The Korean War, June 1950 - July 1953 --

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The Korean War, June 1950 - July 1953 --
Introductory Overview and Special Image Selection
On 25 June 1950, the young Cold War suddenly turned hot, bloody and expensive. Within a few days, North Korea's invasion of South Korea brought about a United Nations' "police action" against the aggressors. That immediately produced heavy military and naval involvement by the United States. While there were no illusions that the task would be easy, nobody expected that this violent conflict would continue for more than three years.

Throughout the summer of 1950, the U.S. and the other involved United Nations' states scrambled to contain North Korea's fast-moving army, assemble the forces necessary to defeat it and simultaneously begin to respond to what was seen as a global military challenge from the Communist world.

Though America's Armed Forces had suffered from several years' of punishing fiscal constraints, the end of World War II just five years earlier had left a vast potential for recovery. U.S. materiel reserves held large quantities of relatively modern ships, aircraft, military equipment and production capacity that could be reactivated in a fraction of the time necessary to build them anew. More importantly, the organized Reserve forces included tens of thousands of trained people, whose World War II experiences remained reasonably fresh and relevant.

In mid-September 1950 a daring amphibous invasion at Inchon fractured the North Korean war machine. In the following two months UN armies pushed swiftly through North Korea. However, with victory seemingly in sight, China intervened openly, and the Soviet Union not-so-openly, on the side of their defeated fellow Communist neighbor. The UN was thrown back midway into South Korea. Early in the new year, the Chinese army was in turn contained and forced to retreat.

By the middle of 1951, the front lines had stabilized near where the war started twelve months earlier. Negotiations began amid hopes that an early truce could be arranged. But this took two more frustrating years, during which the contending forces fought on, with the U.S. Navy providing extensive air and gunfire support, a constant amphibious threat, relentless minesweeping and a large logistics effort.

Finally, on 27 July 1953, with a new regime in the USSR and the blunting of a final Communist offensive, negotiations concluded and fighting ended. However, the Cold War, considerably warmed up by the Korean experience, would would maintain its costly existence for nearly four more decades.

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Preliminary Activities, up to 25 June 1950
With the capitulation of Japan in the Summer of 1945, Korea, which had been under Japanese subjugation for over four decades, was presented with a new regime, as U.S. forces occupied its southern portion and Soviets moved into the north. During the later 1940s, the inital arrangements for a temporary Allied occupation led to a division of the country into two de facto states, neither recognizing the legitimacy of the other and each seeking Korean reunification on its own terms.

In the North, Korean Communists ruled their Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) with the full support of the Soviets, including substantial military aid. The southern Republic of Korea (ROK), in the hands of more conservative forces, was given modest military support by the United States, but deliberately not enough to produce an offensive capability, or, as events would show, even an effective defensive one.

Until quite late in the pre-war period, South Korea's infant navy received a particularly modest level of support. In fact, the ROK Navy's first significant ship, a former U.S. Navy 173-foot submarine chaser, was purchased on the private market with funds contributed by its own personnel. The United States did provide armament for the vessel, which arrived in Korean waters during the late Spring of 1950. The ROK Navy also had a number of minesweepers, very useful for clearing the explosive left-overs of the great Pacific War, a landing ship and some small craft.

The United States Navy maintained a small fleet in the Western Pacific, with some ships based in the Philippines and others in Japan. By 1950, this force had been reduced to one aircraft carrier and two cruisers, plus a number of destroyers and other ships. Occasionally, these units exercised with their counterparts of Great Britain's Royal Navy. They also maintained a sporadic presence in the troubled waters between mainland China and Taiwan, and "showed the flag" in ports throughout the Western Pacific, including those in South Korea.

In eary 1950, a speech by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously omitted the ROK from the United States' defensive interests. A few months later, the DPRK's leader, Kim Il-Sung, shopped around a plan to reunify Korea by force, obtaining the consent of the USSR and China for what then looked like a quick and easy conquest.

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The North Korean Offensive, 25 June -- 15 September 1950
Before dawn on Sunday, 25 June 1950, the North Korean army moved forcefully into the South, whose outgunned defenders were generally overwhelmed. Seoul, capital of the Republic of Korea, fell in four days. Half a world away, the United States and the United Nations decided to actively defend South Korea, quickly bringing air, sea and land forces of the U.S. into the war, along with ships and aircraft of the British Royal Navy.

Available U.S. Navy forces were limited in numbers and divided between Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble's Seventh Fleet and Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy's Naval Forces, Japan. The two admirals quickly established a command relationship that worked satisfactorily through the next three years.

The light cruiser USS Juneau (CLAA-119) began U.S. Navy active involvement with a sweep up South Korea's east coast, starting on 28 June. Initial naval air strikes were carried out by USS Valley Forge (CV-45) and the British light carrier Triumph on 3-4 July. Other U.S. and Royal Navy ships supported the evacuation of refugees and the movement of U.S. Army forces and supplies from Japan to Korea. Inshore along the coasts of the embattled nation, the ROK Navy vigorously interdicted North Korean amphibious warfare efforts.

By early July, it was clear that the invaders would not back down in the face of foreign involvement. During that month, though control of the air and sea was decisively seized by the United Nations' forces, the North Koreans steadily pushed ROK and U.S. ground forces into the southeastern corner of the Korean peninsula.

August 1950 and the first half of September saw a doggedly successful defense of that corner, the Pusan Perimeter, as an increasingly desperate North Korean army tried mightily to break it. Meanwhile, reinforcements, including more aircraft carriers and the first U.S. Marines, arrived from across the Pacific. Air and sea attacks on the enemy cut deeply into his offensive capabilities. In Japan, a daring amphibious counterattack was in preparation, an operation that would end the war's defensive initial phase and open its second.

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The United Nations' Offensive, 15 September - 25 November 1950 --

North Korea's summer offensive was brought to an abrupt end on 15 September 1950 with a daring amphibious landing at Inchon. Within a few days, the much-battered North Korean army was disintegrating as it retreated from the Pusan perimeter, pursued by the U.N. Eighth Army. Seoul was liberated by month's end. In October, a further amphibious operation directed against the east coast port city of Wonsan was overtaken by events, as the South Korean army pushed into the objective area well before the planned landing date.

U.N. ground forces, still largely made up of U.S. and South Korean troops, moved north along the Korean east coast, through the center of the peninsula and up into its western parts from Seoul, constrained more by logistics problems than by enemy resistance. Though hampered by severe shortages of mine clearance assets, the Navy opened new ports at Chinnampo on the west coast and Wonsan, Hungnam, Iwon and Songjin in the east. Supplies and fresh forces from across the Pacific, so sparse in July, were by now arriving in abundance. President Truman and other dignitaries came west to confer and to see for themselves.

Offshore, four U.S. fleet aircraft carriers, smaller U.S. and British carriers, several cruisers and numerous destroyers hurled airborne weapons and naval gunfire wherever enemy targets could be found. The available firepower was so abundant that some ships, rushed out during the summer crisis, were released to return home for a well-deserved rest or returned to their normal duties.

A United Nations' resolution offered a mandate to reunify Korea from the south, and General MacArthur willingly complied. However, his troops were thin on the ground in North Korea, with the separate spearheads too separated by distance and the rugged terrain to provide mutual support. From Communist China came threats of intervention, unfortunately discounted by MacArthur's intelligence, as the Chinese intent was real and was backed by battle-hardened ground forces and a Soviet promise of covering air power.

By early November, U.S. and South Korean troops had fought Chinese units, capturing prisoners and discovering that the new enemy was a tough one. Aerial reconnaissance reported much military traffic southbound from Manchuria. MacArthur was concerned enough to begin bombing attacks against bridges over the Yalu, but retained his optimism that a final offensive in late November would quickly bring the War to a successful conclusion.

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The Inchon Invasion, September 1950 --
Overview and Selected Images
On 15 September 1950, after hurling itself fruitlessly against the Pusan Perimeter for nearly a month and a half, the weakened North Korean army was suddenly confronted with a grave threat in its rear. U.S. Marines had landed at the western port city of Inchon, near Seoul, and were poised to move inland to retake the capital and decisively cut the already tenuous North Korean supply lines.

This daring amphibious operation was conceived by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. Though strategically tempting, Inchon was a tactically challenging amphibious target, with long approaches through shallow channels, poor beaches and a tidal range that restricted landing operations to a few hours a day. It took all of MacArthur's unparalleled powers of persuasion to sell his concept to doubting Army, Navy and Marine Corps commanders.

Forces gathered for the Inchon invasion included the First Marine Division, the Army's Seventh Infantry Division, some South Korean units, virtually every available amphibious ship, and dozens of other Navy warships. Most of the Marines had recently arrived from the U.S., while the rest were withdrawn from the Pusan Perimeter defenses.

Preliminary naval gunfire and air bombardment began on 13 September. The 1st and 5th Marines went ashore on the morning of the 15th. Resistance and casualties were modest, and initial objectives were quickly secured. Over the next several days, as supplies and troops poured ashore at Inchon, the Marines moved relentlessly toward Seoul. Kimpo airfield was taken on 17 September and was in use to support operations two days later. On 29 September, after days of hard street fighting, Seoul was returned to the South Korean government.

A hundred miles to the southeast, the Pusan Perimeter's defenders went on the offensive on 16 September. After resisting for a few days, the now-isolated North Korean army retreated and progressively collapsed during the rest of the month. On the 27th, U.S. Army units moving southwards from Seoul met those coming up from Pusan.

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The Wonsan Operation, October 1950 --

The great success of the Inchon Invasion led General MacArthur to order a second amphibious assault, targeting Wonsan on North Korea's east coast. After landing there, Tenth Corps could advance inland, link up with the Eighth Army moving north from Seoul and hasten the destruction of the North Korean army. Wonsan would also provide UN forces with another logistics support seaport, one closer to the battlefronts than Pusan and with greater handling capacity than tide-encumbered Inchon.

Since the enemy army's coherence collapsed much more rapidly than expected, by the Wonsan operation's planned executation date of 20 October 1950, its immediate strategic goals had been overtaken by events. However, the forces landed there proved valuable in the push up North Korea's east side, and the captured port did fulfill its intended mission.

Wonsan's greatest value, though, was unintended: it gave the U.S. Navy a painfully valuable reminder of the fruits of neglecting mine countermeasures, that unglamorous side of maritime power that, when it is needed, is needed very badly. As Admiral Forrest Sherman, the Chief of Naval Operations at the time, remarked "when you can't go where you want to, when you want to, you haven't got command of the sea". This experience provoked one of the greatest minesweeper building programs in the Navy's history, one that produced hundreds of ships to serve not only under the U.S. flag, but under those of many allied nations.

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The Chinese Offensive, 25 November 1950 - 25 January 1951-
Overview
On 25 November 1950, a day after United Nations and Republic of Korea forces began the offensive they expected would complete the unification of Korea, Communist China countered with a terrific, and very successful offensive of its own. Within a few days, the Chinese onslaught reversed the UN/ROK northward drive in central and western North Korea, devastating several South Korean divisions, badly tearing up the U.S. Second Division and forcing the rest of the UN command to rapidly withdraw southwards to escape destruction.

On 27 November, near eastern North Korea's Chosin Reservoir, the Chinese fell on the First Marine Division and a nearby U.S. Army task force, almost wiping out the latter and provoking a Marine response that ranks as one of history's greatest feats of arms. Over the following two weeks, the Marines battled their way to the port of Hungnam, from which they would be evacuated by sea. In their wake were the ruins of the opposing Chinese divisions, which suffered so many casualties from combat and the bitterly cold weather that they were out of action for months.

In the new year, a renewed enemy offensive captured Seoul and drove the UN/ROK armies into new defensive lines in central South Korea. With no prospect of significant reinforcement, facing what appeared to be a total commitment of China's almost inexhaustable manpower, and fearing Soviet air and naval involvement, it briefly seemed that the UN forces might have to evacuate Korea to avoid unacceptable threats to Japan and, perhaps, to Europe.

However, the UN still had complete control of the sea, which had just allowed rapid and thorough redeployment of troops and materiel from threatened positions in North Korea to reinforce the defenses in the South. Control of the sea allowed effective employment of ships' guns, greatly enhanced the effectiveness of air power and held open the prospect of another amphibious assault in the enemy's rear. Through the cruel wintery months of China's November 1950 - January 1951 offensive, Navy ships and Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps planes helped the UN/ROK armies cut through the enemy's ambushes, hammered his troops at and behind the front and badly eroded his supply lines.

By 25 January 1951, the Chinese and the reconstituted North Korean forces had been so badly depleted that a new UN offensive was possible. If the great Chinese offensive had shown the United States and its allies that there would be no easy victories in mainland Asia, their response gave the Communists a painfully expensive lesson in the vulnerability of their manpower-intensive armies to the vast mobile firepower of Western ground, air and naval forces.

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The Hungnam Evacuation, 10-24 December 1950 --
Overview and Selected Images
Generally described as an "amphibious operation in reverse", the evacuation of Hungnam encompassed the safe withdrawal of the bulk of UN forces in eastern North Korea. It was the largest sealift since the 1945 Okinawa operation. In barely two weeks, over a hundred-thousand military personnel, 17,500 vehicles and 350,000 measurement tons of cargo were pulled out. In comparison with the retreat in central and western Korea, little was left behind. Even broken-down vehicles were loaded and lifted out. Also departing North Korea through Hungnam were some 91,000 refugees, a large number, but not nearly as many as had gathered to leave.

The first major unit to go was the First Marine Division, which arrived in Hungnam on 10-11 December after its successful fighting withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir area. The Marines were followed by Republic of Korea troops, the U.S. Army Seventh Division and Third Division. The ROK First Corps was landed at Mukho, on the Korean east coast below the Thirty-eighth Parallel. U.S. forces were mainly taken to Pusan, where the influx initially overwhelmed that port's capacity.

Though the Chinese did not seriously interfere with the withdrawal, the potential threat they represented necessitated a vigorous bombardment by aircraft, artillery ashore and ships' guns. Air cover was available from nearby Yonpo airfield until that was abandoned on 14 December. Thereafter, for the final ten days of the operation, Navy and Marine carrier-borne planes handled the job. Naval gunfire was provided by two heavy cruisers and a battleship plus several destroyers and rocket ships.

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The War Stabilizes, 25 January - 30 June 1951 --
Overview and Selected Images
After two months of costly attacks, the Chinese army was exhausted. Starting on 25 January 1951, Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway's Eighth Army, assisted by land and sea-based airpower, pushed northward in a sharp series of carefully-planned offensives. By late April, they had recaptured almost all of South Korea and were digging in along a serpentine front line generally well above the old 38th Parallel border. In mid-May, the enemy pushed back, gaining ground across the peninsula, but at such great expense that UN forces quickly recovered most of what had been lost, and more. Only in the west, where terrain was unsuitable for an advanced front line, were the Communists allowed to retain some formerly South Korean territory.

In April President Harry Truman, his patience at an end with General MacArthur's repeated efforts to advance unacceptable war goals, replaced him with General Ridgeway. Riding out the resulting political tempest, the government adhered to a "limited war" policy, containing the Korean conflict and thereby freeing resources for a rapid defense buildup in other strategic parts of the Globe.

At sea, the navies sharpened the focus of their air and gunfire efforts. With three or four big carriers, a battleship, some cruisers and many destroyers on station, the U.S. Navy undertook long campaigns to deconstruct North Korea's eastern railway system and other elements of its transportation and industrial infrastructure. British and smaller U.S. carriers, plus gunfire ships, worked in the Yellow Sea. Minesweepers maintained firing channels for the gunnery ships, and small combatants of many nations enforced a rigorous blockade of the North Korean coast.

The Air Force concentrated on targets in the western side of Korea, used its B-29s for heavy bombing raids, ably kept the MiG-15 threat safely to the north and provided the great bulk of air transport services. The Air Force and planes from other UN nations joined U.S. Marine aviation in directly supporting troops on the ground. USMC and USAF night fighters struggled to counter the only enemy airplanes that dared to approach the front lines, small propeller-driven "night hecklers" that made very challenging targets.

By late June, the most recent Communist ground offensive had been decisively defeated. North Korea was being steadily punished from air and sea. Since the US and UN had decided not to advance further into the North, and with the enemy clearly unable to push South, there seemed little point in continued hostilities. Armistice feelers received favorable responses, and truce talks were in the offing. Most observers expected an early end to the fighting.

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Logistics & Support Activities, 1950-1953 --

Logistics and support activities were vital to the success of U.S. and United Nations Korean War operations. Without extensive and efficient trans-oceanic shipping, the tens of thousands of service people and the hundreds of thousands of tons of "beans, bullets and black oil" needed every month to prosecute the war would never have reached a war zone that was some five thousand miles from the U.S. west coast and about twice that far from eastern seaboard ports. Without underway replenishment of warships off the Korean coast, the effectiveness of Naval forces there would have been substantially reduced. Without well-equipped and effectively-staffed Japanese bases close to the combat theater, sea and air operations against the Communist aggressors would have been gravely hindered, and, during the crisis periods of summer 1950 and winter 1950-51, probably impossible. Without ports and other facilities in South Korea, the insertion and sustenance of the large ground forces needed to defend that country simply could not have been done, and local naval operations would have been hamstrung.

Like much else about the Korean War, its logistics and support effort depended extensively on the legacy of World War II. Transport ships, long-range aircraft and much of the other equipment used in supporting the war had been made during that great conflict and had been wisely retained against the possibility that it might be needed again. The senior officer and enlisted servicemen and civilian sailors and airmen who resurrected the logistics and support system in response to the Korean crisis, and kept it running thereafter, had largely learned their crafts in the struggle against Japan and Germany.

As the Korean conflict wore on, month after month through 1950, 1951, 1952 and into 1953, the early rush to meet the supply, training and repair demands of a dynamic combat situation became essentially routine. However, these efforts were never small. In some months, the volumes of personnel, cargo and fuel sent to the Korean area equalled or exceeded those of some months of the vast Pacific War of 1941-45. To a great extent this was a result of the constant nature of Korean War naval operations, contrasted with the more spasmodic operations of World War II, and the greatly increased fuel and ordnance demands of modern aircraft.

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Activities in the United States --

Seeing the Korean War as but one part of a global Communist challenge, the United States and its allies were spurred to undertake a substantial military buildup, ultimately reaching force levels much greater than had previously been acceptable. Before this began in earnest, however, critical shortages of men and materiel needed in Korea had to be addressed.

Beginning in July 1950, World War II era aircraft, ships and other equipment were withdrawn from "mothballs", quickly refurbished and placed back in service. Units were redeployed and new ones formed for early employment in the war zone. Naval reservists left their civilian occupations to return to active duty. Transportation systems were enhanced and industrial production increased. Naval and military hospital workloads greatly expanded as injured men were brought home for treatment.

Stateside defense activities accelerated into 1951 and were sustained during the next two years, as the Korean fighting peaked and then stabilized. Ship reactivations and modernizations continued. New aircraft, weapons and equipment were manufactured. Naval shipbuilding again got seriously underway, with urgently needed minesweepers heading the list of new types. As veterans returned home after completing their terms in the war zone, citizens were brought into the service, trained and sent overseas.

Politically, the Truman Administration's policy of limiting the war in Korea, while applying greater resources to the defenses of Europe and other strategically vital areas, provoked an intense controversy. As the war went on, the national attitude soured to a resigned sense that Korea was a war "we can't win, we can't lose, we can't quit", but was not accompanied by the vigorous protests that marked a later generation's limited war.