Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (57 page)

Chinese intelligence had read the signs even if Kim Il Sung could not: hundreds of ships in Japanese harbors, practice amphibious assaults, and the well-known capabilities of the U.S. Marines. Yet despite ample warnings, Chromite caught Pyongyang completely by surprise.
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Inchon was captured, followed by Kimpo airfield, and at the end of the day the Americans had suffered fewer than thirty casualties.

Attacking the South Korean capital of Seoul wasn’t quite so simple. Finally aware of the danger to his army, Kim Il Sung sent 20,000 fresh troops south to reinforce the 25,000 NKA soldiers occupying the city. Had MacArthur given command of Chromite to a combat soldier, then the next few weeks might have gone very differently. Thousands of lives might have been saved, and the entire North Korean army might have been bagged as it retreated up the peninsula.

But Army Maj. Gen. Ned Almond wasn’t that man. Primarily a staff officer, in World War II he’d blamed his division’s combat failure on the fact that they were predominantly black troops. Relegated to the oblivion of personnel management in 1946, he’d eventually caught MacArthur’s attention. Vain and aggressive, with no fighting skills whatsoever, Almond patronized the Marine commanders and, modeling himself after MacArthur, refused advice from anyone more experienced than himself. Only the token North Korean resistance had saved him from disaster at Inchon. In any event, the Eighth Army broke out of Pusan on September 16 and eventually linked up with 10th Corps. Seoul was liberated by the end of the month, and a victorious MacArthur prepared for his real offensive, as he saw it.

On September 30 the South Korean 2nd Division headed north across the 38th parallel. A week later the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division crossed into North Korea and turned toward Pyongyang. MacArthur was jubilant, Truman and the Joint Chiefs were nervous, and American fighter pilots ruled the skies, looking for targets.

Two hundred miles to the north, across the Yalu River, the Chinese waited—and watched.

MORE THAN 60
percent of the American public favored going north across the 38th parallel and finishing off Kim Il Sung. Of course, these same people didn’t have to eat C-rations, freeze at night, die in the air, or live without their loved ones. Most of the military hierarchy also wanted to continue, but that was expected. If a line was breached, you pressed through it; if an enemy was on the ropes, you kept hitting till he was down, out, and finished. The whole concept of a limited war hadn’t caught on with the generation that fought and won the Second World War, least of all with MacArthur.

He never intended to stop at the 38th parallel once South Korea was liberated. His goal had always been reunification, and that meant destroying the North Korean Army—nothing less would satisfy his image of himself. You see, MacArthur saw himself as
the
man of this century, a truly pivotal figure destined for greatness, and someone that all lesser men should heed. Self-confidence and even arrogance are forgiven in winning generals, but obtuseness to the point of megalomania was frightening in one responsible for so many lives. MacArthur often referred to himself in the third person and insisted that photographs only be taken from a lower vantage so he’d appear taller, majestic—even his wife called him “the general.” And rather than saluting the president of the United States, MacArthur merely shook his hand.

Without detracting from his judgment at Inchon and undoubted good fortune in bringing it off, Douglas MacArthur was not the general he believed himself to be. His pattern of career miscalculations included the Japanese, the North Koreans, and now the Chinese. He knew little or nothing about them; how they fought, their goals, and what their motivations might be. He didn’t care, and to ask questions would imply that there was something he didn’t know. Such contempt is dangerous in a commander and usually leads to disastrous underestimation.

And so it did.

The general flew to Wake Island to meet with President Truman in mid-October 1950 and not only did he tell Truman that the war was won, but he
believed
it. If it had been only Korea, then he would’ve been correct, but everyone else was worried about direct Chinese intervention. Everyone except Doug MacArthur. He told the president, “I believe that formal resistance will end throughout North and South Korea by Thanksgiving.” He also planned to bring the Eighth Army back to Japan by Christmas.

“What are the chances for Chinese or Soviet interference?” Truman asked him directly.

MacArthur was dismissive, indicating that Beijing had had its chance at the beginning of the war but it was too late now. “They have no air force,” he said. “Now that we have bases for our own Air Force in Korea, if the Chinese tried to get down to Pyongyang there would be the greatest slaughter.”

Unfortunately, China had already made the decision.

Since August three army groups—more than twenty-seven divisions and half a million men—had moved into Manchuria. Chairman Mao Zedong had several very good motives for doing so, which MacArthur should have known about and considered. First, Mao wanted to send a sign to the world that he controlled the new China, a China free of foreign domination and taking its place in the world. Second, Chiang Kai-shek’s establishment of the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan rankled Communist pride, especially as there was nothing Mao could do about it at the moment. There was just no way around the U.S. Navy and Air Force, nor did Red China have an amphibious capability. So Mao couldn’t face the Americans across the Formosa Strait, but he could face them in a land war through Korea. If they could be defeated, it would send a very clear message to the Nationalists on Taiwan.

That he would achieve victory, he had no doubt; the Chinese soldier was, he knew, superior to the American. Revolutionary fervor and moral clarity ensured that, he believed. There was only one weakness in the plan—air cover. Without it his troops would fail in the face of overwhelming U.S. firepower. The North Korean air force had long since ceased to exist and his own PLAAF wasn’t up to the task. There was only one military in the area that could possibly take on the Americans—the Soviet Union.

This was not as straightforward as it seemed to most Westerners, and it is a great mistake to think of Communist nations as a unified whole. They may espouse a similar surface ideology, but they were not, and are not, homogenous. Mao disliked Stalin personally and distrusted the Soviet Union because regardless of who sat in the Kremlin it was still Russia. On the other hand, Mao had no real choice because he needed the Red Air Force. For his part, Stalin was interested in a Communist Korea to counterbalance Communist China and a resurgent, American-backed Japan. But he absolutely did not want open war with the United States. He remembered all too well that his Red Army had worn 11 million pairs of American boots during the last war and had driven into Berlin on two-and-a-half-ton trucks made in Detroit. There would be no Soviet troops actively fighting, but supplying aircraft and training fighter pilots was another matter altogether.

Despite the loss of overt Soviet support, the Chinese 13th Army Group secretly crossed the Yalu River on October 19, the same day UN troops entered Pyongyang. Marching only at night, the Chinese didn’t use vehicles or radio communications. If any aircraft were spotted, the soldiers froze, knowing that movement attracts sight. Generally lacking heavy weapons, they were able to carry their supplies on their backs.
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This would not be the last time a low-tech solution to American high technology plagued the U.S. military.

After the North Koreans destroyed the ROK II Corps at Onjong, their first combat with U.S. forces occurred on November 1, 1950, near Unsan. The Eighth U.S. Cavalry was surrounded, badly cut up, and had to fall back across the Ch’ongch’on River. Incredibly, MacArthur still didn’t accept that the Chinese had invaded in earnest. Believing that it was simply harassment, he stuck to his “home by Christmas” plan, and by late November some units were actually cleaning equipment in preparation for the anticipated redeployment. To the utter amazement of other UN soldiers, the Americans actually managed to fly in a traditional Thanksgiving meal for their soldiers.

But the holiday ended the following day. The Chinese overran the South Koreans, and the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division was badly mauled to the west, creating an 80-mile gap in the UN lines. It was worse to the east, as the Chinese Ninth Army Group tried to encircle the Americans near the Chosin Reservoir. By December 1, with heavy Corsair air support, Regimental Combat Team 31 (RCT-31) of the U.S. 7th Infantry and the 1 Marine Division were able to fight their way clear.
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The USAF dropped portable Treadway bridge spans that were hastily assembled by combat engineers. Consequently, the last U.S. Marines crossed the Funchilin Pass on December 11 heading for Hungnam on the east coast. Naval, Marine, and USAF aircraft provided nonstop close air support to slow the Chinese advance while 193 ships evacuated the soldiers. By Christmas Eve the port was empty and on Christmas Day 1951 the PVA 27th Corps entered the harbor; North Korea was effectively occupied by the People’s Volunteer Army.

THE CHINESE CROSSED
the Yalu into Korea over two main bridges. The North Korean 56th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment was initially the only air cover available until it was thoroughly thrashed by the Mustangs. Air support then fell to Soviet Yak-9 fighters and three squadrons of the new MiG-15s.

The MiG had made its appearance two years earlier during the 1948 Tushino Air Show. Designed to counter a high-altitude threat posed by American bombers, the MiG was tough, simple, and easy to maintain. Self-sealing fuel tanks and cockpit armor were good inclusions; however, there were problems with nearly everything else.

The weapons suite was powerful with one 37 mm cannon and two 23 mm cannons, but they were intended to knock down B-29s, not to dogfight. Left over from World War II, the ASP-1N gunsight was useless at speeds above 500 mph. The sight had been designed with .303-caliber ballistics in mind, not cannons. Bigger guns certainly packed a punch, but they fired relatively slowly and the MiG could only carry 11 seconds’ worth of ammunition.
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Despite having captured thousands of German technicians, designs, and documents, the Soviets often had trouble turning theory into a workable jet. Over 80 percent of the Third Reich’s aircraft production facilities were under postwar Soviet control so the Russians packed everything up and shipped it to Moscow. Jet engines were a real problem for the Soviets, until eventually the British Rolls-Royce Nene was reverse-engineered into the RD-45 and put into the MiG-15.
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Installed in a relatively light aircraft, the powerful engine gave the MiG an exemplary thrust-to-weight ratio, allowing it to outperform any other fighter.

Thrust
, as fighter pilots use it, is simply a measurement of a jet engine’s power, similar to using horsepower as a piston engine rating. By 1950, jet propulsion was certainly not a new idea for fighter aircraft. Frank Whittle submitted designs for a patent in 1932 and, as mentioned, Heinkel had successfully flown the He 178 in August 1939. By the end of World War II, the Me 262 (see Chapter 12) and the RAF Gloster Meteor were both viable jet fighters. The real attraction to jet propulsion was the power and potential speed such an engine produced.

Think of a squid sucking water in one end and expelling it from the other. The expulsion of fluid, in this case water, propels the creature through the sea. A jet works on exactly the same principle: air is sucked into an intake and compressed using a narrower chamber and series of spinning blades. It’s then mixed with fuel and forced into a combustion chamber, where the mixture is ignited. The resulting high-pressure explosions are forced through turbine blades and expelled in the form of thrust. Once the process begins, the turbines continue to suck air to be compressed, mixed, exploded and expelled over and over until fuel is exhausted or the engine comes apart.

This was the real problem with early engines. The concept was simple, but putting it into practice was much more difficult until manufacturing techniques caught up with design. In conjunction with wing loading, the thrust-to-weight ratio, which is the engine’s rated thrust divided by the aircraft weight, is vital in describing the performance capability of a modern jet fighter. The MiG-15 RD-45 produced 6,000 pounds of thrust and the fighter’s loaded weight was about 10,000 pounds, giving a 0.60:1 thrust-to-weight ratio. A higher number means greater acceleration and climb performance but not necessarily a better fighter, and the MiG-15 is a perfect illustration of that discrepancy.

Poor metallurgical skills and extremely inconsistent manufacturing processes created astonishing problems with the wings. At higher airspeeds they would actually droop, and most of them weren’t even the same length. This caused aerodynamic issues resulting in more than fifty-five documented (and truly spectacular) out-of-control situations during combat. The cockpit was a nightmare, cramped, badly organized, and with rearward visibility so poor that eventually a periscope was added!

Air combat technical capabilities, as we’ve seen so far, are about managing design trade-offs to produce an effective aircraft. The MiG-15 was a point defense fighter meant to scramble off the ground and quickly zoom to altitude against a bomber threat. As long as the target was a heavy, nonmaneuvering aircraft, the MiG’s one or two passes should bring it down.

Early in November a strike force of seventy-nine B-29s was sent to destroy both bridges over the Yalu, then level the North Korean city of Sinuiju. Though the bridges remained intact, the raid prompted the Soviet Far Eastern Military District air commander to ask the Kremlin to relax the restrictions on MiG combat. This was granted, and on November 10 a reconnaissance B-29 was ravaged by MiG-15s so badly that it crashed in Japan. During the next month another Superfortress was lost and five more were damaged.