KOREAN WAR
In the dry and clinical description of the annalist, the Korean War may be defined as a war between North Korea allied with China and the Soviet Union and South Korea allied with the United Nations and the United States of America. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. As always, wars have complex backgrounds. Reasons and factors and inevitabilities are dominoes that later historians set up in the worthy cause of warning the present time and future times not to go down that path.
I will keep this personal and small-scale. My father was a veteran of the Korean War. He was there 1953-1954 with the 7th Infantry Division and was awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service. He was 23-24 years old there, fresh out of Michigan State University’s ROTC program. We always traded military history back and forth. Late in life he began to tell me stories of his time there — and of his experiences in the Dominican Republic and in Vietnam. As a bookseller I provided him with books on “his” war, which he appreciated for the larger canvas they provided. Here are some of the good ones I have found over the years. I know I don’t have enough of the Korean perspective of the war, and I don’t have many big strategic maps that situate the war within the Cold War. But this listing is a beginning. History is always beginning over. As a discipline, as a way of thought, history never tires of trying to get the story not only right but understandable.
F-51 Mustang Units of the Korean War [Combat Aircraft series]
F-51 Mustang Units of the Korean War [Combat Aircraft series]
By the time the Korean War erupted, the F-51 Mustang was seen as obsolete, but that view quickly changed when the USAF rushed 145 of them to the theatre in late 1950. They had the endurance to attack targets in Korea from bases in Japan, where the modern F-86 fighters and other jets did not. Rather than the interceptor and escort fighter roles the Mustang had performed during World War 2, in the Korean War they were assigned to ground attack missions - striking at communist troop columns advancing south. This is the chronicle of the Mustang units that fought in the Korean War, detailing the type's involvement in a series of intense actions, its successes and its considerable losses. Drawing on meticulous research and gripping first-hand accounts from aircrew, this book explains how the faithful Mustang was able to roll back the years, fight, and prove itself in a new era of aerial warfare.
Warren Thompson has had numerous books and magazine articles published over the past 30 years. His interest in the Korean War has spanned almost this entire length of time. Thompson has written books for Osprey since 1990, with his latest contribution being the Combat Aircraft volume on the F9F Panther Units of the Korean War.Chris Davey has illustrated more than 30 titles for Osprey's Aircraft of the Aces, Combat Aircraft and Elite Units series since 1994. Based in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and one of the last traditional airbrush artists in the business, he has become the artist of choice for both USAAF/USAF piston-engined fighters.
Contents:
The very early days of the war with a make-shift unit out of Clark Air Base and the arrival of 145 Mustangs from the states
Mustang numbers become large enough to slow down the North Korean advances on the Pusan Perimeter
Breakout from Pusan and the Inchon Landing
The war becomes stagnant and the Mustangs range all the way up to the Yalu River hunting for targets. The South Africans attach their F-51 squadron to the 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing.
USAF winds down its Mustang operations and slowly converts the squadrons over to new F-86F fighter-bombers
Republic of Korea Mustang operations in the war
Appendices