Re: Book review: Red Wings Over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union and the Air War in Korea

["Love Shack" <Home@DanSources.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Evanhoe" <evanhoe@arbuckleonline.com>
To: <KOREAN-WAR-L@listproc.cc.ku.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: Book review: Red Wings Over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union
and the Air War in Korea


> Dan,
>
>  >>At 01:15 PM 6/10/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> >That is nuts..
> Did not know about the Bomber cabal as you call them..<<
>
> What is "nuts?"  Don't know to what you are referring?  The fact ROK only
> had L-4s when the war began?  Or the AF senior staff at the time (Bomber
> Cabal)  consisted of generals who believed strategic bombing and the
A-bomb
> would win the next war so there was little need for close air support
> aircraft/units?

YES. The last question.. I did not know there was this harsh level of dogma.
I guess this played out as well in fighter jet development taking not
planning for Cannon or Machine guns.

> > >>From Cookies list of KW shootdown we lost a lost of B26's.<<
>
> True, but like the F-51, most were hurriedly brought back on line from
> various Air Force bone yards when it was belatedly recognized when the war
> began the Air Force didn't have sufficient active close air support
> aircraft/units.
>
> > >>Also despite the cry that the Mustang was not a good close air support
AC
> >it seems we lost a whole lot of AD's, F4U, F7F as well.<<
>
> True so what's your point?

The comment of the Liquid Cools Planes were more vulnerable to be shot down
then the Radial looks like this is not really all true. It seemed all of
them were vulnerable
in close air support. Each had issues such as the Radials getting hit in the
oil tanks.
The survivability looked about equal.  Just had different problems which
included
maintaining and making damaged AC combat ready.

Did the Jets perform better then the props in the Close Air Support Role?

> > >>From your emails I get the feeling our close air support was good but
not
> >great. Though NK did not have anything close to what we had.<<
>
> Close air support left much to be desired in the first few months of the
> war but improved greatly as time went on.  As for the DPRKAF, it was not a
> major factor after the first few days of the war but DPRKA armor and
> self-propelled artillery were.

Going to get provacative here.
The lesson that Iam seeing is that Airforce, Marine, Navy
and Army internal and political fighting and battle tactics put our forces
at high risk.
Meaning coordination between our services in protecting ground forces
was a secondary thought. Or for that matter vice versa. Causing higher
casualites.
AS compared to Iraq.  Total coordination, looked a lot better.

> > >>Between the wars there must have been a TON political fighting, asset
> >stripping, consolidating, arbitrage.  New age thinking such as a the
> >Department of Defense, new US Air Force, keeping the Marines, reassigning
> >of the Coast Guard, a CIA.

AND continued on even during the war. Such as the MacArthur topics discussed
last year.


> All true.
>
> Ed
> Ed Evanhoe, PO Box 916, Antlers, OK, 74523-0916
> Life Member: Special Forces & Special Operations Associations
> Author:  DARKMOON:  Eighth Army Special Operations in the Korean War
>