Korean War: Inchon's 30-Foot Tides, MacArthur's Cobalt Plan and MASH Units

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After 35 years of Japanese rule, Korea was split at the 38th parallel in 1945, with Soviet forces in the north and Americans in the south. Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang and Syngman Rhee in Seoul each claimed the whole peninsula, and border clashes and the suppression of uprisings on Jeju and at Yeosu and Suncheon came before full war. Stalin agreed to an invasion only after the 1949 Soviet atomic test and Mao Zedong's victory in China, with Mao promising troops if the United States intervened. On June 25, 1950, North Korea crossed the parallel and took Seoul in three days. The UN Security Council authorized defense of the South because the Soviet delegate was boycotting it over the seating of Taiwan.

Under-equipped American occupation troops fell back to the Busan perimeter until Douglas MacArthur's landing at Inchon on September 15 cut North Korea's army in half. UN forces crossed into the North and drove for the Yalu River, where about 300,000 Chinese troops who had marched by night struck in late 1950 and pushed them back past Seoul, through battles such as the Chosin Reservoir. Truman fired MacArthur in April 1951, Matthew Ridgway stabilized the front, and two years of trench fighting followed at places like Heartbreak Ridge and Pork Chop Hill. The July 27, 1953 armistice created the DMZ near the original line, after about three million deaths and no peace treaty.

• American 2.36-inch bazooka rockets bounced off the sloped armor of Soviet-built T-34 tanks.
• Inchon's tides varied by up to 30 feet, giving the landing fleet only a few hours at high water.
• MacArthur wanted a belt of radioactive cobalt across the peninsula to cut Chinese supply lines.
• Swept-wing F-86 Sabres and MiG-15s fought the first large-scale jet battles over MiG Alley.
• Bell H-13 helicopters, sometimes flying with taped rotor blades, and front-line MASH units cut the death rate of wounded soldiers to about 2.5 percent.