MacArthur strongly opposed this proposal on the same day he received it. He insisted the attack should continue to the border. He reaffirmed his faith in the ability of his air force to limit the number of Chinese able to reach the south side of the Yalu. He said he meant to launch his attack on 15 November. MacArthur spoke bitterly of British influence in opposition to his plans. The Joint Chiefs on this same day, 9 November, sent to Defense Secretary George C. Marshall an analysis for the National Security Council, which was scheduled to consider the matter. The Joint Chiefs' basic thought was that the Chinese could not drive the United Nations force from Korea without "material assistance by Soviet naval and airpower." If that happened, World War III would have begun, and the United States would have had to evacuate Korea at once.
Highway and railroad bridges over the Yalu River between Sinuiju, Korea (fimground), and Antung, Manchuria, 14 November 1950. The Leyte strike that month dropped three spans of the highway bridge but left the railroad bridge intact. National Archives 80-G-423495
In the National Security Council meeting, General Bradley said he thought the UN forces could hold their present positions generally, but he did not agree with MacArthur that bombing the Yalu River bridges would stop Chinese forces from entering Korea in strength. He pointed out that, in two to four weeks, the Yalu would be frozen over, and then bombing the bridges would be academic. General Marshall questioned the X Corps troop dispositions, but General Bradley defended MacArthur's deployment of the X Corps as necessary to occupy all of Korea. Pressed on this point, Bradley admitted that, from a military point of view, better defensive lines for the UN forces would be found as the line increasingly moved south of the Yalu.
Earlier, the Joint Chiefs had several times indicated in cables to MacArthur that they thought the "waist of Korea," the narrow section of the peninsula on a line between Pyongyang on the west and Wonsan on the east, would offer the best defensive line for the UN forces. MacArthur had accepted this reasoning at the end of September, but once his X Corps had landed at Wonsan on the cast coast, he found reasons to alter his position and persuaded the Joint Chiefs to allow him to proceed farther north. That change in objectives, approved by the Joint Chiefs, may have been their most serious mistake of the Korean War.
In the end, they decided not to change MacArthur's plans to resume the offensive. Thus, the final decision was made in Washington on 9 November. That there were misgivings about the outcome was evident.'
The Gap between Eighth Army and X Corps
When Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall in the National Security Council meeting of 9 November spoke disapprovingly of the disposition of the X Corps in Korea, he was referring to the separate commands of Eighth Army in the west and of X Corps in the east and northeast. The two commands were not in physical contact with each other. They were separated by the so-called gap. It was widely feared by many, including Maj. Gen. Oliver P. Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division, in X Corps, that strong enemy forces would penetrate this gap and operate against the flanks of both Eighth Army and of X Corps and possibly gain the rear areas of either separated commands. Critics saw this situation as an invitation for military disaster. Many highly placed military analysts and political leaders in the United States and abroad, principally in England, charged that such a penetration took place in the subsequent Chinese 2nd Phase Offensive of late November and early December 1950. General MacArthur caught the brunt of these charges.
There has been no greater misunderstanding, and resulting explosions of rhetoric pro and con, during the entire course of the Korean War than the controversy over the so-called gap between Eighth Army and X Corps. The critics who leveled the charge of gross tactical error in separating the two commands included military men involved in the actual fighting, war correspondents cabling their dispatches back to the United States or other countries, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, editorial and military writers in the American press, foreign military writers, and foreign offices. The critics charged that it was in and through this gap that the Chinese moved to turn the right flank of Eighth Army and brought about the defeat of the UN forces at the end of 1950.
An interesting example of reference to the gap occurred in Gen. Omar N. Bradley's testimony as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the MacArthur hearings on 24 May 1951, when he cited it as a serious cause of UN (he meant MacArthur's) failure in the Chinese 2nd Phase Offensive (see p. 1143 and following in the MacArthur hearings transcripts). Yet, in the 9 November 1950 meeting of the National Security Council on the military situation in Korea, he had upheld MacArthur's separation of commands. An example of how writers and historians of the Korean War continued to be misled on the subject is the position of Robert Leckie, in his Conflict: The History of the Korran War, 1950-53 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1962). He wrote of the gap as "that wide open left flank" (p. 199). He admitted it could not be closed, but he said, "it could be penetrated, and the Chinese were already poised for this purpose." He was wrong. They were not poised to penetrate the gap, and they never penetrated it in their attacks against the UN forces.
MacArthur at the time, and later, defended his decision to separate the two commands temporarily, because of geographic and logistic considerations, and to coordinate their actions himself from Tokyo. The operations plan called for the two forces to meet in the vicinity of Kanggye. They would then be united under the command of Gen. Walton H. Walker, commander of Eighth Army. Both General MacArthur and General Almond of X Corps have denied that the Chinese ever used the so-called gap to effect flanking movements against either the army or the corps for the defeat of those forces.`
On the basis of research into the "gap" question, using the Eighth Army and X Corps unit G-3 operational journals and message files of units adjacent to the gap, and plotting on a scale-50,000 map overlay the movements of Chinese forces in the 2nd Phase Offensive, there is no reason not to support MacArthur's and Almond's views. Neither the UN Forces nor the Chinese used the gap for important military movement.
Those who wrote and talked about the disastrous results of the gap simply never understood the detailed topography of the area or the military movements and subsequent actions that took place on the right flank of Eighth Army and the left flank of X Corps on the two sides of the gap. It seems important to discuss this misunderstood subject briefly.
The high, almost trackless, Taebaek Range of mountains in northern Korea made it almost impossible to form a continuous line across the peninsula. To the northeast of the Taebaek Range, the Yangnim Range rose even higher, to 8,000 feet, and extended to the Manchurian border and beyond it and was almost devoid of human habitation. The ridges of the Taebaek Range trended mostly north-south, but valleys ran in all directions. The whole area was rugged, partly forested, well drained, but unfavorable to lateral (cast-west) crosscountry movement. The hills generally rose to 6,500 feet elevation, and their slopes were steep. Valleys were narrow, winding, and gorgelike. In the upper regions of the gap area that have been discussed, the westward-flowing major streams, such as the Taedong, the Yesong, and the Imjin, flow in narrow, steepsided valleys or gorges. There are no routes across this region for rapid, largescale military movement. The existing roads or tracks, all dirt and gravel, were narrow and winding and crossed the cut-up and rugged terrain in steep 2,000to 3,500-feet-high passes.' These mountains are really a continuation southward of the mountains of southern Manchuria.
The Northern Taebaek Range and the Yangnim Range effectively cut off a great expanse of north and northeastern Korea from the more highly developed and more accessible western and northwestern parts of the peninsula along and inland from the Yellow Sea. If all of Korea were to be reunited, then this northeastern part could not be ignored. Troops operating there for the purpose of establishing administrative and civil control could not be supported logistically from the Pusan-Seoul west-coast rail and roadnet available above Pyongyang and the Taedong River. MacArthur felt there was no alterna
tive to using the east-coast ports of Wonsan and Hungnam and various minor ports and beaches to support the X Corps if it were to be used in that part of Korea.
An inescapable logistic fact at this time was the knowledge that UN airpower had rather thoroughly destroyed all the bridges and rail track north of Seoul, that the harbor facilities of Inchon had been badly damaged, and that the long and narrow channel to the port of Chinnampo had not been swept of mines. In November 1950 there was still no usable rail bridge across the Taedong River at Pyongyang. All military supplies carried northward from the ports of Pusan and Inchon had to be unloaded on the south side of the Taedong, ferried to the north side, and there reloaded on railcars to go on northward toward the front. Chinnampo, the port for the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, 30 air miles downstream from it on the Taedong, had not yet been reopened to shipping.
As we shall see, the date for the Eighth Army advance had to be postponed from 15 November to 24 November because supplies for it could not be accumulated by the earlier date. Only by utilizing all available means-airlift, rail, truck-could Eighth Army get the supplies forward to the Chongchon front to allow it to begin its advance on 24 November.
With the supply situation for Eighth Army in the west such a hard reality, there can be no question that the X Corps in the northeast could not have been supplied from the Eighth Army zone for a military operation at the end of November. The logistics for X Corps operations were dependent on cast-coast facilities. Considering that the X Corps was separated physically from the Eighth Army by approximately 50 air miles of almost trackless, snow-covered mountains between their closest flank positions, it seemed to General MacArthur that he could coordinate the two forces from Tokyo better than they could be coordinated from any point in Korea.
The hue and cry about the gap between the two UN forces in Korea at the time the Chinese struck at the end of November 1950 seems to be without merit. It is without merit because neither side ever operated tactically in any force in this gap. It was a sterile, trackless waste, as negative for the Chinese as it was for the UN.
Instead of using a gap of any kind to outflank either of the two UN forces, the Chinese pattern of attack against the X Corps in the east was a strong frontal holding attack and a simultaneous movement around the immediate flanks on both sides to cut the roads behind the main forward elements. In the west against Eighth Army, the Chinese simultaneously attacked the center and the right flank frontally. On the right flank they penetrated the ROK II Corps at once and then rolled it up to the rear, which exposed the rest of Eighth Army from that flank. Once the Chinese had penetrated the ROK Corps, they sent strong forces to the ROK rear and cut off its line of retreat.
Furthermore, in their attacks against the Eighth Army and the X Corps, the Chinese command used two separate and distinct forces that could not cooperate with each other. These operations, in effect, constituted two different fronts in North Korea. It was a geographic necessity. The two fields of combat were tactically independent of each other, except in the matter of timing. In this re spect both sides made an attempt to coordinate their efforts on both fronts. The CCF succeeded better in this than did the UN.
In northeastern Korea, X Corps units were far north of the line of Eighth Army in the west. A straight line drawn east from the Eighth Army front after the battles along the Chongchon in late October and early November would have passed through the rear areas of X Corps, far south of its front positions. Thus, the X Corps front was not only far north of that of the Eighth Army, but it was also separated from it by the wide lateral terrain gap. All of North Korea west and northwest of the X Corps front in November was either in enemy hands or unoccupied. On any line projected westward, north of the X Corps bases of Hungnam and Hamhung, and the axis of advance north from them to the Chosin Reservoir, there were no UN forces all the way to the Yellow Sea, except a few X Corps outposts to the northwest of Hamhung and north of Wonsan. These disparate troop deployments meant that any physical contact between the two UN forces would have to be between units in the southern part of the X Corps zone and units in the northeastern part of the Eighth Army zone.
The extent of the lateral gap differed from time to time as one or both commands tried to bring their patrol bases closer to each other. In early November the gap extended a minimum distance of 20 air miles between the northernmost right-flank position of Eighth Army to the nearest left-flank position of X Corps. The distance from the 23rd Infantry position on Eighth Army's right flank west of Tokchon to that of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, in the X Corps zone at Majon-ni was 50 air miles. After the South Korean Marine Corps's 3rd Battalion established a blocking position at Tongyang on 14 November, the distance between the edges of the gap had shortened to about 35 air miles on a line drawn from Pyongyang eastward to Wonsan. Road and trail distances were much farther. While the air-mile distance between Maengsan, Eighth Army's easternmost position beyond Tokchon, to X Corps's westernmost position at Kwangchon, just across the X Corps boundary, was 20 miles; by road and trail it was nearly 50 miles.
General MacArthur never expected firm and continuous physical contact between the Eighth Army and the X Corps in North Korea. But he did expect and did have communication between them by radio and liaison plane. There was a daily air flight by an Eighth Army liaison officer to X Corps and back. Each command had radio communication with the other. And there was constant radio and telecon communication between MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo and both the Eighth Army and X Corps headquarters. Beginning on 25 October, the US Fifth Air Force made two reconnaissance flights daily between the ROK II Corps, at Eighth Army's extreme right flank, to the X Corps's left flank. These daily flights were to report on any enemy movements that might be taking place in the area between the two commands.'
In addition to the means of communication available, the two separate commands made many efforts in November to establish physical contact by means of patrols, nearly all of them motorized, to designated meeting points. Eighth Army made the first of these efforts on 6 November when it sent a patrol from K Company, 23rd Infantry, 2nd Division, to Songsin-ni, an agreed-upon meeting point on the boundary between the two command zones, five miles cast of Yangdok. The K Company patrol arrived there on 7 November, but no X Corps unit was there to meet it. This patrol, however, did find and destroy 16 boxcars of enemy ammunition, including 80-mm and 47-mm shells and an assortment of weapons, including six self-propelled guns, 47-mm antitank guns, antitank rifles, heavy machine guns, and one heavy mortar. Petroleum supplies found on the train were handed over to ROK troops.' Yangdok stood in the mountains, near the middle of the peninsula, on the railroad that crossed laterally from Wonsan and Hungnam to Sunchon and Pyongyang. Why this trainload of enemy military supplies had been temporarily abandoned there is not known.
Eighth Army now received a message from X Corps saying that, because of the 30-mile distance from Majon-ni and guerrilla action in its vicinity, the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, could not get a patrol through to the meeting point. X Corps suggested a meeting point farther north, perhaps at Hadongsan-ni or Sachang-ni. Eighth Army thereupon withdrew the 23rd Infantry patrol and prepared to send one from the 38th Infantry of the 2nd Division on the route proposed by X Corps. General Almond then ordered the US 3rd Infantry Division to establish a patrol base from which the two commands could effect a meeting near their boundary. As a result, the 1st Battalion, 65th Infantry, established a patrol base on 10 November at Kwangchon, four air miles, but eight road miles, east of the boundary.
The day before, on 9 November, the 38th Infantry had sent the motorized 2nd Reconnaissance Company eastward for the purpose of reaching Hadongsanni. It could not get there because of cratered roads and huge boulders blocking the way. Other patrols tried other tracks through the mountains but found all of them impassable for motorized units.
On 11 and 12 November, X Corps patrols from the 1st Battalion, 65th Infantry, reached the boundary meeting place but found no contact unit there
from Eighth Army. On 12 November however, a liaison plane scouting over this no-man's-land discovered a ROK patrol from the Eighth Army zone and dropped a message to it, arranging a meeting the next day at the boundary. The next day a patrol from the 1st Battalion, 65th Infantry, went nine miles beyond the boundary in an effort to contact this ROK patrol but failed to make contact with it.
At the same time, a patrol from E Company, 38th Infantry, got no farther than ten miles east of Maengsan, where the track it was following became impassable. It seemed there was no route passable to a motorized patrol through the gap area. Some of the narrow dirt roads and tracks had craters 15 feet deep and spread to as much as 35 feet in diameter. The North Korean guerrilla bands operating in the area apparently were under orders to make all routes impassable to vehicles of any kind-and this would mean from their own side as well as from the UN side.
The effort now turned to a foot patrol from Eighth Army. On 13 November, an Eighth Army liaison plane dropped two messages to a X Corps patrol, informing it that a South Korean foot patrol from the 10th Regiment, ROK 8th Division, was trying to get to the boundary by another route. The next day at 10 A.M., 14 November, a platoon of the 2nd Battalion, 10th ROK Regiment, met a patrol from the 1st Battalion, 65th Infantry, near the village of Songhadong, just west of the boundary between Eighth Army and X Corps. This ROK patrol had come 45 miles from its base at Maengsan in the Eighth Army zone. En route it had encountered several North Korean bands, some recruited recently with one or more Chinese among them, and had fought several skirmishes with them. The ROK patrol estimated the total strength of the guerrilla bands it met numbered about 400 men. This ROK patrol required ten days to make the round trip of about 90 miles from Maengsan to the meeting place and back.'
Again, on 18 November, an Eighth Army patrol from the 3rd Battalion, 38th Infantry, reached the boundary at Hadongsan-ni. This motorized patrol could go no farther, as a blown bridge stopped it. There was no X Corps unit there to meet it.'
Disaster in Korea Page 5