ABSTRACT

In the small hours of Sunday, 25 June 1950, seven Russian-trained, advised, and equipped North Korean divisions and an armored brigade executed a wellplanned surprise attack across the 38th parallel against South Korea, quickly overwhelming the latter’s advance posts, and commencing a swift movement down the peninsula against what proved to be ineffectively organized opposition. Facing the North Korean onslaught was a South Korean army that was, in truth, a constabulary force intended primarily for maintaining internal order. Numbering about 100,000 men and organized into eight divisions, it had no heavy arms. It was in the process of small-unit training, but had no experience in large-scale maneuvers, or in anti-tank tactics.2 General of the Army Douglas MacArthur had the responsibility to repel this invasion. MacArthur knew his military history, both ancient and recent. He read and studied widely in the former; at 47 years of military service, he had played a central role in much of the latter. MacArthur also possessed unsurpassed operational vision and the confidence to develop audacious operational ideas out of that vision. He knew from first-hand experience the close relationship between actions at sea and events ashore. At the same time, in Korea he was supported by an array of subordinate commanders, especially from the Navy, with the professional wherewithal and force capabilities to translate his operational ideas into workable courses of action.3 The present chapter focuses on the close relationship during the first three months of the Korean War between naval operations, particularly those directed toward (1) attaining and maintaining control of the sea; and (2) providing maneuver via amphibious operations to affect events ashore, specifically the landing at Inchon. Absent control of the sea, operational success would have been patently impossible.