Untold Story: How The USAF Won The Korean War But Couldn't Tell Anyone

Not even the most aggressive aerial bombing in history was winning the Korean War, until one heroic Air Force mission did the impossible—ended the war—and violated every rule command leadership had created. Author Thomas McKelvey Cleaver reveals the secrets behind this daring mission.

- Thomas Mckelvey Cleaver

Between June 27, 1950, when the first U.S. interdiction bombing mission of the Korean War was flown, and July 27, 1953, the last day of the war, the United States Air Force dropped more bombs on North Korea than were dropped in the entire Pacific theater in World War II. If the totals from the U.S. Navy’s bombing campaign are added in, more bombs were dropped on North Korea than were dropped on Germany in World War II.

The capital of Pyongyang was bombed into rubble over a three-day all-out campaign in the summer of 1952. The entire North Korean electric power-generating grid was also bombed into rubble, and then subjected to repeated bombing to keep it nonoperational for over a year. The agricultural water system was bombed and the country flooded in the spring of 1953. Every road, every railroad, and every bridge was bombed. As one Air Force planner put it, “If it was bigger than an outhouse, we bombed it.” All of this effort was undertaken to break the will of the North Koreans and their Chinese allies to continue the war. None of it worked. As VADM J.J. “Jocko” Clark, one-time commander of Task Force 77, and later commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet during the final year of the war put it, “The aerial interdiction campaign didn’t interdict.”