"Gull wings in sight"

Sea Power, Dec 2000 by Hudner, Thomas J Jr

Mid-1949, when I was finishing flight training, was not a good time for the armed services. With World War II four years behind us, the likelihood of another war seemed remote. Moreover, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson seemed intent on cutting the military to the bone. The defense budget had been reduced to the point that many ships couldn't get underway, and flying was cut back drastically. Flight training came to a halt in June, and those of us in the flight program were sent on leave until I July-the start of the new fiscal year, when new money would become available.

I received my wings in the late summer of 1949 and in October reported to Fighter Squadron 32 (VF-32), flying the gull-winged F4U-4 Corsairs as a unit of Carrier Air Group 3 stationed at Naval Air Station, Quonset Point, R.I. In early May 1950 we embarked on the aircraft carrier USS Leyte and deployed from Quonset for a six-month Mediterranean cruise. We had two Corsair squadrons, one F9F-2 Panther squadron, and one AD-3 Skyraider squadron, as well as detachments of early warning, electronic-- countermeasures, photo, and both night-- attack and night-fighter aircraft.

On 25 June 1950, Sunday, while at anchor in the French Riviera, we received the news of the North Korean invasion of South Korea. Where was Korea? Most of us had only the vaguest idea.

In January, only five months earlier, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had said in a speech that that part of the world was outside the United States area of interest. But President Harry S. Truman recognized the seriousness of such aggressive communist action and instantly concentrated on getting U.N. support for South Korea, while ordering to the waters off Korea the few U.S. naval forces that were immediately available. The United States had only one aircraft carrier and one patrol squadron in.Northeast Asia at the time of the attack.

Overwhelmed and Trapped

Shipboard news was hard to come by in those days, but we did receive snippets of information as to how the war was progressing-and it wasn't good. U.S. and Republic of Korea (ROK-i.e., South Korea) troops were overwhelmed and trapped in Pusan on the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula. But we continued to follow our schedule in the Mediterranean until 8 August, when we were anchored off Beirut, Lebanon. On that date, without any advance warning to the troops, the aircraft carrier USS Midway showed up to relieve us so we could get underway for Korea-by way of Norfolk, the Panama Canal, San Diego, Hawaii, and Japan-a distance of roughly 20,000 miles. (Major ships could not transit the Suez Canal at that time.)

We made our first strikes against targets in North Korea on 8 October 1950, three weeks after the successful amphibious invasion at Inchon, near the South Korean capital of Seoul. That landing relieved the pressure on the forces in Pusan and started the U.N. drive to the north.

Our missions included bombing (military and critical industrial targets), armed reconnaissance (attacks against military targets of opportunity within a prescribed area), and close air support -in which, under the direction of a ground or air controller, we attacked enemy troops in direct contact with our own ground forces.

Our most important battle, by far, was in the area of the Chosin Reservoir in November and December. Our pilots had sighted some Chinese troops in North Korea at least a month earlier than the time of the massive attackby an estimated 10 Chinese divisions-- across the Yalu River (the boundary between North Korea and China). Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur and his staff downplayed the significance of the initial sightings. Meanwhile, our troops, by this time well north of the 38th parallel that separated North and South Korea, continued their advance towards Manchuria. Mao Tse Tung's warnings not to get too close to China were ignored by MacArthur.

Fighting for Their Lives

In late November, the Chinese hurled 120,000 to 150,000 troops against the approximately 15,000 troops of the First Marine Division and the Army's Seventh Infantry Division then in the area of the Chosin Reservoir. The only way out was down a narrow mountain road barely wide enough for a vehicle to pass in either direction. The tops of the mountains extended to as high as 7,000 feet, there was about a foot and a half of snow on the ground, and the temperatures dropped at times to minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Our Marines and Soldiers were fighting for their lives, not only against a foe ordered by their high command to annihilate them, but also against snow, ice, and the numbing cold.

The mountainous terrain was another obstacle. Our troops were fighting up and down the slopes and in the valleys, so our pilots had to be constantly alert to the topography. There also was a danger that, in bombing or strafing runs, paying too much attention to the target ("target fixation") could result in flying into a mountain while pulling out of a dive. Another danger was inadvertently flying into clouds without knowing whether you could climb above a mountain or fly into it.