Going In

Soon after Seoul fell on Sept. 26, the U.S. 1st Marine Division and 7th Infantry Division which had made the landings at Inchon found themselves back on LSTs and assault transports. Reinforced by the newly arrived 3rd Infantry Division, they were slated to make another amphibious landing—this time at Wonsan on Korea’s east coast. But on Oct. 10, just before what was to have been Dday, troops of the R.O.K. I Corps, driving overland, captured Wonsan ahead of schedule. The war had moved so fast that the big knockout assault scheduled to be commanded by Major General Edward M. Almond was not needed.

Last week U.S. naval officers revealed that the premature fall of Wonsan had probably spared U.S. troops a very messy landing indeed. Captain Richard T. Spofford, in charge of minesweeping operations at Wonsan, told newsmen that the North Korean port had been blocked off by a vast field of 2,000 to 3,000 well-designed Soviet mines running 30 miles out to sea.

Spofford said that his first sweep of the Wonsan area ran into such heavy concentrations that “I could see we would never get in there.” He ordered the three minesweepers of Mine Division 32 to turn back. “My formation is going in,” replied Lieut. Commander Bruce Hyatt, commander of the division. Two of Hyatt’s vessels promptly struck mines and went down with a loss of 13 men.

Last week, after two weeks of steady sweeping, the navy had not yet cleared the Wonsan area of mines. Said Rear Admiral Allan E. Smith, commander of the U.N. Blockade and Escort Force in Korea: “The Russians apparently have everything we have and everything the Germans had in mining techniques . . . The U.S. must put minesweeping on the same priority level as anti-submarine and carrier warfare.”