The Conflict
The first military clash of the Cold War and the first United Nations-sanctioned conflict, the Korean War, pitted the United States and its allies against the Soviet Union and its communist clients.
The prodigious air effort and its complementary surface-force bombardment operations undoubtedly denied the enemy vital munitions and saved the lives of thousands of American and allied soldiers fighting to take or hold ground at the 38th parallel; however, it did not completely cut the enemy's supply lines or prevent him from launching devastating offensives. Tens of thousands of North Korean civilians and military engineers repeatedly put bombed rail lines, bridges, and supply depots back in operation. Nighttime often cloaked communist supply movements. Moreover, enemy antiaircraft fire brought down 559 Navy and Marine aircraft, and MiGs claimed another five. The Korean War experience demonstrated that in the new era of limited conflicts, air power would not be a war-winning instrument. That lesson would have to be relearned 15 years later in the skies over Southeast Asia.
The Navy was essential to the U.S. and U.N. effort in the first major conflict of the Cold War. More than 1,177,000 Navy personnel served in Korea from 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953, when the belligerents finally signed an armistice at Panmunjom. Combat took the lives of 458 Sailors and wounded another 1,576; 4,043 officers and enlisted personnel succumbed to injury or disease. Without the selfless dedication to duty of Navy men and women ashore and afloat, United Nations forces would not have been able to achieve the war's primary goal - to preserve the independence of the Republic of Korea and the freedom of its citizens.
The prodigious air effort and its complementary surface-force bombardment operations undoubtedly denied the enemy vital munitions and saved the lives of thousands of American and allied soldiers fighting to take or hold ground at the 38th parallel; however, it did not completely cut the enemy's supply lines or prevent him from launching devastating offensives. Tens of thousands of North Korean civilians and military engineers repeatedly put bombed rail lines, bridges, and supply depots back in operation. Nighttime often cloaked communist supply movements. Moreover, enemy antiaircraft fire brought down 559 Navy and Marine aircraft, and MiGs claimed another five. The Korean War experience demonstrated that in the new era of limited conflicts, air power would not be a war-winning instrument. That lesson would have to be relearned 15 years later in the skies over Southeast Asia.
The Navy was essential to the U.S. and U.N. effort in the first major conflict of the Cold War. More than 1,177,000 Navy personnel served in Korea from 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953, when the belligerents finally signed an armistice at Panmunjom. Combat took the lives of 458 Sailors and wounded another 1,576; 4,043 officers and enlisted personnel succumbed to injury or disease. Without the selfless dedication to duty of Navy men and women ashore and afloat, United Nations forces would not have been able to achieve the war's primary goal - to preserve the independence of the Republic of Korea and the freedom of its citizens.