The strangest and most unusual war the United States ever fought was the Korean War. It certainly was the most frustrating. It was the war (and it was a war, not a police action or a mere “conflict”) which many Americans chose to ignore while it was being fought and would prefer to forget now. But, as the Chief of Naval Operations has said, the Korean War was the first limited war the K. S. ever fought. He also made the point—since repeated by many American military leaders—that limited wars are more likely to occur than global wars in our thermonuclear age. It is important, therefore, to absorb Korea’s errors and avoid its mistakes.
For there were mistakes in that 37-month war, and we would be exceedingly foolish to say there were not. It would be equally foolish to attempt to conceal our errors and choke off constructive discussion of them, believing that in so doing we give aid and comfort to the enemy. If the Communists make any study of Korea, the mistakes we made will be as obvious to them as theirs are to us. Likewise, it is foolish to believe that the Korean War was an anachronism that cannot happen again and that it has no significance, lessons, or meaning.
The first major military error of the Korean War was the Wonsan landing in October, 1950. It was unnecessary and it should never have been made.
The Inchon assault, a month earlier, had been vastly successful. As General MacArthur predicted, it was the anvil on which the North Korean People’s Army would be pounded to pieces; the successful amphibious assault would sever the Communist’s supply routes; and it would send that army scurrying north of the 38th Parallel, broken and beaten.
So it had. As early as September 29, when the Commanding General first proposed the amphibious assault at Wonsan, evidence was growing that the disorganized Reds could scarcely make a solid stand except in the rugged mountains of North Korea. On the east coast, the north-bound Republic of Korea First Corps was meeting only spotty resistance, and since its break-out from the Pusan perimeter, it had averaged more than ten miles per day. At this rate of advance, the ROKs would soon capture Wonsan. (In fact, the advancing First Corps did capture the city on October 10 with only minor resistance, a full ten days before the Marines finally got ashore.)
The U. S. Navy opposed the landing for several reasons. Loading Marines and their equipment for a Wonsan assault would tie up the small port of Inchon, whose capacity was already fully needed for unloading. Second, there was not enough logistic shipping in the Far East theater to supply an advancing Eighth Army on the west coast and simultaneously carry and support a large amphibious effort on the east coast. Finally, there was gathering evidence and many more suspicions that Wonsan’s harbor and approaches were mined, and clearing a path to the nearby beaches would be time-consuming and difficult with the skimpy mine warfare forces available. Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy summarized the Navy’s opposition when he said, “None of us at NAVFE could see the necessity for such an operation, since the tenth Corps could have marched overland to Wonsan and with much less effort than it would take to get the Corps around to Wonsan by sea.”
The U. S. Marines also opposed the Wonsan operation. First, they still had a job to finish; the Leathernecks had their hands full on the western front. On October 2, in fact, the First Marine Division suffered sixteen killed and 81 wounded in fighting north of the capital city of Seoul. Second, the Marines were of the opinion that the ROKs would soon and easily capture Wonsan and make the roundabout sea-assault unnecessary.
Many Army commanders agreed with the Navy and Marines that the proposed operation was unnecessary. The general consensus was that the tenth Corps need only climb in their tanks and trucks and drive overland to Wonsan—150 miles by land in contrast to 800 by sea.
Why, then, was the operation not cancelled?
First, because the Wonsan assault would physically separate the tenth Corps from the eighth Army and give the former independent status. The decision had been reached earlier that the Korean peninsula would be divided—' with Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker’s Eighth Army holding the western half and Lieut. General Edward M. Almond’s Tenth Corps (Almond was concurrently Mac- Arthur’s Chief of Staff) responsible for the eastern half. An amphibious landing would hasten the separation and guarantee the division of command.
Primarily, however, the Wonsan operation was not revised or cancelled because the objections and alternatives to Wonsan were never presented to the one man who could have revised or cancelled it. “I was never apprised of any Navy objection to the seaborne landing at Wonsan,” General MacArthur said.
The second error of the Korean War followed and was a result of the intervention of the Red Chinese armies. When the Chinese Communists attacked the U. S. Eighth Army in late November, 1950, and the Tenth Corps in early December, U. N. forces commenced falling back. The First Marine Division found itself surrounded by six divisions near the Chosin reservoir and so commenced its historic attack “in another direction.”
In Far East headquarters at this time, a degree of panic and inertia reigned. Many believed (and so stated) that the Red Chinese Army had both the capability and the intention to drive the U. N. forces into the sea and overrun the entire Korean peninsula. Command uncertainty was underlaid by a genuine apprehension that the entry of the Red Chinese into the war might also be a prelude to further Soviet adventures elsewhere—perhaps even the start of World War III.
Accordingly, the U. N. retreat was made in an over-anxious mood. On Korea’s east coast, the North Korean capital city of Pyongyang and the seaports of Chinnampo and Inchon were evacuated and abandoned to the enemy. The South Korean capital, Seoul, was also abandoned. In fact, contact with the enemy in the western zone was completely lost. On the east coast, the U. S. Marines succeeded in fighting their way out of the Communist trap, fracturing five Red divisions in the process. The Leathernecks were lifted from Hungnam to South Korea. Wonsan was now abandoned. A new line, far to the south of the 38th Parallel, was ordered established to staunch the Red Chinese.
Retreating was not the mistake (for the G. N. forces were scarcely positioned or prepared for the heavy Red assault). The error lay in the distance or amount of the retreat. A defensible new line could have been held in the vicinity of Korea’s narrow waist (no further south, certainly, than the truce line which was finally agreed upon two and one- half years later). Both Lieutenant General James Van Fleet and Rear Admiral James H. Doyle felt such a line could have been held. It follows, of course, that had this been done, a great amount of the costly fighting which occurred later might have been avoided.
The third mistake of the Korean War was the failure to coordinate the aerial interdiction program on the theater level. The D- N. effort to “isolate the battlefield” with airpower was a lengthy and expensive effort, from early 1951 through 1952, almost 100% of the offensive efforts of the carrier task force, 60% of the offensive effort of Marine Air, 70% of the offensive effort of the U. S. Fifth Air Force, and 70% of the blockading effort of the blockade force (Task Force 95) was devoted to “interdiction.” At no time during the course of the war did Far East headquarters assign areas of responsibility, coordinate targets, or establish priorities or interdiction criteria. As time went on, an agreement of sorts grew to be accepted: the Air Force would take the western half, the Navy the eastern half of Korea. (Within its own area, the Navy coordinated the interdiction effort of surface forces and naval air.) This lack of coordination was undoubtedly a responsible factor in the over-all failure of interdiction to “isolate the battlefield.”
In the writer’s opinion, the Navy made a mistake in the Korean War by failing to use and operate night carriers. Another of the principal reasons why the long, costly, and intensive effort to sever the enemy’s supply lines failed was the inability of the U. N. air forces to locate, identify, and destroy at night the thousands of trucks and trains which operated from dusk to dawn and which brought ample supplies and munitions from Manchuria to the front. A single carrier, operating at night, could scarcely have staunched the Red’s heavy nighttime supply flow, but it would have done far more damage than the same carrier by day. Moreover, its use would have added knowledge and experience in the night-flying night-operation art.
Another error of the Korean War was the U. N. failure to adopt and use the close air support system and doctrine of the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps, which, by every yardstick and in every demonstration, was proved far superior and more productive than the system which came to be used. On three occasions, the defense of the Pusan perimeter, the invasion at Inchon, and the redeployment at Hungnam, the Navy-Marine system functioned flawlessly and efficiently, proving ideal for the rugged North Korean terrain. To the soldiers in the battleline foxholes who had a chance to observe both systems, whether ROK, U. S. Army, U. N. trooper or U. S. Marine, it was obvious that the Navy-Marine system was superior and the one which hurt the enemy the most. The Navy-Marine system made both the task of defense and offense easier; it killed more enemy soldiers; it boosted morale.
Another and major error of the early days of the Korean war lay in the area of command. Vital military questions and problems could often not be debated or even presented to higher authority because of an insulating command ring. Inchon is a classic example. Undeniably, Inchon was a brilliant maneuver in conception as well as execution, one which reflects lasting credit on the fertile brain wherein it was conceived, and upon the Navy-Marine experts who made it successful. However, Inchon was first chosen, almost arbitrarily, and then reasons were found to justify it. Whereupon, the military means were assembled to carry out the plan.
The normal practice, of course, calls for a commander, with the assistance and advice of his principal subordinates, to decide that an amphibious assault is needed. The next step requires that the amphibious warfare experts select one or more, areas where the commander’s objective can be achieved; then the forces and hardware are assembled. The Inchon decision was a reverse of this time- honored procedure. The mistake lay not so much in the selection or designation of Inchon but in the method and manner by which it was designated. The same command insulation led to the debacle of Wonsan.
Furthermore, had a sound and approachable command structure existed in the Far East in the early months of the war, many of the aforementioned errors might have been avoided. A hearing for the close air support dispute might have been held. Less real estate might have been surrendered to the Reds following their November-December, 1950, assault. Interdiction might have been coordinated on a theater-wide basis; and the early division of the Korean peninsula into east and west zones might have been avoided.
But the gravest error of the Korean War can be summed in one word: timidity. Timidity kept the free world from winning the Korean War. Had the will to do so existed and the decision made quickly and pressed resolutely after the Red Chinese intervened, the Korean War could unquestionably have been won by the U. N.-—and won without widening the area of conflict, bringing the Soviets themselves into Korea, or inviting a third world war in Europe. By limiting our objectives and limiting our means (as well as the geographic arena) but fully using the forces at hand, a decisive military victory could have been won in Korea. As General Van Fleet pointed out, we had superior firepower, we had control of the air and control of the seas; we had abundant resources; we enjoyed the advantages (had we chosen to use them) of flexibility, surprise, and mobility. We denied ourselves “hot pursuit”; we refused to strike legitimate military targets (in Korea, not outside) for fear we would prejudice the truce-talks or perhaps even rile the Soviets. (North Korea’s hydroelectric system was one such target; others were Rashin and military targets in the city of Pyongyang.)
The sentinel mistake of the Korean war, then, lay in not recognizing the need to win the war and in not having the fortitude to do so—all the while keeping it limited. In both previous and subsequent limited conflicts the free world succeeded in doing so—the Berlin blockade, the Greek Civil War are examples. A more recent and striking example of limiting both force and objectives is the Jordanian crisis. Each of these successes lay in the realm of “short-of-total-war” actions where the right amount of force of the right kind in the right place brought us the goals we were seeking. In fact, since 1945, whenever and wherever the Communists have been faced with resolute, determined, and superior force, they have retreated. But in Korea, during a shooting and major war, we were frustrated by the curious American notion of total war and total victory.
The lesson of Korea, therefore, is to prepare for and win the limited wars of the future. If we do, we may yet learn to deter the small war and defeat piecemeal aggression.
Graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1941, Commander Cagle first served in destroyers in the North Atlantic. Subsequently he commanded the USS Yorktown’s Fighting Squadron 88 in the Pacific, was attached to the staff of Commander, Air Force, Atlantic Fleet, and commanded a VF squadron of the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. He later served on the staff of the Commander in Chief, Naval Forces Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean and is now a student at the National War College.
Commander Cagle is a frequent contributor to the Proceedings and is co-author with Frank Manson of The Sea War in Korea, recently published by the U. S. Naval Institute.