Over The Seawall: U.S. Marines At Inchon [Illustrated Edition]
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This volume in the official History of the Marine Corps chronicles the invasion by United States Marines at Inchon in the initial stages of the Korean War.
The Battle of Inchon was an amphibious invasion and battle of the Korean War that resulted in a decisive victory and strategic reversal in favor of the United Nations. The operation involved some 75,000 troops and 261 naval vessels, and led to the recapture of the South Korea capital Seoul two weeks later. The code name for the operation was Operation Chromite. The battle began on 15 September 1950 and ended on 19 September. Through a surprise amphibious assault far from the Pusan Perimeter that UN and South Korean forces were desperately defending, the largely undefended city of Incheon was secured after being bombed by UN forces. The battle ended a string of victories by the invading North Korean People’s Army (NKPA). The subsequent UN recapture of Seoul partially severed NKPA’s supply lines in South Korea. The majority of United Nations ground forces involved were U.S. Marines, commanded by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of the United States Army. MacArthur was the driving force behind the operation, overcoming the strong misgivings of more cautious generals to a risky assault over extremely unfavorable terrain.
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons
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Over The Seawall - Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons
This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com
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Text originally published in 2000 under the same title.
© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
U.S. MARINES AT INCHON
BY
BRIGADIER GENERAL EDWIN H. SIMMONS,
U.S. MARINE CORPS, RETIRED
The mop-up at Inchon turned up a group of young North Koreans, left as harassing forces. Photo courtesy of Leatherneck Magazine
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 6
U.S. MARINES AT INCHON 7
Planning 7
Opening Moves 7
Unready Eighth Army 10
Cates Offers Marines 10
Shepherd Meets with MacArthur 11
Under the U.N. Flag 12
Visitors from Washington 13
Tactical Air Control Problems 14
Joint Chiefs Reluctant 14
A New CG 15
Eighth Army Withdraws to Pusan 16
Reserve Comes to Active Duty 17
7th Infantry Division and KATUSA 18
1st Marine Division Loads Out 19
Joint Chiefs Have a Problem 19
O. P. Smith Departs Pendleton 20
Marine Versus Air Force Close Support 20
Top Brass Gathers in Tokyo 21
Critical 23 August Conference Convenes 22
Disappointment for General Shepherd 25
Plans Progress 26
‘Conditional’ Approval 26
MacArthur Protests 28
Beach Reconnaissance 29
Wolmi-do: Key to Operation 30
Typhoon Jane Disrupts Embarkation 32
Almond Inspects Marines 32
President Writes Letter 35
Pulling Together the Landing Force 35
Almond’s Good Ideas 36
Second Typhoon 37
Execution 38
MacArthur Goes to Sea 39
Operation ‘Common Knowledge’ 40
‘Sitting Ducks’ 40
Attack Force Gathers 41
Destination Wolmi-do 42
‘Wolmi-do Secured’ 45
Waiting for Evening Tide 46
Assaulting Red Beach 52
Assaulting Blue Beach 61
Assault Continues 69
Corsairs Against T-34s 70
O. P. Smith Opens His Command Post 74
More Enemy T-34 Tanks 75
MacArthur Comes Ashore 76
Infantry Advances 83
With 1st Marines 84
5th Marines Takes Kimpo 85
1st Marines Advances 87
Kimpo Airfield Becomes Operational 90
Reinforcements Arrive 91
7th Division Becomes Operational 91
Advancing to the Han 91
Confused Day 96
Ready to cross the Han 100
Pause in the Fighting 103
Almond and Smith Disagree 106
APPENDIX 1—Major General Oliver P. Smith 109
APPENDIX 2—Colonel Lewis B. Chesty
Puller 111
APPENDIX 3—Major General Field Harris 113
APPENDIX 4—Colonel Homer L. Litzenberg, Jr. 115
APPENDIX 5—Lieutenant Colonel Raymond L. Murray 117
APPENDIX 6—First Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez 119
APPENDIX 7—Private First Class Walter C. Monegan, Jr. 121
APPENDIX 8—Second Lieutenant Henry A. Commiskey 123
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 125
SOURCES 126
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 127
U.S. MARINES AT INCHON
BY BRIGADIER GENERAL EDWIN H. SIMMONS, USMC (RET)
Just three weeks away and there was still no approval from Washington for the Marines to land at Inchon on 15 September 1950. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, determined to beat down the opposition to the landing, called a conference for late in the day, 23 August, at his headquarters in the Dai Ichi building in Tokyo.
Planning
As Commander in Chief, Far East (CinCFE), MacArthur considered himself empowered to conduct military operations more-or-less as he saw fit. But for an operation of the magnitude of Inchon and the resources it would require he needed approval from the highest level.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), doubtful of the landing’s chances of success, had sent out the Army Chief of Staff, General J. Lawton Collins, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, to review the situation directly with MacArthur. Now he would have to overcome their skeptical resistance. Collins was the JCS executive agent for the Far East Command and nominally higher in the chain-of-command than MacArthur—but only nominally. In World War I MacArthur was already a Collins four brigadier general when Collins was barely a captain. Now MacArthur had five stars and Collins four.
On this afternoon, First Lieutenant Alexander M. Haig’s task was to lay out the pads of paper, pencils, and water glasses on the table of the sixth floor conference room. This done, he took his post seated in a straight-backed chair just outside the door. Haig, then the junior aide-de-camp to MacArthur’s chief of staff, was destined to become, many years later, the Secretary of State.
The Marine Corps would have no voice at the meeting. The Corps had neither membership nor representation on the JCS. Admiral Sherman, not a strong champion of Marine Corps interests, was the service chief most directly concerned with the amphibious phase of the still tentative operation.
Opening Moves
Only two months before the meeting of MacArthur with Collins and Sherman, in the pre-dawn hours of 25 June, 25-year-old Lieutenant Haig, as duty officer at MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo, received a phone call from the American ambassador in Seoul, John J. Muccio, that large formations of North Korean infantry had crossed the 38th Parallel. Haig informed his boss, Major General Edward M. Ned
Almond, chief of staff of the Far East Command, who awakened MacArthur with the news. The United States was going to war.
Four days later, and a day after the fall of Seoul, MacArthur flew to Korea in the Bataan, to make a personal reconnaissance, taking with him Major General Almond. Korea stretched beneath them like a giant relief map. To the east of the Korean peninsula lay the Sea of Japan; to the west the Yellow Sea. The vulnerability of these two watery sides of the peninsula to a dominant naval power was not lost on a master strategist such as MacArthur. The Bataan landed at Suwon, 20 miles south of Seoul. MacArthur commandeered a jeep and headed north through, in his words, the dreadful backwash of a defeated and dispersed army.
Seoul was already in enemy hands,
he wrote in his Reminiscences some years later. The scene along the Han was enough to convince me that the defensive potential of South Korea had already been exhausted. The answer I had come to seek was there. I would throw occupation troops into this breach. I would rely upon strategic maneuver to overcome the great odds against me.
MacArthur returned to what he liked to call his GHQ
in Tokyo, convinced that to regain the initiative the United States must use its amphibious capability and land behind the advancing North Koreans. He put his staff to work on a broad operational plan: two U.S. divisions would be thrown into the battle to slow the onrush of the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA). A third division would land behind the NKPA and in a flanking attack liberate Seoul, the lost capital.
Unready Eighth Army
MacArthur had at his disposal in Japan the Eighth Army consisting of four divisions—the 7th, 24th, 25th, and the 1st Cavalry—all four at half-strength and under-trained. He began to move pieces of the 24th Division, rated at 65 percent combat-ready, to South Korea. His aim, he later said, was to trade space for time until a base could be developed at Pusan at the southern tip of the peninsula as a springboard for future operations.
Approval came from President Harry S. Truman for the imposition of a naval blockade and limited air operations. The Air Force was under Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, and the Navy under Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy, both able and efficient veterans of the war,
wrote MacArthur.
But Vice Admiral Joy, as Commander Naval Forces, Far East, commanded virtually nothing. Vice Admiral Arthur D. Rip
Struble, commander of the Seventh Fleet, a naval officer of considerable amphibious experience, reported not to Joy but to Admiral Arthur W. Radford who was both Commander in Chief, Pacific, and Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.
Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer commanded FEAF
or Far East Air Forces. Subordinate to him were the Fifth Air Force in Japan, the Twentieth Air Force on Okinawa, and the Thirteenth Air Force in the Philippines.
Cates Offers Marines
Back in Washington, D.C., during the first hectic days after the North Korean invasion, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Clifton B. Cates, was not invited to attend the high-level meetings being held in the Pentagon. After four days of waiting, Cates drove to the Pentagon and, in his words, kind of forced my way in.
We were fighting for our existence,
said General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., who followed Cates as Commandant. Sherman and the rest of these fellows wanted to keep us seagoing Marines, with a battalion landing team being the biggest unit we were supposed to have.... Everybody was against the Marine Corps at that time. Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson, always nagging, Truman hostile, and Cates carried that load all by himself and did it well.
Cates saw Admiral Sherman and told him the Marines could immediately deploy to Korea a brigade consisting of a regimental combat team and an aircraft group.
How soon can you have them ready?
Sherman asked dubiously.
As quickly as the Navy gets the ships,
shot back Cates.
Sherman, overwhelmed perhaps by higher priorities, dallied two days before sending a back-channel message to Admiral Joy, asking him to suggest to MacArthur that he request a Marine air-ground brigade. MacArthur promptly made the request and on 3 July the JCS approved the deployment.
Cates did not wait for JCS approval. Formation of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade had already begun with troops stripped out of the half-strength 1st Marine Division. In four days’ time—on 6 July—the brigade began to load out at San Diego for the Far East.