[742] Generals’ Summary, p. 39.
[743] Between December 1950-July 1953, the 1st Marine Division took 2,445 NKPA/CCF, with an additional 656 enemy seized by its attached 1st KMC/RCT, or a total of 3,101. Marine capturing units included Headquarters Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion, 11th Marines, the three infantry regiments, and 7th Motor Transport Battalion. An additional 4,792 POWs were also taken by the 1st Division in the early Inchon-Seoul operations. G-1 Folder, Aug 53 (Box 4), “Personnel Periodic Rpt. No. 94,” dtd 15–31 Aug 53; USMC Board Rpt, v. I, p. II-B-46.
[744] Generals’ Summary, p. 39.
In the air, photo reconnaissance results were not rated entirely satisfactory as a source of current information by either air or ground Marines. The command channels in effect designated the Air Force as responsible agent for control and coordination of all photo missions in Korea. Requests for photographic missions thus were relayed on to FAF and flown by its Reconnaissance Wing or the Marines’ own VMJ-1 squadron. The system produced relatively good vertical coverage with photos available in about 10 days. Special requests for immediate coverage on areas of local importance, however, customarily were either not flown or “delayed to the point where they were of no value”[745] because the tactical situation had been changed.
[745] Ibid.
Delays were due to the shortage of photographic aircraft throughout FAF and the limited provision in T/Os for photo interpretation. Intelligence of air-strike targets (particularly post-strike) was consistently mediocre. Oblique photos of frontline positions took an average of three-four days to be processed and sometimes longer. As an expedient, aerial observers began to shoot their own vertical and oblique photos with hand-held cameras slung over the side of a VMO-6 plane.
Probably the most serious problem of all, from the Marine Corps point of view, was that during much of the Korean War Marine air-ground components, trained to work as a team, were to a large extent precluded from operating together. The separate missions of the wing and division reflected, on a smaller scale, the divergent UNC air and ground doctrine and tactics. After the early moving battles, Korean hostilities had settled down to a protracted land war in which ground and air tactical commands did not operate jointly and were never coordinated to deal a truly devastating blow to the enemy. Since the Korean War was a limited one most of the fighting was confined to the stabilized front across Korea. Both air and naval forces were viewed largely as supporting arms for the ground operation.
Due to political-military considerations, UNC tactical air power had been, in effect, handcuffed so that its use would not appear “overly aggressive” and threaten an enlargement of the Korean hostilities into a nuclear armageddon of World War III.[746] Since the earliest days of the war, a strict embargo had been placed on any bombing of Chinese rear supply areas or industrial complexes although it was obvious that much of the enemy’s logistical strength lay beyond the Manchurian border.
[746] Much of the unwritten but basic policy mitigating against full use of Allied air superiority stemmed from the desire to employ “humanitarian” standards in the UNC war effort. Following WW II there had been wide criticism of the “moral wrong of massed air bombardment” as well as employment of the atomic bomb by the U. S. to hasten the end of the war. The UNC goal, in Korea, was to avoid needless civilian casualties and for air strikes to be directed against purely military targets. Futrell, USAF Korea, p. 41.
Air efforts were concentrated largely on nuisance or harassing raids within North Korea and close air support efforts of various types, rather than a systematic destruction of the enemy’s primary supply installation’s. Some ranking officers had informally interpreted official Washington policy as “Don’t employ airpower so that the enemy will get mad and won’t sign the armistice.”[747] Indeed, it was not until after the Communists had rejected what the UNC called its “final truce package,” in April 1952, that it was decided to exert greater pressure against the Communists. The list of approved aerial targets was then enlarged to include North Korean hydroelectric power facilities, previously exempted from air attack.