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Victory belongs to the most persevering

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

Korean War, Logistics & Support Activities, 1950-1953

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Logistics and support activities were vital to the success of U.S. and United Nations Korean War operations. Without extensive and efficient trans-oceanic shipping, the tens of thousands of service people and the hundreds of thousands of tons of "beans, bullets and black oil" needed every month to prosecute the war would never have reached a war zone that was some five thousand miles from the U.S. west coast and about twice that far from eastern seaboard ports. Without underway replenishment of warships off the Korean coast, the effectiveness of Naval forces there would have been substantially reduced. Without well-equipped and effectively-staffed Japanese bases close to the combat theater, sea and air operations against the Communist aggressors would have been gravely hindered, and, during the crisis periods of summer 1950 and winter 1950-51, probably impossible. Without ports and other facilities in South Korea, the insertion and sustenance of the large ground forces needed to defend that country simply could not have been done, and local naval operations would have been hamstrung.

Like much else about the Korean War, its logistics and support effort depended extensively on the legacy of World War II. Transport ships, long-range aircraft and much of the other equipment used in supporting the war had been made during that great conflict and had been wisely retained against the possibility that it might be needed again. The senior officer and enlisted servicemen and civilian sailors and airmen who resurrected the logistics and support system in response to the Korean crisis, and kept it running thereafter, had largely learned their crafts in the struggle against Japan and Germany.

As the Korean conflict wore on, month after month through 1950, 1951, 1952 and into 1953, the early rush to meet the supply, training and repair demands of a dynamic combat situation became essentially routine. However, these efforts were never small. In some months, the volumes of personnel, cargo and fuel sent to the Korean area equalled or exceeded those of some months of the vast Pacific War of 1941-45. To a great extent this was a result of the constant nature of Korean War naval operations, contrasted with the more spasmodic operations of World War II, and the greatly increased fuel and ordnance demands of modern aircraft.

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