On 15 September two amphibious landings, six years apart, opened very different battles. In 1950 U.S. Marines landed on the island of Wolmi-do early in the morning and went over the seawalls of Inchon on the evening tide, far behind the North Korean armies pressing the Pusan Perimeter. Two weeks later General Douglas MacArthur handed Seoul back to President Syngman Rhee. In 1944 the 1st Marine Division landed on Peleliu in the Palau Islands. Its commander, according to the Marine Corps history, expected the island to be secured within four days; the fighting went on until 27 November, and the Army's official history later wondered whether the results were worth the effort.
The Battle of Inchon, 1950: MacArthur's masterstroke
15 to 19 September 1950 · 76 years ago
The Battle of Inchon, 15 to 19 September 1950, was a decisive United Nations victory in the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur landed a large amphibious force at Inchon, far behind the North Korean army that had nearly overrun the south.
Read the full story of The Battle of Inchon, 1950: MacArthur's masterstroke ›The Battle of Peleliu, 1944: the bloody ridge nobody could forget
15 September to 27 November 1944 · 82 years ago
As American forces drove toward the Philippines in 1944, Peleliu and its airfield were targeted to protect the flank of the coming invasion. A heavy bombardment was expected to make the landing quick, and the Marine commander William Rupertus predicted the island would fall in a few days.
Read the full story of The Battle of Peleliu, 1944: the bloody ridge nobody could forget ›MacArthur's gamble
By the summer of 1950 the North Korean invasion had penned the United Nations forces inside the Pusan Perimeter, and General Douglas MacArthur chose to strike far behind it, at Inchon, on the west coast near Seoul. The Marine Corps history by Lynn Montross and Nicholas Canzona says that from first to last Inchon was MacArthur's choice.1
Montross and Canzona give the tidal range as an average spring tide of 23 feet, at times as much as 33 feet, and Rear Admiral D. S. Murray gives the same 23 to 33 feet. The LSTs needed a tide of 29 feet to reach the beaches over the mud flats. MacArthur rejected October as too late, so that, in the Marine history's words, "15 September became D-day by virtue of elimination". The planners expected a high tide of 31 feet at 1919 that evening; the Army history by James Schnabel gives 1920.2
Edwin H. Simmons records that others at the conference of 23 August remembered MacArthur's closing words as: "We shall land at Inchon, and I shall crush them".3
Wolmi-do before breakfast
In the Marine Corps accounts, the first wave of the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, under Lieutenant Colonel Robert D. Taplett, grounded on GREEN Beach on Wolmi-do at 0633. At 0655 a sergeant tied the American flag to a shattered tree on Radio Hill, and MacArthur, watching from the flag bridge of the Mount McKinley, said "That's it" and "Let's get a cup of coffee".4
MacArthur then wrote to Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble: "The Navy and Marines have never shone more brightly than this morning". To the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Schnabel quotes him, he reported: "First phase landing successful with losses slight. Surprise apparently complete. All goes well and on schedule". In the Marine accounts the battalion had 17 wounded and no one killed that day; Murray gives 20 wounded.5
Ladders on RED Beach
Then came the wait for the evening tide, and H-hour was set at 1730. Schnabel describes seawalls of twelve to fourteen feet; Montross and Canzona write that as the 5th Marines came in to RED Beach the wall still stood about four feet above the ramps of their landing craft, and the men went up scaling ladders.6
On the left, under heavy fire, First Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez was hit as he moved against a bunker with a grenade; unable to throw it, Montross and Canzona write, he smothered the explosion with his body to protect his men. Simmons adds that it earned him a posthumous Medal of Honor. At 1755, the Marine accounts record, Lopez's Company A fired an amber star cluster to show that Cemetery Hill was secured; the fight had cost it eight killed and 28 wounded.7
Three miles to the south, Colonel Lewis B. Puller's 1st Marines headed for BLUE Beach through smoke and rain that, in the Marine history's words, "had completely blotted out BLUE Beach". Simmons, then a major in its 3d Battalion, recalled seeing only "mustard-colored haze and black smoke" ahead; "the LVT driver had no compass", so he used his own. By nightfall, Schnabel writes, more than a third of Inchon was in Marine hands. The 1st Marine Division's casualty table for 15 September lists 20 killed in action, 1 died of wounds, 1 missing and 174 wounded, 196 in all.8
Seoul, date by date
The sources date different events in Seoul, not one "fall" of the city. Schnabel writes that by 26 September the Marine-Army team "had wrested control" of the capital and seized all its key points. He adds that the North Korean Army, cut off from its supply lines and with a strong force at its back, began a general withdrawal from the Pusan Perimeter that turned into a rout; on the morning of 26 September a task force of the 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, of Eighth Army met elements of the 31st Infantry, 7th Division, of X Corps near Osan.9
On 27 September, the Marine history records under the heading "Objective Secured", the 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, took the government compound at 1508 and raised the United States colors; at 1530 the 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, raised the flag over the Russian Consulate and seven minutes later over the United States Consulate. On 28 September Major General Edward M. Almond, commanding X Corps, wrote to the 1st Marine Division: "On this date the X Corps attained one of its distinct objectives", which he named as "the securing of the city of Seoul".10
On the morning of 29 September, Montross and Canzona write, three North Korean counterattacks were still beaten off on the outskirts. That day MacArthur opened the ceremony in the capitol and led the audience in the Lord's Prayer; Schnabel quotes him restoring to President Syngman Rhee "the seat of your Government". On 30 September, Schnabel writes, President Truman congratulated him on "the brilliant maneuver which has now resulted in the liberation of Seoul". By the end of September, Schnabel concludes, Eighth Army and X Corps held almost all of South Korea and had routed the North Korean Army.11
For the campaign from 15 September to 7 October, the 1st Marine Division's own table, a division count and not one for all of X Corps, lists 366 killed in action, 49 died of wounds, 6 missing and 2,029 wounded, 2,450 battle casualties. Our article on the Battle of Inchon tells the wider story.12
