Bombing the North
The historic belligerence of the North Korean regime is at least partly explained by memories of a savage and remorseless bombing campaign, where the use of atomic weapons was considered
Inside the remorseless bombing campaign that even threatened a nuclear strike
When the regime of Kim Jongun issued threats against the United States territory of Guam in 2017, few observers noted that the first B-29 bombers that bombed Korean targets took off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, just a few days after Kim’s grandfather sent his armies into the south in June 1950.
North Korea was devastated by the US Air Force campaign. The head of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), General Curtis Lemay, claimed that American bombing killed 20 per cent of the North’s population and left not a single village unscathed. Western media seldom reported the bombings: accounts of the air war focused on the high-altitude duels between Soviet-built Mig-15s and American F-86 jets in the so-called ‘MIG Alley’ near the Chinese border. Yet on 29 August 1952 the North’s capital Pyongyang endured over 1,400 sorties in one night alone.
Initially the Supreme Commander of UN forces General Douglas Macarthur was under instructions to limit targets north of the 38th parallel dividing the Koreas, lest the Chinese or Soviets step up their aid to the North. The first B-29s, accompanied by P-51 Mustangs and Lockheed P-80 jets, were barely threatened by the North’s propeller-driven Yakovlev and Sturmovik planes or by ground fire. Flying from the Japanese bases of Yokota and Kadena, they escorted UN forces north towards the Yalu River before the Chinese intervention.
After 200,000 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops intervened on the side of the North in October, the scale of the bombings was vastly increased and included the use of incendiary devices. B-29 bombers typically carried 39,500-pound bomb loads with delayed action fuses and one magnesium flare designed to illuminate a target area for bombardiers bringing up the rear. Bombing missions by B-29s were augmented by Douglas B-26 Invaders flying at lower levels. As early as November, these missions had wreaked sufficient destruction for the North Korean leadership to instruct the population to build dug outs and underground schools. That same month Macarthur even sent two bomber groups, the 22nd and 92nd, back to the US.
By 1951 the US Air Force had largely run out of urban targets and turned to irrigation and hydroelectric dams. These bombings would inflict another kind of misery: flooding farmland and causing starvation among an already brutalised population. In June 1953 American aircraft bombed the irrigation dams of the North’s Toksan Reservoir, flooding villages and farms. Similar actions by the Nazis in the Netherlands in World War II had been considered a war crime.
For all the devastation wrought by conventional weaponry, the shadow of the atomic bomb loomed across the Korean battlefield. At the outset of the invasion, the United States had nearly 300 Mark-4 plutonium weapons in its stockpile, and while the Soviets had tested a similar weapon in 1949, it would be two years before they conducted a test drop. In July 1950 Lemay was ordered by President Harry Truman to move B-29s to England, to be capable of hitting Soviet targets. Weeks later the first of 20 nuclear-capable B-29s were sent to Guam. By November, as the PLA advanced south, Truman gave a press conference and stated that his administration would consider any steps necessary to win in Korea, including the use of atomic weapons.
In April 1951 he authorised nine devices to be transferred to atomic-capable B-29s at Kadena Base, Okinawa. Although the SAC set up a command and control centre in Tokyo, the aircraft were removed by June. Nevertheless, the ‘Hudson Harbour’ operations took place in October – ‘dummy run’ missions against potential communist targets.
By this time the war was largely stalemated on the ground, but it is uncertain if the atomic option would have changed the course of the war. Communist forces were widely dispersed and relied on a primitive infrastructure, and the destructive strength of the bombs available at the time was limited. But even without their use, the air war proved a calamity for Korea’s civilian population. Like the bombing of German and Japanese cities a few years earlier, a key objective was destroying the enemy population’s morale. Ultimately the North Korean state survived. Memories of the merciless nature of the aerial campaign have, in part, guided its leaders ever since, endangering the region even today.
“AS THE PLA ADVANCED SOUTH, TRUMAN GAVE A PRESS CONFERENCE AND STATED THAT HIS ADMINISTRATION WOULD CONSIDER ANY STEPS NECESSARY TO WIN IN KOREA, INCLUDING THE USE OF ATOMIC WEAPONS”