Forward air control operations during the Korean War information
Forward air controllers in the Korean War were prominent throughout the conflict. United Nations forces depended upon improvised U.S. forward air control systems. The United States military held two competing doctrines for directing close air support (CAS). The U.S. Marine Corps' system depended on an organic supporting air wing delivering ordnance within 1,000 yards of front-line troops; this was to compensate for their weakness in artillery caused by being an amphibious force. On the other hand, the U.S. Army believed close air support should extend the range of its own organic artillery; it also wanted its own air corps. However, the U.S. Air Force was tasked with supplying trained fighter pilots as forward air controllers (FACs), with the Army supplying equipment and personnel. As events fell out, the 1st Marine Air Wing supplied the FACs and air strikes for X Corps during the war, while 5th Air Force supplied FACs and strike support to 8th Army. There were awkward attempts at coordination between the two, and with carrier-borne air power, though with limited success.
Tactical air power, including CAS, was largely instrumental in staunching communist offensives as the opposing forces swept back and forth in mobile warfare. (See graphic below.) Notable from the beginning was the reinvention of the airborne FAC; the T-6 "Mosquitos" of the 6147th Tactical Control Group would fly 40,354 FAC sorties, be credited with killing 184,808 communist troops, and win two U.S. and one Korean Presidential Unit Citations. Though only United Nations air superiority from the earliest days of the war made "Mosquito" operations possible, other FACs also inflicted serious casualties on the communists.
However, forward air control techniques paid off in diminishing returns once the opposing sides settled into trench warfare. As both sides dug in à la World War I, the communists operated at night to avoid air attacks. The U.S. Air Force FAC effort experimented with Shoran-directed raids and radar-directed bombing as a counter to this.
Even as the FAC systems served crucial roles in combat, the turf war concerning doctrine continued unabated. There were at least eight attempts to alter the Army/Air Force FAC system during the Korean War, with no substantive result. At war's end, forward air control policies in the U.S. military remained unchanged from those at its start. By 1956, the Army/Air Force CAS system was defunct.
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