Colonel Strong so disapproved of the army demolition policy in the withdrawal from North Korea that he said the army would have been "better off if every block of TNT had been destroyed and dumped into the ocean." General Walker personally ordered the destruction of the port facilities of Inchon, over Colonel Strong's objections. Strong pointed out that, in any event, the CCF and North Koreans could not use the port of Inchon while the US naval forces controlled the sea and held blockade power over the area. Under General Walker's policy at this time, heavy bridging supplies, including some Bailey bridges already in Korea (but not bridging construction equipment), were sent back to Japan in December and January. After the ground forces had destroyed bridges and transportation facilities, the Air Force subsequently increased and widened the destruction by repeated bombing.16
At one time Colonel Strong said Army Engineers were using 1,000 tons of bridging materials a day in trying to restore the roads and railroads for army use in the drive to push the enemy forces north out of South Korea in 1951. By that time General Ridgway had changed the policy so that only key bridges or other structures were damaged when the CCF or North Koreans gained temporary success in their repeated major offensives in the first half of 1951. In contrast to the American policy, the enemy rarely destroyed transportation features when the fortunes of war went against them and they had to withdraw from a battle area.
Many of the unit commanders in the UN forces disagreed with the American demolition policy. For instance, Col. Harold K. Johnson, then commanding the 5th Cavalry Regiment and later US Army chief of staff, thought the policy went too far. The burning of haystacks and villages and dwellings alienated the native people, he thought, and the destruction of transport facilities was later a tremendous handicap to Eighth Army when it turned and started back north in 1951. Brig. Gen. James Brittingham, I Corps Artillery officer, held similar views. He said, "We New everything- never expected to come back. Now, we never knock them out to that extent again. We are only now [July 1951] getting the high level bridges back again." Captain Bodkin, of the 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, said he tried to receive authority in the withdrawal to leave bridges intact, but was overruled by superiors carrying out the army demolition policy. 16
The US Air Force: Unhindered over Korea
While the Eighth Army was out of contact with the CCF on the ground for more than two weeks during its withdrawal south in December, the US Air Force, Far East, increased its sorties and attacks on enemy troops and targets in North Korea right up to the border. The Air Force carried on the war during this period and tried in every way possible to inflict enemy casualties and to impede, if not stop, southward advance of the CCF.
A new situation developed in the air over Korea in the border region when American Mustang pilots met their first MiG-15 fighter planes. These Soviet planes clearly outclassed the American fighter planes in Korea during the month of November. Among their armament the MiGs had 23-mm cannon. Operating from an all-weather field at Antung, just across the Yalu River from Sinuiju, the MiG-15s took a toll of American B-29 bombers and other aircraft during the month. The MiG-15 fighter plane was generally piloted by poor pilots, by American standards, and they did not do the damage they might have in the hands of expert fighter pilots. The developing situation in the air over North Korea, however, required immediate attention.
On 8 November, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, US Air Force chief of staff, offered to send an F-84E Thunderjet and an F-86A Sabre Wing to Korea, if usable fields for them could be prepared. The offer was accepted by Generals Partridge and Stratemeyer the same day, and Vandenberg ordered the 4th F-86A Sabre Fighter Interceptor Wing and the 27th F-84E Thunderjet Fighter Escort Wing to Korea. The F-86A Sabre was the best fighter plane the United States had. The two wings flew to San Diego, California, where they were deck-loaded on aircraft carriers and a fast tanker. They arrived in the Far East in early December. General Partridge had planned to put the 4th Sabre Fighter Wing at Pyongyang airfield and the Thunderjet Fighter Escort Wing at Kimpo airfield near Seoul, but by the time they arrived in Japan, the situation in Korea on the ground had changed drastically. Eighth Army was in precipitate retreat, and the Pyongyang airfield could not be used. General Partridge sent a part of the 4th Fighter Wing of Sabres to Kimpo in South Korea and the Thunderjet Fighter Escort Wing to Taegu.
The Thunderjets at Taegu flew their first mission on 6 December. On 15 December the Sabres flew an orientation mission from Kimpo over North Korea. General Partridge gave the Sabres a simple but hard assignment-to fly combat air patrols over northwest Korea, to meet and, if possible, to destroy the MiG-15s, and to establish air superiority. The Sabres were the only plane the United States had that could compare with the MiG-15, and since they had never met in combat, the outcome was uncertain, but the Sabre pilots felt confident they could win.
The first Sabre combat flight took off from Kimpo airfield on 17 December and headed for the Korean border. The Sabres carried six .50-caliber machine guns and gyroscope computing gunsight with an electric range-control system. It had a limitation in its flight range of only 490 nautical miles. Lt. Col. Bruce H. Hinton commanded the 336th Squadron and led the flight. When he arrived near the border at midafternoon, he sighted a flight of four MiGs below him. The MiGs were climbing up to meet Hinton's flight and apparently thought they were the old and slow F-80s that they had met before. The Sabres put on a burst of speed and dove toward the MiGs. The startled MiG pilots tried to dive away toward the Yalu. Hinton tailed the second MiG and gave it three long bursts from his machine guns. The MiG burst into flames and spun toward the ground. Hinton was the first Sabre pilot to destroy a MiG-15 in aerial combat."
A little experience soon taught the Sabre pilots they should arrive over the Yalu at high speed and not try to save fuel. Otherwise, their slow speed on arrival would place them at a disadvantage in a sudden encounter with the MiGs. The new procedure would give them only ten minutes of time over target. On 22 December Lt. Col. John C. Meyer, commander of the 4th Group, led two Sabre flights that met more than 15 MiGs near the Yalu. The ensuing dogfight lasted 20 minutes and ranged from near ground level to 30,000 feet. Meyer's Sabres shot down six MiGs and lost one of its own planes. A MiG pilot caught Capt. L. V. Bach in a tight turn and shot him down. The fight for control of the air over the border escalated during December. On 30 December 36 MiGs rose to meet a flight of 16 Sabres, but they were very cautious by this time, and the Sabres were able to damage only two of the MiGs. The Sabres established superiority over the MiGs by the end of December, and the anxiety about enemy threat of air control over North Korea subsided."
In the short period when the MiG-15 pretty well ruled the skies over the Yalu border, the question of "hot pursuit" became an urgent issue. The American pilots were prevented by the policy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from crossing the Korean-Manchurian border at the Yalu in pursuit of enemy planes. They had to break off combat over the river while the enemy planes descended to their sanctuary at the Antung airfield. The American pilots chafed over this restriction, and their morale was lowered by what they considered a limitation that imperiled them and made it all but impossible for them to destroy the enemy air strength. The issue reached the Joint Chiefs in Washington, where on 7-8 December the Joint Chiefs proposed lifting the restriction and allowing what it called hot pursuit for a limited distance beyond the Yalu. Gen. George C. Marshall, secretary of defense, fully supported the proposal. His testimony on 7, 8, and 11 May 1951, before the Senate Armed Services and Military Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee tells what happened to that proposal. In response to a question from Senator Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services and Military Affairs Committee, on 7 May 1951, General Marshall said that hot pursuit "was considered, concurred in by me, as a matter of fact I had urgently recommended it, and was concurred in by the Secretary of State and approved by the President, and the Secretary of State was directed to take that up with the thirteen nations involved wit
h us in fighting.... They voted solidly against it, so for the time being we had to drop that."`°
Beginning about 1 December, after the CCF had driven Eighth Army south of the Chongchon River, the Chinese battle forces began moving in the open during the daytime, something previously not done. This willingness to move openly lasted for the first half of December. During this period the Fifth Air Force had its golden opportunity of the war. Daily it roamed the skies over the Chongchon and south of it, strafing and bombing enemy caught in the open. It especially sought targets of CCF transport such as trucks now moving on the roads leading south from the border. At the end of two weeks of this kind of aerial action, General Stratemeyer on 16 December estimated that the Fifth Air Force had killed or wounded 33,000 enemy soldiers. Also, by this time the supply trucks again disappeared from the roads during the daytime and moved only at night. A Chinese prisoner, an assistant platoon leader in the CCF 113th Division, told interrogators that his division moved during this period by day until aerial attacks had destroyed nearly all its trucks. The division then reverted to its customary practice of moving during darkness.20
At the same time, bombers struck the major towns of North Korea, its airfields, and its railroad marshaling yards. On 4 December Fifth Air Force B-29s bombed Tokchon, Anju, and Pukchang-ni. The next day the B-29s hit Sunchon, Songchon, and Sukchon. On 10 December they cratered two airfields at the northeast edge of Pyongyang. Four days later they hit the railroad marshaling yards in Pyongyang and the storage yards south of the river to destroy a large amount of military supplies the Eighth Army had left there in its withdrawal. On 21-22 December, as Eighth Army settled into its position on the Imjin River fine, the US Bomber Command sent its entire force against North Korean bridges. On 23 December General MacArthur asked that two-thirds of the B-29s be used against towns and villages where enemy troops might be sheltered. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused MacArthur's request to bomb Racin on the northeast coast, about 35 miles south of the Soviet border. Racin was a railroad and highway center for supplies coming into Korea from the Soviet Union. The Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense Marshall felt that "it was a question of the risk involved in an operation so close to the Soviet frontier, and as to the question of ships in the harbor, and other mishaps that might occur.""
As Eighth Army continued its retreat toward Seoul, the Air Force began to question how long its planes could continue to operate out of airfields it then held. On 6 December, Maj. Gen. Edward J. Timberlake, deputy commander of the Fifth Air Force, presided at a conference in Seoul to consider the subject. He reported that Eighth Army had not yet decided whether to plan on holding a beachhead in the Seoul-Inchon area, or at Taegu-Pusan. He said if the beachhead was to be in the Seoul area, then the Air Force units at Taegu, Pusan, and Pohang-dong would have to be evacuated. If the beachhead was to be in the Pusan area, then the Air Force units at Seoul and Kimpo would have to move. Within the next day or two, the Fifth Air Force learned that Eighth Army would try to hold Seoul as long as possible and then withdraw toward Taegu and Pusan. The Air Force now began to prepare for the evacuation of its airfields at Seoul, Kimpo, and Suwon, the latter two on the south side of the Han River. On 10 December, the 8th Wing of Mustangs at Seoul began to move back to Itazuke, Japan. On the same day the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing began moving its main organization to Itazuke, leaving behind a combat group at Kimpo, organized in a way similar to the recently arrived 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing. Five days later, the 18th Fighter Bomber Wing at Suwon departed for the airfield at Chinhae (K-10) on the southern coast of Korea, leaving behind only a servicing detachment. Then, on 20 December, Eighth Army moved its main CP from Seoul to Taegu, and both the Fifth Air Force and the Joint Operations Center followed it."
While this movement of aircraft away from the Han River was in progress, the Far East Air Force on 15 December implemented its Interdiction Plan No. 4, which divided Korea above the 37th Parallel into 11 zones on the basis of the country's main transportation routes. It named 172 specific targets: 45 railroad bridges, 12 highway bridges, 13 railroad tunnels, 39 railroad marshaling yards, and 63 supply centers. The Naval Forces Far Fast assumed responsibility for destroying similar targets in the three interdiction zones on the eastern coast of North Korea from Wonsan north to the Siberian border. If the interdiction campaign was able to keep all the railroad bridges listed knocked out, there would be no stretch of rail line in North Korea above the 37th Parallel longer than 30 miles that would be serviceable."
The North Korean Army Is Reborn
In December 1950 the recently shattered North Korean Army was reborn from the fragments that had survived and reached sanctuary in Manchuria or had found a haven just south of the border in the mountains of the Korean highlands near the Yalu. The new North Korean Army headquarters established itself in Pyongyang as soon as the city was reoccupied.
According to an interrogation report of a North Korean Army headquarters signal officer who surrendered to the 23rd Infantry on 27 May 1951, the North Korean Army headquarters crossed back to Korea at Sinuiju on 27 November, as the CCF 2nd Phase Offensive was making rapid progress. From Sinuiju, the North Korean general headquarters moved by convoy to Pyongyang, entering the city on 6 December. It made its headquarters at Moran-Bong, adjacent to the Pyongyang racetracks, and used the underground ammunition dumps that the UN had failed to destroy before evacuating Pyongyang. There were many large coal mines northeast of the city that the North Korean Army had used in the early part of the war, and after its return to Pyongyang, it again used them for various military purposes. There they were protected from aerial attack. This North Korean officer said he left Pyongyang Army headquarters on 27 April 1951, for temporary duty with the NK V Corps Headquarters, and after six days of jeep travel via the Pyongyang-Wonsan road, reached Kosong, where he joined the V Corps headquarters."
Another document based on a number of enemy interrogations outlines what was a typical experience for recently defeated and decimated North Korean Army units after the fall of Seoul in late September 1950. Advance groups of the retreating NK 12th Division passed through Injc, situated virtually on the 38th Parallel, and there turned northwest to reach Pyongyang about the end of October. Aircraft attacked them constantly, and the journey was one for survival. Stragglers from many other North Korean units joined them en route. From Pyongyang the 12th Division group continued north to Sunchon, Anju, and from there turned northeast up the Chongchon River road toward Kanggye, which they reached about 10 November. The interrogations gave the information that Kanggye at that time was the reorganization and retraining center for the defeated NK Army. The remains of the original 12th Division were absorbed into the mass of North Koreans assembled there, and the original division ceased to exist. A new 12th Division was organized and activated in late November, having three rifle regiments, each numbering about 2,000 troops. About 40 percent of the new division were veterans of the original North Korean Army that fought the summer battles; the other 60 percent were freshly conscripted men. The combat veterans of the new 12th Division came mostly from the original 7th, 9th, and 12th North Korean divisions. The men were issued winter uniforms and armed with Soviet rifles and hand grenades. The new North Korean 12th Division was assigned to the NK V Corps. The 12th Division left Kanggye on 25 November, headed south toward the battlefront, and was to operate as an organized guerrilla force.'s
During the second week of December, strong and active North Korean guerrilla groups were dominant in the Iron Triangle area, defeating the ROK 2nd and 5th divisions that had been sent there to secure the area for the UN. This vital area obviously was fast falling into the hands of North Korean Army forces. They began making probing attacks wherever they found UN forces. These North Korean forces belonged to the NK II Corps, which now held the Hwachon and Yonchon areas. The newly organized NK V Corps arrived during this period from Kanggye with its reorganized 6th, 12th, 31st, and 38th divisions. It went into positions in the mountains east of th
e NK II Corps, athwart the important central mountain corridor that led south. The NK V Corps reached as far east as Inje. The preliminary indications seemed to be in mid-December that the two recently formed North Korean II and V corps, holding the area from the Iron Triangle eastward to Inje, was forming an attack force along the central mountain corridor leading into South Korea at the same time the Chinese moved south to the west of them and formed a line from the coast to the Iron Triangle in the area north of Seoul.2°
In an effort to meet the growing threat that the North Korean Army was making to establish control of the central part of Korea east of the Iron Triangle, Eighth Army on 10 December ordered the ROK III Corps to move to Yongpyong ten miles south of Yonchon, and to assume control of the ROK 2nd, 5th, and 7th divisions. At the same time it ordered the ROK II Corps to move to Wonju with the ROK 8th and 9th divisions. The ROK 1st, 2nd, and 3rd security battalions were reorganized and given the mission of extending the UN line, or the eastern ROK portion of it, eastward from the Wonju-Hoengsong area to the Sea of Japan on the cast coast at a point three miles north of Yonpori. Here we see Eighth Army's first attempt to extend its line all the way across the Korean Peninsula and to counter the North Korean infiltration into the central corridor for a potential drive south. On this same day General Walker had a conference with President Syngman Rhee and his cabinet in Seoul.='
On 11 December the Far East intelligence report estimated that 40,000 North Korean guerrillas were in the Iron Triangle area, controlled by Gen. Kim Chack and his staff by radio from Kisan-ni. There Kim Chack and his staff lived in the village and nearby farmhouses and wore civilian clothing. It is noteworthy that Kim Chack had formerly been vice-premier of North Korea."
Disaster in Korea Page 58
