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Warfare History Network

History, Asia

Commodore Dewey steamed out of Hong Kong for the Philippines, fully prepared to meet the Spanish at the Battle of Manila Bay.

Key Point: Never before had an entire fleet been wiped out without the loss of a ship—or a single man—on the part of an attacking force.

The United States Navy investigation into the February 15, 1898, sinking of the battleship Maine was a difficult undertaking. The nation’s press had been inciting the American people with war hysteria headlines. It was almost impossible for the naval officers conducting the inquiry not to be influenced by public opinion, the enormity of the tragedy, and a thirst for revenge.

There were only two possibilities for the loss of the Maine. Either the ship had been destroyed by an accidental internal explosion or by a deliberate act of sabotage. If it was an accident, then the commanding officer, Captain Charles Sigsbee, was required to explain how it occurred on a ship for which he was responsible. But if the act had been carried out by Spanish authorities, dissident Spaniards, or Cuban insurgents, then Spain was to blame.

The assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, was convinced that the fault lay with the Spanish. He was positive that the explosion was no accident, and that the Maine was a victim of “dirty treachery.” Thus, comments supporting the accident theory were a particular worry to Roosevelt; he was a constant advocate of a strong Navy, and Republican congressional leaders had stated that “the [Maine] disaster proved the United States must stop building battleships.”

Teddy Roosevelt countered by saying that this reaction was weak and cowardly. He argued that “battleships were delicate instruments, and even the most advanced naval powers had accidents—they were as inevitable as losses in war. The men who live aboard these ships recognize and accept the hazard. The nation which they defend cannot do less. The loss of the Maine was the price the country must pay to assume its role as a great power.”

Unleashing the Fox in the Chicken House

On the afternoon of February 25, Secretary of the Navy John Long departed his office early, thereby leaving Roosevelt “in charge”—the fox was loose in the chicken house. The assistant secretary began to issue fleet orders as fast as the telegrapher could handle them. A general alert was sent to all ships, stations, and fleet commanders throughout the world ordering them to have their ships fueled and ready to leave port immediately.

Even before the Maine disaster, Commodore George Dewey had sailed with his flagship, the cruiser Olympia, from Nagasaki, Japan, to Hong Kong, closer to the Spanish-held Philippines. But the rest of Dewey’s squadron was still at Nagasaki.

Roosevelt changed that in a hurry. He telegraphed Dewey: “Order your squadron, except the Monocacy, to join you at Hong Kong. In event of declaration of war against Spain, your duty will be to see that Spanish ships do not leave the Asiatic coast, and then begin offensive operations in the Philippine Islands.” When Secretary Long returned to his office, he was surprised and upset at the actions Roosevelt had taken. But the orders to Commodore Dewey were not rescinded.

On Friday, March 25, the final report on the cause of the Maine disaster was delivered to the White House. The following Monday, President McKinley announced to the world that the Maine had been destroyed by a mine. This was the news that the American public had been waiting to hear. The nation’s press called for war, and the cry, “Remember the Maine” quickly healed the festering wounds of the recent Civil War.

The American people became united in a common cause. Only “war” could satisfy their hunger for revenge—the flames of which were fanned by the rival newspapers of Hearst and Pulitzer. Brewing in the wind was a newspaper circulation war in the States, and a shooting war on the high seas.

The loss of the Maine was not the only issue provoking a nationalistic spirit in the United States. The issue of Spanish misrule in Cuba had acquired an importance equal to that of who was to blame for the destruction of the battleship.

President McKinley’s Secretary of State, William R. Day, declared that Spain must accept responsibility for the loss of the Maine. This was not all; Spain should make reparations to the United States, and also grant Cuba her independence. The president, on the other hand, strove for neutrality and sought concessions from Spain in order to satisfy America’s lust for war. But “flag-waving” Congressmen demanded retribution, and continually exerted pressure on McKinley to act militarily against the Spanish.

Declaring War with Spain

Secretary of War Russell A. Alger told the president that Congress was hell-bent for revenge and would declare war in spite of McKinley’s pleas for calmness and cool heads. The war hawks finally prevailed. On April 19, Congress passed a resolution demanding that Spain relinquish her authority and government in Cuba—and McKinley was authorized to use the armed forces to effectuate the decree. Except for a formal declaration, the United States was at war with Spain.

Within a few days, President McKinley ordered a naval blockade of Cuban ports, and a call went out for 125,000 Army volunteers. Then, on April 25, Congress passed a joint resolution that a state of war existed between the two countries.

George Dewey had entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1854, aged 17. He was just beginning his Navy career at the time of the Civil War, and participated in the capture of New Orleans—serving as a lieutenant aboard the USS Mississippi. When Commodore Dewey was assigned to the Asiatic Squadron in January 1898, he was already 60 years old and looking forward to retirement.

On Friday, April 22, Dewey’s fleet was riding at anchor in the British port of Hong Kong. Navy Secretary Long cabled the commodore that the United States had begun a blockade of Cuban ports, but that war had not yet been officially announced. Later that afternoon, the cruiser Baltimore (dispatched by Roosevelt) arrived from Honolulu loaded with powder and ammunition for Dewey’s flotilla. On April 24, because of British neutrality regulations, the American Asiatic Squadron was ordered to leave Hong Kong. While Dewey’s ships steamed out from the British port, military bands on English vessels played the “Star Spangled Banner,” their crews cheering the American sailors.

Commodore Dewey anchored his fleet about 30 miles down the Chinese coast at Mirs Bay and awaited further instructions. During the weeks that Dewey was in Hong Kong, his days were spent in consultation with the various ship captains under his command. All possibilities and eventualities of conflict with the enemy were discussed. He called upon his men to express their opinions freely, and all ideas were given careful consideration. Also while the American squadron was anchored at Hong Kong, Spanish agents played a cat-and-mouse game with Dewey. The Spaniards continually spread rumors concerning the mining of channels surrounding the island of Corregidor and portions of Manila.

America’s Uncomfortable Analysis

Because of all the misinformation he was receiving, Dewey had established his own spy network. He had assigned his aide, Ensign F.B. Upham, to pose as a civilian interested in the sea and ships. Upham would interview crews attached to vessels arriving from Manila. Additional important data was obtained from an American businessman living in Hong Kong who made frequent trips to the Philippines and reported his observations to the commodore. Surprisingly, actual U.S. Naval intelligence was so lacking that Dewey was forced to buy charts of the Philippine Islands at a Hong Kong store.

After as many facts as they could gather were in and sorted out, the final picture they pieced together was not comforting. Approximately 20 Spanish naval vessels were in the Manila area, though most of these were gunboats and small torpedo craft. The largest ships were two cruisers, the Reina Cristina and Castilla.

Actually, it was the Spanish coastal defenses that worried Dewey the most. The island of Corregidor divided the entrance of Manila Bay into two channels. The north passage, between Corregidor and the Bataan peninsula was called Boca Chica and was only two miles wide. The southern channel, Boca Grande, was five miles wide. Strong fortifications mounting high- power German-made Krupp guns had been constructed on the island and mainland. Both channels had been mined by the Spanish. The narrow passage was the shallower of the two, and potentially more dangerous. Dewey was of the opinion that mining the deep channel at Boca Grande would be a much more difficult undertaking, and he doubted the Spanish could have accomplished the feat successfully. Other information relayed to the American fleet reported heavily armed fortresses at Cavite and Manila itself.

Another disturbing problem confronting Dewey was the knowledge that no reinforcements, nor assistance of any kind, had been dispatched by Navy Secretary Long to support the Asiatic Squadron. There was also the realization that in case the battle was not decisive and his fleet was forced to retire from the action, there was no place to go if any of his ships needed repair. Neutrality laws worked against the Americans in all Asian ports—and the United States was 8,000 miles away. Thus, by steaming to Manila, Dewey was burning all his bridges behind him. He had to be victorious. If the mission failed, the likely result was hopeless retreat and eventual annihilation of his squadron.

“You Must Capture Vessels or Destroy”

While battle plans were being formulated, crew members of the American flotilla were not taking life easy. The sailors trained continually in target practice, fire drills, and all possible conditions of actual combat. On Tuesday, April 26, Dewey was notified that war had begun and received his sailing orders: “War has commenced between the United States and Spain. Proceed at once to the Philippine Islands, and initiate operations against the Spanish fleet. You must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost endeavors.”

A reporter for the New York Journal, John Barrett, witnessed the American ships leaving the Chinese coast. He wrote: “When Dewey’s squad- ron sailed out from Mirs Bay, it reminded me of thoroughbred race horses, trained to the minute by an expert, who not only knew his animals, but also his competition, and the conditions of the race.” Nevertheless the United States Asiatic Fleet did not include a single battleship. The flotilla was composed of four cruisers, the Olympia, Baltimore, Boston, , and Raleigh; two gunboats, the Concord and Petrel; and the revenue cutter McCulloch. Dewey’s flagship, the Olympia, was commanded by Captain Charles V. Gridley.

The armament of the American vessels ranged from 8-inch to 5-inch guns, plus many smaller caliber weapons. The combined tonnage of the cruisers was only slightly more than that of the battleship Iowa.

Before leaving Hong Kong, Dewey had asked for and received permission to purchase two British cargo ships—the Nanshan and the Zafiro. The merchantmen were loaded with 10,000 tons of coal for the task force and manned by English crews. Three newspaper correspondents sailed with the American fleet. Aboard the McCulloch were Edwin Harden of the New York World and John McCutch- eon of the Chicago Record. Joseph Stickney of the New York Herald had a ringside seat on the bridge of the Olympia,.

Hong Kong was 600 miles from Manila, and there was plenty of time for the men in Dewey’s squadron to worry and wonder what was in store for them. Moreover, they could be anxious about an ambush; more than a thousand islands were scattered throughout the Philippine archipelago, and Spanish warships could be hiding anywhere

During the voyage, individual ship captains kept their men razor-sharp, with constant gun drills and signal exercises. General quarters was called at any hour of the day or night. On Friday evening, April 29, the fleet was ordered darkened, except for small stern lights that were barely visible. On Saturday morning, the island of Luzon was sighted. Fires were kindled under each boiler, and black smoke poured from every stack. The vessels were a bedlam of activity. Splinter nettings were spread and hoses run between decks—ready to instantly drown any fires caused by bursting shells. Ammunition hoists were checked, magazines opened, and every strip of bunting except the signal flags was packed away. Wooden stanchions, rails, and other movable items were stowed below to prevent shrapnel fragments from slashing the men topside in case of an enemy hit.

The Spanish Fleet Possessed a Distinct Numerical Advantage

Wooden lifeboats were lowered and towed behind the McCulloch. All spars and ladders that could not be stowed below decks were swung over the sides of the ships. Unnecessary rigging was taken down, and wire stays attached to the masts were firmly lashed with ropes, so that if shot away, the masts would not crash to the deck and interfere with the operation of the guns. The captain of every ship in Dewey’s squadron informed his crew that the Spanish fleet was larger than the American squadron, and that considering the mined channels and forts that had to be traversed, the enemy had a distinct advantage.

Before he sailed from Mirs Bay, Dewey learned that Spanish Admiral Patricio Montojo had ordered his warships to Subic Bay, about 30 miles north of Corregidor, and was prepared to battle the Americans from an excellent defensive position. The vessels under Montojo’s command were the cruisers Reina Cristina and Castilla and the gunboats Isla de Cuba, Isla de Luzon, Don Juan de Austria, and the Don Antonio de Ulloa. Several smaller ships included four torpedo boats.

Subic Bay was an ideal defensive setup. The entrance was about two miles wide, and halfway up the bay was Grande Island, commanding both sides of the passage. But unknown to Dewey, when Admiral Montojo’s fleet reached Subic Bay, he discovered that only five mines had been placed and that four cannon, supposedly mounted on the island, were instead lying on the beach. Visibly upset, Montojo turned his fleet around and headed for Manila. The Spanish admiral anchored his warships on both sides of the Cavite fortress, where the vessels could be protected by large land-based guns. Montojo was familiar with the harbor area, and was aware that the Americans would be compelled to maneuver in strange waters—and with inaccurate Spanish charts.

Dewey halted his squadron outside Subic Bay and sent the Boston, Baltimore, and Concord ahead as pickets to scout the inlet. The vessels returned in the afternoon and reported they found only a few small sloops and schooners. Dewey also received news that Montojo had left Subic Bay earlier that morning.

All ship captains were immediately summoned to the Olympia, for a conference. Dewey told the officers he intended to enter Manila Bay that evening—regardless of the mines and forts. The Commodore felt confident the Spaniards would not expect such a move, and that they could be taken by surprise. Then the American squadron sneaked along the Philippine coast at four knots so as not to reach the Manila Bay entrance before nightfall.

Battle Stations!

The ships’ crews went to their battle-eve supper at 7 o’clock, and about two hours later, battle ports were closed. A spirit of tense excitement permeated the hot, muggy night. The only light visible was a tiny stern signal, enclosed in a box so it could only be seen by ships directly in the wake of the slow-moving vessels.

The Olympia, led the column, followed by the Baltimore, Boston, Raleigh, Concord, and Petrel. The McCulloch and the coal ships were stationed a mile astern. The sky was overcast but the moon occasionally peeked between the clouds, silhouetting the invading fleet. Off to port, the coast of Bataan could be seen in the distance. Dewey realized that the enemy could be watching their approach and preparing their fortress guns for a heavy barrage. At 10 o’clock, the men were sent to their battle stations—not by the usual bugle call, but by word of mouth. Dewey timed his arrival with precision. It was almost midnight when the Corregidor Island foglight flashed ahead. The American squadron passed into the Boca Grande channel and approached Corregidor abeam to port. Every binocular and gun was trained on the fortress as Dewey’s fleet turned north into Manila Bay.

Suddenly the McCulloch’s smokestack belched a bright flash of flame. Soot from the soft coal she was burning had ignited inside the stack owing to the intense heat of her furnace. The fire glowed for a few minutes, leaving the cutter a perfect target for the enemy’s big guns. But the Spaniards had evidently been taken by surprise. Their weapons were not fully manned, and it took time to ready the batteries for action.

It was not until Dewey’s fleet cleared Corregidor that the Spanish opened fire. The flash from a cannon erupted on the mainland, and a shell ripped across the water, splashing in front of the Olympia,. The Raleigh answered the challenge, followed by 8-inch salvos from the Boston. Direct hits were scored on the enemy’s position, silencing their guns.

Even though the American squadron had been discovered, Spaniards in the forts at the bay’s entrance could not directly tell their comrades farther up the bay what was happening; there was no telegraphic communication between them and the city of Manila. Dewey was only 20 miles from Manila, but decided not to arrive until daylight. He signaled his ships to proceed in double column at a speed of four knots. He also ordered the McCulloch to lead the cargo vessels up to a position where they would be protected by the cruisers and less exposed to a sudden attack. All gun crews were directed to try to get some sleep. The men lay down on the decks near their battle stations. Each ship was in a state of readiness. Every gun was loaded, and ammunition hoists were filled with shells. Officers on watch continually moved about, inspecting every station over and over again. Conversations were conducted in whispers so as not to disturb the sleeping men.

At 5 o’clock Sunday morning, May 1, the dim outline of Manila loomed through the haze on the horizon. A few minutes later, the city’s waterfront could be seen. In a moment, a lookout aboard the Olympia, sighted the outline of ships about five miles south. Lieutenant C.G. Calkins, using his binoculars, brought Sangley Point and Cavite into sharp focus. He could see a line of gray and white vessels stretching eastward from the point, the flame-colored flags of Spain hanging listlessly from their masts. Dewey’s squadron, with bright-hued signal flags whipping in the air, looked every bit like ships on parade as they headed for their date with destiny.

Battle Commences

John McCutcheon described the opening of the battle: “At ten minutes after five, the American fleet was off Cavite, and the brightness of the day revealed the enemy’s position. Spanish began firing immediately at a range of four miles. At the sound of the first shot, the Olympia, swung to starboard, and headed straight for the Spaniards. The flagship was followed by the Baltimore, Raleigh, Petrel, Concord, and Boston.”

Aboard the advancing American vessels, gunners, stripped of all clothing except their trousers, waited impatiently for the order to commence firing. Dewey had given strict instructions for his ships to hold their fire until an effective range had been reached—he could not afford to waste powder and shells. The McCulloch and coal ships remained back in the bay, their crews lining the decks to watch the spectacle. Commodore Dewey and Lieutenant Calkins stood on the forward bridge of the Olympia, while Captain Gridley’s post was in the conning tower.

With Dewey’s flagship in the lead, the silent fleet steamed steadily forward. Enemy shells kicked up the water around the squadron, but each vessel maneuvered directly behind the Olympia, with absolute precision and in perfect order.

As the American flotilla drew closer to Cavite, shells from the Spanish fort and anchored warships churned the bay into a frothy foam. Suddenly two large geysers of water shot into the air as the Spaniards exploded a couple of mines in front of Dewey’s advancing column. But the American ships stayed on course, closing the distance between themselves and the smoking Spanish cannon. When each range was called, the gunners aboard the Olympia, lowered their sight-bars.

The flagship continued for another mile, with shots splashing on all sides. The tension among the crew was almost unbearable. As soon as the Olympia, was three miles from Cavite, Dewey ordered the cruiser’s port 5-inch battery turned toward the enemy. Seconds later, a shell burst above the flagship. A boatswain’s mate at one of the aft guns shouted “Remember the Maine!” and every man on deck echoed the cry.

“You may fire when ready, Gridley!”

Dewey checked with his gunnery officer. The range was perfect. The commodore then glanced at his watch. It was exactly 5:40. He looked up at the conning tower and called out, “You may fire when ready, Gridley!”

Dewey had barely finished giving the order when the Olympia, sent a broadside of shells crashing into Fort Cavite. The signal for attack brought every squadron gun into action. A hailstorm of steel from rapid-fire weapons pounded the Spanish fleet, while large-caliber shells concentrated on the fortress. The enemy’s return fire increased. Splashing projectiles hurled a deluge of water across the Olympia,’s deck, thoroughly dowsing the gun crews. Clouds of dense smoke enveloped the Spanish and American vessels. The terrific onslaught by Dewey’s fleet continued as it steamed past the enemy fortifications.

When the port batteries of the American ships would no longer bear on the Spaniards, Dewey’s column swung about and cut loose with their starboard guns. One sailor remarked, “It was a tremendous, roaring procession—a scene of awful magnificence!” Two enemy shells ripped the Baltimore. One missile passed clear through the cruiser without exploding. The other tore across the main deck, wrecking a 6-inch gun and wounding eight men.

The Boston was also blasted. A projectile struck her port quarter. A fire broke out, but it was quickly extinguished. Time-fuse shells continually exploded above the American fleet, scattering steel fragments in all directions. Joseph Stickney was on the Olympia,’s bridge during the conflict and described the battle: “One projectile headed straight for the forward bridge, but exploded less than a hundred feet away. Shrapnel sliced the rigging over the heads of Commander Lamberton and myself. Another shell, about as large as a flatiron, gouged a hole in the deck a few feet below the Commodore.”

Tons of Spanish shells fell about the American squadron, whose salvation was the poor marksmanship of the enemy. Most of their shots were too high and roared into the bay beyond. After passing the enemy’s line for the second time, the Olympia,’s column swung around again on a closer tack, giving the port guns a second chance at the Spaniards. The Cavite shoreline was a veritable inferno of flames and the pandemonium was indescribable. Suddenly the Americans spotted the Reina Cristina steaming out to meet the Olympia,. Dewey ordered his ships to concentrate their fire on the reckless enemy vessel. Rapid-fire shells riddled the side of the Spaniard, and gunfire swept her decks. An 8-inch projectile struck the enemy cruiser in the stern, plowing completely through the ship and blowing up its forward magazine.

Dewey’s fleet had just finished its fifth circle of the enemy’s position, when Gridley reported that there were only 15 rounds per gun for the Olympia,’s 5-inch battery. Not wishing to alarm the crew, the commodore ordered his squadron to withdraw for “breakfast.” While the battle-weary fleet steamed north, beyond the range of Spanish guns, clearing smoke near Cavite revealed the wreckage of the fort and fires burning on several enemy vessels.

How Morale on the Olympia Plummeted

Once safely out in the bay, Dewey summoned his ship captains to the Olympia,. Remaining ammunition was checked and powder and shells redistributed where necessary. During this unorthodox pause in the action, Stickney wrote the following: “We had been fighting a determined and courageous enemy for almost three hours, without noticeably diminishing their volume of fire. So far as we could see, there was no indication that the Spaniards were less able to defend themselves than they had been at the beginning of the engagement.

“We knew the Spanish had an ample supply of ammunition, so there was no hope of exhausting their fighting power by a battle lasting twice as long. If we should run short of powder and shell, we might possibly become the hunted instead of the hunter. The gloom on the bridge of the Olympia, was thicker than a London fog in November. We had all been disappointed by results of our gunfire. For some reason, the shells seemed to go too high or too low. The same had been the case with the Spaniards. On our final circle, we were within 2,500 yards of the enemy. At that distance, and in a smooth sea, we should have had a large percentage of hits. However, as near as we could judge, we had not crippled the foe to any great extent.”

While his ravenous sailors ate a hearty meal, Commodore Dewey scouted the enemy position with his binoculars. Heavy smoke obscured Cavite, but he still could make out the tall masts and flags of Spanish ships. Occasionally the sound of exploding ammunition could also be heard in the distance. After a three-hour respite, Dewey again formed his battle line for attack. This time the Baltimore was in the lead.

As the American fleet approached Cavite, the sound of church bells in downtown Manila floated peacefully across the bay. Curious spectators could be seen crowding the rooftops of the city. They appeared to be preparing to watch a pageant or play.

Dewey’s squadron and the big guns of Cavite opened fire at the same time. Only one Spanish vessel slipped her moorings and came out fighting. The captain of the Antonio de Ulloa nailed her flag to the mast and engaged the American cruisers in a one-sided firefight. Within a few minutes, the Spanish vessel went down with all hands.

Spotting the White Flag of Surrender

Recognizing the futility of continuing the conflict, Admiral Montojo issued his last order to his fleet officers: “Scuttle and abandon your ships!” The admiral then escaped to Manila in a small boat.

About 12:30, a white flag of surrender was seen flying over Fort Cavite, and Dewey anchored his squadron near Manila.

Three enemy ships had been sunk by Dewey’s squadron. Eight Spanish vessels had been set afire and scuttled by their crews. A total of 381 Spaniards were killed during the fierce battle. While aboard the American fleet, only eight men were wounded. Amazingly, not one member of Dewey’s squadron was killed in action.

After the conflict, Commodore Dewey declared: “This battle was won in Hong Kong Harbor. My captains and staff officers working with me, planned out the fight with reference to all contingencies, and we were fully prepared for exactly what happened. Although I recognized the alternatives from reports that reached me—that the Spanish might meet me at Subic Bay, or possibly near Corregidor, I made up my mind that the battle would be fought right here that very morning, at the same hour, and with nearly the same position of opposing ships. That is why and how, at break of day, we formed in perfect line, opened fire, and kept our position without mistake or interruption until the enemy ships were destroyed.”

Dewey’s engagement was unsurpassed in the naval history of that time. Never before had an entire fleet been wiped out without the loss of a ship—or a single man—on the part of an attacking force. Commodore Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay is still one of the most romantic and decisive in world history.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Warfare History Network

History, Asia

Its destroyers and other warships being too large, the U.S. Navy developed the Swift Boat to patrol coastal areas and rivers during the Vietnam War.

Key Point: The first Swift Boats reached Vietnam in October 1965.

In addition to standard aircraft carrier and warship patrol operations in the open sea, naval action during the Vietnam War developed a character of its own. While the U.S. Navy maintained responsibility for more traditional functions, the interior waterways of Vietnam became an area of operations that required a different approach.

Since the early 20-century, the patrol workhorse of the U.S. Navy had been the destroyer, which rose to prominence during the two world wars. Destroyers provided perimeter security for formations of surface ships, anti-submarine and antiaircraft defenses, and search-and-rescue duties among others. These warships rendered invaluable service; however, during the Vietnam War the ocean-going vessels were unsuited for operations along the deltas, coastal areas, and rivers of the country.

A Holdover From World War II

The American Fletcher-class Navy destroyer was a weapon of World War II. Armed with main batteries of five-inch guns, 40mm Bofors antiaircraft weapons, 20mm cannon, torpedoes, and an array of machine guns and automatic weapons, these were formidable warships, and a number of them remained in service through both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. These destroyers displaced 2,500 tons fully loaded, were more than 375 feet long, and their draft exceeded 17 feet.

Clearly, a smaller warship was needed to navigate the confines of Vietnam’s coastal areas and to patrol the waterways of the country’s interior. By 1965, the Navy recognized the need for such craft, and the primary weapon of the so-called “Brown Water Navy” was born. The Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) became commonly known as the Swift Boat and was the most prominent of the Navy’s riverine patrol craft during the Vietnam War.

On February 1, 1965, an extensive naval staff study titled Naval Craft Requirements in a Counter Insurgency Environment was published. It concluded that the requirements of patrol, combat, and interdiction of communist troop and supply movement along the rivers of Vietnam presented unique challenges. Further, the document specified the basic capabilities of a new type of riverine craft to fulfill the brown water role. Among these were superb reliability, a non-wooden hull, speed of up to 25 knots, the capability to sustain operations during patrols of up to 500 miles, quiet running, shallow draft, and armament capable of limited offensive operations.

The Swift Boat

The Swift Boats were 50 feet long and constructed of welded aluminum hulls. With a beam of about 13 feet and a draft of roughly five feet, they were well suited for narrow spaces. Their General Motors 12V71 Detroit Diesel engines provided 480 horsepower with a range of 750 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots and 320 nautical miles at 21 knots. The Swift Boats were initially armed with twin-mounted .50-caliber Browning machine guns in a turret atop the pilothouse, another .50-caliber in an over-under configuration, and an 81mm mortar. The standard crew was six, including a skipper, boatswain, radar and radio operator, engineer, and two gunners.

The first Swift Boats reached Vietnam in October 1965, and about 100 of the Mark I and Mark II variants were ordered by the Navy through 1967. Another 33 of the slightly larger Mark III boats were delivered to Vietnam between 1969 and 1972.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: USMC Archives / Flickr

Warfare History Network

History, Asia

World War II experiences led to more shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons such as the RPG and the M72 LAW, both widely used in the Vietnam War.

Key Point: The one-shot disposable LAW made its debut with the U.S. military in 1963 and remains in limited use.

Among the most effective and feared weapons of the communist North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong insurgency during the Vietnam War was the rocket-propelled grenade, commonly known as the RPG. These were simple weapons originally designed and manufactured in the Soviet Union. The RPG-2 and the follow-on RPG-7 were perhaps the best-known types of these weapons that entered service in Vietnam. During the conflict, these RPG types were known as the B-40 and B-41.

A shoulder-fired anti-armor weapon, the RPG traces its roots to the latter years of World War II as the Soviets developed and tested its predecessor, the PG-70. The RPG-2 entered service in 1949 and was mass produced in the Soviet Union, both for use by the Red Army and for the export market. The weapon was also produced under license in other countries. The simplicity of the RPG-2 and its light weight of just under 10 pounds were attributes that made it ideal for squad level anti-tank operations.

The basic RPG consists of a 40mm tube and fires a high explosive anti-tank grenade such as the Soviet PG-2. Although it may be operated by a single soldier, it has most often been deployed with a two-man team. Firing involves the simple steps of cocking with the thumb, aiming, and then pulling the trigger. Once the grenade exits the tube, six stabilizer fins deploy, and the grenade is accurate up to about 160 yards with a maximum range of nearly 220 yards.

During the Vietnam War, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces regularly encountered the RPG. Particularly effective against the high-silhouetted M113 armored personnel carrier, as well as against tanks and low-flying helicopters and other aircraft, the RPG developed a formidable reputation and remains common around the world.

The LAW Enters Combat in 1963

The United States military of the Vietnam era deployed its own version of the infantry squad level shoulder fired anti-tank weapon. Like the RPG, the M72 LAW (Light Anti-Tank Weapon) traces its lineage to the World War II era. The LAW was influenced first by the German panzerfaust and then the American M1 bazooka. The one-shot disposable LAW made its debut with the U.S. military in 1963 and remains in limited use.

The 66mm weapon consists of a high explosive anti-tank rocket or grenade placed inside a pair of tubes, one fitting within the other. In preparation for firing, the inner tube telescopes to the rear, and the operator acquires the target and pulls the trigger. The LAW weighs only 5.5 pounds, and its effective range is similar to that of the RPG at more than 150 yards and a maximum range of 220 yards. The projectile has been documented to penetrate nearly 10 inches of armor.

In Vietnam the LAW was once recalled due to malfunctions resulting in the warhead exploding while the rocket was in flight. It was reissued after safety modifications were completed. More recently, the LAW has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan where its light weight and low cost have made it ideal for urban combat or instances when enemy vehicles are encountered.

Since the Vietnam War, the LAW has been in service with the armed forces of more than 30 countries, including Israel, Egypt, Australia, South Korea, and Great Britain.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Chris Bauch, Brendon Phillips, Dillon Thomas Browne, Madhur Anand

Coronavirus, The Americas

For students attending in person, there are many questions to consider: How important is the cleaning and disinfecting of surfaces? Which age of students should use masks, and when? What is the best approach to cohorting? How large should class sizes be? Here's the math. 

Formulating school and childcare centre reopening plans in North America this fall has been a daunting task, as both the pandemic and our scientific knowledge of COVID-19 continue to unfold quickly.

For students attending in person, there are many questions to consider: How important is the cleaning and disinfecting of surfaces? Which age of students should use masks, and when? What is the best approach to cohorting? How large should class sizes be?

Knowledge of how COVID-19 spreads has improved since the pandemic started, but as reopening plans were being developed, we recognized a need to investigate outbreak scenarios in schools and childcare centres. With our combined background in mathematical modelling, epidemiology, environmental sciences and childhood education, we tackled the question of class sizes.

We developed a mathematical model of outbreaks in homes and classrooms. The model made a very surprising prediction: as class sizes go up, the negative impacts of COVID-19 go up exponentially faster.

A granular approach

We opted for an “individual-based” model where distinct individuals (adults and children) are allowed to interact according to specified rules. This highly granular approach allows us to see the effects of social groupings and individual characteristics on personal outcomes like missed school days.

Using age and household size information obtained from Canadian census data, we constructed small populations with childhood education centres and associated households consisting of one or more adults and one or more children. Our model is essentially a simulated virtual world of schools and homes.

Children were allocated to classrooms randomly or by grouping siblings together. We considered childcare centre scenarios with student/educator ratios of 7:3, 8:2 and 15:2. We also considered primary school scenarios with student/educator ratios of 8:1, 15:1 and 30:1. Students could attend class every day or alternate between in-person instruction one week and online learning the next week.

Influencing factors

Then we ran our computer simulation of COVID-19 outbreaks in this setting. We assumed that when a symptomatic case of COVID-19 appears in a classroom that it would then be closed for 14 days.

But modelling the impact of class sizes on outbreaks is tricky.

Schools have been closed during much of the first wave and so — perhaps unsurprisingly — school-aged children did not account for a significant portion of cases during this period. In addition, children are more likely to be asymptomatic and therefore not reported as having COVID-19. A host of other factors could influence both the risk and size of outbreaks.

So how can we predict what outbreaks in schools might look like, given that schools have not been open in Ontario since March 2020? Since we don’t know all of the right input values to use, we took an approach of “uncertainty analysis,” a cornerstone of scientific inquiry — admitting that you do not know everything.

This approach meant that we would change the model inputs and study how those affect the predictions. For example, we distinguished between a “high transmission” assumption, where the virus can spread quickly, and a “low transmission” assumption, where the virus spread is being slowed by the use of masks, disinfection and physical distancing.

Triple whammy

Across all of the permutations used in our uncertainty analysis, we were surprised to find that when class size doubled, the number of cases and student-days lost to closure more than doubled. Student-days are calculated by multiplying the number of closure days by the number of students affected, and with each class size doubling, they went up by factors of two to five.

When we increased the transmission rate, it changed the total number of cases, but the relative number of cases or student-days lost to closure between the various class size scenarios did not change much: larger classes were always relatively worse than smaller classes, and by about the same factor of two to five.

We describe this as a “triple whammy.” First, when class sizes are larger, the chances are higher that one of the children will test positive. Second, when that child does test positive and the class is closed, closure of a larger class affects more children. Third, by the time the case is identified, the student might have been transmitting the virus for several days, or someone else in the class may have been asymptomatic and transmitting for many days. This third point is crucial — it is increasingly clear that SARS-CoV-2 can be spread by aerosol particles.

Other consequences

The worst scenario, by a wide margin, was the 30:1 ratio in the primary school setting. Switching to a 15:1 ratio with alternating weekly cohorts (15:1A) reduced the number of cases and student-days lost to closure by a factor of around four. And even though higher student/educator ratios allow more students to get in-person instruction, they also cause more disruptions due to more frequent need to close classrooms when a case is identified.

In addition, there are likely to be significant psychological, social and mental health consequences for parents and children when schools and childcare centres close. And since outbreaks can happen at any time, working parents may need to be pulled from their work with little or no advance notice.

Read more: How to help your child cope with the transition back to school during COVID-19

Moving forward

Schools and childcare centres have already reopened. Some districts have been allowed to go with a preferred model that permits smaller class sizes, and this is a step in the right direction.

There are also many examples of how school districts can reduce class size at minimal cost. For instance, kindergarten classes with two teachers could split into two groups, one of which uses the library, gym or spends more time outdoors in activities.

Read more: COVID-19 and schools reopening: Now is the time to embrace outdoor education

If widespread school closure occurs again this fall, we suggest that re-reopening plans pay close attention to the aspect of class size. While the risk of outbreaks will never be zero even with small classes, it would be prudent for class sizes to be lower, so these disruptions affect the fewest number of children and families possible. In the meantime, for parents and caregivers, the best thing to do is have honest and open conversations around how closures will look like in their family, including arrangements for work and child care.

The math tells us that school or classroom closures will be a reality for many school districts this fall.

Chris Bauch, Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo; Brendon Phillips, Ph.D. student, Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo; Dillon Thomas Browne, Assistant Professor, Psychology, University of Waterloo, and Madhur Anand, Professor & Director, Global Ecological Change & Sustainability Laboratory, University of Guelph

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Rebecca Dumbell

Health, World

Unfortunately, this means that it might be more difficult for a person who naturally stores fat around their waist to maintain good health.

It’s well known that carrying extra fat around your waist can be harmful to your health, bringing greater risk of developing illnesses such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. But a recent study found that, regardless of weight, people who carry more fat around their abdomen had a higher risk of dying sooner – in fact, there was an 11% increase in death during follow up with every extra 10cm of waist circumference.

The researchers included 72 studies in their review, which contained data on 2.5 million people. They then analysed the combined data on body shape measures, looking at waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-thigh ratio, and waist and thigh circumference – in other words, all the areas where a person naturally stores fat.

Beside the finding on belly fat, the researchers also found that people who tend to store more fat on the hips and thighs – instead of their abdomen – had a lower risk of dying sooner, with each extra 5cm thigh circumference associated with an 18% reduced risk of death during the follow-up period (between 3-24 years, depending on the study). But why might this be the case? The answer has to do with the type of fat tissue we tend to store in certain areas of our body.

Body fat (known as adipose tissue) plays an important role in our physiology. Its main purpose is to take glucose from the blood and safely store this energy as lipid inside our fat cells, which our body uses later for fuel. Our fat cells also produce hormone signals that influence many body processes, including appetite. Adipose tissue is therefore important for good metabolic health.

But having too little adipose tissue can affect how well blood sugar levels are regulated in the body. Insulin regulates healthy blood sugar levels, telling fat cells to take up glucose from the blood and store it for later. Without enough adipose tissue (a condition known as lipodystrophy), this process can’t work properly – resulting in insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes.

Although fat is important for good metabolic health, where we store it (and the kind of fat tissue it is) can have different health consequences. Research shows that people with the same height and weight, but who store their fat in different places have different risks of developing certain metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Visceral versus Subcutaneous

Body shape is influenced by where fat is stored in our body. For example, “apple shaped” people store more fat around their waist and are likely to store more fat deeper in the body surrounding their organs as visceral fat. “Pear shaped” people have larger thighs, and store more fat more evenly around their body just under the skin as subcutaneous fat.

These different fat depots have different physiological properties and express different genes. It’s thought that different visceral and subcutaneous fat depots develop from different precursor cells – cells that can become fat cells.

Visceral fat is considered more insulin resistant, and so carries a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Body fat stored around the waist also releases more blood triglycerides in response to stress hormone signals compared to hip and thigh fat. High blood trigylceride levels are associated with greater risk of heart disease. This is partly why visceral fat is seen as as more harmful than subcutaneous fat.

On the other hand, hip and thigh subcutaneous fat can better take up these triglycerides from the blood and store them safely, preventing the body from incorrectly storing them in the muscles or liver, which can cause liver disease. Subcutaneous fat tissue can even develop specialised “beige” fat cells that are able to burn fat. For these reasons, subcutaneous fat is thought of as safer – even protective against metabolic disease.

It’s thought that in some people subcutaneous fat stores run out of storage space (or the ability to make new fat cells) sooner than in others. This means more fat will be stored in the less safe visceral depots. Visceral fat can cause inflammation, eventually leading to metabolic and cardiovascular disease. And if fat can no longer be stored in adipose tissue, eventually lipid can accumulate elsewhere – including the heart, muscles, and liver – which again can lead to disease.

As with height, your genes play a large part in weight and body shape. Large genetic studies have identified over 400 of the tiniest genome differences that might contribute to body-fat distribution. For example, people who have a mutation in the LRP5 gene carry more fat in their abdomen and less in their lower body. However, these tiny genetic differences are common in the population, affecting most of us in one way or another – and may explain why humans have such a range of different body shapes.

Unfortunately, this means that it might be more difficult for a person who naturally stores fat around their waist to maintain good health. But research also shows that weight loss can reduce visceral fat and improve metabolic health. So what is important to remember is that body shape is only a risk factor, and even with these differences you can still lower your risk of chronic disease if you maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Rebecca Dumbell, Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters.

Erin Duffy, Erin Trish, Loren Adler

Healthcare,

Too often after a hospital procedure or visit to an emergency room patients get hit with unexpected bills from out-of-network doctors they had no role in choosing. These include assistant surgeons, emergency room doctors and anesthesiologists.

Surprise medical billing is one of the most urgent topics in health care.

Too often after a hospital procedure or visit to an emergency room patients get hit with unexpected bills from out-of-network doctors they had no role in choosing. These include assistant surgeons, emergency room doctors and anesthesiologists.

Most research and media coverage focuses on how burdensome these bills are for the patients who receive them. As health economists and policy analysts, we think there is a broader impact of surprise billing that deserves to share the spotlight.

Evidence from our recent study suggests that everyone with commercial health insurance is paying higher premiums today because lawmakers allow the practice of surprise billing to persist. Fixing surprise billing won’t just help the patients being billed; it offers the potential to lower health insurance premiums for everyone.

No choice, no competition

Patients can typically choose their doctors before they get treated. For example, they might pick a primary care doctor or the hospital and surgeon for a planned procedure based on reputation and whether those providers are in their insurance network. Picking a doctor who is in their insurance provider’s network typically comes with lower costs for the patient.

When the system works well, a patient ends up with a provider they like at a price negotiated by their insurer.

But patients don’t always have the opportunity to make this informed choice. In an emergency, a patient accepts the ambulance that arrives on the scene and the physicians who treat them in the emergency room. For elective procedures, even though the patient chooses the hospital and lead surgeon, they do not choose the radiologists, pathologists and anesthesiologists who are integral to their care.

About one in five commercially insured patients treated at an in-network emergency room is seen by an out-of-network physician. In about one in 10 elective procedures at an in-network hospital with an in-network surgeon, the anesthesiologist, assistant surgeon or similar physician is out-of-network.

This is not the way a market typically works. In a functioning market, consumers can choose service providers based on quality and price.

At its core, market failure arises because this system allows the subset of hospital-based physicians whom patients don’t choose to negotiate with insurance companies independent of the hospital at which they practice. Therefore, ambulance companies, emergency facilities and hospital-based physicians can still receive a substantial volume of patients whether they are in- or out-of-network. They are assured a steady stream of patients, in part, by the nature of their work. They don’t need to join networks to get patients. And, as out-of-network providers, they can set their own prices.

If the insurer pays less than their full charges, the out-of-network provider can send the patient a surprise bill for the balance.

Using Medicare as a benchmark shows the markup

With this out-of-network option to submit surprise bills, these unique providers have a valuable alternative to joining networks. This gives them bargaining leverage when they negotiate with insurers, allowing them to negotiate higher prices than they otherwise could have.

As a result, these providers are out-of-network more often, set higher charges and have higher in-network prices than other types of providers who rely on being in-network to generate patient volume.

To gauge just how much higher prices are, researchers often use Medicare as a benchmark for comparison. Medicare does not negotiate with providers. It instead sets prices administratively in an attempt to reflect efficient costs.

The numbers are telling.

Radiologists, or those who view MRIs, CT scans and other diagnostic images, get paid roughly twice as much by commercial insurers as Medicare pays, on average, for in-network services.

Emergency room physicians receive in-network payments that are triple the Medicare reimbursement.

Anesthesiologists and pathologists receive in-network payments three and a half times the Medicare reimbursement.

The average payments for other specialties have an upper bound of around 150% of Medicare.

This suggests that the ability to submit surprise bills generates a substantial markup in negotiated prices paid by commercial insurers.

In addition to high in-network prices, we have observed in our research that insurance plans pay out-of-network providers full charges one-quarter of the time. This prevents patients from getting surprise bills, but it is costly for insurers.

It’s not just the patients getting these services who bear the inflated costs. Everyone enrolled in commercial insurance plans also pays. When insurers or employers pay providers high prices, those costs are passed on to enrollees through higher premiums.

A lot of insurer spending goes to services for which surprise billing is common

This might not be so important if these unique providers accounted for only a very small share of health care spending. But we found that is not the case.

In our recent study, we found that about 12% of insurers’ spending on medical care goes to providers who commonly issue surprise bills: anesthesiologists, radiologists, pathologists, emergency medicine physicians, emergency facilities and emergency ground ambulance services.

Eliminating the ability to submit surprise bills for these unique providers would reduce their ability to collect large out-of-network payments. This would bring their leverage in price negotiations with insurers in line with those of other specialties in which patients are able to choose their providers. In turn, less insurer spending would result in lower premiums.

Two possible fixes

We looked at two potential federal policy approaches to address how surprise billing might affect insurance premiums. In both approaches, we assume that surprise billing is banned, but the details of out-of-network payments are handled differently.

In the first approach, instead of charging what they wish, out-of-network providers would receive the average amount that insurers currently pay to similar in-network providers in the local area. This approach could reduce average payments for services where surprise billing is common by about 15%, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

A second approach would cap charges from out-of-network emergency facilities and lead hospital-based doctors to negotiate how much they get paid with the hospital. The hospital would negotiate payment with the insurer for this combined service.

Without the option to treat patients who did not choose them on an out-of-network basis, bargaining leverage for these unique providers should fall in line with specialties that cannot submit surprise bills. The precise impacts are difficult to predict, but we assume that prices shift to about half again the cost of Medicare – the high end of what these other specialties are paid.

This means savings for the health care consumer and the health care system in general, not just the people unfortunate enough to get a surprise bill.

We estimate that premiums would drop by US$67 per member-year – or 1.6% – under the first scenario. Under the second scenario, premiums would drop $212 per member-year, or 5.1%.

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Applied to the U.S. commercially insured population – about 177 million people – we estimate that these reductions would save $12 billion and $38 billion, respectively.

Our research suggests that a federal policy eliminating surprise medical bills would reduce premiums for everyone with commercial insurance, in addition to sparing individual patients from these burdensome bills.

Erin Duffy, Post-doctoral research fellow, University of Southern California; Erin Trish, Associate Director, Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics, University of Southern California, and Loren Adler, Associate Director, USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, University of Southern California

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’automne de Politique étrangère 
(n° 3/2020). Marc Hecker, rédacteur en chef de Politique étrangère, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage dirigé par Bernard Rougier, Les territoires conquis de l’islamisme (Presses universitaires de France, 2020, 416 pages).

En 2002, Les Territoires perdus de la République – ouvrage dirigé sous pseudonyme par Georges Bensoussan – avait fait grand bruit. Les contributeurs y dénonçaient le recul des valeurs républicaines et la progression de l’antisémitisme dans certains quartiers sensibles. Moins de vingt ans plus tard, ces territoires auraient été conquis par l’islamisme, que Bernard Rougier définit comme « le refus assumé de distinguer l’islam comme religion, l’islam comme culture et l’islam comme idéologie », couplé au « souci de soumettre l’espace social, voire l’espace politique, à un régime spécifique de règles religieuses promues et interprétées par des groupes spécialisés ».

Les Territoires conquis de l’islamisme est aussi un ouvrage collectif et plusieurs auteurs – présentés comme des étudiants du Centre des études arabes et orientales de l’université Paris 3 – ont choisi d’écrire sous pseudonyme. Il se divise en trois parties. La première porte sur l’idéologie. Quatre variantes d’islamisme sont distinguées : les Frères musulmans, le Tabligh, le salafisme et le djihadisme. Seul ce dernier appelle ouvertement à la violence, mais les auteurs cherchent à démontrer que les variantes non violentes ne sont pas pour autant bénignes. D’une part, elles sont subversives, dans la mesure où elles portent un discours de rupture avec la société française. D’autre part, il peut exister des formes d’hybridation – dont le « salafo-frérisme » est un exemple – et de continuité entre les différentes formes d’islamisme.

La deuxième partie a trait aux « quartiers ». Elle était sans doute la plus attendue, car le travail de terrain devait permettre de fournir des éléments objectifs sur la « prise de contrôle » de certaines banlieues par les islamistes. Or l’approche microsociologique choisie interdit la vue d’ensemble. Des prêcheurs prônent la division et placent la charia au-dessus des lois de la République, mais on ne peut mesurer ni la réception de ces discours, ni l’ampleur du phénomène. Autrement dit, le lecteur constate que des stratégies de rupture, voire de conquête de l’espace social, sont mises en œuvre, sans pouvoir en conclure que certains territoires ont bel et bien été conquis par l’islamisme. Contrôler des mosquées est une chose, prendre le pouvoir dans une ville en est une autre.

La troisième et dernière partie est consacrée aux prisons. L’étude des femmes incarcérées pour terrorisme à la maison d’arrêt de Fleury-Mérogis mérite une attention particulière. Son auteur montre notamment que « 34 détenues sur 36 ont été socialisées dans des cercles salafistes prétendument apolitiques avant de basculer dans le jihadisme ». Seules deux détenues peuvent être considérées comme repenties. Les autres font corps et tentent d’imposer leurs normes au reste de l’établissement. Dans une autre contribution, Peter Neumann et Rajan Basra (du King’s College de Londres) élargissent le spectre aux hommes et à d’autres pays d’Europe. Ils analysent les formes d’hybridation qui existent entre terrorisme et criminalité.

Les Territoires conquis de l’islamisme a eu un écho médiatique hors normes pour un ouvrage académique, et n’a pas manqué de susciter des réactions hostiles dans le marigot universitaire, certains adversaires n’hésitant pas à brandir le chiffon rouge de l’islamophobie. Au-delà des polémiques, une chose est sûre : l’ouvrage n’épuise pas le sujet de l’islamisme en France, et d’autres enquêtes seront les bienvenues.

Marc Hecker

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Nick Haslam

Coronavirus,

Over time, people have changed how they have responded to the threat of COVID-19. Google searches have shifted from the harm of the pandemic itself to ways of dealing with it, such as exercising and learning new skills.

The pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges. Many of us have lost work, gained carer responsibilities and grappled with social isolation. Experts have warned of a looming wave of mental illness as a result.

Research suggests they’re largely correct. Surveys in Australia, the UK and the USA point to rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thinking substantially higher than in previous years.

But over time, people have changed how they have responded to the threat of COVID-19. Google searches have shifted from the harm of the pandemic itself to ways of dealing with it, such as exercising and learning new skills.

This pivot points to a new focus on coping with COVID-19.

Many ways of coping

Coping is the process of responding effectively to problems and challenges. To cope well is to respond to the threat in ways that minimise its damaging impact.

Coping can involve many different strategies and it’s likely you have your own preferred ones. These strategies can be classified in many ways, but a key distinction is between problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies.

What’s the difference?

Problem-focused coping involves actively engaging with the outside world. This might mean making action plans, seeking further information about a threat, or confronting an adversary.

Emotion-focused coping, in contrast, is directed inward, attempting to change how we respond emotionally to stressful events and conditions, rather than to change them at their source.

Effective emotion-focused strategies include meditation, humour and reappraising difficulties to find benefits.

Less effective emotion-focused strategies include seeking distractions, denial and substance use. Although these tactics may stave off distress in the short term, they neither address its causes nor prevent its longer term effects.

Which is best?

Neither of these coping strategies is intrinsically more or less effective than the other. Both can be effective for different kinds of challenges.

Problem-focused strategies are said to work best when we can control the problem.

However, when we face an immovable challenge, it can be better to adjust our response to it using emotion-focused strategies, rather than battling fruitlessly against it.

Coping strategies during the pandemic

Physical activity and experiencing nature can offer some protection from depression during the pandemic. One study even points to the benefits of birdwatching.

But there’s more evidence around coping strategies to avoid. Rising levels of substance use during the pandemic are associated with greater distress.

Eating too many snacks and accessing too much COVID-related media have also been linked to higher levels of stress and depression. So these should be consumed in moderation.

How can I tell if I’m not coping well?

We should be able to assess how well we are coping with the pandemic by judging how we’re going compared to our previous normal.

Think of yourself this time last year. Are you drinking more, sleeping poorly or experiencing fewer positive emotions and more negative emotions now?

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then compared to your previous normal, your coping may not been as good as it could be. But before you judge your coping critically, it’s worth considering a few things.

Your coping is relative to your challenge

The pandemic may be shared, but its impacts have been unequal.

If you live alone, are a caregiver or have lost work, the pandemic has been a larger threat for you than for many others. If you’ve suffered more distress than others, or more than you did last year, it doesn’t mean you have coped less well — you may have just had more to cope with.

Read more: Your coping and resilience strategies might need to shift as the COVID-19 crisis continues

Negative emotions can be appropriate

Experiencing some anxiety in the face of a threat like COVID-19 is justified. Experiencing sadness at separation from loved ones under lockdown is also inevitable. Suffering does not mean maladjustment.

In fact, unpleasant emotions draw our attention to problems and motivate us to tackle them, rather than just being signs of mental fragility or not coping.

We should, of course, be vigilant for serious problems, such as thoughts of self-harm, but we should also avoid pathologising ordinary distress. Not all distress is a symptom of a mental health problem.

Read more: 7 mental health coping tips for life in the time of COVID-19

Coping isn’t just about emotions anyway

Coping isn’t all about how we feel. It’s also about action and finding a sense of meaning and purpose in life, despite our distress. Perhaps if we’ve sustained our relationships and done our jobs passably during the pandemic, we have coped well enough, even if we have sometimes been miserable.

Read more: 7 science-based strategies to cope with coronavirus anxiety

Coping with COVID-19 has been an uneven contest

Social distancing and lockdowns have left us with a reduced coping repertoire. Seeking emotional and practical support from others, also known as “social coping”, is made more difficult by pandemic restrictions. Without our usual supports, many of us have had to cope with one arm tied behind our backs.

So remember to cut yourself some slack. For most people, the pandemic has been a unique challenge. When judging how well we’ve coped we should practise self-compassion. Let’s not make things worse by criticising ourselves for failing to cope better.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

The Triple Alliance served the purposes of Kaiser Wilhelm II in his pursuit of a colonial empire and political and military influence for Germany.

Key Point: The agreement left room for clandestine dealings.

When Kaiser Wilhelm II acceded to the throne of the German Empire in 1888, the young nation was already an economic and military force with which to be reckoned on the European continent. During the previous three decades, Otto von Bismarck, first as Prime Minister of Prussia and then Chancellor of Germany, had presided over the unification of the country, the successful prosecution of multiple wars, and the establishment of a colonial empire, particularly on the continent of Africa.

Bismarck had also later worked to maintain an uneasy peace among the major European powers, negotiating settlements that avoided wars between Germany’s neighbors while protecting his nation’s own interests. In 1873, Bismarck spearheaded the formation of the League of Three Emperors with Austria-Hungary and Italy primarily for the purpose of isolating France, which remained hostile and might seek vengeance after its decisive defeat by the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Although the League survived until 1890, Russia and Austria-Hungary were distrustful of one another as opportunities for expansion in the Balkans developed with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, Russia became wary of the growing possibility of German hegemony in Europe and sought closer ties with France, which shared similar concerns.

Forming the Alliance

In May 1882, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy successfully concluded the Triple Alliance, which provided assurances between the nations in the event that one of them was attacked. However, there were some elements of the agreement that left room for clandestine dealings. On the face of it, the alliance purported that Germany and Austria-Hungary would assist Italy if that country were attacked by France without having provoked a French military move. Italy would side with Germany in the event that France opened hostilities against that country, and if Austria-Hungary went to war with Russia, Italy pledged to remain neutral. Five years later the Triple Alliance was renewed with the conclusion of additional assurances between the nations.

While young Wilhelm II had benefited directly from Bismarck’s efforts, he dismissed the “Iron Chancellor” in 1890, determined to pursue a more aggressive imperial posture. The Kaiser asserted that Germany would have its “place in the sun.” Bismarck died in 1898, amid the Kaiser’s overt efforts to build a German Navy that rivaled the supremacy of the British Royal Navy and establish German economic, industrial, and military domination in Europe.

A Flurry of Negotiations & Counter-Agreements

Although the Triple Alliance ostensibly represented a powerful coalition in Central Europe, five months after the agreement was renewed in November 1902, Italy successfully negotiated an understanding with France that each country would remain neutral if the other were attacked. The Triple Alliance was again renewed in 1907 and 1912, countering the Triple Entente between France, Great Britain, and Russia, each of which feared the growing might of the German nation and its obvious desire for territorial expansion.

The foremost of the flurry of agreements, treaties, and secret protocols that emerged among the major European powers prior to World War I, the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente significantly influenced the march toward global war in 1914. The Triple Alliance survived until the outbreak of the Great War, when Italy declined to enter the conflict on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

The Clemson-class U.S. Navy destroyers were both speedy and heavily armed.

Key Point: Built too late for extensive combat service in World War I, the ships were approaching obsolescence by the advent of World War II.

The 50 ships transferred to Great Britain by executive action of President Roosevelt were all Clemson-class destroyers. There were 273 of these ships commissioned during 1917-1922. In general, they had an overall length of 314 feet, 5 inches; and a beam of 31 feet, 8 inches. Normal displacement was 1,190 tons, which produced a mean draft of 9 feet, 3 inches. The design speed was 35 knots, and their complement was six officers and 89 men. The ships were normally armed with four 4-inch guns and one 3-inch gun, plus twelve 21-inch torpedo tubes arranged in four triple mounts.

The Clemson-class carried hull numbers DD-69 through DD-347 inclusive. Despite the fact that World War I was concluded before construction on many of the destroyers was started, only hull numbers 200-205 were canceled. These destroyers, commonly referred to as “four-pipers,” were perhaps the archetypal American warships. Built too late for extensive combat service in World War I, they were approaching obsolescence by the advent of World War II; however, they played an important role in the latter conflict. One ship of the class, USS Reuben James, became the first American combat vessel sunk during hostilities between the United States and Germany when she was torpedoed by German submarine U-552 while escorting a British convoy on October 31, 1941, more than a month before the United States entered the war.

“Four-Piper”: The Ubiquitous Ship

Four-pipers were possibly the U.S. Navy’s most ubiquitous and colorful ships. Their presence in huge numbers during the 1920s virtually halted new American destroyer construction for 12 years. In addition, their existence as usable hulls practically forced the U.S. Navy to find alternative uses for them. Consequently, many were converted to destroyer minelayers, seaplane tenders, minesweepers, high-speed transports, radio-controlled target vessels, and even water barges. Several were sold and converted to civilian banana carriers. As combat ships, they served under the ensigns of the United States, Great Britain, Norway, Canada, and the Soviet Union. One captured four-piper, USS Stewart, even fought for Japan.

While the four-pipers were normally considered a homogeneous class of ships, that was not quite true. It should be recognized that the 273 completed destroyers were constructed in 11 different building yards, each of which made slight changes in the basic design to utilize the best local ship-construction practices. Three ships of the class were built with only three stacks, while many others in later life had one or two of the original four stacks removed. For this reason, “flush-decker” rather than “four-piper” is sometimes used to describe the class. Two of the ships had three, rather than the usual two, propeller shafts. Of the 273 four-pipers completed, only 20 were built in Navy yards, while 253 were constructed by civilian shipbuilders.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Latham

History, World

People are beginning to understand that the little changes COVID-19 has already ushered in or accelerated – telemedicine, remote work, social distancing, the death of the handshake, online shopping, the virtual disappearance of cash and so on – have begun to change their way of life. This is not the first time a pandemic has reshaped society. 

Before March of this year, few probably thought disease could be a significant driver of human history.

Not so anymore. People are beginning to understand that the little changes COVID-19 has already ushered in or accelerated – telemedicine, remote work, social distancing, the death of the handshake, online shopping, the virtual disappearance of cash and so on – have begun to change their way of life. They may not be sure whether these changes will outlive the pandemic. And they may be uncertain whether these changes are for good or ill.

Three previous plagues could yield some clues about the way COVID-19 might bend the arc of history. As I teach in my course “Plagues, Pandemics and Politics,” pandemics tend to shape human affairs in three ways.

First, they can profoundly alter a society’s fundamental worldview. Second, they can upend core economic structures. And, finally, they can sway power struggles among nations.

Sickness spurs the rise of the Christian West

The Antonine plague, and its twin, the Cyprian plague – both now widely thought to have been caused by a smallpox strain – ravaged the Roman Empire from A.D. 165 to 262. It’s been estimated that the combined pandemics’ mortality rate was anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the empire’s population.

While staggering, the number of deaths tells only part of the story. This also triggered a profound transformation in the religious culture of the Roman Empire.

On the eve of the Antonine plague, the empire was pagan. The vast majority of the population worshipped multiple gods and spirits and believed that rivers, trees, fields and buildings each had their own spirit.

Christianity, a monotheistic religion that had little in common with paganism, had only 40,000 adherents, no more than 0.07% of the empire’s population.

Yet within a generation of the end of the Cyprian plague, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the empire.

How did these twin pandemics effect this profound religious transformation?

Rodney Stark, in his seminal work “The Rise of Christianity,” argues that these two pandemics made Christianity a much more attractive belief system.

While the disease was effectively incurable, rudimentary palliative care – the provision of food and water, for example – could spur recovery of those too weak to care for themselves. Motivated by Christian charity and an ethic of care for the sick – and enabled by the thick social and charitable networks around which the early church was organized – the empire’s Christian communities were willing and able to provide this sort of care.

Pagan Romans, on the other hand, opted instead either to flee outbreaks of the plague or to self-isolate in the hope of being spared infection.

This had two effects.

First, Christians survived the ravages of these plagues at higher rates than their pagan neighbors and developed higher levels of immunity more quickly. Seeing that many more of their Christian compatriots were surviving the plague – and attributing this either to divine favor or the benefits of the care being provided by Christians – many pagans were drawn to the Christian community and the belief system that underpinned it. At the same time, tending to sick pagans afforded Christians unprecedented opportunities to evangelize.

Second, Stark argues that, because these two plagues disproportionately affected young and pregnant women, the lower mortality rate among Christians translated into a higher birth rate.

The net effect of all this was that, in roughly the span of a century, an essentially pagan empire found itself well on its way to becoming a majority Christian one.

The plague of Justinian and the fall of Rome

The plague of Justinian, named after the Roman emperor who reigned from A.S. 527 to 565, arrived in the Roman Empire in A.D. 542 and didn’t disappear until A.D. 755. During its two centuries of recurrence, it killed an estimated 25% to 50% of the population – anywhere from 25 million to 100 million people.

This massive loss of lives crippled the economy, triggering a financial crisis that exhausted the state’s coffers and hobbled the empire’s once mighty military.

In the east, Rome’s principal geopolitical rival, Sassanid Persia, was also devastated by the plague and was therefore in no position to exploit the Roman Empire’s weakness. But the forces of the Islamic Rashidun Caliphate in Arabia – which had long been contained by the Romans and Sasanians – were largely unaffected by the plague. The reasons for this are not well understood, but they probably have to do with the caliphate’s relative isolation from major urban centers.

Caliph Abu Bakr didn’t let the opportunity go to waste. Seizing the moment, his forces swiftly conquered the entire Sasanian Empire while stripping the weakened Roman Empire of its territories in the Levant, the Caucasus, Egypt and North Africa.

Pre-pandemic, the Mediterranean world had been relatively unified by commerce, politics, religion and culture. What emerged was a fractured trio of civilizations jockeying for power and influence: an Islamic one in the eastern and southern Mediterranean basin; a Greek one in the northeastern Mediterranean; and a European one between the western Mediterranean and the North Sea.

This last civilization – what we now call medieval Europe – was defined by a new, distinctive economic system.

Before the plague, the European economy had been based on slavery. After the plague, the significantly diminished supply of slaves forced landowners to begin granting plots to nominally “free” laborers – serfs who worked the lord’s fields and, in return, received military protection and certain legal rights from the lord.

The seeds of feudalism were planted.

The Black Death of the Middle Ages

The Black Death broke out in Europe in 1347 and subsequently killed between one-third and one-half of the total European population of 80 million people. But it killed more than people. By the time the pandemic had burned out by the early 1350s, a distinctly modern world emerged – one defined by free labor, technological innovation and a growing middle class.

Before the Yersinia pestis bacterium arrived in 1347, Western Europe was a feudal society that was overpopulated. Labor was cheap, serfs had little bargaining power, social mobility was stymied and there was little incentive to increase productivity.

But the loss of so much life shook up an ossified society.

Labor shortages gave peasants more bargaining power. In the agrarian economy, they also encouraged the widespread adoption of new and existing technologies – the iron plow, the three-field crop rotation system and fertilization with manure, all of which significantly increased productivity. Beyond the countryside, it resulted in the invention of time and labor-saving devices such as the printing press, water pumps for draining mines and gunpowder weapons.

In turn, freedom from feudal obligations and a desire to move up the social ladder encouraged many peasants to move to towns and engage in crafts and trades. The more successful ones became wealthier and constituted a new middle class. They could now afford more of the luxury goods that could be obtained only from beyond Europe’s frontiers, and this stimulated both long-distance trade and the more efficient three-masted ships needed to engage in that trade.

The new middle class’s increasing wealth also stimulated patronage of the arts, science, literature and philosophy. The result was an explosion of cultural and intellectual creativity – what we now call the Renaissance.

Our present future

None of this is to argue that the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will have similarly earth-shattering outcomes. The mortality rate of COVID-19 is nothing like that of the plagues discussed above, and therefore the consequences may not be as seismic.

But there are some indications that they could be.

Will the bumbling efforts of the open societies of the West to come to grips with the virus shattering already-wavering faith in liberal democracy, creating a space for other ideologies to evolve and metastasize?

In a similar fashion, COVID-19 may be accelerating an already ongoing geopolitical shift in the balance of power between the U.S. and China. During the pandemic, China has taken the global lead in providing medical assistance to other countries as part of its “Health Silk Road” initiative. Some argue that the combination of America’s failure to lead and China’s relative success at picking up the slack may well be turbocharging China’s rise to a position of global leadership.

Finally, COVID-19 seems to be accelerating the unraveling of long-established patterns and practices of work, with repercussions that could affet the future of office towers, big cities and mass transit, to name just a few. The implications of this and related economic developments may prove as profoundly transformative as those triggered by the Black Death in 1347.

Ultimately, the longer-term consequences of this pandemic – like all previous pandemics – are simply unknowable to those who must endure them. But just as past plagues made the world we currently inhabit, so too will this plague likely remake the one populated by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Andrew Latham, Professor of Political Science, Macalester College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Wikimedia

Matt Weidinger

Politics,

The new legislation could be considered on the House floor as soon as today. 

Late Monday, House Democrats released an updated version of the “Heroes Act,” the massive $3.4 trillion coronavirus relief bill that passed the House mostly along partisan lines in May but has languished since then. The new 2154-page legislative text is billed as a slimmed down version of the prior bill, and Capitol Hill sources suggest the new legislation could be considered on the House floor as soon as today. 

Despite its “slimmed down” billing, a review of the legislation’s unemployment provisions shows it calls for an expansion of several key unemployment benefits, including an extension of 13 more weeks of benefits (for a new total of up to 72 weeks of benefits) and an expansion of the eligibility criteria for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which has been subject to significant fraud and abuse.

Meanwhile, as the table below also displays, the legislation adds a new $125-per-week federal benefit for individuals with at least $5,000 in prior self-employment earnings, on top of the revived $600 per week federal bonus and other unemployment benefits. As under the May version of the legislation, the $600 bonus would be extended through January 2021 with a phase-out through March 2021 — except its revival would begin after September 5, when the intervening $300 per week federal Lost Wages Assistance program ceased supplementing other unemployment benefits.

Comparison of Unemployment Benefit Policies in Heroes Act I and II

  Policy     Heroes Act I (May 2020)   Heroes Act II (September 2020) Extension of $600 bonus Extends the federal $600 per week bonus from late July 2020 through January 2021, with a soft phase-out through March 2021. Same extension, except the revival of the $600 bonus begins after September 5, 2020 (that is, not during weeks when intervening $300-per-week federal Lost Wages Assistance benefits were payable).   Additional $125 benefit for “mixed earners” No provision. Adds a new $125-per-week federal “mixed-earner unemployment compensation” benefit (on top of the $600 bonus and other unemployment benefits) for individuals with at least $5,000 in prior self-employment earnings.   Disregard of $600 bonus Expands the current law disregard of the $600 bonus payments (which currently covers only Medicaid) to include “any Federal program or under any State or local program financed in whole or in part with Federal funds.”   Same, but adds that this change “shall take effect as if included in the enactment of the CARES Act,” suggesting unemployment benefit recipients may be able to file new claims for SNAP and other means-tested benefits back to March 2020.   More weeks of extended benefits Proposes a total of up to 59 weeks of all unemployment benefits (up to 26 weeks of UI, 13 of PEUC, and 20 of EB). Proposes a total of up to 72 weeks of all unemployment benefits (adding a new 13-week PEUC “extension” program).   PUA extension and eligibility expansion Extends PUA through January 2021 (i.e. a one-month straight extension). Same extension, but also expands eligibility for PUA, such as for adults whose children are in schools that are “partially reopened” or for whom “physical attendance at the school or facility presents an unacceptable health risk for the household.” Also allows the waiver of the repayment of PUA overpayments back to the program’s start, including if repayment “would be contrary to equity and good conscience.”   Extension of CARES Act benefits Extends PEUC plus federal financing of STC and the first week of UI benefits through January 2021 (i.e. a one-month straight extension).   Same as Heroes Act I. Other extensions Extends 100 percent federal funding of EB, interest-free treatment on federal loans, and federal assistance for reimbursable employers through June 2021 (i.e. a six-month straight extension).   Same as Heroes Act I. Report on claim backlogs No provision. Requires states to update the Department of Labor on backlogs of unemployment claims and develop a corrective action plan.  

Note: SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly known as food stamps);

PEUC = federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, a program that currently provides 13 weeks of extended benefits to those exhausting state UI benefits;

PUA = federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program;

STC = Short-time compensation;

UI = state Unemployment Insurance program;

EB = Extended Benefits program.

This article first appeared on the AEIdeas blog, a publication of the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Reuters.

Al Cross

Politics,

Trump exercises his power with what often seems like reckless audacity, but McConnell’s 36-year Senate tenure is built on his calculated audacity.

Unless Democrats win both the White House and the Senate in November, abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is about to finish his project of remaking the federal judiciary from top to bottom.

The impact of that achievement will outlive the 78-year-old Kentuckian, making it the biggest piece of his large legacy in Senate history.

This feat could hardly have been predicted when Senate Republicans elected McConnell their leader in 2006. For most of the 40-plus years I have watched McConnell, first as a reporter covering Kentucky politics and now as a journalism professor focused on rural issues, he seemed to have no great ambition or goals, other than gaining power and keeping it.

He always cared about the courts, though. In 1987, after Democrats defeated Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, McConnell warned that if a Democratic president “sends up somebody we don’t like” to a Republican-controlled Senate, the GOP would follow suit. He fulfilled that threat in 2016, refusing to confirm Merrick Garland, Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court.

Keeping that vacancy open helped elect Donald Trump. Two people could hardly be more different, but the taciturn McConnell and the voluble Trump have at least one thing in common: They want power.

Trump exercises his power with what often seems like reckless audacity, but McConnell’s 36-year Senate tenure is built on his calculated audacity.

McConnell’s political rise

It was audacious, back in 1977, to think that a wonky lawyer who had been disqualified from his only previous campaign for public office could defeat a popular two-term county executive in Louisville.

McConnell ran anyway.

It was audacious to think that a Republican could get the local labor council to endorse him in that race, but he got it, by leading the members to believe he would help them get collective bargaining for public employees.

McConnell won the race. He didn’t pursue collective bargaining.

Seven years later, it was audacious to think that an urbanite who wore loafers to dusty, gravelly county fairs and lacked a compelling personality could unseat a popular two-term Kentucky senator, especially when he trailed by 40 points in August, but McConnell won.

As soon as he won a second term in 1990, McConnell started climbing the Senate leadership ladder, facilitated in large measure by his willingness to be the point man on campaign finance issues, an area his colleagues feared. They reacted emotionally to this touchy issue; he studied it, owned it and moved higher in the leadership.

Business, not service

In politics, lack of emotion is usually a drawback. McConnell makes up for that by having command of the rules and the facts and a methodical attitude.

McConnell in 1992. Laura Patterson/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

The recording on his home phone once said, “This is Mitch McConnell. You’ve reached my home. If this call is about business, please call my office.”

Business. Not something like “my service to you in the United States Senate,” but “business.”

This lack of emotion keeps McConnell disciplined. I am not the only person he has told, “The most important word in the English language is ‘focus,’ because if you don’t focus, you don’t get anything done.”

Last year, I spoke to the McConnell Scholars, the political-leadership program he started at the University of Louisville. One thank-you gift was a letter opener bearing two words: focus and humility. The first word was no surprise, because of McConnell’s well-known maxim; the second one intrigued me.

The director of the program, Gary Gregg, says adding “humility” was his idea. But it fits the founder. With his studied approach and careful reticence, McConnell is the opposite of bombast, and that surely helped him gain the Republican leader’s job and stay there. He has occasionally described his colleagues as prima donnas who look in the mirror and see a president, something he claims to have never done.

When the colleagues in your party caucus know you are focused on their interests and not your own, you can keep getting reelected leader, as McConnell has done without opposition every two years since 2006.

McConnell’s Supreme Court

McConnell’s caucus trusts him. When he saw Obama as an existential threat – someone who could bring back enough moderate Democrats to give the party a long-term governing majority – McConnell held the caucus together in opposition to Obamacare, and Republicans used that as an issue to rouse their base in the 2010 midterm election.

Meanwhile, McConnell was working on the federal judiciary. He and his colleagues slow-walked and filibustered Obama’s nominees, requiring “aye” votes from 60 of the 100 senators to confirm each one. The process consumed so much time that then-Majority Leader Harry Reid abolished the filibuster for nominations, except those to the Supreme Court.

That sped up the process, allowing Obama to appoint 323 judges, about as many as George W. Bush. But Republicans’ additional delaying tactics still left 105 vacancies for Trump to fill.

When Democrats weakened the filibuster, McConnell warned, “You’ll regret this. And you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.”

Seven years later, Democrats may concede that point. McConnell and Trump have put nearly 200 judges on the federal courts, making them all the more a white-male bastion of judicial conservatism.

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When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016 and McConnell said the seat wouldn’t be filled until after the November election, it was another case of calculated audacity.

Sen. Chuck Schumer reminding McConnell of his ‘rule,’ September 2020. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Democrats cried foul, but they were powerless to reverse his decision because Republicans stuck with him.

Trump’s victory preserved the Senate Republican majority, which then did away with the Supreme Court exception, allowing McConnell and his colleagues to install by simple majority vote the sort of Supreme Court justices they wanted: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh – and, now, it seems almost certain, Amy Coney Barrett.

Al Cross, Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky, University of Kentucky

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Stewart Clem

Politics, The Americas

In 1963, James Baldwin wrote: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

When President Donald Trump talks about “patriots” – and he does, a lot – he probably doesn’t have in mind a fictional Black American sailor sitting in a cafe in Wales, listening to locals sing folks songs.

But in Ralph Ellison’s short story “In a Strange Country,” the protagonist, Mr. Parker, listens to Welsh songs that simultaneously express loyalty to the queen and defiance of England, and sees something of his own situation and conflicting feelings to the land of his birth. When the locals begin to sing “The Star Spangled Banner,” Mr. Parker finds himself singing along. Thousands of miles away from his homeland and fighting back tears, he sings his national anthem for the first time without irony.

It is a form of patriotism echoed by another Black American, this time the very nonfictional author and thinker James Baldwin. In 1963, Baldwin wrote: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Trump sees patriotism differently. For him, it is unconditional. Even before coming to office, he was tweeting about the topic, on one occasion using the Mark Twain adage: “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

More recently, he has bestowed the term on his supporters and sought to cast them as being more patriotic than Black Lives Matter protesters.

Pitting 1776 against 1619

In September, Trump announced plans for a “patriotic” and “pro-American” curriculum in American public schools.

In unveiling a proposed “1776 Commission” to ensure that “our youth will be taught to love America,” Trump was seemingly responding to The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project. That project aims to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

Trump appears to imply that loving America is incompatible with acknowledging that the U.S. has oppressed certain people and groups on its path to glory.

Deciphering the word ‘patriot’

As a moral theologian and someone who frequently engages the writings of medieval thinkers, I can’t help but notice that this understanding of patriotism is relatively novel. The concept that a “good” patriot unquestionably loves his country unconditionally is not in keeping with how it has been viewed throughout history.

The word “patriot” comes from the ancient Greek “patrios,” translated as “of one’s fathers.” As such, in the original meaning a patriot is someone who belongs to one’s fatherland. No judgment was made as to how that person should view the fatherland. This came later.

The medieval scholastics – a diverse group of thinkers including such luminaries as St. Bonaventure and St. Anselm of Canterbury – were known for reviving and developing ideas that originated in ancient Greek philosophy.

To belong to something, according to the scholastics, is not a mere observation of fact. It generates moral obligations, because we owe a debt to the things that give us life. As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “The principles of our being and government are our parents and our country, which have given us birth and nourishment. Thus, a person is debtor chiefly to their parents and their country, after God.”

The virtue of piety

The scholastics had a name for this virtue: piety. The virtuous person honors and loves the things that have brought them into being, and this includes one’s homeland. “Piety,” St. Thomas writes, “is a declaration of the love we bear towards our parents and our country.”

While perceived wrongdoing may lead us to denounce the actions of our country’s government, such criticism is compatible with – and, indeed, necessitated by – the virtue of piety, according to the scholastic understanding of the virtue of justice.

What we can learn from the scholastics is that the heart of patriotism is not an unwavering commitment to the objective superiority of one’s country – rather, the heart of patriotism is love.

As such, we should study the shameful aspects of our nation’s past not only because it is fair and honest but also because it can can make us love our country more. In short, it can make us better patriots.

As the theologian and philospher G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they loved her.”

A modern interpretation could be that an American patriot will always love America, but he or she may not always be pro-America.

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This is an interpretation that jars most with Americans on the political right. But there is also a lesson here for some Americans on the left that criticism of one’s own country should not spill out into contempt. Hatred or indifference toward one’s country is not a virtue, in the eyes of the scholastics.

So someone can be a “good American patriot” who ardently loves America while also lamenting its shortcomings – both past and present. If Trump’s proposed K-12 curriculum can maintain both of these virtues, then it would be truly patriotic. But if it leads to educators who insist that students be blindly pro-American, it would merely be propaganda.

Aquinas Institute of Theology is a member of the Association of Theological Schools.

The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation US.

Stewart Clem, Assistant Professor of Moral Theology, Aquinas Institute of Theology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Austin Sarat

Politics, The Americas

Recent media reports indicate that Trump’s campaign is considering asking some of the 29 state legislatures with Republican majorities, in charge of a total of 300 electoral votes, to depart from current practice in choosing their Electoral College delegates. The request would be for those bodies to select Trump electors and order them to cast their ballots for the president, regardless of the candidate the states’ voters actually preferred.

State legislatures could face legal and perhaps even state constitutional crises after Election Day, if they’re pressured to change how they traditionally allocate electoral votes.

Recent media reports indicate that Trump’s campaign is considering asking some of the 29 state legislatures with Republican majorities, in charge of a total of 300 electoral votes, to depart from current practice in choosing their Electoral College delegates. The request would be for those bodies to select Trump electors and order them to cast their ballots for the president, regardless of the candidate the states’ voters actually preferred. A similar possibility arose in 2000, when the Republican majority in the state’s legislature claimed to possess “broad authority to allocate Florida’s electoral votes,” and came close to doing so.

As a student of American democratic politics, I believe that while there are some legal barriers that could limit the ability of legislative bodies to disregard popular vote totals in the allocation of their electoral votes, the most important constraints would be political.

A president picked this way by state legislatures would likely have his legitimacy questioned – and the legislatures would also likely face the public’s ire.

A base in the Constitution

Article II of the U.S. Constitution leaves decisions about how electors will be chosen to state legislatures: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”

In the country’s early years, some legislatures did not trouble themselves to involve their citizens in choosing the president. When George Washington was first elected in 1788, the legislatures of Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey and South Carolina appointed electors directly without a popular vote. The New York state legislature did not even choose electors because lawmakers couldn’t resolve the split between its two chambers, which were controlled by different parties.

The first several presidential elections followed a mixed pattern, with some states using popular elections to direct the choice of electors, while others left that choice solely to their legislatures. As political parties jockeyed for advantage, states changed their systems often.

No state legislature has ever appointed a slate of electors supporting a candidate who lost the state’s popular vote. As the Supreme Court noted in the recent “faithless electors” case, by 1832, every state except South Carolina had passed legislation saying that the popular vote would determine the choice of its electors.

In 1876, newly admitted Colorado became the last state whose legislature chose electors on its own. Today the laws of every state give voters the final say about which party the electors should represent.

The Supreme Court’s view

State legislatures have given up the power to choose electors, but the Supreme Court has on several occasions recognized their right to take it back.

The first decision was in 1892, when the court declared that “the legislature possesses plenary authority to direct the manner of appointment, and might itself exercise the appointing power by joint ballot or concurrence of the two houses, or according to such mode as it designated.”

More than 100 years later, the court revisited the question in Bush v. Gore. In a little noticed but highly consequential passage, the majority wrote that a state legislature “may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself,” and it retains authority to “take back the power to appoint electors,” even if it formerly let the popular vote make the decision.

In a July 2020 decision, the Supreme Court again declared that Article II gives state legislatures “the broadest power of determination” over who becomes an elector. However, the majority opinion did suggest that power might be subject to “some other constitutional constraint.”

What are the limits?

The court has declared that states have the right to take back the choice of electors from the people – but has cautioned that they may not do so easily.

When states give the voters control over electoral picks, they confer on them a “fundamental” right, which is protected by other constitutional guarantees, including the due process and equal protection clauses.

But it’s not clear how strong that protection might actually be. State legislatures would almost certainly have to pass a new law or resolution to make any change. In each state, a majority of legislators would have to agree. And, depending on the form of the enactment, it might or might not be subject to a governor’s approval – or a veto override.

Historically, courts have respected legislative decisions to change how a state appoints electors so long as the changes happen before the election happens, not after the ballots are cast.

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A matter of timing

Post-election changes of the kind the Trump campaign is reportedly contemplating would cause confusion around two federal laws that directly contradict each other.

One law requires electors to be appointed on Election Day itself. But all states abide by another law, the Electoral Count Act, passed in 1887, which gives states up to 41 days after Election Day to designate their slate of electors. The conflict between these laws provides fertile ground for litigation.

In the end, however, the most effective forces blocking state legislatures from disregarding the popular vote may be political, rather than legal. It is, after all, up to the people to hold their officials accountable for their actions.

Yet in the country’s current toxic political environment, it’s not clear whether even an obvious effort to ignore the popular vote might nonetheless find support among some of the public, and some of their elected representatives too.

Austin Sarat, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Matthew Van Wagenen, Arnel P. David

Security, Americas

Dr. Esper’s vision of a renaissance is unfolding right before our eyes.

Many in defense would be cautious about using the word ‘renaissance,’ but in 2018, Dr. Mark Esper declared just that and argued, “the time for change is now.” The Army is entering a new era, and after observing Project Convergence in Yuma Proving Ground last week, it is abundantly clear that the Army is indeed reaching a new level of experimentation and testing. Dr. Esper’s vision of a renaissance is unfolding right before our eyes.

The Army is converting ideas, prototypes, and various modes of operating (i.e., new ways of fighting) into new capabilities.  This is a departure from the past, where a lion share of the budget and programming narrowly focused on incremental upgrades to existing platforms, adding armor, speed, reach, and lethality at exorbitant costs, over long periods of time. This approach is antiquated, and the Army is aggressively pursuing innovation to attain a decisive edge over rising competitors.

A recent podcast by 1st Special Forces Command’s Chief of Staff, Colonel Ed Croot, and The Kill Chain author, Christian Brose, clarifies the distinction between modernization and innovation. The key to innovation is finding cost-wise solutions to operational problems the nation is facing on a fast-paced and rapidly changing battlefield. At best, modernization has been the approach to make incremental changes, but innovation is now the collective aim.

Early in Army Futures Command development, there was a concern on whether or not the new command could cultivate an “innovative culture.” The inaugural Project Convergence, led by Brigadier General Ross Coffman and his Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) Cross-Functional Team (CFT), validated Army Futures Command’s ability to bring diverse talent and capability together from across industry, sister services, and other CFTs to “fail early, fail small, and learn fast” and prototype warfare.

In an unprecedented level of collaboration, on the hardpan desert of Yuma Proving Ground, Project Convergence has throttled the needle forward and sped the kill chain from minutes to seconds, combining over thirty technologies to alter the speed, complexity, and overall geometry of the battlefield. To be sure, the experimentation was not perfect, but the aggressive use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to sense, detect, and assign shooters to service targets was fast and rather remarkable.

To build on this success, we propose two ideas to (1) accelerate the transition of capability through experimental units and (2) garner increased investment and interoperability with allies and partners.

1. Experimental Units. Advanced research organizations like DARPA and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) routinely study how they might improve technology transition to units and organizations within the Department of Defense. Past case studies show how experimental units aided the acceleration of technological adoption through repetitive testing in field environments and routine interaction between soldiers, scientists, and engineers. Take the example of the 1st Air Cavalry Division.

Before Vietnam, the 11th Air Assault Division (Test) at Fort Benning, Georgia, served as a tactical training and experimental testbed for tactical maneuvers with helicopters. The troubling events in Vietnam, combined with the challenges of mobility and restrictive terrain, caused the test division to be converted into a combat division, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).

The prior experimentation and testing of the division validated the utility of air assault operations in combat. The 1st Air Cav (as it was often called) excelled in cavalry missions to reconnoiter, screen, delay, and conduct raids over expansive terrain. Its most successful air cavalry mission was the relief of Khe Sanh to aid US Marines. The air mobility concept influenced the development of other capabilities in other services to include special operations units, with the most recent successful air raid to kill or capture Osama bin Laden.

The Army and the Joint Force should examine how modern experimental units might help accelerate technology transition and adoption. The success and speed of change with Project Convergence warrant such an examination. The integration of units and partners early and often amplifies innovation, leading to the next point.

2. Incentivize Allied and Partner Investment and Interoperability. Last month during the 2020 Maneuver Conference, Brigadier General Matthew Van Wagenen proposed that the key to unlocking unlimited potential across the allied enterprise is multinational interoperability. A highly-integrated multinational kill chain will further deter would-be adversaries, and our alliance formations need to operate with increased reach and dispersion, in a fast-paced and connected environment.

We need our allies and partner to have the ability to collect on information requirements to support the close and deep fight, probe enemy gaps, and, if needed, strike hard and fast, destroying as much enemy force as possible with minimal friendly economy of force, speed and precision. In essence, they need to plug into our battle networks with their sensors and shooters while adhering to interoperability standards and their national caveats.

Army Futures Command plans to include allied forces in their 2022 Project Convergence capstone but coordination to make that happen needs to begin now. There need to be incentives to drive collaborative investments and unconventional partnerships to deliver interoperability. Data standards and sharing agreements will require not just military and industry partners but also policymakers and diplomats.

Whether it is in Europe or on the Korean Peninsula, our combined headquarters require the ability and capacity to rapidly coalesce an alliance of forces, spanning multiple echelons and across multiple domains, into a highly dense digital environment. Success requires digital alignment across all warfighting functions and a common set of tools in a mission partnered environment. U.S. Army Europe has made progress in this space with the DEFENDER series of exercises, and this work should continue to inform experiments like Project Convergence.

What we witnessed in the scorching hot desert of Yuma Proving Ground is genuinely incredible. The collaborative ‘team of teams’ approach of the CFTs and the increased risk tolerance by senior Army leaders is extraordinary. Success must continue, and the incorporation of experimental units can accelerate the transition of technology and elicit feedback, ideas, and buy-in from soldiers. By incentivizing allied investment and participation, innovation can flourish faster, and the costs can be shared by more. After all, as General Mark Milley once pointed out in the Conference of European Armies, “it is our network of allies and partners that serves as a centerpiece for modern deterrence.” Our network of partners and allies is a strength and competitive advantage our adversaries do not have.

BG Matthew Van Wagenen, U.S. Army, is currently serving as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (DCOS OPS) in the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps.

LTC Arnel P. David, U.S. Army, is currently serving as the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff G5 (DACOS G5) in the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. 

The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect any entity or organization of the U.S. Government or NATO.

This article first appeared in RealClearDefense.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Asia

During the early days of the Korean War, Douglas MacArthur attempted a daring amphibious Inchon Invasion to retake Seoul.

Key Point: General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower termed the victory "a brilliant example of strategic leadership."

Late in the evening of June 25, 1950 U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was at his Maryland farmhouse reading when a call arrived to inform him of a serious situation in the Far East. He telephoned President Harry S Truman at the latter’s Independence, Mo. home that same Saturday evening and told HST, “Mr. President … the North Koreans are attacking across the 38th Parallel.”

Harry S. Truman Responds To The Korean Crisis

The next day, President Truman returned to Washington aboard his aircraft Independence for an emergency meeting of the top-level Security Council at Blair House, his temporary residence while the White House was undergoing renovation.

The President heard and approved a triad of recommendations, namely, first, to evacuate all American civilian dependents from the South Korean capital of Seoul; second, to air-drop supplies to the embattled Republic of Korea (ROK) forces under attack; and third, to move the U.S. fleet based at Cavite in the Philippines to Korea. Another caveat was that there would be no Nationalist Chinese forces sent from Formosa to fight in South Korea.

Meanwhile, far away from the nation’s capital in Allied-occupied Japan, America’s Supreme Commander there—five-star General of the Army Douglas MacArthur—picked up the telephone by his bedside in the American Embassy in Tokyo. He, too, was told that the North Koreans had struck in great strength.

North Koreans Had Formidable Soviet Tanks

Long familiar with all the countries of Asia, MacArthur thus described Korea in his 1964 memoirs, Reminiscences: “Geographically, South Korea is a ruggedly mountainous peninsula that juts out toward Japan from the Manchurian mainland between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan. An uneven north-south corridor cuts through the rough heart of the country below the 38th Parallel, and there are highways and rail links on both the eastern and western coastal plains.” He knew that the existing ROK forces were very weak: four divisions along the Parallel and, although well trained, “organized as a constabulary force, not troops of the line. They had only light weapons, no air or naval forces, and were lacking in tanks, artillery, and many other essentials. The decision to equip and organize them in this way had been made by the [U.S.] State Department.” As for their North Korean People’s Army opponents, they, MacArthur knew, had “a powerful striking army, fully equipped with heavy weapons, including the latest model of Soviet tanks,” the vaunted T-34 that had shattered the German Wehrmacht.

The mathematical equation of the rival forces on the ground was both simple and deadly: 100,000 ROKs versus 200,000 NKPAs—plus no modern weapons for the defenders as opposed to all modern weapons for the attackers. The method of the North Korean steamroller-like advance was also quite basic: Swing left and then right of their opponents’ lines in broad, flanking movements, so well practiced by British line infantry regiments during the entirety of the Napoleonic Wars of the previous century, and then plunge through any opened gap in the enemy center.

”Timidity Breeds Conflict, And Courage Often Prevents”

Disdaining President Truman’s term for Korea as a “police action,” his man in Tokyo privately thought, “Now was the time to recognize what the history of the world has taught from the beginning of time: that timidity breeds conflict, and courage often prevents.” Right from the start, therefore, the general misread the mettle of his commander-in-chief, just as the latter did him.

Nevertheless, in these early hours and days of dire emergency, the man in Washington turned to the man in Tokyo: “I was directed to use the Navy and the Air Force to assist South Korean defenses … also to isolate the Nationalist-held island of Formosa from the Chinese mainland. The U.S. 7th Fleet was turned over to my operational control.”

The British Asiatic Fleet was also placed under his command and, with his historic corncob pipe clenched between his teeth, MacArthur flew out of Haneda Airport aboard his old wartime plane the Bataan to take a first-hand, on-the-ground look at the fighting in Korea.

MacArthur Arrives To Witness A Tragic Scene

Upon arrival, he came almost immediately under enemy fire. He commandeered a jeep. “Seoul was already in enemy hands,” he later wrote. “It was a tragic scene. I watched for an hour the disaster I had inherited. In that brief interval on that blood-soaked hill, I formulated my plans. They were desperate plans, indeed, but I could see no other way except to accept a defeat which would include not only Korea, but all of Continental Asia.”

How could that have been, this instant of genius in the midst of overwhelming catastrophe and seemingly hopeless rout? Asserted his later compatriot and eventual successor, Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway in 1986, “He was truly one of the great captains of warfare.” Like Napoleon who would nap on a battlefield by his horse as deadly cannonballs would claim the lives of lesser mortals, Douglas MacArthur was lofty and serene in his genius, utterly convinced in his purpose, and absolutely determined that he would see all his plans through to completion or die in the process.

Formulating a Battle Plan

Clear-eyed and alert despite his 71 years, with thinning hair but no gray, MacArthur set about his plans. On July 23 he cabled to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon the basic tenets of his plan, to be called Operation Chromite. “Operation planned mid-September is amphibious landing of two division corps in rear of enemy lines [150 miles behind NKPA lines, far to the north of the Pusan Perimeter fighting where General Walton Walker’s 8th Army was fighting for its life and what little Korean territory remained to it] for purpose of enveloping and destroying enemy forces in conjunction with attack from south by 8th Army.…”

Ironically, unlike other U.S. Army generals of the day (like Omar Bradley, who stated openly that seaborne landings were obsolete), MacArthur was a distinct rarity—an army leader who firmly believed in amphibious operations, based on his own previous wartime experiences in the Pacific against the Japanese Army, working hand-in-glove with the U.S. Navy. Moreover, unlike Truman, Bradley, and former U.S. Defense Secretary Louis Johnson (who was fired the day before Inchon was launched, and replaced by General Marshall), MacArthur was not against the Marine Corps. Indeed, having first planned to use the army’s lst Cavalry Division as his projected lead assault unit of what was to be called the X Corps, he changed his mind and asked for—and got—the 1st Marine Division instead.

Tide And Terrain Make Water Landing Extremely Hazardous

Secretary Johnson had even gone so far as to assert that “the Navy is on its way out.… There’s no reason for having a Navy and a Marine Corps,” feeling instead that the new U.S. Air Force could take over both services’ functions. At Inchon, MacArthur used navy ships, Marine aerial Corsairs and Marine and army troops jointly, in a superb example of inter-service cooperation.

In late August, in the Dai Ichi Building in Tokyo, America’s “proconsul for Japan” listened politely to all the arguments against Operation Chromite, and the dire prophecies of doom that it would fail ignominiously. The obstacles were formidable, indeed. MacArthur later wrote: “A naval briefing staff argued that two elements—tide and terrain—made a landing at Inchon extremely hazardous. They referred to Navy hydrographic studies which listed the average rise and fall of tides at Inchon at 20.7 feet—one of ‘the greatest in the world.’ On the tentative target date for the invasion, the rise and fall would be more than 30 feet because of the position of the moon.

“When Inchon’s tides were at full ebb, the mud banks that had accumulated over the centuries from the Yellow Sea jutted from the shore in some places as far as two miles out into the harbor, and during ebb and flow these tides raced through ‘Flying Fish Channel,’ the best approach to the port, at speeds up to six knots. Even under the most favorable conditions, ‘Flying Fish Channel’ was narrow and winding. Not only did it make a perfect location for enemy mines, but also any ship sunk at a particularly vulnerable point could block the channel to all other ships.

The Invasion Plan Would Rise Or Fall With the Tide

“On the target date, the Navy experts went on, the first high tide would occur at 6:59 am, and the afternoon high tide would be at 7:19 pm, a full 35 minutes after sunset. Within two hours after high tide most of the assault craft would be wallowing in the ooze of Inchon’s mud banks, sitting ducks for Communist shore batteries until the next tide came in to float them again.

“In effect, the amphibious forces would have only about two hours in the morning for the complex job of reducing or effectively neutralizing Wolmi-Do, the 350-foot-high, heavily-fortified island which commands the harbor and which is connected with the mainland by a long causeway. …

“Assuming that this could be done, the afternoon’s high tide and approaching darkness would allow only 2 1/2 hours for the troops to land, secure a beachhead for the night, and bring up all the supplies essential to enable [the] forces to withstand counterattacks until morning. The landing craft, after putting the first assault waves ashore, would be helpless on the mud banks until the morning tide.”

A City With Every Conceivable Handicap

And then there came the icing on the cake. “Beyond all this,” MacArthur recalled, “the Navy summed up [that] the assault landings would have to be made right in the heart of the city itself, where every structure provided a potential strong point of enemy resistance. Reviewing the Navy’s presentation, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Sherman concluded by saying, ‘If every possible geographical and naval handicap were listed—Inchon has ’em all!’”

Army Chief of Staff General Joseph Collins believed that, even if the landings were a success, MacArthur would not be able to retake Seoul, and might even suffer a complete defeat at the hands of the NKPA in the embattled capital’s suburbs. The specter of an Asian Dunkirk thus loomed, with MacArthur in no doubt that he must first defend Japan, and only then Korea.

And what about the Japanese Home Islands? Might they not be attacked by their traditional enemy, the Russian bear, while MacArthur was tied down in Korea? And what, too, of the Red Chinese? Might they not also sweep down from the north and crush the X Corps like a paper cup and then go on to do the same to the 8th Army in the Pusan Perimeter? The risks that MacArthur was running were enormous.

The Impossible Serves To Surprise

Now it was MacArthur’s turn to answer his critics at the Dai Ichi military summit conference. “The bulk of the Reds,” he recalled saying, “are committed around Walker’s defense perimeter. The enemy, I am convinced, has failed to prepare Inchon properly for defense. The very arguments you have made as to the impracticabilities involved will tend to ensure for me the element of surprise, for the enemy commander will reason that no one would be so brash as to make such an attempt.

“Surprise is the most vital element for success in war. As an example, the Marquis de Montcalm believed in 1759 that it was impossible for an armed force to scale the precipitous river banks south of the then walled city of Quebec, and therefore concentrated his formidable defenses along the more vulnerable banks north of the city. But Gen. James Wolfe and a small force did, indeed, come up the St. Lawrence River and scale those heights.

“On the Plains of Abraham, Wolfe won a stunning victory that was made possible almost entirely by surprise. Thus, he captured Quebec and in effect ended the French and Indian War. Like Montcalm, the North Koreans would regard an Inchon landing as impossible. Like Wolfe, I could take them by surprise.”

MacArthur Makes a Convincing Case

Turning to the assembled sailors, he intoned, “The Navy’s objections as to tides, hydrography, terrain and physical handicaps are indeed substantial and pertinent, but they are not insuperable. My confidence in the Navy is complete, and in fact I seem to have more confidence in the Navy than the Navy has in itself! The Navy’s rich experience in staging the numerous amphibious landings under my command in the Pacific during the late war, frequently under somewhat similar difficulties, leaves me with little doubt on that score.”

Gen. Collins had proposed another landing at the west coast port of Kunsan instead, thus canceling MacArthur’s prized Inchon plan, but the latter was having none of it: “It would be largely ineffective and indecisive … an attempted envelopment that would not envelop. It would not sever or destroy the enemy’s supply lines or distribution center.… Better no flank movement than one such as this!”

After his conclusion, Admiral Sherman rose and said, “Thank you. A great voice in a great cause.” As for the dangers of going up Flying Fish Channel, Admiral Sherman snorted, “I wouldn’t hesitate to take a ship up there!” leading MacArthur to exclaim, “Spoken like a Farragut!”

A 45,000-To-One Shot

When MacArthur had earlier stated, “If we find we can’t make it, we will withdraw,” Admiral James T. Doyle retorted, “No, General, we don’t know how to do that. Once we start ashore, we’ll keep going.” Later, Admiral Doyle would recall the overall scene thus: “If MacArthur had gone on the stage, you never would have heard of John Barrymore!”

In his final remarks, MacArthur was even more firm: “We must strike hard and deep! For a five-dollar ante, I have an opportunity to win $50,000, and that is what I am going to do.” Indeed, almost no one except those on MacArthur’s immediate staff liked or backed the plan. General Ridgeway called it a 45,000-to-one shot.

Only three dates were possible for the attempted landing because of the moon: September 15, October 11, and November 3; characteristically, MacArthur chose the first, even though when President Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved Operation Chromite, there were only a mere 17 days to D-Day. Yet another problem was security—or the total lack of it—as South Korean President Syngman Rhee, General Walker, the American news media (which kept silent at MacArthur’s request), and even Red spies in Japan all knew of it and, later, an NKPA officer correctly predicted the landing in an official dispatch that was found after the battle.

Troops Are Called In To Mount Up

Like Tsarist Marshal Mikhail Kutusov in Russia against the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, MacArthur’s basic strategy in these weeks was to buy time with space (the shrinking Pusan Perimenter) so as to build up his independent strike force and then smash the enemy in the rear at the time and place of his choosing, just as he had against the then-victorious Japanese Army in New Guinea in 1942.

To facilitate this, there was an unheard-of mobilization of troops and ships within Japan and the “mounting up” of Marines from all over the world, including American embassies, the U.S. Navy fleet in the Mediterranean, and the Marine Corps Reserve called up by the President to flesh out the needed muscle of MacArthur’s invasion armada. In the meantime, the beleaguered troops within the Pusan Perimeter kept buying the time needed in order for Chromite’s blow to assemble itself.

Chromite’s keys were simple: Land and secure the initial beachhead on the morning tide, land again in the evening with army troops and then, with the Marines, wage the land battle to defeat the surprised NKPA, cross the Han River, take Kimpo Airfield and then Seoul. After that, Walker would break out of the perimeter, link up with X Corps and drive the NKPA back to their frontier—and later beyond it.

An Unparalleled Leap In Mobilization

The Marine “mounting out” or build-up from scratch, especially, was impressive, with the lst Marine Division rising in strength from 7,789 men in June when the North Korean invasion commenced, to 26,000 men by D-Day, Sept. 15, an unparalleled leap in mobilization, to use the term used by Lt. Gen. Lem Shepherd.

Marine Reserves flooded in from posts around the world and homes across the country. During four frantic days, August l to 5, nine thousand officers and men reported for duty. Lamented a Pentagon planner, “The only thing left between us and an emergency in Europe are the School Troops at Quantico [Virginia].”

North Koreans Begin to Fortify

The NKPA, too, were strengthening their forces and positions, however, particularly on Wolmi-Do Island astride Flying Fish Channel, the literal key to the overall success of Operation Chromite. Notes Robert Leckie, “Little Wolmi-Do guarded all the approaches to the inner harbor. It was well fortified. More, Wolmi rose 351 feet above water and was the highest point of land in the Inchon area. Its guns could strike at Marines attempting to storm the port’s seawalls to the north and south. Wolmi would have to be captured to secure the flanks of both landings, but before it could, Wolmi would have to be subjected to several days of bombardment by air and sea, and this, of course, would forfeit that advantage of surprise so necessary to MacArthur’s plan,” thus making the island fortress seemingly the very nemesis at the heart of Chromite’s hoped-for success.

As what was now being called “Operation Common Knowledge” proceeded, the later problem of the port of Inchon itself came into sharper focus as well. The Marines were concerned that they would be landing under fire directly into a city of 250,000 people where warehouses and buildings were fortified. In addition, once the port was taken, the Marines would have to regroup and prepare for the expected NKPA counterattack that might well drive them back into the water with heavy losses, much as had happened during the Canadian raid on Dieppe in Nazi-occupied France in 1942.

The Top Priority: Retaking Seoul

Surviving this, they would have to cross the wide and swift Han River before they could reach Seoul, the coveted prize. Not only the South Korean capital, Seoul was also the linchpin of the country’s telephone, telegraph, rail-way, and highway networks.

And what of the defenders? In Seoul there was the 10,000-man 18th Rifle Division, reinforced by the Seoul City Regiment, an infantry unit 3,600 strong. There was also the hated 36th Battalion, 111th Security Regiment, plus an antiaircraft defense force unit armed with Russian 85mm guns, 37mm automatic cannon, and 12.7mm machine guns, and air force personnel numbering in the thousands.

At Inchon was a garrison of two thousand new conscripts and two harbor defense batteries of four 76mm guns, each manned by two hundred gunners. In addition, Russian land mines were being laid, trenches and emplacements dug, and weapons and ammunition arriving. There were plans to mine the harbor, but the work had not begun.

Espionage Helped Provide a Guiding Light

Kimpo Airfield, too, was an extremely worthwhile military objective. Located to the north of the Inchon-Seoul axis, it lay a mile inland along the left bank of the Han River, downstream—or northwest—of Seoul. It was the best airfield in Korea, serving the two million inhabitants of Seoul as well as the port of Inchon.

Espionage played a significant part in the planning stages from the Navy side. Recalled Ridgway, “The first step in Operation Chromite was to scout the harbor islands which commanded the straitened Channel. A young Navy lieutenant, Eugene Clark, was put ashore near Inchon on Sept. lst and worked two weeks, largely under cover of darkness, to locate gun emplacements and to measure the height of the seawall. So successful were his efforts that he actually turned on a light in a lighthouse to guide the first assault ships into Inchon harbor before dawn on Sept. 15th.”

Even MacArthur saw the light on the way in to shore on the morning of the 15th: “I noticed a flash—a light that winked on and off across the water. The channel navigation lights were on. We were taking the enemy by surprise. The lights were not even turned off.” (Apparently, he never learned of Lieutenant Clark’s daring mission.) “I went to my cabin and turned in,” he concluded.

Weather Takes A Turn For Worse

“All I fear is nature,” asserted Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Inchon invasion, too, was threatened by the sea and wind in the form of Typhoon Kezia, a 125-mile-an-hour storm that seemed destined to arrive precisely on time with Chromite’s Joint Task Force 7 invasion fleet in the Korean Strait. Naval planners nervously recalled the disastrous storm that had occurred during the invasion of Okinawa in the spring of 1945, and wondered if history might be repeating itself. MacArthur boarded his flagship the Mt. McKinley on the 12th. The vessel and its mates at sea were buffeted by howling winds and high seas when the storm suddenly veered north from the east coast of Japan on the 13th. But the worst of the terrible storm narrowly missed the invasion fleet.

As the countdown for Chromite approached, two diversionary bombardments took place by air to the south at Kunsan and to the north at Chinammpo, with the battleship USS Missouri blasting Samchok on the east coast right across from the real target, Inchon. Next came Wolmi-Do; beginning on Sept. 10 Marine Corsairs set most of its buildings afire.

Enemy Gets Ample Warning Of Invasion

By the 13th, the cat seemed to be out of the bag in the enemy camp: an intercepted Communist dispatch to Pyongyang read: “Ten enemy vessels are approaching Inchon. Many aircraft are bombing Wolmi-Do. There is every indication the enemy will perform a landing. All units under my command are directed to be ready for combat; all units will be stationed in their given positions so that they may throw back enemy forces when they attempt their landing operation.”

At last, 71,339 officers and men of the U.S. Marine Corps, Navy, Army, and ROK Marines were ready in their 47 landing craft to prove MacArthur either a seer or a reckless gambler who had bet on the wrong horse. According to one source, “Precisely at 0630, the U.S. Marines swept in from the Yellow Sea to face 40,000 North Korean troops.”

What would be the outcome—tremendous victory or ignominious defeat? In the event, the Battle of Inchon is most notable for two things: What didn’t happen that very well might have, and for the “about as planned” outcome that Douglas MacArthur had envisioned on that hill in South Korea just a short time before.

Did MacArthur Call It Right?

The initial landing force of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, lst Marine Divsion clambered ashore from their landing craft and scaled the sea wall, securing Wolmi-Do Island in a mere—and historic—45 minutes. Stated Ridgway, “The action opened at dawn with a heavy bombardment by American destroyers, whose skippers gallantly steamed up the channel under the very muzzles of enemy cannons, and by British and American cruisers. The first task was to neutralize Wolmi-Do, the little island that sat right athwart the channel, with all channel traffic within point-blank range of its guns.

“The island, however, was not nearly so strongly fortified as had been feared [MacArthur had been right in this assessment] and its guns were quickly silenced by the naval bombardment. Marine Corsair planes strafed the island beaches … and the Marines stormed ashore, scattering the dazed defenders.… Artillery was positioned on the island then to support the assault upon the seawall.”

Continues Ridgway: “In places, the Marines used ladders to scale the wall, which stood four feet above the prows of the Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs). Elsewhere the LSTs simply rammed holes in the wall, or Marines opened holes with dynamite, through which the assault troops poured.… By dark the advance elements … were securely dug in on their beachhead ready to repel counterattacks,” which never came, so complete and total was the surprise victory.

A Smug General Rolls Back Over To Sleep

And what of the man whose military genius had foreseen all this from the start? Aboard the Mt. McKinley, two NKPA MiG fighters were seen at 5:40 am beginning an attack on a cruiser to the front, leading General Courtney Whitney to alert MacArthur in his cabin of the danger. MacArthur simply said. “Wake me up again, Court, if they attack this ship,” rolled over and went to sleep.

After the bombardment began, he went to breakfast and then up on deck, commenting above the roar of the guns, “Just like Lingayen Gulf,” meaning his invasion of the Philippines in 1945. Later, Marine General Shepherd would recall, “His staff was grouped around him. He was seated in the admiral’s chair with his old Bataan cap with its tarnished gold braid [that Truman would mock a month to the day later] and a leather jacket on. Photographers were busily engaged in taking pictures of the General, while he continued to watch the naval gunfire—paying no attention to his admirers.”

“More People Than That Get Killed In Traffic Every Day!”

As the Marines had stormed ashore, elderly Korean civilians had gathered to watch them in awe, admiration, and relief at being liberated from their northern oppressors. The NKPAs also admired the Leathernecks, calling them “yellow legs” because of their distinctive leggings. Indeed, President Truman’s personal observer throughout the battle, National Guard Maj. Gen. Frank E. Lowe, also admired the men his boss had derisively called “The Navy’s police force,” leading the amphibious commander General Oliver P. Smith later to write, “As to personal danger, his claim was that the safest place in Korea was with a platoon of Marines.”

Back on the Mt. McKinley, MacArthur was told that there were 45 enemy POWs on Wolmi-Do, with U.S. losses being put at about six dead and 15-20 wounded, leading him to comment, “More people than that get killed in traffic every day!”

The landings were divided into a trio of Beaches: Green to take Wolmi-Do, and Red and Blue to seize Inchon proper, with the former to the north of the causeway linking Wolmi-Do to the port and the latter to the south of it.

Taking Of Red Beach a Sight To Behold

The main battle assault was at Red Beach. In the words of one Marine company commander, Captain Frank I. Fenton, “It really looked dangerous.… There was a finger pier and causeway that extended out from Red Beach which reminded us of Tarawa, and, if machineguns were on the finger pier and causeway, we were going to have a tough time making the last 200 yards to the beach.”

At 5:24 pm the Marines went in, and Herald-Tribune reporter Marguerite Higgins described the scene: “A rocket hit a round oil tower and big, ugly smoke rings billowed up. The dockside buildings were brilliant with flames. Through the haze it looked as if the whole city was burning.… The strange sunset, combined with the crimson haze of the flaming docks, was so spectacular that a movie audience would have considered it overdone.” Cemetery Hill was taken, and Miss Higgins came in with the fifth wave onto Red Beach.

“We were relentlessly pinned down by rifle and automatic weapon fire coming down on us from another rise on the right [Observatory Hill]. Capt. Fenton’s men took it, and the CO himself had a rather unusual experience, as related by the late Marine Col. Robert Debs Heinl, Jr, whose seminal work Victory at High Tide: The Inchon-Seoul Campaign, is without doubt the very best study in print on MacArthur’s Cannae: “Outside his command post on the hill., Capt. Fenton stood poised to relieve himself by the light of a star shell. As he did so, the hole at his feet came alive and a frightened Communist soldier, armed with burp gun and grenades, sprang out and cried for mercy. Momentarily transfixed, Fenton shouted for his runner, who disarmed the drenched captive.”

The Indomitable “Chesty” Puller

Now came the taking of Blue Beach, and the re-emergence of one of the Marine Corps’ greatest all-time combat heroes: Colonel Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller, 52. “Fierce and utterly fearless,” wrote Colonel Heinl, “entitled to almost as many battle stars as the regiment he commanded. Winner of two Navy Crosses before World War II, and of two more during the war, Puller was one of the great fighting soldiers of American history. … Puller’s mission was to land south of Inchon and seize a beachhead covering the main approach to the city proper, from which the regiment could advance directly on [a fortress called] Yongdungpo and Seoul.

During one rather gloomy G-2 report, he cut his own intelligence officer short: “We’ll find out what’s on the beach when we get there. There’s not necessarily a gun in every hole! There’s too much goddamned pessimism in this regiment. Most times, professional soldiers have to wait 25 years or more for a war, but here we are, with only five years’ wait for this one.… We’re going to work at our trade for a little while. We live by the sword and, if necessary, we’re ready to die by the sword. Good luck! I’ll see you ashore.”

Notes his biographer, Burke Davis, Puller’s first wave went in at 5:30 pm. “Puller went to his objective at Blue Beach with the third wave, in a twilight hastened by the smoke pall, and climbed a 15-foot sea wall on one of the scaling ladders improvised on the ship en route. It occurred to him that the Corps had not used ladders since [the storming of] Chapultepec [in the 1848 Mexican War].

Leaflets Dropped To Discourage Enemy Into Surrender

“He sat on the wall,” wrote Davis, “briefly watching the enemy in his front.” He settled his men in for the night, and launched his renewed attack inland the next day, Sept. 16 as planned, at dawn. “By 9 a.m., Puller had driven 4,000 yards against machinegun and mortar fire.” To the north, the fighting was sharper, with a counterattack by six Russian-made tanks against which the Americans launched aircraft. But the advance inland continued, the Marines taking care that none of their dead or wounded remained on the battlefield but were carried to the rear.

MacArthur—ever the military public relations man—had devised yet another masterstroke that paid off, a leaflet dropped some two hundred miles to the southeast, on the Red troops fighting at the Pusan Perimeter.
It read: “UNITED NATIONS FORCES HAVE LANDED AT INCHON. Officers and men of North Korea, powerful UN forces have landed at Inchon and are advancing rapidly. You can see from this map how hopeless your situation has become. Your supply lines cannot reach you, nor can you withdraw to the North. The odds against you are tremendous. Fifty-three of the 59 countries in the UN are opposing you. You are outnumbered in equipment, manpower and firepower. Come over to the UN side and you will get good food and prompt medical care.”

Onto Kimpo Airfield After Inchon Falls

With nine American tanks on Wolmi-Do, three with flame-throwers, three with bulldozer blades, success was in the air. MacArthur took great satisfaction when he saw the Stars and Stripes flying overhead. Six NKPAs forced their officer to strip naked and then surrender, others jumped into the water and tried to swim to Inchon, and yet still others fought to the death in their holes in the ground.

The overall casualties at Wolmi-Do were 20 Marines wounded, with about 120 North Koreans killed and another 180 captured. MacArthur’s great gamble was looking good. After the fall of Inchon came that of Kimpo Airfield on the 17th—D-Day plus two. Two hundred NKPAs with five tanks were wiped out by the Marines in a battle six miles southeast of Inchon.

“Attack, push and pursue without cease,” had asserted French Marshal Maurice de Saxe, and now his 20th-century counterpart—MacArthur—came ashore to do precisely that, landing on the 17th and setting out in a jeep convoy to find the hero of the hour, Chesty Puller. But the tough Marine sent back the message: “If he wants to see me, have him come up in the front lines. I’ll be waiting for him.” MacArthur did so, and awarded Puller the Silver Star on the spot. Puller said, “Thanks very much for the Star, General. Now, if you want to know where those sons of bitches are, they’re right over the next ridge!”

Propaganda From Moscow Paints A Different Picture Of Invasion

The Marines had first fought in Korea in 1871, and first taken Seoul in 1894. Now—after taking fortress Yongdungpo and crossing the Han River, they took it a second time, on Sept. 26, but it wasn’t completely cleared of enemy resistance, after tough street-by-street, house-to-house fighting, until the 28th.

Indeed, the Soviet newspaper Pravda likened the battle for Seoul to the epic struggle at Stalingrad against the Germans in 1942-43: “Cement, streetcar rails, beams and stones are being used to build barricades in the streets, and workers are joining soldiers in the defense. The situation is very serious. Pillboxes and tank points dot the scene. Every home must be defended as a fortress. There is firing from behind every stone.

“When a soldier is killed, his gun continues to fire. It is picked up by a worker, tradesman or office worker. … Gen. MacArthur landed the most arrant criminals at Inchon, gathered from the ends of the earth. He sends British and New Zealand adventure-seekers ahead of his own executioners, letting them drag Yankee chestnuts from the fire. American bandits are shooting every Seoul inhabitant taken prisoner.”

A Huge Number Of North Koreans Taken Prisoner

That was on the 23rd. The day before, the NKPA troops had begun surrendering, as Colonel Heinl points out: “They started coming in in numbers, all carrying their burp guns. We stripped every one as he came in—pretty hard trying to get trousers off over leggings … (which the North Koreans, like their Marine captors, also wore). Indeed, in the two weeks after Inchon, MacArthur’s forces captured a stunning 130,000 North Koreans, just as predicted.

States Leckie, “By mid-September, the 70,000 combat troops opposing Gen. Walker’s combat force of 140,000 men [in the Pusan Perimeter] were served by perhaps 50% of the tanks and heavy weapons they needed. MacArthur’s estimate of what happened to an army at the end of a long supply line was proven correct, and his faith in what happened to it when it was put to rout was borne out with grim exactitude during the last 10 days of September.

All Escape Routes In United Nations’ Hands

“By the end of the month, the North Korean Army was shattered and fleeing north with little semblance of order. Some of the enemy’s 13 divisions simply disappeared. Their men were spread all over the South Korean countryside in disorganized and demoralized small parties. All of the escape routes were in United Nations hands, the sea was hostile to them and the sky roared with the motors of planes that spat death at them or showered them with firebombs.

“The roads, rice paddies and ditches of South Korea became littered with abandoned enemy tanks, guns and vehicles. Wholesale surrenders became commonplace.”

It was at this point and this juncture only—in the heady, warm glow of total victory by UN arms—that arose the idea of the unification of the two Koreas by force, especially espoused by President Rhee, who crowed, on Sept. 30, “What is the 38th Parallel?… It is non-existent. I am going all the way to the Yalu, and the United Nations can’t stop me.”

The Extent Of North Korean Atrocities Become Apparent

On Sept. 29, MacArthur and President Rhee wept together over the liberation of Seoul, as the General and the assemblage recited The Lord’s Prayer in gratitude for the UN victory, and the President blurted out through his tears, “We admire you. We love you as the savior of our race!” He would be overthrown in 1960.

The South Korean people had welcomed the incoming Marines with open arms, and had even brought out their small cooking stoves so that their liberators could warm their cold rations before eating. It soon became apparent why, as Communist atrocities began surfacing. Murdered American POWs also cropped up in ever-increasing incidents as UN forces advanced north into enemy territory.

The reckoning of the battle was also accomplished on Sept. 30, as—in the words of Colonel Heinl—“The X Corps War Diary rounded out the number of enemy killed at 14,000, his prisoners in hand, 7,000. These figures are about as correct as any that will ever be arrived at. Some 50 Russian tanks were destroyed, 47 by Marine ground or air. … The Marine division alone destroyed or took 23 120mm mortars, two 76mm self-propelled guns, eight 76mm guns, 19 45mm antitank guns, 59 14.5mm antitank rifles, 56 heavy machineguns, and 7,543 rifles.”

”The Trinity Of Victory”

General MacArthur was not solely responsible for the great deed done in the campaign, Colonel Heinl concluded. He must be given credit for what Heinl calls “a masterpiece,” but he was responsible for the conception of Operation Chromite, not its command execution. For that the laurels must properly go to “the trinity of victory:” Admiral Struble, the overall commander of all forces afloat; Rear Admiral Doyle, the amphibious force commander; and General Oliver P. Smith, the landing force CO.

“Every great campaign spawns its statistics,” lamented Heinl. “To defeat the 30-40,000 defenders which the [NKPA] threw piecemeal against X Corps, 71,339 soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and ROK troops landed at Inchon and bore their part in the battle. The cost of this victory to the United States was 536 killed in action or died of wounds, 2,550 wounded, and 65 missing in action. Among the Services, Marines, on the ground and in the air, paid the highest price.”

Adds Ridgway: “The measure of the role the ground forces played in Korea may be judged from the fact that, of the total U.S. battle casualties for the entire conflict, the Army and Marines accounted for 97%.… [But it] certainly may be said that the gallant airmen and sailors who contributed so much to the effort are nowhere more highly honored than in the hearts of the doughboys and Marines who fought the ground battles.”

Reassertion That America Was a Maritime Power

Overall, Heinl asserts, “Inchon underscored … that America is a maritime power, that her weapon is the trident, and her strategy that of the oceans. Only through the sure and practiced exercise of sea power could this awkward war in a remote place have been turned upside down in a matter of days.”

He also makes this very astute observation: “Civil wars, Communist wars, and Asian wars are unhappily noted for their ferocity. The Korean War was all three … Not only did the NKPA cause the ruin of Seoul, but they stripped it systematically (as they did Inchon) of all usable industrial machinery and even office furniture, conducting such removals until the very last moment.”

Like Army man Ridgway, Marine Heinl notes, too, that Inchon was a joint inter-service victory, and quotes the words that are inscribed on the monument that stands today at Green Beach on Wolmi-Do and is still honored each year on Sept. 15 by the South Koreans (who “do not forget”):

Red Chinese Enter The Korean War

“The victory was not won by any one nation or any one branch of the military service. … The Inchon-Seoul operation was conducted jointly by the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.” The ROK forces, this writer feels, should be added to the inscription.

The victory had long-term effects that are still felt today, Heinl felt: “It revindicated amphibious assault (and, more fundamentally, maritime strategy) as a modern technique of war. In so doing, it almost unquestionably averted the abolition of the U.S. Marine Corps and naval aviation.”

The war went on, even though many thought it was won (on Oct. 30, 1950, one U.S. newspaper prematurely avowed that “Hard-Hitting UN Forces Wind Up War”). Less than a month later, Red Chinese Marshal Lin Piao launched his massive attack across the Yalu River from Manchuria into North Korea. “Two Chinese Army Groups—the Fourth, operating against Walker, the Third, against Almond [commanding the X Corps]—attacked with overwhelming force,” wrote MacArthur. “It was an entirely new war.”

Still, that was in the future, and even in the light of subsequent events, nothing can be taken from the bold stroke that both the enemy believed impossible of attempt and completely fulfilled its goal and prediction of cutting enemy supplies and reinforcements while at the same time putting him in a vise between two fighting forces.

Inchon Invasion Receives Wide Praise

General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower termed the victory “a brilliant example of strategic leadership,” while General Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz called it “one of the most, if not the most, significant military operations in history.”

It was left to U.S. Navy Admiral “Bull” Halsey to say of the attack: “Characteristic and magnificent. The Inchon landing is the most masterly and audacious strategic stroke in all history.” In 1964, author David Rees in his work Korea: The Limited War, termed Inchon “A 20th Century Cannae, ever to be studied.”

And yet back in those bleak and desolate days of the summer of 1951, MacArthur himself was the first to realize that, in German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s words, “If I fail… everybody will be after my blood.” On the very eve of the landings he noted, “I alone was responsible for tomorrow, and if I failed, the dreadful results would rest on Judgment Day against my soul.”

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons