Korean War, U.S. Naval Operations in the

Korean War, U.S. Naval Operations in the. In addition to the role of the U.S. Marine Corps, the ships and planes of the U.S. Navy played a vital role in the Korean War (1950–1953). When President Harry Truman ordered U.S. forces to try to block the North Korean invasion of South Korea, the first units deployed were aircraft from the navy and the air force. U.S. naval forces in the western Pacific in 1950 included Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy's force in Japan consisting of a light cruiser and four destroyers and the Seventh Fleet in the Philippines under Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble, comprising the carrier Valley Forge, a heavy cruiser, and several destroyers and submarines. Since the North Korean navy consisted only of 45 small craft, these U.S. naval vessels eventually joined by the British light carrier Triumph and a some other warships, took command of the seas around the Korean peninsula. Naval and air force planes also quickly destroyed the small North Korean air force. This allowed the forces of the United Nations to move and be supplied unimpeded and it enabled carrier‐based planes and sometimes surface ships to bombard the enemy forces and supply lines.

The navy's most dramatic exploit was the Inchon Landing (1950), a daring amphibious envelopment planned by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Commander in Chief Far East, to capture the South Korean capital of Seoul and its port, Inchon, then deep behind North Korean lines. The difficulties were enormous, for Inchon lay behind miles of islands, shoals, and mud flats, approachable from the sea only through two narrow, winding channels. These could be easily mined and if an attacking ship were disabled by mine, bomb, or a shell from the guarding fortified island it would trap those ahead and block those behind. Nevertheless, Admiral Forrest Sherman, chief of naval operations, agreed, and an international fleet of 230 ships carried the more than 70,000 soldiers and Marines to the successful Inchon landing, catching the defenders, who had not mined the harbor, largely by surprise.

Later, when the Chinese intervened and the war turned against the U.N. forces again, the navy evacuated 100,000 army and Marine forces from the northeast coast. Despite the Chinese advances, air strikes from land‐ and ship‐based planes destroyed bridges and interdicted roads and railroads by day. Truman rejected MacArthur's proposal to widen the war by bombing the Peoples Republic of China and using the Seventh Fleet to blockade its coasts and transport Nationalist Chinese troops from Taiwan to fight in Korea or mainland China. But the communist forces were soon halted in 1951 and agreed to truce talks.

Naval success in the Korean War, in particular the Inchon landing and the continual employment of carrier‐based air attacks, won congressional support for an expanded navy, including supercarriers, to implement the navy's forward maritime strategy in the Cold War.
[See also Korean War: U.S. Air Operations in the; Navy, U.S.: Since 1946.]

Bibliography

James A. Field, Jr. , United States Naval Operations, Korea, 1962;
Richard P. Hallion , The Naval Air War in Korea, 1986;
Allan R. Millett , Korea, 1950–1953, in Benjamin Franklin Cooling, ed., Case Studies in the Development of Close Air Support, 1990.

John Whiteclay Chambers II