"The Not-So-Forgotten War: Fodder for Your Reading on the Air War in Korea..."

[Mike Yared <mikeyared@yahoo.com>]

from
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/win03/mets.html

The Not-So-Forgotten War: Fodder for Your Reading on
the Air War in
Korea a Half Century Later

*This article, as with all those in the Fodder series,
is dedicated to a great military educator. This one
honors the late Col Roger Nye, USA, who suggested the
idea for the series. I also wish to thank Prof. Dennis
Drew for his excellent assistance in the preparation
of this article. Its remaining flaws are entirely my
responsibility.

Some years ago, Clay Blair published a good book on US
experiences in Korea titled The Forgotten War. It is
forgotten no more?Blair helped revive that memory, as
did the passing of the war?s 50th anniversary. In
1950, we were feeling our way in a new, bipolar, and
nuclear world. Today, the aspirant air strategist is
also facing a new world. It is no longer bipolar,
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threaten to spread,
and the means and motivation for their long-range
delivery again upset our sense of security. The Korean
War truce took effect in July 1953?just 50 years ago.
Perhaps it is an altogether proper time to look over
the literature on that war to add to your fodder for
professional study.

As with the previous articles in this series, we shall
review three recent books on our subject and establish
a rough outline of the air war in Korea to serve as a
basis for your lifelong professional reading program.
Col Rod Paschall, an experienced soldier-scholar, is
the author of the first and will provide an
intro­duction to our study. The second is a memoir by
Lt Col Cecil Foster, an air warrior and Sabre ace with
nine kills in Korea. Our final book is authored by
Allan Millett, a retired Marine Corps colonel. This
article will conclude with the usual 12-book sampler,
which you can use to get a general overview of the
subject and then further your efforts towards depth
and mastery.

An air warrior-scholar can find a splendid, short
summary of the Cold War?s first armed conflict in
Paschall?s Witness to War: Korea.1 Its author is a
soldier-scholar of the first rank, well qualified to
produce such a work from the perspectives of both
experience and study. A West Point graduate of the
class of 1959, Colonel Paschall has had much
experience in Asia, including tours in Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia, and Korea. Perhaps Paschall?s most
satisfying tour was as the commander of the Army?s
famed Delta Force, a position which lends great
credibility to his status as a leading authority on
special operations. While on active duty, he was
awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. He
earned a master?s degree from Duke University and
taught military history at West Point. Although his
writing is well organized and readable, an air
advocate may take exception to some of the things he
has to say.

A Time Line for the Korean War

1882?88  United States?Korean Treaty of Amity  

  The United States concluded a treaty of friendship,
navigation, and commerce with Korea and later deployed
a military assistance group to the peninsula to help
train a Korean army. Chinese and Japanese interests in
the area would often clash, and the Koreans, on
occasion, tried to use the United States as a
counterweight to one or the other. Although Russia had
an interest in Korea, it lost the Russo-Japanese War
in 1905, allowing Japan to dominate Korea until 1945.

1 October 1949 Chinese Communist Victory over
Nationalists 

 The Chinese communists had fought a lengthy battle
against the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek long
before Pearl Harbor and did not lose sight of that
battle during the war. Soon after Hiroshima was bombed
and the Japanese departed the Asian mainland, the
communists were able to again concentrate on their
domestic struggle. The United States had long been
involved in these struggles, and many Americans
advocated armed intervention. Although President
Truman avoided becoming involved with that conflict
and narrowly won the election of 1948, the fall of the
Chinese Nationalists and the creation of the People?s
Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 was blamed on him.
Meanwhile, in the opening rounds of the Cold War,
things had gone from bad to worse in Europe?the
administration?s first priority for defense. The
prospects for the Democratic Party in the election of
1952 were indeed poor.

12 January 1950 Dean Acheson?s Perimeter Speech  

 In a 12 January 1950 speech to the National Press
Club, Secretary of State Dean Acheson defined US
national interests in the Pacific and implied that
Korea lay outside those interests by drawing the
defensive perimeter through the offshore islands along
the Asian coasts. Many argued that Acheson?s
definition of US interests had given the communists a
green light to invade South Korea.

25 June 1950  North Koreans Invade South Korea  

The initial phase of the war was a triumph for the
North Koreans, who came close to driving the United
Nations (UN) forces into the sea. Defeat was near and
some prominent Army officers credited the efforts of
the fledgling US Air Force for preventing that
outcome. At first, the occupation forces were the only
ground and air units available to General of the Army
Douglas MacArthur. Their mission had been restricted
to the defense of Japan, which limited their training
and equipment. Airmen only had short-range jet
interceptors and trained for defensive counterair
(DCA)?they had no air-to-ground training. Soldiers
were likewise limited in their equipment and training.

15 September 1950  Inchon Landing  

However, as the UN forces were beleaguered within the
Pusan Perimeter, MacArthur executed an end run around
the communist right flank with an amphibious landing
at Inchon. Although he took this action in the face of
the doubting Joint Chiefs of Staff, it succeeded
brilliantly. The North Koreans were cut off and in a
vise between the Eighth Army coming out of Pusan and
the X Corps cutting off their retreat in a thrust
eastward from Inchon and through Seoul. Once on a
roll, President Truman and the UN changed the
objectives from the mere restoration of the status quo
to the reunification of Korea by force. MacArthur?s
soldiers charged northward and believed it would be
over by Christmas. 

26 November 1950 The PRC Enters the Korean War 

The Chinese communists had sent some rather clear
signals?particularly in retrospect?that a UN army
approach to the Yalu River border between Korea and
China would not be tolerated. Notwithstanding those
signals, MacArthur seemed surprised when China entered
the war by launching a massive offensive aimed between
the Eighth Army in the west and the X Corps in the
east. Soon, UN forces were in a helter-skelter retreat
that did not end until they were south of the 38th
parallel, the prewar line. Gen Walton H. Walker,
Eighth Army commander, was killed in an accident
around Christmas, and Gen Matthew B. Ridgway took over
and launched a counteroffensive. 

11 April 1951 MacArthur Relieved 

President Truman was concerned the Soviets might take
advantage of the US preoccupation with Korea and
invade Western Europe, an action that could then
escalate into World War III and the use of nuclear
weapons. General MacArthur, while still popular in the
United States, was losing the confidence of the allies
and acted beyond his authority often enough to cause
President Truman to relieve him. The war stagnated in
the vicinity of the Korean peninsula waist, and as the
stalemate deepened, the UN returned to its initial
objective?the reestablishment of the status quo. 

23 June 1951 Soviet Cease-Fire Proposal 

On the basis of the Soviet Union?s proposed
cease-fire, the two sides met at the negotiating
table. Although fighting continued, each side mounted
only relatively minor offensives. Progress toward a
truce was slowed by many minor sticking points.
However, in the end it was the repatriation of North
Korean prisoners of war (POW)?forcing released
soldiers to go back to their homes?that delayed a
settlement for many months. President Syngman Rhee
made that a moot issue when he released several
thousand North Korean POWs, who then disappeared into
the South Korean landscape. 

27 July 1953 Korean War Armistice 

The agreement reached in the armistice was roughly
that which had been desired by the UN at the outset?a
status quo near the waist of the Korean Peninsula. The
war had also improved the UN?s prestige, had made NATO
stronger, and had shown the Soviets that there were
limits to their expansion without war. Furthermore,
the PRC had proven itself a great power by stopping
the UN armies short of their maximum goals.
 

Witness to War provides a good overview of both the
land and air operations and is organized in a
near-chronological fashion. Paschall provides his own
descriptions and analyses and then adds the
first-person accounts of combatants from all levels
between private and general. These go beyond American
experiences and include the accounts of South and
North Korean soldiers. Paschall reveals the
experiences of UN-affiliated guerrillas operating in
North Korea as well as those of the North Korean POWs
held in the south?their trials and the long
repatriation struggle to determine their fate at the
end of hostilities. He also lists the general sources
he used for each chapter, which could serve as a
recommended reading list. Although Paschall amply
demonstrates the misery of the Korean War, he also
stresses its secondary status when compared to home
defense and the buildup in support of NATO.

Although Witness to War states that Korea was a
?forgotten war,? it denies that it was either futile
or the ?wrong war.? In spite of its costs, Paschall
insists that it was necessary to the development of
the national-security strategies of containment and
collective defense.2 In addition, the US refusal to
coerce prisoners to go back to their communist world
showed America at her best. That selfless act forced
the United States to tolerate a considerable delay in
concluding the truce. Insofar as Colonel Paschall
deals with airpower, he does not denigrate it. Rather,
he insists that airpower is most effective when used
in conjunction with active ground operations, a stance
which is compatible with Air Force doctrine. Airpower
strategists have long recognized that interdiction
works best when an active ground campaign imposes high
rates of consumption upon the enemy, forcing him to
depend on his lines of communication. This book is a
good starter for building your personal picture of the
Korean War.

With Paschall?s overview in mind, the next step is to
build a more detailed understanding of the context in
which the war was fought. It should be a top-down
approach starting with the international political
setting. In the wake of the 50th anniversary of the
war, there are many new books on that subject. One of
the best is William Stueck?s The Korean War: An
International History.3 It discusses in great detail
the goals and actions of all the principal states
involved in the war and the degree to which they
achieved their objectives. He concludes that the North
and South Koreans were, in the end, the main losers.

The Soviets caused a major distraction to the West at
a moderate cost to themselves. Although the Western
coalition lost many lives and used up considerable
treasure, its NATO Alliance was solidified and
equipped with real military muscle. It had made clear
to the Soviets that further geographic expansion would
not be cost-free. The Chinese communists had
consolidated their revolution and established
themselves as a great power on the world stage.
Japan?s economy received a large boost from war orders
and the peace settlement, and its normalization with
the United States probably was accelerated. The late
1940s was characterized by turmoil in all parts of the
world, and the late 1950s were probably one of the
most stable periods of the twentieth century. In
general, world stability at the lowest possible cost
has been the consistent goal of American foreign
policy throughout this period.

Stueck is able to demonstrate better than most that
foreign and military affairs are affected by much more
than events on the battle­field. Each participating
nation?s culture and domestic politics had an impact
on the way things went on the Korean Peninsula. US
election politics were part of the equation. The
Democrats had been in power for nearly 20 years, and
New York?s Thomas E. Dewey had run against Roosevelt
in 1944 and lost. That result came notwithstanding
that FDR was running for an unprecedented fourth term
and was sick. He soon died, and Harry Truman succeeded
him. He had been selected as the vice presidential
candidate for reasons other than his expertise in
foreign policy?far from it, as almost all his
experience was in domestic politics, though he had
served in France during the First World War. Thus,
Truman was deemed politically vulnerable in the
election of 1948.

Notwithstanding turmoil in Europe, economic affairs
there and at home, and Demo­cratic losses in the
off-year elections of 1946, the president upset
aspirant Republican Tom Dewey in 1948?which only
further aggravated the members of the opposition. The
apparent success in the Berlin airlift and Truman?s
quick recognition of Israel had something to do with
that outcome. Dewey?s loss only further aggravated the
members of the opposition, but Truman?s euphoria did
not last long. In 1949 the Chinese communists defeated
Chiang Kai-shek, and the Soviets exploded a nuclear
device, far ahead of predictions.4 Although the North
Atlantic Treaty had been signed that same year with
important support from the Senate?s Republican
heavyweights, the wartime bipartisanship in the
Congress was running thin.5 All this was happening
when the anticommunist frenzy stimulated partly by
Sen. Joseph McCarthy was in its gene­sis and provided
much fodder for the Republican political cannons.

12 January 1950:
Dean Acheson?s Perimeter Speech
Secretary of State Dean Acheson, speaking to the
National Press Club in early 1950, declared that the
US defense perimeter ran from Alaska through the
Aleutian Islands and along the offshore islands of
Asia and down through Okinawa to the Philippines. That
was nothing new; many have claimed that Kim Il Sung
took it as a green light to invade South Korea and
reunify the peninsula under communist rule. Still, in
the same speech Acheson declared that aggression
against states outside the perimeter would be a
concern of the United Nations.6 That very spring, the
National Security Council (NSC) produced a seminal
strategy paper, NSC-68, in the wake of the fall of
Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade, and the Soviet
detonation of a nuclear device. It portended a huge
stiffening of American foreign policy and the
associated strengthening of her armed forces. However,
that was not yet understood beyond the Washington
inner circles.7 Too, not enough time had passed for it
to have had any practical effects in military terms.

25 June 1950: North Korea
Invades South Korea
On 25 June 1950, the North Koreans crossed the 38th
parallel with the consent and strong materiel support
of the USSR. It was also facilitated by the Chinese
communists. The United States had previously withdrawn
almost all of its own troops from the peninsula and
had deliberately confined its military aid for South
Korea to defensive equipment. She feared that were
President Syngman Rhee capable of offensive war, he
would certainly undertake the conquest of the north.8
The invaders, led by Soviet-made tanks and supported
by a tiny and obsolescent air force of their own,
rolled rapidly southward. There was a real danger that
it would all be over before the United States or the
United Nations could react.9

President Truman quickly dispatched air and naval
units to assist the South Koreans. However, it was
soon clear that those forces would not be enough, so
he authorized General MacArthur to send ground troops.
However, none of these forces was well suited to halt
the invasion.

The chief mission for American ground forces stationed
in Asia had been the occupation of Japan, and there
had been little antici­pation that they would be
required to fight on the Asian mainland. Consequently,
they had generally grown soft in that duty?their units
were below full strength and had accomplished very
little training. The Far East Air Forces (FEAF), under
Lt Gen George E. Stratemeyer, were not much better
off. There were three air forces assigned to the FEAF
(Fifth in Japan; Twentieth on Okinawa; and Thirteenth
in the Philippines). Although it is true that these
were the strongest air forces the United States had
deployed overseas, they were generally only suited for
a DCA mission near their home air base. Fifth Air
Force, based in Japan, was almost wholly dedicated to
the DCA mission and equipped with a substantial number
of Lockheed F-80 Shooting Stars. These aircraft had a
very short range and did not even have bomb racks
installed; furthermore, the Fifth?s crews had not been
trained for the air-to-ground attack mission. Because
early jet fighters had engines with limited thrust,
they required long runways on which to accelerate to
takeoff speed. Almost all of the runways in South
Korea were too short to support these fighters. The
Shooting Stars had not yet been equipped with
droppable fuel tanks and thus could spend only a very
few minutes over the battlefield. The jets were much
easier to maintain in the field than the F-51 Mustangs
and could generate twice as many sorties in a given
period. Their superior speed enabled them to pass
through enemy fire zones in far shorter times, which
reduced their vulnerability, as demonstrated by a loss
rate that was half that of the F-51. Even in World War
II, the Mustang?s liquid-cooling system had made it
more vulnerable than other aircraft in low-level
operations. Finally, the addition of pylons and drop
tanks mitigated the F-80 and F-84 bomb load and range
limitations.10

Fortunately, the United States had command of the sea
in the maritime area surrounding the Korean peninsula
and, for that matter, in the entire Pacific. That
permitted the free flow of reinforcements and
logistics, as well as the extensive use of naval
airpower in support of air and surface operations.
During the recent World War II, the Navy had found it
unhealthy for its aircraft carriers to remain in one
spot very long due to the Japanese air and submarine
threats. During the Korean War, however, US naval
dominance was so great that even escort carriers were
able to remain on station for long periods without
undue risk. The naval transition to jets had just
begun, and the decks still contained many
propeller-driven aircraft that were, fortuitously,
well suited for the tactical-air-support role flown
under the Korean War conditions. The F4U Corsairs and
AD Skyraiders were launched close to the battlefield,
could carry large munition loads, and were able to
loiter over the battlefield much longer than jets.
They were very important in support of ground
forces?particularly in this early phase of the war.11

The minuscule North Korean air force did a bit of good
work before American airpower arrived and quickly
destroyed it. The United States then enjoyed air
superiority in the battle zone for the rest of the
war.12 The enemy onslaught continued south down the
Korean peninsula as UN forces were assisted by
airpower from four aircraft carriers plus that which
could reach the battle from bases in Japan and
Okinawa. Moving some of the F-80 pilots back to
F-51s?aircraft they had flown from World War II to
just months before?helped to mitigate the problems the
F-80s had flying the close air support (CAS) mission.
The Air Force and its reserve components still had
many of the F-51s in reasonable condition in Japan and
back in the United States. These aircraft were moved
forward to support the war effort; the USS Boxer set a
record when it hauled 145 Mustangs across the Pacific
in only eight days.13

Even B-29 Superfortresses and B-26 Invaders were flown
in from Okinawa and Japan to be used in the CAS
mission. CAS was an important mission that required
employing ordnance on an enemy that was close to our
troops. However, these aircraft had not been optimized
for CAS, and their aircrews had not been trained to
accomplish this mission. Never­theless, the
contributions of all of the various forms of airpower
combined with the gallant defense of the Eighth
Army?after being reinforced by a substantial number of
US ground units that had arrived through South Korea?s
last remaining port?to stem the communist onslaught
short of the sea at what became known as the Pusan
Perimeter.14 Meanwhile, General MacArthur and his
staff had been planning a counterstroke.

15 September 1950:
Inchon Landing
By early September, reinforcements through Pusan were
stabilizing the front. New air units of all sorts were
arriving on the scene. Though the North Korean forces
contained many experienced combat soldiers, few of
them had ever faced much in the way of air opposition.
They had not been trained in ground-based defensive
measures, neither passive nor active. Thus, as their
line of communications stretched southbound, it became
increasingly vulnerable to air interdiction. That,
too, had a stabilizing effect. The Chinese themselves
confessed that then and later the interdiction had
largely prevented large-scale daylight offensives on
the ground.15 All the same, the US Air Force was less
than three years old, and there had been little or no
opportunity for training in joint air operations.

General MacArthur?s headquarters was planning an end
run to trap the North Korean forces and bring the war
to an end. The notion was to use American naval and
air superiority to land Marine and Army forces far in
the North Korean rear. The lines of communications
there were focused through Seoul, and the recapture of
the city promised dramatic results.16

While Gen Walton Walker and his Eighth Army kept the
enemy fixed around Pusan, a new X Corps was
constituted under the command of Lt Gen Edward M.
Almond to do the end run. On the surface of things,
the amphibious operation?up a narrow channel plagued
with huge tides, mines, and fortifi­cations
(presumably on both sides)?to land at Inchon appeared
to be a reckless undertaking. There was much
opposition to the plan not only in the Far East, but
also in Washington.17 Three of the four members of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff had been cadets or company grade
officers at West Point during the time MacArthur had
served as its super­intendent. Still, they had the
temerity to express their skepticism and only
reluctantly approved his plan. MacArthur prevailed
over all his skeptics, both in the operation?s
planning and its execution, and one of his biographers
refers to it as the one day in his life when he truly
was a military genius.18

Because of the huge tides, the invasion had to be made
with two landings. The first was to be at daybreak on
Wolmi Do Island to take out the defenses overlooking
the channel. On the next tide, 12 hours later, the
rest would land at Inchon to climb the 12-foot stone
seawalls there. Then they were to charge on Kimpo
Airfield and Seoul to win a forward air base plus the
hub of the lines of communications for the entire
peninsula to the south.19

The air plan called for a division of functions among
the services. The Navy and Marine air units were to
provide CAS in the immediate vicinity of the landings.
As soon as feasible, the FEAF would use its
engineering force to restore Kimpo Airfield, enabling
the Marine air units to deploy from their escort
carriers. The Marine deployment to Kimpo was to be
temporary, and that unit was to be replaced by Air
Force organizations. FEAF was tasked to isolate the
battlefield, provide CAS to General Walker?s forces in
the south, and provide airlift into Kimpo and Suwon
once those fields were available. It was also to be
prepared to drop an airborne regimental combat team
into the battle area if so ordered. Air superiority,
always the prime consideration, was practically a
given at that ­juncture. However, centralized
theater-level command of air assets under an
airman?one of the central pillars of US Air Force
doctrine?had not been implemented.20

In general, the FEAF assigned the task of supporting
the Eighth Army to the Fifth Air Force and that of
isolating the battlefield and continuing the bombing
of industrial targets to the Twentieth. The planning
of the latter was complicated by the worry that China
or the USSR would intervene on the ground and come to
the aid of the North ­Koreans. That made the
interdiction campaign more difficult and more
important. Preparations for a possible airdrop were
complicated by the stateside location of both the
troop-transport units and the paratroopers.21

Inchon worked like a charm. UN casualties at Wolmi Do
Island and Inchon were blessedly light, and Kimpo was
quickly taken.22 The Marines quickly established their
air operations at Kimpo, which put them much closer to
the battlefield, allowing them to loiter longer in the
area of the ground battle and spend less time flying
home to refuel, reload, and return to the fight. Air
Force C-54s landed at Kimpo and Suwon on 19 and 24
September, respectively, and began the increasingly
vital materiel airlift to support the offensive. Seoul
changed hands for the second of four times. The North
Korean army was trapped between X Corps in the north
and Eighth Army, now on the offensive from the
south.23

The air support by the Navy and Marine aviators within
the amphibious zone was a smashing success. They did
not experience the communications difficulties that
had been a problem at Pusan and were amply provided
with very competent forward air controllers who
directed the CAS, which caused many enemy casualties
and little fratricide. Largely as a result of this
experience, General Almond fell in love with the
Marine Corps approach to CAS, which portended the
controversy between the Air Force and the other
services that has not yet completely disappeared.24

The UN had practically annihilated the North Korean
army and had returned to the vicinity of the 38th
parallel in short order?accomplishing the original
objective. However, even before the landings, leaders
in Washington and the Far East were thinking that once
the UN forces were on a roll, Korea might as well be
reunified by force. From hindsight, it is clear the
Chinese communists were signaling they would not
tolerate that result. They strengthened their forces
in Manchuria and even issued warnings through indirect
diplomatic channels. MacArthur and the leaders in
Washington discounted those?the troops were ordered to
continue the northward march. The result was a
disaster.

26 November 1950:
China Enters the Korean War
In late 1950, Chinese armies crossed the Yalu River
into Korea and administered one of the most
humiliating defeats to the mainly US arms in their
entire military history.25 The communists did so with
no air cover. Stalin had earlier seemed to promise
that if the Chinese intervened, he would supply air
cover for their invasion. However, at the last minute
he reneged and limited his support to air defense of
the Chinese border with Korea.26 In fact, the first
air combat between the communist and UN forces did not
occur for another 10 months.27 The air forces did what
they could to support the retreating marines and
soldiers with fire and resupply. The Eighth Army moved
by land down the west coast, and X Corps was evacuated
by sea from Hungnam on the east coast. UN air
superiority was sustained throughout the retreat. By
February 1951, Seoul fell for the third time, and the
line separating UN and communist forces had stabilized
well south of the 38th parallel but significantly
above the old Pusan Peri­meter. General Walker died in
an accident that winter and was replaced by Gen
Matthew Ridgway. The latter resumed the offensive and
moved the front line so that it straddled the 38th
parallel by springtime and hovered there for the next
two years.28

11 April 1951:
MacArthur Relieved 
Shortly after Ridgway resumed the offensive, a
long-festering problem between President Truman and
General MacArthur came to a head. Exercising his
constitutional responsibilities as commander in chief
of the armed forces, the president summarily relieved
the general. MacArthur returned to the United States
for the first time in years to widespread public
acclaim. MacArthur was nothing if not a great ora­tor,
which is easily detected in his personal address to
both houses of Congress. In the end, however, members
of the JCS supported President Truman just as their
duty required, and Truman?s policy choices
prevailed.29 

Air mobility had its finest hour during the retreat
through North Korea. A couple of small airborne
operations had been mounted as the UN forces had moved
north, but the timing on both was poor and the results
were disappointing. However, on the retreat both
aerial delivery and air landing had vital roles in the
X Corps withdrawal from the Choshin Reservoir. The
C-119, C-46, and venerable C-47 were the principal
aircraft involved. The 119 was vital because it could
drop greater loads more quickly than the side-loading
C-46 and C-47. This was crucial in emergency
situations where rough landing fields could not be
carved out for the others. However, that airplane was
still new and not very reliable. The others had been
well tested in World War II and were more capable of
landing on rough, short fields. That was crucial where
air evacuation was needed and feasible. The helicopter
was just coming into service as a battlefield
medical-evacuation bird, and, with the C-47s, it
helped bring about the dawn of this very important
function?saving lives and improving the morale of
those in battle. The 47s picked up patients from the
choppers and rushed them to full-fledged hospitals in
Japan.30 

The Chinese intervention also brought with it the
MiG-15.31 Much ink has been spilled over that?possibly
because of American cultural conceit. We have long
prided ourselves as being an exceedingly pragmatic and
practical people. An important belief in the Ameri­can
psyche since colonial times has been that men of
goodwill using common sense and energy can solve all
of life?s problems. From the earliest of times, in the
Ameri­can experience, the scarcity of labor with
respect to the availability of cheap land has been
conducive to a technological approach to solving
problems. We have tended to believe that we are
technologically superior to the Old World, and
especially to Asia and Africa. Thus, it came as a big
shock when the Japanese Zero outclassed our fighters,
when the ?backward? Russians came up with a nuclear
device just four years after Hiroshima, and when the
MiG-15 was so clearly superior to both the Air Force?s
F-80 Shooting Star and the Navy?s F-9F Panther.32
These things were unsettling; the Russians had done it
again! 

One of the books under review in this ­article
contributes to the explanation of how the MiG-15
problem was overcome.33 Part of the solution was to
ship to the Far East two wings of the new F-86
Sabres?notwithstanding an urgent need for them in the
air defense of the United States and in the buildup of
NATO capabilities in Europe. However, even the F-86
was not superior to the MiG-15 in every respect.
Neither its rate of climb nor its service ceiling was
as good as that of the lighter MiG-15. It did have a
sturdy airframe and greater maneuverability,
particularly in the transonic region, due to its
hydraulically assisted flight controls and a
low-mounted, moveable stabilizer-elevator (slab or
stabilator). The F-86 also had a G suit, heating and
air-conditioning, a superior Sperry gunsight, and six
Browning .50-caliber machine guns, which were smaller
than the MiG-15?s 37 mm cannons but had a
substantially higher rate of fire. But those
technological things were far from enough to explain
the 10:1 kill advantage.34 Cecil G. Foster, credited
with nine kills, is ranked 12th among Korean War
aces.35 In his MiG Alley to Mu Ghia Pass, he tells an
engaging story, most of which, under­standably, deals
with his experience in Korea. A native of Michigan, he
had enlisted during World War II and was sent to
navigator training but did not finish in time to get
into combat. He remained in the service following the
end of the war and got into pilot training. He
graduated in 1947 with the first class to be directly
commissioned into the new United States Air Force.
Foster was initially checked out in jets and then sent
for a tour in Alaska. He was soon caught in a
reduction in force (RIF), discharged, and moved his
family back to Michigan. He was barely back into
civilian life when the Korean War broke out, and he
found his way back into the US Air Force?this time
with an F-86 checkout and an assignment to Korea 

Foster flew with the 16th Fighter Squadron of the 51st
Wing stationed at Suwon. He got his first kills in the
summer of 1952 and finished his combat assignment
early in 1953. His memoirs are well written and can
provide an evening of engaging reading for the
aspiring air warrior-scholar. Although Foster seemed
to have had great confidence in his airplane, its
guns, and its gunsight, he nonetheless recognized the
MiG-15?s technical advantages and the wide variation
in his opponents? abilities. As a ­primary source, he
provides some colorful details, and nothing in his
narrations ­contradicts the conventional view of the
air-superiority fight in the northern part of Korea.
He was witness to only part of the struggle for air
superiority. Therefore, his is not the complete air
war story. He continued to serve as a fighter pilot
with assignments in the United States, Africa, Europe,
and Vietnam; he commanded a squadron and was hit by
ground fire during one of his combat missions in
Vietnam. Foster retired as a lieutenant colonel,
decorated with two Silver Stars, a Distinguished
Flying Cross, a Purple Heart, and many Air
Medals?altogether fitting for a man who served his
country well and lived to tell the tale. 

Much more has been written about the Korean War, from
many different perspectives, that could assist current
airpower students in their search for the whole story.
Robert Futrell?s The United States Air Force in Korea
is the most comprehensive and authoritative source on
the whole air war.36 He contends that the dominance
enjoyed by UN air forces in MiG Alley was only partly
dependent on the technical characteristics of the F-86
and more a function of the superior training and
combat experience of the US flyers?many of whom had
World War II combat experience. With the exception of
some participating ­Russian pilots, most communist
pilots did not have combat experience. The PRC had to
­create an air force from the ground up, a task made
possible by massive Soviet assistance in both
equipment and training.37 Even with that help, it
appears that communist sortie rates were far lower
than those of the UN.38 The human-resource pool, from
which the PRC had to draw its pilots and maintainers,
did not have much education or technical training?the
majority having lived in rural areas without exposure
to much mechanical equipment.39 Although some Russian
pilots were quite good, they strictly limited their
combat operations to DCA in China and the extreme
northern parts of Korea. Their policy to rotate units
through combat every six weeks further mitigated their
contributions.40 

The American air history strongly indicates that two
kinds of experience are vital to survival in air
combat: total flying experience and experience in the
theater. Naturally, there is a continuing desire to
share the risk among all the members of the force;
too, it is also beneficial to spread the combat
experience to as many people as possible. Nowadays,
the under­lying theory of Red Flag is that the first
10 missions in-theater are the most dangerous; the
training at Nellis is therefore built to be as close
to the actual combat experience as possible to
accumulate in effect those missions before engaging
the enemy. Inadvertently, because of the recency of
the combat experience in World War II in the USAF and
the absence of it in the Chinese air force, that was a
telling advantage. 

In MiG Alley, the communists had the important
advantage of operating in their own radar environment
and very near their own sanctuary and
airfields?similar to the British advantage during the
Battle of Britain. US crews had to fly 200
miles?beyond their radar coverage?to engage the enemy
for a very limited amount of time and then fly another
200 miles to find a safe landing site. Nevertheless,
there were considerations other than combat in MiG
Alley that affected the air war over Korea and the
attainment of air superiority. Wishing to avoid a
nuclear confrontation, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin
was careful to avoid direct confrontation with US
forces on the ground. Although he deployed major air
units to the region, he gave them strict orders to
operate on the defensive at the Chinese border with
Korea and nothing more. Russian airmen, therefore,
made no attempt to go farther south to the area of the
battle and went to great lengths (even suicide) to
avoid capture by the UN forces and expose their
participation. Only after the new Chinese air force
began to participate was there any threat of communist
airpower moving southward?but without Soviet
participation.41 

Foster?s experience had little to do with offensive
counterair (OCA) operations against enemy airfields in
Korea but is well covered in Conrad Crane?s recent
American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950?1953.42 In
the first desperate days of the war, the UN air forces
quickly destroyed the North Korean air force and
provided CAS for the retreating troops to help prevent
a much worse outcome. After the Chinese offensive and
UN counteroffensive were spent?Seoul having changed
hands two more times?the war of movement was replaced
with a war of position. CAS then became less
profitable while at the same time becoming more
difficult and dangerous. The Chinese, trained in the
school of hard knocks, learned to protect themselves
from enemy airpower more effectively and no longer
left their troops in the open. From the summer of 1951
onward, OCA and AI became relatively more important. 

Interdiction also became more difficult in the war of
position. When the enemy troops were not actively
engaged with our forces, their materiel consumption
was much reduced. That diminishes their resupply
requirements, which results in fewer targets traveling
along the lines of communication. That was also true
in World War II and Vietnam. The communists also
learned from their experiences that CAS could be a big
help to troops on the ground. The MiG-15?s short range
then became a big disadvantage because it forced the
communists to construct airfields near the front if
they wanted these aircraft to provide CAS. Crane notes
that the communists were soon making substantial
efforts to build airfields farther south in North
Korea. Although the communists had made daytime B-29
operations along the Yalu River prohibitive, the short
range of their jets could not extend that prohibition
very far to the south. Thus, as communist airfields
close to the front neared completion, B-29s buried
them in bombs. In that way, the Superfortresses made a
very substantial contribution to air superiority over
the battlefield?something the Army has come to expect,
and perhaps take for granted, since the middle of
World War II.43 

The OCA campaign to destroy airfields was a clear
success; however, other air-to-ground missions
achieved mixed results and continued to generate
interservice arguments. Various interdiction efforts
were undertaken during the next two years, but the
communists were always able to get enough materiel
through to keep their troops alive. Air advocates
argue that those AI efforts prevented the communists
from mounting a major offensive; Army soldiers and
marines have declared that the Air Force had not
strangled the enemy, as Operation Strangle had seemed
to promise. Air Force partisans state that while CAS
had been a success, it would have been even better had
theater-level centralized control been used. Other
services argued that the Air Force disliked the CAS
mission and, as a result, had never bought an airplane
optimized for that mission?an argu­ment that continues
today. Although the A/OA-10 aircraft, built in the
1970s, was specifically developed as a CAS aircraft,
the current issue is how long it will remain in the
inventory. The original service life could be reached
in FY 2005 and has caused some to again question the
Air Force?s commitment to CAS. The service life was
revised, and some current long-range plans show the
A/OA-10 in the fleet through FY 2028, a fact which
supports airmen who deny any intention of doing away
with the A/OA-10 aircraft.44 My own opinion, for what
it is worth, is that the United States hung on for
three long years?right on the borders of two communist
giants and 8,000 miles away from our home. That could
not have happened without air superiority, which was
achieved and maintained in good style; about that
there can be no argument. If the interdiction case
cannot be as well sustained for the sister services,
the fact remains that many senior Army officers,
including General Walker himself, have testified that
without the CAS in the summer of 1950, the soldiers
would have been driven into the sea.45 

Retrospect
This is being written at the 50th anniversary of the
end of the Korean War. As always, milestone 50 is
characterized by a host of new works looking back from
the perspective of time. The agonies of the period
have diminished in their impact; there are still
enough survivors to provide their memories. I have
already alluded to one such book in the Paschall tome
above; here we turn to a review of another done by one
of the national experts on the subject of the war?one
who has written much about it and who has also
traveled extensively in Korea.

Allan R. Millett is certainly well qualified to
produce Their War for Korea.46 He is a prominent
military historian with long service as a professor at
Ohio State University?the institution that awarded him
the PhD in 1966. Although his interests are broad, he
has specialized in the Korean War to some extent. He
served on active duty in the US Marine Corps for three
years, continued in its Reserves, and rose to
battalion command and the rank of colonel before he
retired. Millett?s publications are too numerous to
list here, but they include an important history of
the US Marine Corps and his highly regarded For the
Common Defense: A Military History of the United
States of America. War to be Won: Fighting the Second
World War is another recent and well-received work
that he coauthored with Williamson Murray. Scholars
wishing to study the Korean War in exhaustive depth
might be especially interested in Millett?s ?Reader?s
Guide to the Korean War: A Review-Essay,? which
appeared in the spring 1995 issue of Joint Forces
Quarterly (JFQ). Another notable article on this
subject is his ?Korea, 1950?1953,? chapter 8 in Case
Studies in the Development of Close Air Support,
edited by Benjamin Franklin Cooling.

Their War for Korea has a general focus and is
composed of many well-written vignettes based on
Millett?s interviews with people in Korea and the
United States. It is interesting and done with
sympathy for both the Korean people and those
Americans who fought in the war. Although not focused
on airpower, some of the vignettes about airmen may be
especially interesting to the readers of Air and Space
Power Journal, but that may not be enough to cause
those with limited reading time to tarry with this
work.

One of Millett?s most interesting tales has to do with
North Korean MiG pilot No Kum-Sok. Lieutenant No was
from a Christian family in North Korea, and his father
had worked in the electrical industry for the Japanese
during the interwar period. By lying about his
heritage, he bypassed those personal relationships
that the communist government would view as a severe
handicap and was admitted to the naval academy. But
the UN had pretty well destroyed both the North Korean
navy and air force, when a number of midshipmen were
tested and dragged out of the academy for training as
MiG pilots. In spite of a good deal of attrition,
Lieutenant No made it through training and flew more
than 100 combat missions in the MiG-15 against
increasingly bad odds. According to him, for all the
MiG?s advantage in ceiling and climb rate, it was a
pretty shabby piece of equipment. The airplane had a
poor gunsight and did not have a radar or G suit
capability. Its T-tail blocked the pilot?s view to the
rear and above. Many of his colleagues did not make it
through training?some were executed because of a lack
of political correctness or other perceived defects in
their attitude.47

In July 1953, after the armistice, No claims that he
learned that he was being investigated for political
unreliability and chose to fly his aircraft to South
Korea. He landed?against traffic?at Kimpo Airfield and
received an award of $100,000 from the United States
for the delivery of an intact MiG-15. No claimed he
knew nothing of the reward before he landed. The
airplane lives on in the Museum at Wright-Patterson
AFB, and No lived happily ever after in the United
States under the name of Kenneth Rowe.

Another of Millett?s flying vignettes had special
meaning for me. In the early 1950s, Col Dean Hess was
the Air Force representative at the US Naval Academy.
I can confirm Millett?s description of the man?s
intensity and persuasiveness. I well remember Hess?s
penetrating light blue eyes and his eloquence in
describing the life in the air, and I quite understood
his power in his original vocation as a clergyman. He
must have been good at that. Two hundred and thirty
midshipmen of the Class of 1953 chose to enter the Air
Force, and many did not need much persuasion. Hess
took his job seriously; his door was always open to
the naval midshipmen, and he told one heck of a good
war story. 

A few years later, as Millett reminds us, Hollywood
released Battle Hymn, a motion picture starring Rock
Hudson as Dean Hess. Hess explains in Their War that
he would have been more comfortable with the late
Gregory Peck playing his character, but the film was a
hit for those of us who had met the real Hess at
Annapolis. Hess now declares that the idealism
expressed in the film was somewhat exaggerated, and
although he may have hit an orphanage as depicted in
the film, he did not know it. He had flown CAS
missions in World War II as a P-47 pilot and knew that
collateral damage was a practical certainty but
admitted that it still weighed heavily on him when,
after the fact, he discovered that he had hit a
civilian. During the Korean War, he also remembers
being directed by a forward air controller to attack a
target thought to be military but which turned out to
be noncombatant.

Hess left the service after World War II but, like
Foster, was recalled in 1948 in time for the Korean
War. He was tasked to train experienced Korean pilots
in the F-51, and, although the job was challenging, he
was an effective instructor. After the Chinese entered
the war and were driving south, a horde of Korean
orphans?who had been created by the war?were being
driven along in advance of the communist armies with
nowhere to hide and no one to take care of them. As
depicted in the film, Hess started an orphanage on an
island off the Korean coast and was able to get
sustained support for it, due in part to his
visi­bility with senior Air Force leaders through his
training and combat activities. Now in his eighties,
he continues to visit Korea periodically and otherwise
leads a quiet life in Ohio. He still maintains contact
with many of his orphans, some of whom have indeed
prospered.

Capt Donald D. Bolt was much less famous than either
Foster or Hess. Like Foster, he had graduated from
flying school at the end of World War II, but unlike
Foster, Bolt was not a confident or natural pilot. He
was released from active duty and went back to the
University of Maryland to finish his degree in
architectural engineering. Back in the service for
Korea, he volunteered for jet training in the F-80.
But when he arrived in the Far East, he was assigned
to fly the CAS mission in the F-51 Mustang. His
piloting skills were unspectacular, and he still had
only limited confidence. Nevertheless, he soldiered on
in one of the most dangerous missions. His first
shootdown was close to friendly troops, and after a
traumatic rescue, he got back in the saddle and was
assigned a ground-attack mission near Pyongyang. By
then the Inchon landing was in the past, and the UN
armies were marching northward. While attacking
targets near Pyongyang, he took a hit in his F-51
engine?s notoriously vulnerable liquid-cooling system.
He landed in a rice paddy and was immediately
threatened by some North Koreans at the edge of the
paddy who were beginning to advance toward his
wreckage. His wingman circled above, making firing
passes between the wreckage and the North Koreans to
keep them at bay but carefully avoiding hitting the
North Koreans for fear that they would execute Bolt it
they captured him. His wingman was relieved as he ran
low on fuel by another F-51, and those relays of F-51s
continued as long as the daylight lasted. As the light
faded, the last one departed with Bolt sitting
dejectedly on his wing. Sadly, Bolt was never heard
from again.48

Millett?s book is full of vignettes of others, like
Foster and Hess, more decorated and ­famous than Bolt
but perhaps none more heroic. These are mostly about
people who participated on the ground, but all are
interesting and engagingly written. In the JFQ
­article cited above, Millett points out that the
power of organized Christianity in Korea was left out
of one of the books?I suspect that has been the
general tendency. He does show some of its impact in
many of his vignettes, but it is hard for the reader
to judge just how much that power influenced the
course of events. Millett includes appendices that may
not be necessary to the work, and there are many other
reference tomes that would be a better choice for
facts and figures than his book. Although several of
the other works on our sampler would take a higher
place on a reading list designed to further one?s
professional development as an air strategist, Their
War might be useful to an air warrior-scholar if that
person is pursuing short, colorful pictures of the
Korean War or is just interested in recreational
reading.

23 June 1951:
Soviet Cease-Fire Proposal
The war had reached a near stalemate by the spring of
1951 and was getting more expensive for both sides. It
was clear that President Truman had no intention of
advancing north again or allowing things to escalate
to general war. The Chinese had suffered enormous
losses?men and resources?and needed to consolidate
their gains in their own country after achieving a
great victory over Chiang Kai-shek?s nationalists. The
conclusion of the NATO Treaty doubtless persuaded the
Soviets that their Berlin blockade had backfired and
that the costs of the Korean stalemate were heavy
burdens. In addition, the Korean conflict also caused
NATO to put some real military muscle behind that
treaty. It established greater in-theater force levels
that would be complemented, when necessary, by the
deployment to Europe of considerable American air and
ground forces. The Air Force also created a joint
operations center in Korea, and while it never
exercised control, it did serve to coordinate the
airpower efforts and to improve the effectiveness of
the various services. The stalemate reduced CAS
requirements and made a substantial amount of UN
airpower available to roam at will over North
Korea?imposing greater costs and casualties on the
enemy, notwithstanding the latter?s improved
techniques for protecting his moving units and supply
convoys. Jon Halliday has argued that the North
Koreans lost about one-third of their adult male
population, and the Chinese communists were using
about half their national budget on the war and lost
around a million people during the fighting.49

The original vote for UN intervention had been made
possible by the Soviets temporally vacating their seat
on the Security Council to protest the decision to
seat the Nationalist Chinese, rather than the
communist, representative. However, the Soviet member
had returned and proposed a cease-fire in the summer
of 1951. Both sides quickly agreed to begin
negotiations in Korea, but those dragged on for two
long years with little progress.

27 July 1953:
Korean War Armistice
As Paschall argued, the United States paid a great
price for principle when it would not agree to force
North Korean POWs to return home. On 25 March 1953,
LCpl Abner S. Black?my cousin and schoolmate?paid part
of that cost when he died on Porkchop Hill while
diplomats parried with each other over the
repatriation issue. He was but one of our 55,000 human
treasures lost in the war. 

President Eisenhower took office, and Joseph Stalin
died that spring. The former implied that he would use
nuclear weapons if a settlement were not made. A power
struggle within the USSR was in its genesis. Rhee
opened the gates to some of his POW camps, and that
issue was overtaken by events. The Korean Truce was
concluded on 27 July 1953, and it has been sustained
for a half century. The USSR followed a conservative
foreign policy ever afterwards, avoiding direct
confrontation with the armed forces of the United
States. America, for her part, did not respond with
force to the 1950s? uprisings in East Germany,
Czechoslovakia, or Hungary, notwithstanding the
election campaign hype about ?Rolling Back the Iron
Curtain.? A nuclear weapon has not been detonated in
anger for 58 years. It behooves the air
warrior-scholar to pursue his or her professional
reading program on this and other wars. The costs of a
faulty strategy can be enormous; the rewards of a good
one can be great?survival can depend upon them.

A 12-Book Sampler on the Air War in Korea**

Two for the Overview 

The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950?1953 by
Robert F. Futrell. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1996. 
This is the most definitive work on the air war,
written by the dean of USAF historians and from an Air
Force perspective. It is comprehensive, so allow a
good bit of time to go through it. 

The Naval Air War in Korea by Richard P. Hallion.
Baltimore, Md.: Nautical and Aviation, 1986.
The former Air Force historian has produced one of the
few and very readable books that are focused on the
naval air aspects of the air war.  

Ten for Depth 

The Korean War: An International History by William
Stueck. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1997. 
This work, by a University of Georgia author,
concentrates on the complicated political context in
which the war was fought.  

Crimson Sky: The Air Battle for Korea by John R.
Bruning Jr. Dulles, Va: Brassey?s, 2000. 
A sound and recent general treatment that examines the
operational and tactical levels of the war. Bruning?s
book is both readable and compact. 

Red Wings over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and
the Air War in Korea by Xiaoming Zhang. College
Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2002.
This author?s father was in the PRC air force during
the Korean War. Zhang, the son, earned his PhD at the
University of Iowa and has served as a member of the
US Air Force Air War College faculty. 

The History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Vol. 2, The Test of War, 1950?1953 by Doris M. Condit.
Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense,
1988.
Condit provides the official history, which gives a
comprehensive view of the war from the
military-strategy level. 

Hoyt S. Vandenberg: The Life of a General by Phillip
S. Meilinger. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University
Press, 1989.
This biography of the chief of staff of the Air Force
during the Korean War was written by a serving Air
Force officer.  

The Korean War by Matthew B. Ridgway. Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967.
Although General Ridgway, the theater commander, had
made his reputation as a paratrooper in Europe in
World War II, he was not a big fan of airpower. This
primary source reflects that point of view. 

The Sea War in Korea by Malcolm W. Cagle and Frank A.
Manson. Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute,
1957.
The authors are an articulate pair of Korean War
veterans. Cagle, an aviator, rose to flag rank.
Although the book was published 46 years ago, it
remains valid. 

American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950?1953 by
Conrad C. Crane. Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of
Kansas, 2000.
This is one of the few works focused on the
operational-strategy level of the air war. It was
authored by a retired Army lieutenant colonel who
taught at West Point and at the Army War College. 

The Three Wars of Lieutenant General George E.
Stratemeyer: His Korean War Diary edited by William T.
Y?Blood. Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and
Museums Program, 1999.
This diary and others have the advantage of recording
primary-source matter while memories are fresh; time
has not caused them to mellow and improve the truth.
Stratemeyer was MacArthur?s airman?the commander of
the FEAF for the first year of the war. 

Down in the Weeds: Close Air Support in Korea by
William T. Y?Blood. Washington, D.C.: Air Force
History Support Office, 2002.
Authored by a member of the Air Force History and
Museums Program, this pamphlet deals with CAS, one of
the most important issues of the Korean air war. 

One for Good Measure 

Dog Company Six by Edwin Howard Simmons. Annapolis,
Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2000.
Sometimes, a work of fiction can be a higher form of
truth than many histories?perhaps this is one of
those. It is authored by a Marine general with combat
experience in Korea. As one of the Corps?s former
historians, he writes with a sure hand and an engaging
style. The book rings true and deserves a place on
your reading list. 

**As with our previous fodder articles, this sampler
does not aspire to be a definitive bibliography, but
only a starter list of available and readable works. 
 

Notes

1. Rod Paschall, Witness to War: Korea (New York:
Perigee Books, 1995).

2. This is a view shared by David Halberstam, ?This Is
Korea, Fifty Years Later,? AARP: The Magazine,
July?August 2003, 86.

3. William Stueck, The Korean War: An International
History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1997).

4. Robert D. Schulzinger, U.S. Diplomacy since 1900,
5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002),
222?24.

5. Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War,
1945?1966 (New York: Wiley, 1967), 75?80; and Dean
Acheson, The Korean War (New York: Norton, 1971),
13?14.

6. LaFeber, 88?89; and Lester H. B. Rune, ?Recent
Scholarship and Findings about the Korean War,?
American Studies International 36 (October 1998): 8,
on-line, Internet, 23 July 2003, available from
http://www.gwu.edu/-asi/articles/36-3-1.pdf .

7. Max Hastings, The Korean War (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1987), 50?51; and Schulzinger, 214.

8. Stetson Conn, ed., United States Army in the Korean
War, vol. 2, Truce Tent and Fighting Front by Walter
G. Hermes (1966; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Center of
Military History, United States Army, 1992), 8,
on-line, Internet, 8 October 2003, available from
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/korea/truce/fm.htm.

9. Hastings, 52?54.

10. George E. Stratemeyer, The Three Wars of Lt Gen
George E. Stratemeyer: His Korean War Diary, ed.
William T. Y?Blood (Washington, D.C.: Air Force
History and Museums Program, 1999), 34?35; Thomas C.
Hone, ?Korea,? in Case Studies in the Achievement of
Air Superiority, ed. Benjamin F. Cooling (Washington,
D.C.: Center for Air Force History, 1999), 454?55; and
Allan Millett, ?Korea, 1950?1953,? in Case Studies in
the Development of Close Air Support, ed. Benjamin F.
Cooling (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force
History, 1990), 362?63.

11. Malcolm W. Cagle and Frank A. Manson, The Sea War
in Korea (Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval
Institute, 1957), 47?74.

12. Steven J. Zaloga, ?The Russians in MiG Alley,? Air
Force Magazine 74, no. 2 (February 1991): 74.

13. Cagle and Manson, 50; and Cmdr Peter B. Mersky,
USNR, retired, ?Marine Aviation in Korea, 1950?1953,?
Naval Aviation News, September?October 2002, 32. The
USS Badoeng Strait and the USS Sicily were the two
escort carriers. John S. Thach, the famous Navy World
War II ace, was the skipper of the latter. Neither
carrier was capable of operating jets and carried only
propeller-driven aircraft.

14. Maurice Matloff, ed., American Military History
(1969; reprint, partially revised, Washington, D.C.:
Office of the Chief of Military History, 1973), 553.

15. Hermes, 10; and Xiaoming Zhang, Red Wings over the
Yalu (College Station, Tex.: Texas A & M University
Press, 2002), 284.

16. Geoffrey Perret, Old Soldiers Never Die (New York:
Random House, 1996), 547.

17. Matloff, 554.

18. H. Pat Tomlinson, ?Inchon: The General?s
Decision,? in MacArthur and the American Century: A
Reader, ed. William M. Leary (Lincoln, Nebr.:
University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 344?49; D.
Clayton James, Refighting the Last War: Command and
Crisis in Korea, 1950?1953 (New York: Free Press,
1993), 165?72; and Perret, 548.

19. Richard Whelan, Drawing the Line: The Korean War,
1950?1953 (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1990),
189?90; and Robert Frank Futrell, The United States
Air Force in Korea, 1950?1953 (1961; new imprint,
Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983),
148.

20. Futrell, 147?51.

21. Ibid., 152?56.

22. Fact Sheet: ?Operation Chromite?The Inchon
Landing,? official, public-access Web site for the
Department of Defense commemoration of the 50th
Anniversary of the Korean War, on-line, Internet, 8
October 2003, available from http://
www.korea50.mil/history/factsheets/chromite.shtml.
This Web site states that the whole invasion force had
a total of 20 killed, one missing in action, and 174
wounded.

23. James, 173?74; and Futrell, 157?61.

24. Cagle and Manson, 104?5; and Michael Lewis,
?Lieutenant General Ned Almond, USA: A Ground
Commander?s Conflicting View with Airmen over CAS
Doctrine and Employment? (master?s thesis, School of
Advanced Air and Space Studies, 1996).

25. Zaloga, 74. Two weeks after the Inchon landing,
Mao received and quickly agreed to a request from Kim
Il Sung for Chinese intervention.

26. Jon Halliday, ?Air Operations in Korea: The Soviet
Side of the Story,? in A Revolutionary War: Korea and
the Transformation of the Post War World, ed. William
J. Williams (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1993),
151.

27. Zhang, 7.

28. Whelan, 307?13.

29. Although the relief of MacArthur is a favored
subject for many academics, it is only indirectly
related to the air war in Korea. The general seemed to
be working on a strategic air strike across the Yalu,
and the president was concerned that escalation could
lead to World War III. Those wishing to explore the
issue further could start with John Spanier?s readable
book The Truman-MacArthur Controversy and the Korean
War (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1959), or Geoffrey
Perret?s Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas
MacArthur (New York: Random House, 1996), chaps.
31?32.

30. Air mobility during the Korean War is the subject
of several books. William M. Leary, Anything,
Anywhere, Any time: Combat Cargo in the Korean War
(Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums
Program, 2000), provides a reliable short summary,
while Charles Miller, Airlift Doctrine (Maxwell AFB,
Ala.: Air University Press, 1988), is less reliable.
Although Futrell covers air mobility, it is not his
focus. Lt Gen William Tunner, Over the Hump (1964;
reprint, Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force
History, 1985), 225?64, is devoted to the Korean
airlift, albeit with some chest thumping.

31. Zhang, 284. MiG-15s arrived in Korea at the same
time as the Chinese intervention?but initially, all
were piloted by Russians. After training, the Chinese
communists committed their first MiG-15s to combat
against UN forces in September 1951.

32. Prior to these events, it had not been known that
technology transfers, in the form of nuclear espionage
and commercial sales, had benefited the Soviets. The
espionage had advanced the development and testing of
their first atomic weapon, while the purchase of a
British jet engine and its subsequent reverse
engineering and production provided reliable engines
for the MiG-15.

33. Cecil G. Foster, MiG Alley to Mu Ghia Pass:
Memoirs of a Korean War Ace (Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland & Company, 2001).

34. Ibid, 46. Even at this late date, the kill ratio
has varied widely, from a high of 13:1 down to 2:1 in
our records and just the opposite in the communist
literature. My guess, given the poor training and lack
of experience of the Korean, Chinese, and some Russian
pilots, is that the ratio might have been around 7:1
in the UN favor. The effects cannot be denied,
whatever the true figure, because the UN clearly
enjoyed air superiority through most of Korea for the
entire war.

35. William T. Y?Blood, Mig Alley (Washington, D.C.:
Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000), 46?47;
and Mersky, 36. Several Marine and Navy pilots served
in exchange tours with the Air Force in Korea and got
kills while flying the F-86. Lt Col John F. Bolt,
USMC, earned ace status with 6.5 kills to his credit.
John Glenn, another famous marine, flew the F-86 and
was credited with three MiG kills before going into
the space program, where he became the first American
astronaut to orbit Earth. He later served in the US
Senate.

36. Futrell.

37. Zaloga, 75. Col Ivan Kochedub, the top-ranking
Soviet ace from World War II (68 kills), was
dispatched to the scene but, because of his
prominence, was prohibited from actually engaging in
air combat.

38. Ibid., 284.

39. Bob Bergin, ?Chinese MiG Ace over Korea,? Military
History 18, no. 5 (December, 2001). Lt Gen Han Decai,
a PRC Korean War ace, reported that at age 15 he was a
farm laborer with only one year of schooling. His
fifth kill?the one that made him an ace?was Hal
Fischer. See Foster, 59.

40. Zaloga, 77.

41. Rune, 11, 13.

42. Conrad C. Crane, American Airpower Strategy in
Korea, 1950?1953 (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of
Kansas, 2000). 

43. Crane, 169; and Zaloga, 76.

44. Eduard Mark, Aerial Interdiction: Air Power and
the Land Battle in Three American Wars (Washington,
D.C.: Center for Air Force History, 1994), 317?19;
Millett, 396?99; James A. Winnefeld, Joint Air
Operations: Pursuit of Unity in Command and Control,
1942?1991 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute, 1993), 62;
and Federation of American Scientists, ?A-10/OA-10
Thunderbolt II,? on-line, Internet, 6 October 2003,
available from
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/a-10.htm .

45. Hastings, 255; and William T. Y?Blood, Down in the
Weeds: Close Air Support in Korea (Washington, D.C.:
Air Force History and Museums Program, 2002), 16, 18.

46. Allan R. Millett, Their War for Korea: American,
Asian, and European Combatants and Civilians,
1945?1953 (Dulles, Va.: Brassey?s, 2002).

47. Bergin. Chinese lieutenant general Han Decai seems
to agree with Lt No when he cites the F-86 as the best
fighter in the world and claims that its .50-caliber
armament was better than the cannons on the MiG.

48. Forrest L. Marion, ?Sabre Pilot Pickup:
Unconventional Contributions to Air Superiority in
Korea,? Air Power History 49, no. 1 (spring 2002): 24.
Bolt was 84 miles into enemy territory and beyond the
reach of rescue at that time. Later in the war,
helicopter rescue became increasingly effective and
important. By example, Capt Joseph C. McConnell, USAF,
was downed after his eighth kill, rescued by an H-19,
and returned to operations. He then went on to shoot
down eight more enemy aircraft, which brought his
total to 16 and earned him the distinction of being
the war?s leading ace.

49. Halliday, 158, 168 n. 64, 65.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contributor 

Dr. David R. Mets (BS, USNA; MA, Columbia University;
PhD, University of Denver) is a professor at Air
University?s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies,
Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He studied naval history at the
US Naval Academy and taught the history of airpower at
both the US Air Force Academy and West Point. During
his 30-year career in the Navy and Air Force, he
served as an instructor pilot in Air Training Command,
a tanker pilot in Strategic Air Command, an instructor
navigator in strategic airlift, and as an aircraft
commander during two tours in Southeast Asia. He flew
more than 900 tactical airlift sorties over the course
of his first tour and commanded an AC-130 ?Spectre?
gunship squadron during his second. A former editor of
Air University Review, Dr. Mets is the author of
Master of Airpower: General Carl A. Spaatz (Presidio,
1988) and four other books and monographs. 

Disclaimer 

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the
freedom of expression, academic environment of Air
University. They do not reflect the official position
of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the
United States Air Force or the Air University. 



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