‘. . . to announce in no uncertain terms that the United States had entered the war’

In July 1950, the USS Valley Forge (CV-45) and HMS Triumph launched the Korean War’s first carrier action. For the U.S. Navy, it was the inaugural combat test of both the AD Skyraider and, notably, the F9F Panther—the Navy’s first fighter jet to engage in air-to-air combat. There, at that moment that marked the baptism under fire of U.S. naval aviation’s jet age, was future Vice Admiral Donald D. Engen—a fighter pilot in Fighting Squadron (VF) 51. In his 1994 Naval Institute oral history conducted by Paul Stillwell, Engen gave his recollections of being in the cockpit at that historic turning point:

So on the very first strikes into Korea, which were done on 3 July 1950, we attacked Pyongyang. This was the very first combat sortie with jet aircraft in the U.S. Navy. We had much to learn. And remember, the F9F-3s had only four 20-mm cannon. Those four 20s were really like a can opener, though, because you loaded them with an armor-piercing tracer, an HEI [high explosive incendiary], and a ball round, and we just repeated that for 200 rounds per cannon. They would blow locomotives, sink ships, and knock down airplanes. When those four 20s hit in a focus point, things happened.

Much of the Valley Forge was run as it was run in World War II. Remember that the squadron commanders, down through the operations officers, certainly, were all products of that war, and so we had foreknowledge of combat. The 38th Parallel was the nominal border between North and South Korea. We wanted to enter north of that. We entered at the mouth of the large river that flows from Pyongyang. We flew over many, many ships to go in and hit the airfields and tried to destroy any air opposition first. We split up and strafed to get the airplanes so that they couldn’t come out and attack our force. So we were going after their air capability first.

There were a number of airplanes shot down. In VF-51 Lieutenant (junior grade) Leonard Plog shot down a Yak-2. Ensign E. W. Brown Jr., USNR, also shot down a Yak. Many were destroyed on the ground. Generally speaking, the goal was to hit many targets to announce in no uncertain terms that the United States had entered the war. After targeting the airfields, we planned to return, regroup, and do it again. The day was designed to have two massive strikes.

The North Korean Air Force was not aggressive. By the time of the second strike, the air opposition was still nominal. They didn’t have anything but Yaks anyway. They didn’t have any jet airplanes. It was clear that, even though they started the war, they were concentrating on the ground war. They certainly had an aggressive army, and they did well. We eventually ended up strafing locomotives and ships and trying to interdict as much transportation as possible in the first few days.

Really, for the jet airplanes, it came down to being a war of interdiction, a word that we really hadn’t known before. Very quickly after the first day, we saw that World War II–type coordinated attacks were not needed. Almost immediately we broke up into more continuous but smaller launches.

The targets of opportunity were just fantastic. There were things all over there. We were briefed to go after military targets and not civilian targets. With so many targets, we slowly built our own intelligence database. Subsequently, as we went into the rhythm of the war, we would fly interdiction, and we’d send two F9Fs on one road for 150 miles and two F9s on another, two F9s to cover this rail line, two F9s to do something else. We literally operated like two airplane teams. We set about to try to interdict surface transportation to the maximum extent possible. Once we finished with the airplanes, we went after ships. Once the ships were gone, we went after the trains.

We started running out of gas and, of course, bombs. But then, finally, as days went by, ships began to show up, and our logistic train began to form. But for the first days of that war, we had the war all to ourselves.