The Air War in Korea

Victor Wieczorek in a photo from approximately 1950 when he was a Captain. 

When word first came to me about this potential program, there was some doubt as to whether I would be part of a cohort traveling to France for World War I or to Hawaii for the Korean War. Candidly, my first hope was for the former. In retrospect, it sounds silly. I felt more of an intellectual curiosity about World War I. I thought some of what I would be learning about World War I would overlap with World War II. And, I might have misunderstood the tentative agenda, but I thought the World War I cohort would be visiting a cemetery that I found oddly fascinating in that area of France.

A World War II tome I have enjoyed reading. 

I didn't get my wish (obviously). And I'm very glad for that.

My intellectual curiosity was satisfied by much of what I learned about the Korean War, a conflict about which I knew very little going in. Also, learning about the Korean War ended up eliding with more learning about World War II, much like I expected would happen with the the two world wars. And now I'm immersed in reading about the era of these two conflicts. I can't get enough of reading about them.

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My two Marines were both Marines, and both were veterans of World War II and Korea. However, that's where their war experiences diverge. Up to this point, I've been posting more about Bruce, the Marine infantryman who died in 1950 at Chosin Reservoir. It's time now to switch my focus over to Vic, who served in Korea in 1951 as an aviator.

Oh, the irony that I found Vic. My job was to find a veteran of Korea buried at Washington Crossing National Cemetery. I came upon the name of Lt. Col. Victor Wieczorek. I chose him for two reasons aside from meeting the program criteria: he was a Marine aviator and he had a distinct last name (given the last names in my family, I'll save chasing down leads for common names for my own genealogical research). I did a little bit more searching to find out that he flew Corsairs in both World War II and Korea. The air war in World War II was my first historical love. The F-4U Corsair, my favorite plane.

Photo taken by Vic of a Corsair landing on the Rendova. 

A fighter from Vic's squadron on the Rendova. 

Fighters from Vic's squadron on the Rendova.

From my study of Vic, I have learned much more about the air war in Korea (and the years surrounding it than I ever expected). My experience with learning about military history in the air is that one can really get distracted by dogfights and aces. Those stories are, frankly, more glamorous. We're attracted to the exploits of a Red Baron, a Pappy Boyington, a Richard Bong. And if fighters don't get our attention, then the big lumbering bombers and the missions their crewmen flew get the glamour. Vic's story wasn't part of those.

That's actually not Boyington. It's Robert Conrad, who played Boyington in film and TV that glamorized exploits of Boyington's squadron. Was I a fan of this TV show? Does one even need to ask? 

Vic flew close air support missions, engaging in tactical bombing strikes against enemy formations facing American soldiers and Marines. In the two wars combined, it looks like he flew approximately 120 of these missions. I don't have evidence to suggest he was ever in an air-to-air battle.

In World War II, he flew missions over the Philippines and Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa is part of that chain). In Korea, he flew from an air base in southeastern Korea for several months. Then his squadron (VMF-212) was transferred to an aircraft carrier, and finished out their tour flying from the U.S.S. Rendova.

Glamorous? Hardly. Aviators in the Korean War loathed these missions. They were much harder to conduct than meets the eye. Distinguishing between friend and foe in the air was difficult. Coordination with spotters didn't always work out as planned. And the missions themselves were more dangerous than one might think. These planes were vulnerable to ground fire, especially the WWII-era Corsair which had some weaknesses in its armor below. Pilots therefore would engage in steep dives in an attempt to minimize the exposure to ground fire, which threatened the danger of not pulling up in time. And in Korea, temperature differences would vary so much as a pilot dove the visibility became problematic.

And in the final month, Vic's squadron returned to an escort-class carrier. In World War II pilots joked that these ships' designation of CVE stood for "Combustible, Vulnerable, Expendible." They weren't nearly as spacious nor as well ventilated as the fleet carriers than normally come to mind when one thinks about naval aviation.

A neat photo from the archives. Vic and his squadron of reservists "adopted" a polio patient (age 5) in Illinois. In this photo they're showing off a letter they penned to her. Vic is the second Marine from the left. 

So instead of chasing MiGs, Vic and his fellow Marines were hitting hard-to-find targets near friendly formations then returning to a cramped WWII-vintage aircraft carrier flying WWII-vintage aircraft to and from on their sorties.

Sounds pretty unglamorous.

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And unglamorous could be a good word to characterize the air war in Korea, period. Korea came at the advent of the jet age and both Americans and Communist forces flew jet-powered aircraft. That's where the dogfighting took place, when it took place. But after an early phase in which the two sides contested for control of the skies, the Communists largely ceded the airspace. Basing their planes inside of China (where they knew UN forces wouldn't strike) they dominated a narrow corridor along the Chinese-Korean border known as MiG Alley. But outside of that, the skies were under the control of America and its allies. Airbases in the south and carriers at sea (the UN had complete control over the waters around Korea in this conflict) gave the UN almost unlimited means to reach targets within the sphere of the land battles.



The jets of that era proved incapable of engaging in bombing missions. They flew too fast. The ordinance wasn't smart. And they could hardly carry any ordinance at all while remaining maneuverable. Bombing, therefore,was left to the prop planes.

A U.S. Sabre (F-86) of the Korean War era. I'll be blunt: I find jets of this era ugly. 

A MiG against which the Sabres flew. Yep. Ugly. 

But bombing was a more frustrating experience for those prop plane crews than it had been in World War II. The Air Force wanted to use its assets to engage in strategic bombing like they had in World War II, but pretty early into 1951 the targets of opportunity in under-developed North Korea were too few to make that worthwhile. The Air Force and Navy also tried interdiction missions aimed to cripple supply lines for the Communists foes. Those missions yielded disappointing results too.

So the leaders of the air war, and the crews they commanded, resigned themselves to close air support missions. Grunt work loathed by airmen.

But necessary work. As one of our guest speakers pointed out in Hawaii, American troops have never fought beneath skies controlled by the enemy. Never. For that we owe gratitude to many pilots and crews. And to take advantage of that reality, we have to thank aviators like Vic who had carried out the unglamorous missions supporting our boys on the ground.