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Ed - in response to your question about
Inchon, I submit the following comments:
I've thought a lot about the Inchon Invasion.
Beyond its historic and military significance are the stories that reflect on
the need for preparedness.
The US Navy didn't have the ships and crews
necessary to pull off the invasion without a Herculean effort. Needed
minesweepers were few and far between - scattered all over the Pacific. LSTs
were almost non-available. In very short order, ships were pulled into Japan,
fixed and refurbished and crewed with men wherever they could be found. Many of
these sailors were green and untrained.
My ship, LST-799 had been in the hands of the
SCAJAP program (on loan to Japan) since the end of WWII, and was a physical and
mechanical mess. It lacked critical equipment routine and major maintenance, and
a first-class cleaning. A skipper, officers and crew were pulled into service
from as far away and the states in a matter of a couple of weeks. With no
assurance the landing could even be accomplished under the extreme hydrological
conditions that prevailed at Inchon, the 799 and a hearty group of other LSTs,
some crewed by Japanese, landed and retracted over and over again until their
part of the job was done - all the while under mortar and small arms fire
from the beach.
The daring of Navy Lieutenant, Eugene Clark, is a
story in itself. He, along with two South Korean naval officers, infiltrated the
mouth of Inchon Harbor several weeks before the invasion and secured vital
information about mining that gave US minesweepers the coordinates they needed
to clear the landing approaches.
I've written extensively about the Inchon Invasion
in my new book, One Ship, Two Wars. Doing the background research and
interviewing a number of men who were there has been tremendously
rewarding.
The invasion was undertaken at great risk, but it
proved to be a brilliant military move.
Dick Tunison
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