In early 1941, newly commissioned Ensign Sheldon Kinney headed out to sea from the Naval Academy as a gunnery officer on North Atlantic escort duty. He took command of the USS Edsall (DE-129) in 1943—becoming the youngest commanding officer of a destroyer-type ship—and a year later, of the USS Bronstein (DE-189). In a single night’s convoy-protection action, the Bronstein sank three German U-boats and damaged another. She was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, with young skipper Kinney receiving the Navy Cross.
In his rise to rear admiral, Kinney would serve in the 1960s as Commandant of Midshipmen and as a member of the Naval Institute Board of Control. During the Korean War, as he relates in these edited excerpts from his August 1954 Proceedings article, “All Quiet at Wonsan,” he had command of the USS Taylor (DD-468), operating off Wonsan shelling shore emplacements and protecting U.S. minesweepers.
In the fall of 1950, the tide of battle swept north through Wonsan. By Christmas it had receded, leaving the city once again in North Korean possession. Later the infantry lines stabilized about 50 miles south of Wonsan. . . . Here converged the roads and railroads that carried the enemy’s men, food, guns and ammunition. . . . There our ships met them with a vengeance. The naval siege commenced on February 16, 1951. Besieged and besieger slugged it out for 861 days, until July 28, 1953, when the strokes of a pen at Panmunjom suspended hostilities.
But the real dirty work of the siege fell to the minesweepers—“Where the fleet goes, we’ve been.” Daily the mine vessels paraded before the enemy, keeping the channels free of the deadly underwater weapon, subjecting themselves to short-range gunfire as they swept.
When the destroyers entered Wonsan to commence the bombardment, the sweeps, as usual, had already opened the gate.
Kinney then describes the horror and heartbreak of mine warfare.
Naval History and Heritage Command
Once mined, you never forget. The explosive impact jars every ounce of your body. A giant has struck the soles of your feet with his sledge. Your bones reverberate the blow. Inert objects become lethal missiles—hurled by the force of the explosion. Men are catapulted—into the air if they are lucky—into the sharp steel angles and jagged fittings of the overhead if they are not.
A small ship doesn’t last long when mined. Disintegrating TNT opens a cavern in the hull. She carries down with her the badly wounded as well as the dead. A live, driving vessel becomes a circle of oil and flotsam, the oil spreading and spreading, the survivors struggling in its greasy film. This happened six times on Korea’s east coast. Our sweeps Magpie, Pirate, Partridge, Pledge, and two Republic of Korea minesweepers sacrificed themselves that their larger brothers might gain and hold the harbor, nor were the destroyers immune.
The enemy constantly devised new ways to re-mine the swept areas. Sampans operating stealthily at night could carry a mine. Fishing boats suspended mines beneath their hulls, planted by cutting the lines securing them to the boat. Floater mines were drifted down on the ships with the current. The mine boys destroyed them all.
They worked under the snouts of the shore batteries, praying that the destroyer riding “shotgun” would occupy the gunners. Back and forth they wove the geometrically precise patterns of coverage.
At night they often sacrificed well-earned rest to form a picket line within spitting distance of the enemy for Operation Flycatcher. Lying silently in wait, engines dead, commands whispered, deck gear muffled, not so much as a binnacle light showing, they detected enemy craft filtering out to lay mines and coached the destroyers to them. Blam!
At 0959, July 28, 1953, the fighting ended in compromise. All was quiet at Wonsan.
