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9 The Pilots’ War The American imperialist aerial insurgents’ mad bombardments neither destroyed our front line transportation capability nor did they weaken it . . . Thus, due to the heroic struggle of the Korean people, the American imperialist “air power” had come to nothing. Official North Korean History of the Korean War,  The air war over Korea differed radically from the ground campaign, and in many ways, so did the plight of the pilots and other aircrew members captured by the communist forces. Throughout the war, UN aircraft controlled the Korean skies and destroyed enemy targets nearly at will. This ability, however, proved inconclusive against enemies who were seemingly immune to the loss of men and matériel. The UN aircrews also suffered heavy losses, and their communist interrogators starved, beat, and tortured the captured aircrews to extract confessions of participating in germ warfare. From the very start of the war, air power seemed to be the United Nations ’ trump card. If the invading North Korean ground forces appeared more capable than either their South Korean opponents or the American units hastily deployed from Japan, Western leaders never doubted the superior ability of the American and allied air forces. In fact, this same con- fidence contributed significantly to MacArthur’s dismissive attitude toward Chinese intervention prior to his fateful November offensive. During World War II, air power magnified MacArthur’s ability to isolate and destroy Japanese strongholds, and the aerial delivery of two atomic bombs had proven decisive in ending the war. In fact, MacArthur felt that the threat of B-s, which had devastated Japanese cities with fire and atomic bombs, would deter any Chinese thoughts of intervention. Moreover, he assumed that his aerial reconnaissance would detect any significant incursion and that his air forces would easily destroy the enemy’s formations as they moved south. “If The opening epigraph is from Mossman, The Effectiveness of Air Interdiction. the pilots’ war 157 the Chinese tried to get down to Pyongyang,” he promised Truman, “there would be the greatest slaughter.” MacArthur was wrong. In Korea, the UN forces fought a different enemy on different terrain—and under very different constraints. Foreshadowing problems in Vietnam, American airpower could not force a resilient, technologically inferior enemy to capitulate. While early air attacks wreaked havoc on the North Koreans’ supply lines, the Chinese proved exceptionally skilled at avoiding MacArthur’s reconnaissance aircraft, enabling them to surprise and overwhelm UN formations during their offensives in November and December of . Their primitive supply system, meanwhile, relied on human transport, dedicated repair crews, and the cover of night to keep supplies moving, facts that plagued UN air planners throughout the war. Attacks against roads, bridges, and rail lines, known doctrinally as “interdiction ,” proved especially frustrating. Communist labor battalions repaired the damage from airstrikes within hours of the attacks, and the supplies continued to reach their front lines. Truman’s strategy of fighting a limited war on the Korean peninsula prevented MacArthur and his successors from attacking the Manchurian supply bases that were sustaining the communist war effort. Constrained to attacking targets below the Yalu, the UN airplanes eventually ran out of suitable targets, having destroyed most of North Korea’s ports, airfields, factories, rail yards, and warehouses. At first, however, there were too many targets and not enough airplanes. By , MacArthur’s air forces were suffering from the same cost cutting that had crippled his ground-combat forces. Lieutenant General George Stratemeyer commanded a Far East Air Force (FEAF) of fewer than three dozen bombers and not even a hundred jet fighters. Prewar training focused on defending Japan against a Soviet air attack, and aircrews had done little training on ground-support missions. Moreover, North Korean troops soon overran most of the landing fields in South Korea capable of supporting U.S air operations. During the war’s first weeks, most UN aircrews flew from Japan, limiting their time on station at the front lines. A shortage of cargo planes severely delayed MacArthur’s efforts to resupply the withdrawing South Koreans and to rush his own forces to the peninsula. Stratemeyer immediately asked for reinforcements. Worried that North Korea’s invasion might be part of a broad Soviet assault, the Pentagon refused to transfer aircrews from Europe. Instead, the air force scrambled to form combat squadrons and recalled thousands of reservists, World War II veterans who had since received little or no...

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