Inchon Landing Essay

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General Douglas MacArthur will forever be remembered for his famed Inchon landing in the Korean war, a piece of tactical genius which swung the tide of the war in favour of the United Nations (UN) and the South Koreans. However, what was his overall contribution to the conflict from the Inchon landing, to his dismissal from his role on April 11th 1951? While the Inchon landing was an unprecedented success, which very few could have the audacity to execute, its success was also the catalyst for the errors in judgement that would follow resulting in Chinese involvement in the war. Ultimately ending in the armistice on July 27th 1953, the Korean War had not been the success many had promised initially following the Inchon landing.
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Public support was strongly against Harry Truman from the outset of the war. Coming off the end of the Second World War, America was in need of rest and healing, not further conflict. By August 25th, there had already been 6886 American casualties, and by mid-September, when the landing took place, this number had doubled. Truman was desperate to end the war quickly, and return the soldiers to their families, a factor that greatly contributed to his approval of MacArthur’s Inchon landing
The tremendous tides at Inchon meant that there was a mere two-hour window within which the landing could be executed. After these two hours, the troops would be stranded without support until the next high tide. What’s more, the narrow channels made the passages very easy to mine. Admiral James Henry Doyle said, “We drew up a list of every natural and geographic handicap--- and Inchon had ‘em all” In the face of such challenging conditions, MacArthur was confident. He maintained that the difficulty of landing at Inchon would make it a total astonishment to the North Koreans, similar to General James Wolfe’s attack at the Plains of Abraham. Fortunately for MacArthur, the Japanese had previously had success landing at Inchon in 1904 prior to their occupation of the Korean Peninsula. This gave promise that while the plan was bold enough not to be expected, there was still a reasonable possibility of

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