Chapters:

1. To Korea by Sea
2. Policy and its Instruments
3. War Begins
4. Help on the Way
5. Into the Perimeter
6. Holding the Line
7. Back to the Parallel
8. On to the Border
9. Retreat to the South
10. The Second Six Months
11. Problems of a Policeman
12. Two More Years

A Note on Source Material

Glossary of Naval Abbreviations

• Part 1. The Unexpected Shape of War
• Part 2. Operating Problems
• Part 3. Logistic Support
• Part 4. Interservice Coordination and the Air Problem
• Part 5. The Larger Picture
• Part 6. Into the Future
• Source Notes

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Part 5. The Larger Picture

          Despite its violence and drama the struggle in Korea was but one aspect of a larger whole. While the tide of battle flowed up and down the peninsula, the war of maneuver, diplomacy, and subsidy continued all along the frontiers of the divided world. Unquestionably there were great differences between the operations in the Korean sector and the course of affairs elsewhere: as General MacArthur, who felt this most keenly, observed, "here we fight Europe’s war with arms while the diplomats there still fight it with words." But words are weapons; the aims and stakes were everywhere the same; Europe remained of primary importance and the boundaries of the shooting war subject to change.

          For the armed forces in the Far East, most of all, perhaps, for the Navy, the existence of Communist nations on both flanks, the commitment to defend Formosa, and the international nature of the high seas obscured the borders of the conflict. Of the possibilities inherent in the conduct of operations in an area flanked by unfriendly powers, both possessed of military air forces and one with a sizable submarine fleet, the most dramatic example had been the destruction of the Russian bomber in September 1950. But while the chance of similar incidents was ever present, it was with regard to the submarine that the question of when properly to engage an unidentified intruder was most puzzling.

          Early in the conflict Admiral Joy had advised his forces that "unidentified submarines may be attacked and driven off by any means available in self-defense or when offensive action against our forces is indicated," and that "continued submergence of an unidentified submarine in position to attack . . . is considered to indicate offensive action." Since submarines can detect an approaching surface force before being themselves discovered, and so enjoy a period of time in which to make their presence known, "continued submergence" was narrowly interpreted and sound contacts were invariably attacked at once. Such attacks were frequent in the first months of fighting, both in Korean waters and in the Ryukyu-Formosa area, but most targets were ultimately evaluated doubtful and some as positively non-submarine.

          The air action in the Yellow Sea was not repeated, and no submarine attacks developed. But there remained, most notably in the Formosa area and along the patrol plane tracks in the Yellow and Japan Seas, the possibility of chance encounters with Chinese Communist or Soviet forces. In the Yellow Sea, except for the loss of a patrol plane to North Korean antiaircraft, no incidents took place until summer of 1952, when two PBMs were attacked and damaged by Communist jets. In the Sea of Japan, however, in November 1951, a P2V failed to return from a northerly search, and subsequent information indicated that it had been shot down off Cape Ostrovnoy by Soviet fighters. Here in the north the Air Force also engaged in reconnaissance, and with similar results: in October 1952, a year after the loss of the P2V, a B-29 was shot down off Hokkaido by Soviet fighters; in March 1953 an RB-50 was attacked, although without damage, over the sea to the east of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

          In Formosa Strait, the region of Seventh Fleet’s contingent responsibility, the situation remained generally quiescent. The alarm of late July 1950 had brought the hasty diversion of Helena and a destroyer division from Korea, followed within a few days by Juneau. Early in August Admiral Struble formed Juneau, two destroyers, and an oiler into Task Group 77.3, based at Keelung and shortly to be reinforced by Worcester and another destroyer from the Mediterranean. By month’s end Rear Admiral Thomas H. Binford, who in 1942 had commanded the old fourstackers in the Java Sea fighting, had arrived from the United States in the heavy cruiser Saint Paul to assume command of the Formosa Patrol. Although the crisis of December brought the surface units north the task group was shortly reconstituted, and throughout the war surveillance of the strait was continued by Seventh Fleet surface units and by patrol planes.

          Here, too, as in the north, long-range naval aircaft working the area from their bases in the Pescadores, at Buckner Bay, and on Luzon, had intermittent brushes with the Communists. As early as 26 July 1950 a P4Y was attacked by fighters in northern Formosa Strait, but escaped without damage; ten days later a PBM was fired on by antiaircraft batteries in the neighborhood of Amoy. On 5 November a PBM failed to return from southern Formosa Strait, and although searches were persistent they were also negative and the cause of loss remained unknown. Two generally peaceful years followed, but in the autumn of 1952 there developed a number of antiaircraft actions with shore batteries and small warships, and on two occasions patrol aircraft were attacked by MIGs. But no plane was lost until January 1953, when a P2V was shot down by gunfire from a coastal island and a Coast Guard PBM, sent to rescue the crew, itself crashed and sank while attempting takeoff in heavy seas.

          So despite all hazards the war remained circumscribed. Although planning for larger things had followed the intervention of the CCF, the blockade of mainland China was never implemented and mainland target folders stayed on the shelf. The intensity of action diminished rapidly with distance, and except for minor incidents shooting was limited to Korea and to Korean waters. In the northern Sea of Japan the units of the Soviet Far Eastern Fleet maneuvered, undisturbed and undisturbing. Through the waters of the Western Pacific, Soviet and Chinese Communist merchant ships continued on their way, subject only to the photographic efforts of search planes and submarines. But while the area of actual combat remained small, related events of great importance were taking place throughout the world.

          In the United States, in September 1950, a controversial career ended as Louis Johnson, in part the architect and in part the victim of the Truman administration’s defense policies, departed Washington, and General Marshall, again recalled from retirement, reigned in his place. Already, however, the policies had changed. With the invasion of South Korea the $14 billion ceiling vanished overnight, and budgeting and planning officers labored to keep up with administration willingness to approve and congressional readiness to appropriate. In the fiscal year 1949–50, the year of interservice quarreling and the B-36 hearings, naval appropriations, originally voted at slightly over $5 billion, had been cut by the Johnsonian ax to less than $4½ billion. For 1950–51 they totalled more than $12 billion, and in the following fiscal year monies appropriated for the Navy alone would exceed the earlier three-service ceiling, while the total defense budget would approach $60 billion.

          It is, of course, easier to appropriate than to spend, and the events of immediate significance were less the dollar votes than the recall of reserves, the expansion of selective service calls, and the reactivation of fleet units and base facilities. But with the passing of time expenditures also rose dramatically: the $14¼ billion spent by all services in fiscal 1950 rose to $38¼ billion in 1952; for the Navy alone the increase was from $4.1 billion to almost $10 billion. The effects on the national economy were not disastrous.

          For the Navy’s operating forces two principal consequences followed this dollar flood: an immediate expansion of the fleet through reactivation of mothballed ships, and its subsequent strengthening by conversion of existing units and by new construction. Reserving the latter subject for later treatment, it may be noted here that fleet expansion took place in all categories from attack carriers of the Essex class down to yard craft and liberty boats. The extent and speed of this expansion may be inferred from a tabulation of major combatant ships in active service in June and October 1950.

	June 1950			October 1950
Type	Atlantic Fleet	Pacific Fleet	Total	Atlantic Fleet	Pacific Fleet	Total
Fleet carriers	4	3	7	4	5	9
Light carriers	3	1	4	4	1	5
Escort carriers	2	2	4	3	3	6
Battleships	1	0	1	1	1	2
Cruisers	7	6	13	8	8	16
Totals	17	12	29	20	18	38

          The 50 percent expansion of the Pacific Fleet, while sufficiently impressive, is perhaps less remarkable than the fact that the Atlantic Fleet should have expanded at all, while at the same time contributing heavily to the increase of Far Eastern naval strength. From this Fleet, by way of the Suez and Panama Canals, there came in the early months a battleship, a fleet carrier, a light cruiser, a destroyer squadron and an escort destroyer division, a hospital ship, three attack transports, three attack cargo ships, and two LSDs. This was no inconsiderable contribution, yet it was dwarfed by that of the Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, which for a time almost disappeared as a result of the need to reinforce the 1st Marine Division for Inchon. In the period between June and mid-August, when FMFLant hit its low point, onboard personnel, officer and enlisted, diminished from 18,470 to a mere 3,196.

          Notable as was this westward shift of force, it was controlled and limited. Great though they were, the exigencies of the Korean situation were not permitted to overthrow the broad lines of accepted strategy. The defense of Europe remained the primary task; the larger portion of the Navy remained in the Atlantic. And as a precautionary measure, since none could read the future, the outbreak of fighting in Asia was soon followed by a forward deployment on the other side of the world.

          In the Mediterranean Sea, where geography affords the opportunity to reach behind the Iron Curtain and to sustain the independence of the nations of Southern Europe and the Near East, the Navy maintained its Sixth Fleet. This fleet, lineal descendant of the Naval Forces Mediterranean of World War II days, had received its current designation in early 1950. Its existing deployment dated from the previous year, at which time the Atlantic Fleet had organized three carrier task forces, one of which was at all times kept on station in the Mediterranean, along with an amphibious element embarking a Marine battalion and miscellaneous supporting units. Spring of 1950 had seen this force, built around the carrier Leyte and the cruisers Salem and Worcester, engaged in routine exercises. With the invasion of the Republic of Korea its strength was to be more than doubled.

          Escorted by a division of destroyers, the large carrier Midway, which already enjoyed a limited nuclear capability, was speedily sailed for the Mediterranean, where she arrived in mid-July and where she was joined shortly by her sister Coral Sea. With the striking force thus strengthened, Worcester and a destroyer division were detached to the Far East by way of Suez, followed in mid-August by Bexar and Montague with the Marine battalion, while Leyte was returned to the United States for further transfer to the Far East by way of Panama. There remained in the Sixth Fleet the 2 large carriers, 3 cruisers, and 14 destroyers, and in September the force was further strengthened by an antisubmarine group formed about the escort carrier Mindoro. But with the period of triumph in Korea the crisis seemed to have been surmounted, tension diminished, and Sixth Fleet was cut back to normal size.

          The reduction, like the triumph, was to prove short-lived. As the emergency which followed Chinese intervention in Korea brought a second hasty reinforcement of the Far East, so too it governed movements in the Atlantic. In January a new augmentation of the Sixth Fleet was begun, as a light carrier, a destroyer division, and two fast minesweepers were ordered forward. With the apparent imminence of a major spring crisis the scheduled May relieving group of one large carrier, 11 destroyers, and ancillary units was sailed to reach the Mediterranean in March; at the same time an amphibious task element with a Marine battalion was sent forward to provide, for the first time since the previous August, a limited amphibious capability. Following the arrival of these reinforcements the ships already on station were kept on through early May, with the result that these months saw the largest concentration of American naval power in the Mediterranean since the end of World War II.

          The expected crisis did not come, but little relaxation resulted. Over and above the necessity of strengthening its striking force in Mediterranean waters, and of contributing to Far Eastern naval strength, manifold responsibilities weighed upon the Atlantic Fleet. During the warm months resupply convoys had to be sent up to the Arctic. Spring of 1951 brought the need to transport and land the newly established Iceland Defense Force. An arduous and continuing schedule of training in convoy work, mine warfare, amphibious operations, and air defense had to be maintained. The strains of rapid expansion, brought about by reactivation of mothballed ships and the activation of new aviation units, imposed a heavy load in personnel training and administration as on-board complement expanded in the space of two years from 107,575 to 235,426. Nor was non-shooting war without its costs: the greatest single tragedy of the period of the Korean conflict took place in the Atlantic, when in April 1952, in the course of night air operations, the DMS Hobson got in front of the carrier Wasp and was run down and sunk with a loss of 176 lives.

          So war in Europe, if still in CincFE’s phrase only a war of words, absorbed large quantities of naval strength. And in diplomacy, as in the military establishment, the sense of urgency deriving from aggression in Korea was employed to strengthen the defenses of the West. This process was most notable in the fleshing out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, where the treaty of April 1949 had been followed by requests for American military assistance and these, in October, by the Mutual Defense Act. More paperwork and negotiation followed, but in March of 1950 shipment of materiel began with the sailing of a load of naval aircraft on the French carrier Dixmude, a vessel of appropriately international background which, begun as an American merchant ship, had been converted to an auxiliary aircraft carrier, lend-leased for wartime service to Great Britain, and ultimately transferred to the French Navy.

          The NATO powers had by now agreed on broad strategic concepts, and the wheels of implementation were grinding. The pace, however, remained leisurely: Russian forces in the satellites outnumbered those available for the defense of Europe by perhaps five to one, and the latter, of widely varying quality, were maldeployed, malsupported, and without a coordinating command structure. But Korea changed all this. In the new atmosphere came new effort, and on 15 September, as the Marines were going over the seawalls at Inchon, the North Atlantic Council voted to create an integrated force under centralized command. In December the call went out for General Eisenhower to return to the scene of his earlier triumphs; in January the organization of a headquarters was begun; on 2 April 1951 SHAPE assumed operational control of NATO forces.

          Although much remained to be done, General Eisenhower’s hand had already been strengthened by the arrival of new Army and Air Force contingents, as well as by expansion of the Sixth Fleet. Following the invasion of South Korea an increase of jet fighters and B-50 bombers had trebled Air Force strength in the United Kingdom. In the course of 1951 the Air Divisions there and in Germany were expanded into Air Forces, the southern flank was strengthened by acquisition of North African airbases, and four more Army divisions reached Europe to join the two already there. There was also reinforcement from within: in Europe as in America defense expenditures rose steadily, and while the American contribution continued to predominate, the outlays of European NATO members more than doubled between 1949 and 1952.

          While the defenses were going up in Europe the right flank was pushed forward through the Mediterranean. Here geography and naval power permitted both the development of advanced airfields in Tripoli and Saudi Arabia and the extension of NATO planning to include Greece and Turkey. These were hardly Atlantic states, and their accession was consequently opposed by some, but the sea road that connected them with the Atlantic made possible their support against pressure from the north. These facts of life were emphasized and western power made tangible in the summer of 1950 by the appearance of the Sixth Fleet at Phaleron Bay, just east of the Piraeus; by amphibious exercises in Crete; and by an aerial demonstration staged over Lebanon at the request of the Lebanese government. Late in the year Greece and Turkey were invited to associate themselves with NATO planning, and in early 1951 the Sixth Fleet again called at Phaleron Bay. In May the United States proposed formal NATO membership for these countries, and in July Coral Sea and her attendant ships dropped anchor at Istanbul. In the fall the formal invitation to accede was issued, and early in 1952 the transaction was consummated.

          Naval diplomacy was by this time in full swing, and the fleet was showing the flag in a new area. The adherence of Greece and Turkey to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization greatly emphasized the importance of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Army. Here cooperation had been facilitated by the end of civil war in Greece and by Tito’s break with Russia. Subsequent to these developments crop failures had forced this Communist country to turn westward and, despite many protestations to the contrary, to start edging into the position of a constructive member of NATO. By early 1951 Yugoslav preparations to receive assistance were in progress and in February food and credits began arriving. In April former German military equipment was provided by France and Britain, to be followed, with poetic justice, by Russian gear captured in Korea. Before the year was out military missions had been exchanged with the United States, and in December Sixth Fleet units visited a Yugoslav port. In 1952 this developing cordiality brought a task force built around Coral Sea to Split, finest of Adriatic harbors, where Marshal Tito was himself embarked and edified by a demonstration of flight operations.

          By early 1952 the NATO naval command structure had been completed, and arduous efforts in the coordination of multinational forces were beginning to flower in large-scale naval exercises. In November a six-nation operation was carried out; in the following March a large NATO maneuver was held in the Western Mediterranean; in the autumn of 1953 the Sixth Fleet would sortie to the North Atlantic, to join the forces of that ocean in the greatest combined exercise to date.

          So in Europe, as in Korea, the line was held, and even slightly improved. As always the imperfect world contained sufficient difficulties: despite SEATO and the Baghdad Pact, the unsettled conditions of Southeast Asia and the Near East continued to resist treatment. Still, it could be said that the events set in train by the invasion of South Korea had reacted, on balance, to the detriment rather than the advantage of the Communist world. The North Korean People’s Army had been destroyed and the forces of Communist China heavily punished. Japan had been protected; the Republic of Korea had been liberated; Formosa had not fallen. In Europe NATO had been built up. The United States, keystone of the entire structure, was to a considerable degree rearmed.

          All this, of course, had been accomplished by way of reaction. That so much had to be credited to the North Koreans rather than to the conscious and purposeful initiative of the West was perhaps cause for philosophical regret. But the response, for the moment at least, had been a notable one.