Douglas MacArthur’s admirers and detractors alike admitted to his uncanny predilection for victory, never so evident than at his landing at Inchon in the Korean War, code-named ‘Operation Chromite. The Inchon landing offered the promise of relieving battered United Nations defenders on the Pusan Perimeter, soundly defeating the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) and rapidly ending the Korean War. Unfortunately for him, those hopes proved ephemeral during the brutal winter of 1950-51, as U.N. fortunes were reversed by a massive, clearly telegraphed Chinese intervention, triggered in part by MacArthur’s single-minded pursuit of a final triumph at the Yalu River. Instead of celebrating a solid victory in the late fall of 1950, U.N. forces found themselves once again desperately fighting for survival. After MacArthur slipped from the stage, relieved of command, the bitter, unpopular war he might have won in 1950 dragged on in a grinding stalemate until July 1953, with the face-saving but inconclusive armistice that remains in effect today.

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North Korea’s invasion of the south on June 25, 1950, caught the United States utterly unprepared, and as a result its leaders did not develop clear war aims in the months of desperate combat that followed. From the time he first conceived of an amphibious landing to fall on the North Korean rear, however, MacArthur anticipated destroying the NKPA in the process, advancing into North Korea itself and reuniting the country under Syngman Rhee’s government in a liberated Seoul. Those views were not shared by President Harry Truman’s administration in Washington. The White House and Pentagon remained focused on the immediate threat in South Korea and on marshaling sufficient resources to credibly combat North Korea. Little thought was given to larger strategic goals and objectives, other than a recognized desire to extricate American forces from Korea as quickly and completely as possible.

Even at MacArthur’s own Far East Command headquarters in Tokyo, little thought was given to aims beyond halting the enemy advance and retaking Seoul. Consequently, he was left to do the strategic thinking largely unimpeded, and his views — and will — prevailed. Only on the question of advancing into North Korea and reuniting the peninsula was there any strong resistance or real debate among MacArthur’s masters in Washington, and then only largely after the fact. As far as the supreme commander was concerned, there would be an amphibious landing in the vicinity of Inchon to slice off, halt, isolate and destroy the NKPA, coordinated with a breakout from the Pusan Perimeter by its defenders. Seoul would be liberated and the South Korean government restored, followed by the invasion and occupation of North Korea.

As the aggressor, North Korean premier Kim Il-Sung espoused war aims that were fairly simple and straightforward: Defeat the puppet Republic of Korea (ROK) forces before any tangible American combat power could be brought to bear, and occupy the entire Korean Peninsula in order to legitimize Communist political control. Attaining those goals depended on swift military success, followed by Soviet and Chinese political recognition and Western acquiescence. However, the Achilles’ heel of the North Korean plan, the need to overpower South Korea quickly, became apparent to MacArthur very early on as the NKPA stalled on the Pusan Perimeter and exposed its vulnerable rear to a decisive counterblow.

The military forces that the United States expected to take on and defeat North Korea in 1950 were numerically a fraction of their size in 1945, but they were organized in the same way, equipped with the same weapons and employed the same doctrine. On paper both U.S. Army and Marine divisions consisted of a core of three infantry regiments of three battalions each, with supporting artillery, armor, engineers and specialist troops. In reality, U.S. combat forces were drastically understrength and ill-equipped, and most Army soldiers were poorly trained draftees. Massive coordinated firepower and mechanization remained the centerpieces of American tactical doctrine. Indeed, throughout the summer of 1950, as more American divisions were fed into the Pusan meat grinder, it was largely the brute force of artillery and air power that checked the North Koreans.

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