Bridges at "Toko-Ri", The

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE FICTION

IN 1955, JAMES MICHENER'S 1954 novel about U.S. Naval aviation in the Korean War was brought to the silver screen. The movie was very successful and still generates interest. Although his story was fictional, the foundation for it was not because Michener was allowed to spend time on the USS Essex and USS Valley Forge off the coast of North Korea during several critical planning sessions. He sat in on these and was also present during the after-strike debriefings that followed certain missions to destroy some of the most heavily defended bridges. The knowledge he gained by talking to the Navy pilots gave him the idea for his great novel. Although the movie gave these events a Hollywood spin, it still gave us all an idea of how dangerous the air war over Korea was.

The real story begins sometime around Thanksgiving 1951 when Michener arrived on the Essex. he stayed approximately six weeks and then moved to the Valley Forge. Not only was he able to extract the data he needed to write an award-winning novel, but he also penned a magazine article entitled "The Forgotten Heroes of Korea." This appeared in the May 10, 1952, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. In reality, the bridges he wrote about were situated across the neck of the Korean Peninsula-the route of the TransPeninsula Railroad-and if enemy forces were to have any chance of building enough supplies to maintain their ground troops or even to accumulate enough to sustain a major offensive, they had to keep these bridges intact-at any cost!

When the Chinese entered the war in early November 1950, the number of UN aircraft shot down increased because they determinedly defended their assets along the main roads and rail lines. Nevertheless, fighter-bombers constantly made rail cuts on the straight stretches, which were not as heavily defended because the lines could be repaired in hours under cover of darkness. But the bridges that spanned the gorges were almost impossible to repair, so they were usually defended with a greater number of antiaircraft weapons. As shown in the movie, these sites took a heavy toll on attacking aircraft. Something had to be done to reduce the losses and destroy more bridges. The slower attack aircraft (F4U Corsairs and AD Skyraiders) sustained heavy damage because they were the most vulnerable.

The terrain north of the 38th Parallel is mountainous, and most of the roads, rail lines and rivers run through deep valleys that contained some of the war's most crucial, best-defended targets, including the bridges. Records that cover the last six months of 1951 show that the U.S. Navy lost 55 Corsairs and 40 Skyraiders, and many of these were lost during attacks on these bridges.

Attempts to destroy the big bridge complexes at Changnim-ni and Majon'ni proved to be too costly. Intelligence sources confirmed that the bridges at Majon-ni were almost impregnable. They were protected by numerous gun emplacements concentrated in a very small area. Eleven radar sites controlled the guns (mostly 37mm with some five-inch guns), so all attack aircraft faced a well-planned defense. The guns were perfectly positioned to focus on a flight path that had to be flown to destroy the bridges. They had already extracted a heavy toll on UN aircraft, so something had to be done to put them out of commission-but without killing half of an Air Group.

In the late fall of 1951, the leader of Air Group Five on the Essex and several squadron commanders changed the bridge-destruction strategy. Until this time, many of the strikes used only one aircraft type on a mission-usually I either Corsairs or Skyraiders-loaded with bombs to attack specific targets. The Navy F9F Panthers were also available in large numbers, and as they didn't have the range and endurance of the propeller types, they were usually assigned closer targets. Also on board for their first combat cruise were a squadron of F2H Banshees flown by VF-172.

The strike planners on the Essex began to look at the idea of simultaneously using all four aircraft types against the most heavily defended targets. Working out the details of these new, coordinated, integrated attacks would not be easy; such attacks had to be precisely planned and timed.

There was one squadron of Grumman F9F Panthers (VF-Sl) on the carrier. Lt. K.C. Kramer-one of their most experienced pilotsflew some of the first strikes using the new tactics: "Planning for the coordinated attacks was very complicated, but the concept was valid, and the initial attacks against the bridges were very successful. It was the first time that we executed a major attack using all four of our strike aircraft against the same targets. It had not been done previously because jets operate under a totally different time schedule from the propeller types. We didn't have aerial refueling in those days, so a jet mission might last about one and a half hours. On the other hand, the Skyraiders and Corsairs could stay airborne for at least four hours, so this type of integrated attack required a lot of planning. all four squadrons had to arrive over the target at the same time, and because of the difference in speed between the jets and the prop types, it was a planner's nightmare! Nevertheless, they had it down correctly, and most of the time, we arrived over the target bridges together."