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Posted on 08/02/2005 9:06:46 PM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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The landing at Inchon, in a large part, is the story of six brave little Ships and a wonderful blunder.  In the entrance of Inchon harbor, and commanding approaches to it, is the island of Wolmi. It is a wooded island shaped like an oyster shell. From the beaches, the ground rises 300 feet to a rounded top, A stone causeway connects the island to the Inchon waterfront. Wolmi was the key to the entire operation. Before the main attack could begin on Inchon, Wolmi had to be taken. In an order issued before the battle, Rear Admiral James H. Doyle, commander of Task Force 90, said:, "This mission (Wolmi) must be successfully completed at any cost. Failure will seriously jeopardize or even prevent the major amphibious assault on Inchon therefore, press the assault with the utmost vigor despite loss or difficulty." Big questions loomed. What did the north Koreans have on Wolmi to defend it? How many guns? How big? Where?  Five U.S. Navy destroyers steam up the Inchon channel to bombard Wolmi-Do island on 13 September 1950, two days prior to the Inchon landings. Wolmi-Do is in the right center background, with smoke rising from air strikes. The ships are USS Mansfield (DD-728); USS DeHaven (DD-727); USS Lyman K. Swenson (DD-729); USS Collett (DD-730) and USS Gurke (DD-783). Six brave little ships. six destroyers, were sent to find out. Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble, commander of Joint Task Force 7, ordered a "reconnaissance in force." The mission frankly was to draw fire from Wolmi-the more the better. A destroyer's armor is three-eighths of an inch thick. Practically anything stronger than a slingshot will pierce it.  Wolmi-do Island, Inchon, 9/14/50 Before Assault On the morning of September 13, "D-day minus two," the six brave little ships, moving in column, and slowly, sailed into the narrowing channel leading pass Wolmi to Inchon. One anchored off of the southern face of the island. Three passed through the neck of the channel to the other side. Two remained in the channel. None was more than a mile from the beaches and some were 1,000 yards-two thirds of a mile. They were "sitting ducks." That's what they were meant to be, juicy targets for concealed guns on the shore.  USS DeHaven DD-727 From all over the elbe of the channel farther down, thousands of binoculars were trained on them from American and British cruisers. The silence was like a blanket. It was a brilliant sunny day, and you could see even without binoculars. Suddenly there was a single white flash. Seconds later the muffled crack of the gun came back. "The 730 reported she spotted a battery moving on the beach," a report to the bridge of the flag ship said. A few more tense, breathless, incredible seconds of waiting passed. Still silence. Wolmi Island looked like a picnickers paradise, green-wooded and serene.  USS MANSFIELD DD-728 Then the North Koreans made a fateful and wonderful blunder. Suddenly a necklace of gun flashes sparkled around the waist of the island. The flashes were reddish gold and they came so fast that soon the entire slope was sparkling with pinpoint of fire. The destroyers were quick to answer. Lightening flashes leaped from their guns. They hit back, shell for shell, firing faster and faster until the whole channel was a tunnel of rumbling thunder.  USS Lyman K Swenson DD-729 The pace increased. On Wolmi, still more gun positions opened up. The red necklace spread and widened. They were hitting destroyers now. They could hardly miss at that range. Then a report came down to the bridge and your blood ran cold. "It looks as though the 783 is dead in the water, Sir." Admiral Struble's answer was quiet and the words were taut. "Make sure and then see what we have to do to get her out of there." The duel went on for an hour. It was a slugging match, toe to toe, and nobody quit or backed away. Six brave little ships sat there and shot it out with the dug in enemy gun crews on Wolmi Island.  USS Collett DD-730 Three of the six were hit, one seriously, but not so seriously that she could not come out under her own steam. An officer died. There were other casualties. The destroyers came out proudly and without haste, still firing flat trajectory fire at close range and then at higher arcs as the distance increased. The mission was accomplished successfully, the navy will say. Gloriously is a better word.  USS Gurke DD-783 If the guns on Wolmi Island had never been discovered; if the North Koreans had not blundered into exposing their armament, it is hard to say what might have happened to the transports and the little landing craft when they came in for the assault two days later. At best, the casualties would have been enormous -for Wolmi Island is studded with guns-at worst, the invasion could have stalled right there at the first objective. Six brave little ships exposed themselves to fire. The bigger guns and hordes of planes knocked it out before the Marines ever appeared.  USS Henderson DD-785 Six brave little ships: the Mansfield DD728, DeHaven 727, Collett 730 Lyman K Swenson 729, Gurke 783 and the Henderson 785.  Two days later the Marine invasion took place.
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I love grits. BittyGirl has taste!
Naw, I'm inport right now. I just mean I'm back on sea duty.
I don't think I have ever eaten grits.
They're an aquired taste, and very bipolar. Bad grits are REALLY awful, good grit are yummy!
Msdrby fixed them up with sliced jalapenos and a bit of cheese melted on top. Very good. I made sure to eat all the peppers so BG would not. We're gonna let her grow up first. Maybe when she's two. ;-)
She does indeed. Now if we could only get Spiderboy to be a little bit adventurous.
The Secrets of Inchon: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Covert Mission of the Korean War.
By Cmdr. Eugene F. Clark, USN.In August of 1950, as the North Korean army swept through the Republic of South Korea, Douglas MacArthur proposed a brilliant but stupendously risky plan that would change the course of the war. MacArthur chose 39-year old lieutenant Clark for a two-week commando mission deep behind enemy lines. Discovered by the Communists, Clark's reconnaissance became a dazzling series of night raids, firefights, and naval battles between armed junk ships. Clark wrote of these events as a keepsake for his wife and children, and to memorialize the valor of the Korean men and women who helped him achieve his objective. His story is an electrifying narrative, shot through with tension and intrigue and told with a crisp eloquence that reveals Clark as a man of action and a keen observer with a clear understanding of the significance of what he was trying to accomplish.
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. (212) 366-2666.
Pcrichton@penguinputnam.com.
ISBN 0-399-14871-X. 325 pp. $26.95 plus postage.
Clark, with of team of two Korean officers, was smuggled onto one of the islands in the Inchon harbor with little more than two weeks to reconnoiter the harbor and prepare for the landing. Excellent maps illustrate the difficulty of this site for invasion.
Reconnaissance of the approaches and islands of Flying Fish Channel began on September 1, led by the "Blackbeard of Yonghung Do," Navy Lieutenant Eugene F. Clark, with an intelligence team of South Koreans. The team conducted raids, collected intelligence, and went head-on, sampan-to-sampan, in close quarters gunfire exchanges with North Korean troops.D-Day, midnight, September 15, Clark relighted the beacon on the Palmi Do island lighthouse. The beam guided the advance naval elements of the amphibious assault force threading the dangerous approach to Inchon. At 5:20 a.m., the amphibious force dropped anchor and embarked Marines loaded onto landing craft at the order, "Land the Landing Force."
As a final means of checking on conditions in Inch'on harbor, the Navy on 31 August sent Lt. Eugene F. Clark to Yonghung-do, an island at the mouth of the ship channel ten sea miles from Inch'on. There, Clark used friendly natives to gather the information needed. He sent them on several trips to Inch'on to measure water depths, check on the mud flats, and to observe enemy strength and fortifications. He transmitted their reports by radio to friendly vessels in Korean waters. Clark was still in the outer harbor when the invasion fleet entered it. [35]
Intelligence Operations Preparing For The Inchon Assault Two of Clark's men were Korean officers: a bilingual Navy Lieutenant, Youn Joung; and a former Korean counterintelligence officer, Colonel Ke In-Ju. Both had served on General MacArthur's staff. Youn and Ke used the aliases of "Yong Chi Ho" and "Kim Nam Sun" and were nominally on detached duty from ROK forces, to try and mask the intelligence nature of the covert mission. Youn is standing at center with the pistol at his belt.
Clark and his men conducted bloody raids on land and sea, gathered vital information on the approaches and seawalls at the Inchon landing "beaches," and turned on the Palmi-do light-house to help the invasion fleet navigate. Clark brought Youn and Ke out to the McKinley with him, but most of the men in the above photo were probably caught and killed by the North Koreans, who also murdered 50 civilians at Yonghung-do who had helped the mission succeed.
Clark later took about 150 South Korean Guerillas, including Youn, on island-hopping forays all the way up to the Yalu. In October, Clark was able to notify Tokyo Headquarters that his agents had reported large numbers of Chinese were crossing the Yalu into North Korea.
High Command ignored this information, with the result that 8th Army was ill-prepared psychologically, and ill-deployed tactically when attacked by the veteran Chinese infantry, and soon fled from them in the longest retreat in US history.
ANTIAIRCRAFT COMMON (AAC) — AAC projectiles are dual-purpose projectiles combining most of the qualities of the AA type with the strength necessary to penetrate mild steel plate (fig. 2, view A). However, AAC projectiles do not have the penetrative ability of common (COM) projectiles. The type of fuzing will depend on the use. Fuze threads are provided in the nose and in the base. AAC projectiles are normally equipped with a mechanical time fuze (MTF) and an auxiliary detonating fuze (ADF). Dual-purpose action is accomplished by a time setting for airburst or by setting MTFs on “safe” or for a time longer than flight to target to permit the base detonating fuze (BDF - delay) to function for penetration. When you substitute a point detonating fuze (PDF) for the MTF, these projectiles are converted to HC for surface burst.
[60] ATIS Res Supp Interrog Rpts, Issue 106 (N.K. Arty), pp. 23, 66. This figure probably includes the 122-mm. howitzers. The standard North Korean division artillery included twenty-four 76-mm. guns and twelve 122-mm. howitzers. Most of the Russian-supplied artillery ammunition used by the North Koreans was four or five years old and verdigris deposits coated the shell casings. There were many misfires and duds. Until about October 1950, the North Koreans used only two types of artillery ammunition, high explosive and armor piercing. The shell had a point detonating fuze to which a nose cap could be attached to give a slightly delayed burst.
Big bump for ya, Phil.
evening!
I'm hoping we get some relief from the heat also.
The round I picked up was an AP round and had no nose fuze that we could detect. It did have the BDDD base fuze. You know how sailors are, they will shoot anything.
Oh good. Are you settling in pretty good now?
I have a firm policy, I don't eat anything that's been soaked in lye. So far it's worked real well.
When in Korea, in 68/69 I picked up a lot of 45mm AP solid shot rounds which was very common. This was their basic anti-tank towed gun and there were lots of them during the war. This would explain hits and no detonations. I also saw a lot 76mm and 85mm duds. Plus there were a number of 152mm duds here and there.
Oh I know that fish. Ugh. Smells like sh@@!
That's when I was there. Osan 6314th Secruity Police SQ. 1/1/68-1/31/69. It was an...experience, one I don't regret, but one I REALLY wouldn't do over. It was great when I first got there then the Pueblo incident happened and the sh*t hit the fan.
PS: By any chance did you know a Miss Kim, who was about 5'5" tall, kind of slim, not a whole lot topside, had black hair and brown slanted eyes?
SURE! Speaks Korean like a native, LOVES GIs? I do seen to recall meeting her. Of course being a 19 year old true blue yankee doddle dandy airman I really didn't have time for such things as getting drunk and laid. I was always thinking "How can I help my flight chief", "Gosh I sure miss moms apple pie", "Say guys wanna do a little close order drill?"
That's my story and I'm stickin with it!
I was gaurding the alert planes when they got captured. 23 days in country and green as they come.
Correction on my post, good catch. Someone thought it was a great idea to can all the paper pubs, I rescued some but lost a bunch.
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