The British Carrier Strike Fleet. David Hobbs
and withdraw its forces north of the 38th Parallel but the North Koreans took no notice.
Triumph and Cossack off the coast of Japan in May 1950 during exercises with the USN. The aircraft in Fly 1 with their wings folded are Seafire FR 47s. (Author’s collection)
The Origins of the War
Korea had gained independence from China in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War but was annexed by Japan in 1910 and subsequently exploited ruthlessly.3 The Allied leaders’ wartime conference at Cairo in December 1943 had discussed Korea and the UK, USA and China had minuted that ‘in due course Korea shall become free and independent’. This policy was re-affirmed by the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 but this straightforward intention was complicated when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan a month later in August. In September Korea was occupied by Soviet forces in the north and United States’ forces in the south and an ad hoc agreement between the two powers fixed the 38th Parallel as the line of demarcation between them. In December 1945 an agreement was reached in Moscow for the re-establishment of Korea as an independent state with a democratically-elected government under the initial ‘trusteeship’ of the four signatory powers who had guaranteed the nation’s independence, the UK, USA, USSR and Nationalist China. The Chinese Communist regime subsequently accepted the agreement and stated its intention to adhere to it in principle. Significantly no agreement emerged on the method of implementing this aim and the UK and USA took the matter to the United Nations. In 1947 two UN Resolutions were passed calling for democratic elections to be overseen by a UN Commission. The Soviet authorities flouted them, however, and all the Commission could do was monitor elections south of the 38th Parallel where a National Assembly was established and the Republic of Korea established in 1948. Shortly afterwards, the area of Korea under Soviet occupation north of the 38th Parallel proclaimed itself to be the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea but, since the UN Commission had not been allowed to monitor the elections that were claimed to have taken place, it recommended against recognition of the People’s Republic and identified South Korea as the only legal Korean government. The UN General Assembly subsequently endorsed this view.
The UN Commission continued to strive for unification under the terms of the Moscow Agreement but in a report dated 8 September 19494 its Chairman stated that it was hopeless to attempt to gain access to, or even to communicate with North Korea. The report described the North as ‘the creature of a military occupation’ that denied its population any chance to express their opinion upon its claim to rule. Communication between the two Koreas broke down completely but US troops were removed from South Korea in June 1948, leaving only a small military advisory group. There could be no verification of when Soviet forces left the North but by 1949 they had equipped and trained a North Korean People’s Army, of over 130,000 combat troops equipped with 500 Soviet tanks and 132 aircraft. Neither the North nor the South had a significant navy.
Korea in 1950.
Reactions
The US President, Harry S Truman, waited until 26 June, giving the UN Security Council time to discuss the matter, before stating his position swiftly and unambiguously. He ordered US sea and air forces to support South Korean military forces and immediately sought international support from other heads of government for armed intervention to counter North Korean aggression. There were credible fears that this was but the first step in a major offensive in the Far East now that the Communists had emerged victorious from the Chinese civil war and the President ordered the Seventh Fleet to prepare to meet any potential attack on the Nationalist-held island of Formosa. C-in-C Pacific was ordered to form new carrier battle groups as quickly as possible for deployment to the western Pacific. On 30 June President Truman ordered a naval blockade of the whole Korean peninsula and authorised General Douglas MacArthur to send combat troops to Korea and to carry out air strikes against targets in Korea both north and south of the 38th Parallel. MacArthur had, in fact, ordered the first attack on the North a day earlier on his own initiative.
The US Army still maintained an occupation force in Japan under MacArthur who had his headquarters in Tokyo. He was immediately placed in supreme command of all United States’ forces in the region. These comprised four US Army divisions that were being used for constabulary duties as an occupying power and were not equipped or trained for combat on the scale now required of them. The USAF units placed under his command included about 400 aircraft which were intended for the air defence of Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines and Guam and there were a small number of warships forming US Naval Forces Far East under its Commander, Vice Admiral C Turner Joy USN (COMNAVFE). These comprised a light cruiser, four destroyers and six minesweepers. Further away but immediately available was a Seventh Fleet strike carrier task force which included the USS Valley Forge, a heavy cruiser and eight destroyers under Vice Admiral Arthur Struble USN. There was also a British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan under Lieutenant General Sir Horace Robertson of the Australian Army but by June 1950 this had been reduced to a single Australian infantry battalion, a single RAAF fighter squadron and a small naval contingent based ashore in Kure Dockyard under a Commander RAN. The BPF had, initially, maintained a sizeable naval force in Japanese waters and in 1946 this had comprised two British or Australian cruisers, several British and Australian destroyers or frigates and an Indian frigate. Such numbers could not be maintained through the manpower crisis, however, and from mid-1947 ships were not replaced as they left Japan, the last to leave being the British frigate Hart on 18 December 1947. A number of ships from the Far East Station and Australia continued to visit Japanese ports whenever possible, however, both to provide a Commonwealth presence and to practice operations with the USN. Having failed to anticipate or prevent the conflict, the UN had at least condemned North Korean aggression and, within a week, taken steps to defend the south. On 7 July 1950 MacArthur was named as the supreme commander of all Allied forces allocated to the UN in the Far East in addition to those of the US. His line of responsibility, however, remained directly to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than to the UN General Assembly for this wider role.
The British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, announced British support for the UN in the House of Commons on 27 June 1950. On 28 June he announced that warships of the FEF were to be placed at the disposal of the US authorities to operate on behalf of the UN. The Canadian Government offered naval support on the same day, followed by the Governments of Australia and New Zealand, who were some nine hours ahead of GMT, a day later on 29 June. The Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Station, Admiral Sir Patrick Brind, who flew his flag at a shore headquarters in Singapore, had elected to deploy substantial units of his fleet to Japanese waters in the late spring and early summer under the tactical command of Rear Admiral William Andrewes, Flag Officer Second-in-Command Far East Station (FO2FES), who flew his flag in the cruiser Belfast.5 Whilst there, the British task force formed part of the occupation forces and came under the command of Vice Admiral Turner Joy USN. It had maintained close contact with its American counterparts and had carried out joint exercises using USN signal procedures. The British task force included the light fleet carrier Triumph with 800 (Seafire FR 47) and 827 (Firefly FR 1) NAS embarked, the cruisers Belfast and Jamaica, two destroyers, three frigates and a number of auxiliaries including tankers and a hospital ship.
When fighting began on 25 June 1950, Belfast was visiting Hakodate in northern Japan. FO2 heard of the invasion that evening, ordered the ship to raise steam immediately and sailed at 01.30 on 26 June on his own initiative to position himself further south where he would be available to meet any eventuality. The C-in-C ordered another cruiser, Kenya, together with further destroyers, frigates and auxiliaries to raise steam in Singapore and Hong Kong and prepare for operations off Korea. In his subsequent report of proceedings (ROP) FO2 said that he wished to concentrate his ships without delay since it seemed probable that any action would be off South Korea and that, should the Soviet Union intervene, the best place for his task force would be further to the south.6 Later on 26 June Admiral Brind signalled COMNAVFE offering the use of British warships for any humanitarian