After practicing some last minute carrier landing approaches, the fighter pilots got into combat almost at once. Following -214 into the war, VMF-323 started operations on 6 August, flying from USS Badoeng Strait in support of the Pusan ground defenders. When the brigade mounted out on 7 August on its drive to Chinju, the two MAG-33 carrier squadrons were there with their 5-inch HVARs, napalm, 100- to 500-pound bombs, and 20mm cannon. VMF(N)-513 began its regularly-scheduled night tours over the Korean perimeter that same date, lashing at enemy supply and transportation centers in the Sachon-Chinju area of southern Korea. VMO-6 had already started evacuating casualties from the Pusan area three days earlier.
Many Army ground commanders witnessed the Marine system of close air support for the first time during the Pusan fighting. After the second Naktong battle, when air strikes had silenced enemy guns and 300 troops near Obong-ni, the commander of the 23rd Regiment to the right of the brigade wrote General Ridgway in Washington:
Infantry and artillery is a good team, but only by adding adequate and efficient air support can we succeed without devastating losses ... The Marines on our left were a sight to behold. Not only was their equipment superior or equal to ours, but they had squadrons of air in direct support. They used it like artillery. It was, ‘Hey, Joe, this is Smitty, knock the left of that ridge in from Item Company.’ They had it day and night.[701]
[701] Quoted in Andrew Geer, The New Breed—The Story of the U.S. Marines in Korea (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), pp. 94–95, quoted with permission of the publisher.
And while Marine, Army, and Navy staffs were completing plans for the forthcoming Inchon assault, MAG-33’s little aerial Photo Unit (part of Headquarters Squadron) took a series of reconnaissance photographs of the landing beaches in preparation for the closely coordinated maneuver.
During Inchon-Seoul operations, MAG-33 was joined by three MAG-12 fighter squadrons: VMF-212, VMF-312, and VMF(N)-542. After the capture of Kimpo airfield, 212’s “Devilcats” and 542’s nightfighters transferred from Itami to Kimpo. Flying out of 2d MAW headquarters, Cherry Point, N.C., on 18 August, the Devilcats had climaxed a hurried dash halfway around the world to get into action. The squadron flew its first combat mission from Kimpo a month after its departure from the East Coast. While the MAG-12 land-based squadrons and the carrier pilots functioned as the division’s flying artillery, MGCIS-1 set up a radar warning system and MTACS-2 established a Tactical Air Direction Center to direct all aircraft in the X Corps zone of action.
With the conclusion of the Inchon operation on 8 October, VMF-312 and VMF(N)-542 remained at Kimpo. Other Marine squadrons (VMF-212, VMF(N)-513, VMO-6, HqSq-12, and carrier-based VMF-323) shifted to the Korean east coast in readiness for the Wonsan landing and subsequent deployment north of the Marine infantry regiments. Wing elements began arriving at the port city’s airfield on 13 October. Division Marines, meanwhile, on board ship in the Wonsan harbor while more than 3,000 expertly laid Communist mines were being removed, did not land until 26 October. For the men who fought the vertical war in Korea, it was “one of the rare times in the air-ground association, the 1st MAW had landed ahead of the 1st Marine Division. The aviators didn’t miss putting up a big sign-board “Welcome, 1st Division!”[702]
[702] LtCol C. A. Phillips and Maj H. D. Kuokka, “1st MAW in Korea,” Part I, Marine Corps Gazette, May 1957, p. 45.
As 30 CCF divisions slammed into UNC forces all across the fighting front in late November to change the nature of ground operations (and the future of the war), so did the onset of the first Korean winter test 1st MAW aerial skills and ingenuity. Low hanging ceilings, icing conditions, and three-inch snows on the carrier decks were common operating hazards. For the shore-based pilots, the bad weather often caused changed flight plans as they were forced to land at alternate fields or on Navy carriers. Nonetheless, Marine RD4s flew up to the southern tip of the Chosin Reservoir, at Hagaru, to air-drop ammunition and supplies and evacuate casualties from the entrapment. Logistical support to this tiny frozen makeshift air strip was also provided by Air Force C-47s and C-119s. Later on, during the first step of the grinding movement south, Air Force pilots paradropped a sectionalized steel bridge vitally needed at Koto-ri to replace a destroyed span over a chasm.
Beginning with the load-out for Wonsan in early October, the 1st MAW was placed under operational control of the Seoul-based Fifth Air Force.[703] Echelons of FAF air command and control initially slowed operational orders anywhere from 4 to 36 hours. Simplified interservice communications and command liaison between 1st MAW and FAF helped improve the situation. With a verbal agreement, on 1 December, for CG, 1st MAW to receive full control over X Corps area aircraft, problems eased substantially. To a large degree the close coordination of Marine aviation and ground forces during the Chosin campaign was due to the use of flexible, simplified, and fast battle-tested Marine Corps-Navy CAS techniques and to having increased the number of pilot FACs from one to two per battalion.