December 1950 (III)
A decision-forcing case
This post concludes a three-part decision-forcing case study. To engage the case as an integrated exercise, please begin with the following articles.
You initially planned to evacuate X Corps by a combination of road marches and amphibious withdrawal. However, after showing you calculations of the length of the column that the 17,500 vehicles of your command would form, your staff convinces you to conduct the movement entirely by sea.
This decision proves correct. Better yet, the extra capacity made available by the large fleet of transports at your disposal allows you to rescue the 100,000 or so refugees that presented themselves at your ports of embarkation.
The easternmost elements of X Corps made use of small ports along the long northeastern coast of the Korean peninsula. Most of your units, however, boarded ships anchored in the harbor of Hungnam.
For details of this operation - which has since become known as the ‘Hungnam Evacuation’ - please see the following film.
(You can also see the film on Tactical Notebook Channel on Bitchute)
Source
Richard W. Stewart Staff Operations: The X Corps in Korea, December 1950 (Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute, 1991)
For Further Reading
