For three years, beginning in June 1950, air and ground crews of
the United States Air Force (USAF) conducted bombing operations
with Boeing B-29 Superfortresses in support of the United Nations
(U.N.) forces engaged on the peninsula of Korea. Powered by four
large radial piston engines, the propeller- driven Superfortress
had been the most advanced very long-range heavy bomber developed
during the Second World War. But such had been the pace of
aeronautical development since the Second World War that it was
now, at the time of Korea, considered but a medium bomber, and one
outclassed by early jet aircraft at that. Manned principally by
officers and men from the Strategic Air Command (SAC), the B-29
units carried out missions very different from the task for which
SAC was trained. Instead of striking at the homeland of a major
industrial power with ATOMIC weapons, the crews at- tacked targets
of many types, showing the variety of functions that air power
could perform. The bombers carried out battlefield support,
interdiction, and air superiority (counter airfield) missions. They
hit industrial targets of the type normally classified as strategic
and also took part in an effort to utilize air power to pressure
the enemy to agree to a cease-fire. This study traces the war
fought by Far East Air Forces (FEAF) Bomber Command (Provisional),
the B-29 force created to attack targets in Korea from bases in
Okinawa and Japan. Consisting of units belonging to FEAF and others
from SAC assigned on temporary duty, Bomber Command cooperated with
other USAF organizations to support operations in the Korean
peninsula. The B-29 crews earned credit in all ten of the
recognized campaigns of the Korean War. Politically, the war had
three phases. From June 25, 1950, when North Koreans attacked South
Korea, until November 2, 1950, U.N. forces defended the south and
defeated the invaders. From November 1950 until July 1951, the U.N.
had to deal with the intervention of Communist China and the most
desperate fighting of the war. Beginning on July 10, 1951, fighting
continued even as negotiations for a cease-fire between the
opposing military commands were under way. This third phase, and
the war, ended when the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. As
for actual combat operations, however, Bomber Command experienced
the war in terms of the opposition it encountered. Following a
brief but intensive air superiority war in the summer of 1950,
North Korea posed negligible air opposition, but when the Chinese
entered the war in November, assisted by Soviet fighter pilots
flying MiG-15 jet fighters, the limitations of the obsolescent
B-29s became apparent. Communist air resistance was so heavy that
by the end of October 1951 the B-29s had switched to a remarkable
night campaign that continued for more than a year and a half. By
1953, SAC was well on the way to removing the B-29s from its
inventory. Thus, for one last time, the B-29, a workhorse of the
air campaign in the Pacific in World War II, flew into combat.
Often called a "police action," or the "Korean conflict," the
fighting in Korea was undertaken under the leadership of the United
States on the authority of the U.N., to defend the Republic of
Korea against the Communist North Koreans and Chinese and their
Soviet supporters. Thus, it differed significantly from previous
conflicts, which had been typified by formal declarations of war by
the Congress. This semantic uncertainty well reflects the
unprecedented situation that American fighting men faced in the Far
East. For Bomber Command, the contrast between what a strategic
bomber like the B-29 had been designed for and what it actually did
clearly illustrates the anomalies.
General
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