Word: breakouts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Phase Two began after less than three months during which a nearly miraculous logistical effort poured a flood of war materiel and men into Pusan's choking port. When the allied forces were finally ready for the big breakout, some U.N. forces stabbed westward to Kunsan, but the main body drove north toward Seoul. Then MacArthur dealt one of the master strokes of the war: the landing at Inchon (Seoul's port). The routed North Koreans reeled back toward the Manchurian border. MacArthur sent his forces after them in hot pursuit up to the Yalu...
With the Hungnam evacuation completed, tacticians looked back on the battle -the U.S. breakout from the Changjin trap, the fighting retreat to the sea, and the successful evacuation-to assess the showing made by the Chinese, who had looked so overwhelming in the first flush of their massive offensive. The assessment was that in northeast Korea, Mao's men had made a very poor showing indeed...
...MacArthur's first step and forced the enemy to deploy (map 1), MacArthur was able to foresee and plan the future course of the war. He planned a delaying retreat to a defensible beachhead (map 2), a buildup of strength behind the perimeter (map 3) and finally a breakout aided by one or more amphibious attacks behind the enemy lines (map 4). Although the Korean war brought many surprises (of which the greatest was the sudden Red collapse), the shape of the war after the first two weeks was that imposed on it by MacArthur...
Phase One of the war had been the dismal series of retreats to a defensible beachhead line. Phase Two had been the creditable establishing and holding of the beachhead. But Phase Three-the buildup preparatory to a breakout-was moving too slowly. At the rate the manpower buildup was going last week, a general counteroffensive seemed no nearer than it had when the beachhead was first established. The enemy was still strong, still attacking, still forcing General Walker to dance to the Communist tune...
Allies would begin a general counteroffensive. In the lines it was widely taken for granted that a breakout would be made in a matter of weeks. "We'll never even find a North Korean soldier," said a colonel. "They'll all take off their uniforms and become refugees." In Tokyo, one of General MacArthur's comfortable spokesmen said that the war might, just possibly, be won by Thanksgiving...