan Perimeter.” The situation was dire as the North Koreans were on the offensive and threatening to drive the UN forces into the sea. By 1 September, however, UN forces outnumbered the Communist forces 180,000 to 98,000 and had somewhat beaten them up, forcing them more and more frequently to impress South Koreans at gunpoint to fight for them. UN air attacks further battered the Communist army and supply lines.
Then, on 15 September, the UN launched an amphibious assault at Inchon, on the west coast of Korea near the South Korean capital of Seoul, hundreds of miles behind the front lines. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the architect of this move, pushed this bold and risky operation over the objections of the American high command. It caught the Communists by surprise and was a smashing success. The UN followed the Inchon assault with an offensive from the Pusan Perimeter, the two UN forces linking up on 26 September. After some heavy fighting in Seoul, the war became a UN pursuit of the broken North Korean army. On 1 October, RoK troops crossed the 38th parallel, followed by other UN forces on 9 October. Truman met with MacArthur on Wake Island on 15 October, where the general told the president that the war would be over by Thanksgiving and that many of the western troops would be home for Christmas.
In response to Truman’s questions, MacArthur rejected the notion that the Chinese would intervene in the war. Ten days later, the Chinese Army surprised and mauled UN forces in sharp fighting before pulling back as quickly and mysteriously as they had appeared. The UN commanders believed that this was merely a show of force. On 24 November MacArthur took the offensive but ran into a massive Chinese attack the next day that threw the stunned UN forces back in a costly rout. This was a huge intelligence and aerial reconnaissance failure. It also was a new war.
The retreat of the UN force from North Korea was a disaster and arguably the worst defeat in U.S. military history. The action is that much more remarkable because the UN force was clearly trounced even though it was not greatly outnumbered and had overwhelming superiority in armor, artillery, air, and sea power. When the year ended, the combatants faced one another along the 38th parallel.
A Chinese offensive early in January swept south of the 38th parallel, recaptured Seoul, and reached a point sixty miles southeast of the South Korean capital. As January 1951 closed, UN forces counterattacked and were able to again recapture Seoul. By the end of that month, the battle line was along the 38th parallel, a line that the UN forces pushed northward in the next weeks.
Then, after almost a year of mobile warfare that swept back and forth across the Korean peninsula, the war dramatically changed character. In late June, the Soviet ambassador to the UN called for negotiations; armistice talks began on 10 July 1951. Thus, over the next two years there was little movement in the battle lines, despite bitter fighting that resembled World War I trench warfare. The major fighting stopped just before midnight on 27 July 1953. In the interim both sides shed much blood, and the names of such engagements as the Punchbowl, Heartbreak Ridge, and Pork Chop Hill became notorious for high casualties and futility. The war ended close to where it had begun, with Korea divided between a fiercely Communist North and an anti-Communistic (and authoritarian) South. During the three-year war, the Communists military suffered 1.6 million casualties, and UN forces suffered about .5 million casualties. Three million South Korean civilians died, along with untold North Korean civilians. The United States lost 34,000 killed, over 10,000 missing, and 103,000 wounded.3
The war was not in vain, for the Communist invasion was thwarted, and South Korea gradually became a thriving economic power and a democracy. Meanwhile, North Korea declined economically as it built up a large conventional (and perhaps nuclear-armed) military. American troops remain in Korea to this day.
The North Korean air force had no opposition from the South Korean air force but in turn was no match for the American airmen. The USAF had about twelve hundred aircraft in the region at the beginning of the war, a figure that grew during the period of July to September to almost seventeen hundred UN aircraft.4 The two air forces quickly came into conflict.
On the first day of the war, 25 June 1950, two North Korean fighters strafed the airfield at Kimpo (just outside of Seoul) and destroyed an American C-54 on the ground, and four other fighters strafed the Seoul airfield and damaged seven RoK aircraft. The first course of action for the Americans was to get U.S. civilians out of South Korea. That day Gen. Earle Partridge, commander of the USAF Fifth Air Force, ordered his units to prepare for an airlift of the estimated two thousand Americans in South Korea to Japan. Just before midnight, the American ambassador to South Korea, John Muccio, told MacArthur of his decision to evacuate the civilians by ship; MacArthur in turn ordered the USAF to provide air cover. That afternoon a Red fighter bounced two F-82s defending the ships but did not fire at them or the ships. Following orders, the Twin Mustang pilots took evasive action but did not engage the North Korean aircraft.
Although Muccio planned to use more ships, the rapid North Korean advance forced him to request air evacuation. On 27 June USAF transports evacuated 850 people to Japan escorted by F-80s, F-82s, and B-26s. Around noon, five Red fighters flew over Seoul heading for Kimpo. Five F-82s intercepted them and Maj. James Little, commander of the 339th Fighter All Weather Squadron (FAWS) who had claimed seven Japanese aircraft in World War II, fired the first U.S. shots of the war. But the Air Force credits 1st Lt. William Hudson of the 68th FAWS with the first American air-to-air victory of the war. In all, six F-80 and F-82 pilots downed seven North Korean aircraft that day, each getting one victory except for 1st Lt. Robert Wayne (35th FS) who bagged two IL-10s.5
The Air Force attempted to fly bombing strikes that night but was thwarted by weather. The next day, 28 June, however, the USAF launched two dozen B-26s on two missions, one against railroad yards and the other against road and rail traffic. One of the bombers hit by antiaircraft fire crashed at its home base, killing all aboard, while another got down safely but had to be junked. B-29s based on Okinawa also entered the war on 28 June, four hitting rail and road targets. The North Korean air force was also active, that afternoon strafing the Suwon airfield, twenty miles south of Seoul, damaging one B-26 and one F-82, and returning later to destroy a C-54 on the ground.
On 29 June nine B-29s hit the Kimpo airfield with excellent results. That day General MacArthur flew to Korea to get a first-hand view of the action and to meet with President Syngman Rhee of South Korea, Ambassador Muccio, and top American and South Korean officers. According to one account, during the conference in a Suwon schoolhouse, four North Korean fighters made a pass on the Suwon airfield. MacArthur and his officers watched as Mustangs downed all four of the enemy. (Another source states that the conference took place between two North Korean air attacks on the airfield.) The USAF claimed a total of fourteen aerial victories during the month. The constant and aggressive North Korean air attacks prompted MacArthur to authorize attacks on North Korean airfields. On 29 June the Americans attacked North Korea for the first time when eighteen B-26s hit an airfield near the capital, Pyongyang, destroying twenty-five aircraft on the ground.6
The United States deployed two additional B-29 groups to the theater and converted some of the fighter units from the F-80 to the F-51 in July. Although the World War II fighter was more vulnerable than the jet fighter, the Mustang had longer range and endurance and could better operate out of the shorter and rougher airstrips in South Korea. On 3 July the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy entered the air war, attacking airfields in North Korea. During the first day’s assault, F9F pilots downed two North Korean fighters. After the Joint Chiefs of Staff authorized a plan to attack eighteen strategic targets in the north, B-29s began bombing the few strategic targets in North Korea on 6 July when nine B-29s hit an oil refinery and chemical plant. Four days later four Communist fighters attacked an American infantry unit with bullets and bombs. On 27 July North Korean aircraft dropped a bomb on a USAF headquarters without causing any damage. These were the only cases of American troops being attacked by enemy aircraft during daylight in the Korean War.7 On 12 July the North Korean air force had its best day of the war when it downed one B-26, one B-29, and one L-4 in aerial combat. The USAF fighter pilots claimed six Red aircraft destroyed in the air in July along with another nineteen on the ground. The Navy also battered the North Korean air force with two strikes on 18 July on an airfield near Pyongyang, and the next day launched two attacks on the airfields near the east coast that destroyed between thirty-two and forty-seven aircraft. The Navy hit other targets as well—the Wonsan refinery on 18 July and enemy troops for the first time on 22 July.8
B-29s were involved in three incidents in 1950 that had the potential to widen the war. On 27 July a Superfort got lost and flew well into Chinese territory. Russian fighters intercepted the American bomber but did not fire on it. About two months later (22 September) a B-29 bombed the marshalling yard at Antung, jus t north of the border. Antung was hit again on 13 November when one of more than one hundred bombs unloaded on the North Korean target of Sinuiju went astray.9
The American airmen achieved air superiority in the last half of July, reducing the North Korean air force to an estimated eighteen serviceable aircraft. During June and July the Air Force lost twenty-five aircraft to enemy action: four in air-to-air combat, twenty to ground fire, and one to an unknown cause.10 The USAF fighter pilots claimed twenty North Korean aircraft destroyed in air-to-air combat and another nineteen destroyed on the ground. In addition the B-26s and B-29s destroyed other aircraft on the ground, and the Navy claimed two aircraft destroyed in the air and others destroyed on the airfield attacks. In August B-29s no longer required fighter escort and the Navy’s aircraft carriers could operate closer to the Korean coast.11
August saw the critical fighting around the Pusan Perimeter. The North Korean advance made air support more difficult as it forced a number of the fighter units based in Korea to move back to Japan. The war showed that failing in air-to-air combat, the most effective methods to counter UN air power was antiaircraft artillery and capturing UN airfields. The Communist ground threat was so grave that on 16 August ninety-eight B-29s carpet-bombed a twenty-seven-square-mile area near UN lines. The Superforts dropped over 840 tons of bombs, but reconnaissance failed to detect any significant damage. On 18 September forty-two B-29s flew a similar mission against a two-square-mile area near Waegwan with better results. The four engine bombers then returned to hitting the few strategic targets in the north along with interdiction targets in the south. On 27 August two F-51s strayed across the Yalu River and shot up an airfield five miles inside China. There is no mention of the physical damage, but the Chinese vigorously protested.
Another significant event in August was the first USAF rescue of an American aircrew during the war. On 5 August an Air Force SA-16 amphibian plucked a Navy pilot out of the sea. A month later, on 4 September, saw the first USAF helicopter rescue of the war. An H-5 flown by Lt. Paul Van Boven picked up (now) Capt. Robert Wayne, the F-80 pilot who had downed two Il-10s on 27 June, from behind enemy lines.
There was little action against the North Korean air force after July, with no aerial claims and only five ground claims during August and no aerial claims and six ground claims in September. The Inchon invasion on 15 September and the breakout from the Pusan Perimeter a few days later turned the war around. As the UN ground forces swept northward, the Air Force continued to bomb strategic targets, but having eliminated the eighteen original strategic targets and about to occupy all of North Korea, the Joint Chiefs of Staff canceled such missions on the 27 September.12
Air power, land and carrier based, was critical in the defeat of the North Korean invasion. The USAF claimed that air attacks killed at least thirty-nine thousand North Korean troops and destroyed 76 percent of their tanks. In an August interdiction campaign the USAF dropped thirty-seven of forty-four targeted bridges. Interrogation reports indicated that air attacks accounted for 47 percent of North Korean personnel losses and 75 percent of tanks, 81 percent of trucks, and 72 percent of artillery destroyed. The official USAF history is more circumspect claiming that the airmen caused about the same number of enemy casualties as artillery, and “noticeably greater” equipment losses. Whatever the actual figures, air power probably tipped the balance in favor of the UN forces, which were untouched by enemy aircraft while their opponents were battered by air power. The UN ground commander, Lt. Gen. Walton Walker, declared: “I will gladly lay my cards right on the table and state that if it had not been for the air support that we received from the Fifth Air Force we would not have been able to stay in Korea.”13
As the UN forces moved northward in October, the USAF deployed four fighter groups and two reconnaissance squadrons from Japan to Korea. With no more strategic targets to hit, the Air Force sent two B-29 groups back to the states. On 8 October two F-80 pilots got lost and shot up a Soviet airfield near Vladivostok. The Russians strenuously protested and the USAF court-martialed the two pilots (they were found not guilty) and removed the group commander, transferring him to Tokyo. Two Red aircraft attacked Inchon Harbor and Kimpo airfield on 14 October. UN ground troops continued their northern advance and entered the North Korean capital on 19 October. As already noted, the Chinese hit RoK forces on 26 October and American forces on 1 November and then withdrew.14
The war took a new course in November. For over three months the North Korean air force had not engaged the UN forces in aerial combat. Then, on the first day of the month, three Yak fighters tussled with an American strike over northwestern Korea. A B-26 claimed one (not acknowledged by the USAF) and F-51s claimed the other two. More ominous, later that day six MiG-15s fired on UN aircraft but did not register any damage. F-51s downed two Yak-9s on 2 November and two on 6 November. On 8 November an F-80 pilot claimed a MiG, and the next day a Navy F9F pilot claimed another. Navy F9Fs claimed two MiGs on 18 November. Both the Navy and Air Force attacked the Yalu River bridges with some effect despite restrictions levied on them to hit only the southern (North Korean) end of the bridges and fly bombing runs that did not overfly Chinese territory. Intense Red flak from both sides of the river, pontoon bridges, and the icing of the river rendered these attacks ineffective. The MiGs attacked the B-29s, downing a Superfort on 10 November. B-29 gunners also scored, claiming MiGs on 9 November and 14 November. More significant, the Chinese attacked in force on 25 November, which kicked the UN out of North Korea. The new war, and especially the introduction of the MiG-15, forced the USAF to respond.15