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...communist North. both conflicts, U.S. Air Force units and aircraft played significant roles. Those roles depended greatly on the acquisition, improvement, construction, and maintenance of combat airfields.
When it was born in 1947, the Air Force lacked an organic engineering capability. According to the National Security Act of that year, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy Civil Engineer Corps shared responsibility for Air Force construction. In peacetime, the arrangement saved money by avoiding senseless duplication, but the Far Eastern conflicts exposed the need for the Air Force to have its own engineers for forward airfield construction. (1)
Air Base Construction in Korea, 1950-1953
When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, the Far East Air Forces (FEAF) had limited theater airfield construction capability. Installations squadrons were prepared to repair and maintain airfields, not to build them. In the course of the conflict, USAF tactical unit commanders eventually gained responsibility for air base development, but adequately trained personnel and stockpiles of spare parts were always in short supply. (2)
The engineer aviation battalions of the Korean War were similar but not identical to those of the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II. By 1950, aviation engineering personnel were somewhere in between the Army and the Air Force, serving as "Special Category Army Personnel with Air Force" (SCARWAF) troops. When the Korean War broke out, five of these battalions were active in Japan, Okinawa, and Guam, organized under the 930th and 931st Engineer Aviation Groups. In April 1951, the Air Force organized an Engineer Aviation Force under the Continental Air Command to provide operational training for construction battalions expected to deploy from the United States to Korea. (3)
Early in the Korean War, FEAF utilized existing airfields in Japan and South Korea. Many of these were formerly Japanese military airfields, and some of them had been converted to civilian airports. Before long, almost all of South Korea had been taken over by the invaders, leaving only a handful of airstrips in the southeastern corner of the peninsula available for USAF use. The most important of these were Taegu, Pohang, and Pusan West. The 930th Engineer Aviation Group and its 811th and 822d Engineer Aviation Battalions, deployed from Japan to Korea to keep these fields operational. Aviation engineers in Japan improved airfields at Itazuke and Tsuiki for tactical fighter missions to Korea, just across the Korea Strait. (4)
In late 1950, United Nations forces pushed the North Korean invaders out of South Korea and marched northward. Expectation of a quick victory, acquisition of North Korean air bases, and concern about the defense of western Europe restricted airfield construction in Korea. The North Koreans, reinforced by thousands of fresh Chinese troops at the end of 1950, resumed the offensive by early 1951 and invaded South Korea again. (5)
The shortage of operational airfields in South Korea...
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