By Kelly Bell
The first two tanks crossed the small Changnung river in one piece. As the third was splashing across, though, it hit a mine the first two had barely missed. The armored column ground to a halt as engineers swept the area with mine detectors and dug up a sobering number of infernal machines the Chinese had expertly sowed before withdrawing. With sappers and their detectors leading the way, the convoy slowly made it to the village of Sinwon by 9 a.m. on March 23, 1951. Here the detectors began to beep again, once more forcing the column to a halt. By this time paratroopers were jumping outside the town of Munsan-ni 19 miles to the north. With the ground forces bogged down, the paras would have to do a great deal themselves.
The ebb and flow of the Korean War had momentarily stagnated. Just as the Chinese seemed about to overrun all of South Korea, Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s timely amphibious landing at Inchon had sliced into the Communist flank and sent them reeling northward with United Nations (UN) forces pursuing them all the way to the Yalu River, North Korea’s border with Red China. Earlier, discounted reports delivered through diplomatic channels out of India that the Chinese would not tolerate Free World military forces so close to their home soil were vindicated when hordes of Chinese forces counterattacked the forward western elements, driving them back to the south before UN forces were able to establish a strong defensive line roughly along the 38th Parallel.
It was a bitter shock for the Americans and their allies. In defiance of previous, disparaging intelligence evaluations of Mao Tse-Tung’s military, the Chinese soldiers now in Korea fought hard and well. The majority of these troops were seasoned combat veterans, toughened by years of fighting first the Japanese, and later the Nationalist Army of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek during the Chinese Civil War. If their communications and air support were lacking, they more than made up for it through their sheer numbers, ferocity and the combat savvy of their senior officers, many of whom had been at war for 20 years. They may have been fought to a standstill by March of 1951, but there was no doubt they planned to keep up the pressure, and there were so many of them. Their numbers along with their North Korean comrades then deployed between the Han and Imjin rivers north of Seoul were too great a threat for the UN and Republic of (South) Korea’s (ROK) forces to ignore.
U.S. 8th Army commanding General Mathew Ridgway conceived of Operation Courageous as a means of neutralizing the worrisome Communist enclave between these rivers. The American 25th and 3rd Infantry divisions and the ROK 1st Infantry Division were to advance northward to Munsan-ni, and then veer east while the paratroopers came down from the north, trapping the enemy between the two allied forces. The paradrop was designated Operation Tomahawk, and would utilize the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team (RCT), an excellent choice for the assignment.
The 187th had been in Korea since the fall of 1950 and had performed exceptionally well. After heavy fighting in the bitter cold central mountains near Wonju in January, the regiment was sent to Taegu Airfield to prepare for imminent airborne operations. A scheduled jump north of Chuncheon was scrubbed when UN ground forces overran the target area ahead of schedule. The RCT’s training for this cancelled assignment, however, turned out to be appropriate for Operation Tomahawk. The regiment received notice of its new assignment on March 16. They were originally slated to jump on the 20th, but it became obvious this was too soon to make even the bare minimum of preparations. The attack was re-scheduled for the 23rd.
Reconnaissance indicated the Chinese and North Koreans were fortifying their positions north of Seoul, and showing no inclination to withdraw. The North Korean units nearest Seoul were in the most vulnerable position because their route of potential retreat was blocked by the deep and virtually unfordable Imjin River. The key to the success of the interrelated Operations Courageous/Tomahawk was the 187th’s occupation of the area around Munsan-ni. In this scenario the Reds would be essentially encircled by the 187th, the advancing ground units of Operation Courageous and the river.
The 187th, bolstered by elements of the 2nd and 4th Ranger companies, would drop into their assigned area at the same time a ground force from the U.S. I Corps advanced to the northwest from Seoul. Commanded by Lt.-Col. John Growdon, the mechanized Task Force Growdon—composed of the 6th Medium Tank Battalion; 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment; all but one battery of the 58th Armored Field Artillery Battalion; a battery of the 999th Armored Field Artillery Battalion; Company A of the 14th Engineer Battalion; and two bridge-laying Churchill tanks from the British 29th Brigade—would link up with the 187th within 24 hours of the drop. It would be a monumental task for the paratroops to hold out for that long.
The rush to launch the operation left little time to prepare and the men received only the barest briefing on the drop zone. There was no time for aerial reconnaissance but, through herculean efforts, technical information was delivered to the battalion by noon on March 22. Ridgway and his staff worked on the project’s details until 1 a.m. of the 23rd, making it possible to deliver crucial data to participating junior officers in time for them to share it with their men.
About 15,000 soldiers of the North Korean I Corps would oppose the American I Corps on the left flank. The Communist units were armed with an uncertain number of medium tanks, self-propelled guns and heavy machine guns. The North Korean I Corps had been busy during the past week defending itself against constant pressure from the American I Corps. Judging from the volume of fire still coming from the Communists here and the heavy gunfire directed at UN aircraft passing over their positions it appeared these North Koreans still had sufficient ordnance for both defensive and mobile combat. There was also the possibility they might be reinforced.
The 8th and 47th North Korean Rifle Divisions were ensconced about 10 miles southeast of their I Corps comrades. There were also elements of the Chinese 27th and 50th armies holed up in a valley about 15 miles away outside Uijeongbu. Should these three Communist enclaves manage to merge into one in the Munsan-ni area, operations Courageous and Tomahawk could end up resembling Custer’s attack at Little Bighorn. To prevent this, it was decided the attempt would have to be made as soon as possible and regardless of the opposition’s strength—not only because of the value of the objective (Munsan-ni) but because of the immediate threat these hostiles posed to nearby Seoul. The target location was too significant to not hold.
Munsan-ni was a vital railroad crossroads and communications center. Whoever held the area was in a position to use adjacent high ground as artillery sites to monitor local flats, ferry crossings, road and riverine approaches, the sector’s inland areas, river islands as well as the valley approaches from the south. Deep ravines throughout the area provide excellent protection for defensive lines, or staging points for attacks.
The terrain in the south and east was ideal for rapid movement of troops and equipment of all kinds. To the north, the Imjin blocked resupply efforts. This type of terrain required any attacking force to rapidly clear the objective of the enemy before setting up on high ground and/or the brushy ravines, and utilizing these same features to meet potential counterattacks. The flat terrain to the west, south and east required quick fortification because it was ideal for the transit of tanks. Although as much of this information as possible was shared with the 187th’s officers, there was insufficient time to meticulously brief the majority of the rank-and-file who would be making the actual jump. This meant reliable communications between the combat zone and headquarters would be of paramount importance in order to correctly deploy the troops after they landed. For the UN forces preparing for this operation, March 22 was a very busy day. At 7:15 a.m. the next day planes began taking off from Taegu airfield. By 9 a.m., precisely on schedule, they began unloading their human cargo. But the drop was not without incident.
Engine trouble forced the lead plane to abort. The pilots of the following planes had not been briefed on where to unload the paras, but were told simply to drop the men on the same mark as the lead plane. The following pilots had to make their best guess on the location of the drop zone, resulting in the entire 1st Battalion being dropped about five miles north of its assigned area, in among the already-landed soldiers of the 3rd Battalion. Despite the glut of troops in the northern zone the units managed to deploy relatively quickly (being completely organized according to plan by 12:15) and start fighting.
“The northern DZ was initially saturated with personnel due to the 1st Battalion’s accidental drop,” Major Ronald C. Speirs later recalled of the situation in the crowded north, “This hampered the assembly of the 3rd Battalion as there were too many men at the assembly point, which was the northwest sector of the DZ. The initial mission of the 3rd Battalion was to secure the DZ, and this was accomplished. Forty to 50 enemy were killed and wounded by the battalion.”
At noon, the 3rd Battalion’s 4th Ranger Company assaulted Hill 205 in order to neutralize mortar crews who had been shelling the battalion since it landed. Not waiting for assembly to be complete, Company I struck out toward Munsan-ni at 9:30 a.m. The unit’s first assignment was the capture and fortification of Hill 86. They accomplished their task in 30 minutes, killing 8 and taking 21 prisoners. Tomahawk was officially underway.
As the U.S. units were assembling, Ridgway arrived via light aircraft to personally oversee the operation’s initial stages. His first command post had to relocate due to mortar and small arms fire. From his new location he began issuing orders aimed at thoroughly securing the DZ for following units, sending elements of the 3rd Battalion to the east and north. At this point some late-arriving troops parachuted almost on top of Ridgway’s CP. Forty-five minutes after the first soldiers had jumped, the sector was secure and its units operational despite intermittent mortar rounds. For the 1st Battalion the situation was more precarious.
The sole planeload of 1st Battalion paratroopers had also missed their mark, coming down in the midst of a sizable concentration of hostiles. The Americans immediately came under fire from Chinese troops atop Hill 216 and an adjacent ridge, but called down an air strike that silenced these positions. This enabled part of the 1st Battalion to leave the DZ and deploy, but the clock was ticking.
As it turned out, not all Communist troops on Hill 216 had been killed by the air strike, and the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Platoon, under a Captain Miller waged a violent firefight for the position from noon until 1 p.m. The platoon occupied the hill and radioed instructions to comrades deploying in the surrounding countryside as, to the north, the pace was quickening.
After landing and assembling, the 2nd Battalion wasted no time in moving against its objective—the high ground north of the DZ. By 10 a.m. these men had moved out for their point of interest—specifically a high ridge overlooking a railroad tunnel about 2,000 yards north of Munsan-ni. Although bedevilled by mortar fire these troops pressed steadily forward, splashing across a rice paddy and engaging the enemy at the foot of the hill. Most of the North Koreans taken captive turned out to be recent conscripts no more than 15 and 16 years old, who put up little resistance. As soon as the Americans took these defenses, they came under sporadic artillery fire from what seemed to be self-propelled guns. By 5 p.m. the sector was cleared of North Koreans, with 35 of them killed and 22 captured. An hour later adjacent Hill 65 was secured. The overall operation was still gathering momentum.
The northern sector was a cauldron of combat. The 4th Ranger Company ran into serious opposition when it moved against its objective—Hill 205. The elevation overlooked two fords on the Imjin, which the Communists could use for either retreat or reinforcement.
After jumping at 9:17 a.m. the paras came down in a dry rice paddy outside a hamlet called Ich’on-ni and assembled on the northwest side of a road paralleling the drop zone. After accounting for about 90 percent of his troops Capt. Dorsey Anderson led his command toward Hill 205, about 1,700 yards northeast of the drop zone. The company had been under small arms and mortar fire since landing, but this interdiction was so inaccurate it did little to hamper the soldiers as they deployed. The elevation was made up of several long ridges the men had come to call “The Fingers” during pre-attack briefings. Fourth Company’s 1st Platoon started up the middle finger, while 3rd Platoon started climbing up the one just north of it to the left. Both fingers were unoccupied by the enemy. The company then advanced in force up the remaining fingers until encountering concentrated defensive fire from the hill’s summit. Under cover fire from the rest of the company, the 1st Platoon continued slowly up the slope with the intent of forming assault positions. The rocky, irregular promontory was difficult to assault due to its having just one narrow approach to the top.
First Platoon continued its assault, but as its lead elements reached the peak the men, one after another, began to run out of ammunition for their small arms. By noon the platoon was forced to retreat, dragging 13 wounded, under cover of two men using a Browning Automatic Rifle and an M-1 carbine as clubs. Anderson had 2nd Platoon trade places with 1st Platoon while 3rd Platoon moved against an adjacent village called Sin’gong-ni, where heavy defensive fire pinned it down.
With his advance grinding to a halt, Anderson was relieved to have a mortar crew report to him and commence an accurate shelling of the hill’s defensive positions. He then called for an air strike to augment the mortaring, but the response was actually too fast. Four F-51 Mustangs strafed and rocketed the hilltop, but the aerial interdiction was premature because it came before 2nd Platoon had had time to deploy for a charge. Anderson assembled his strike force and called for another softening-up air strike, with napalm. The Mustangs and some F-80 Shooting Stars quickly returned, but without napalm. After the pilots strafed and fired all their rockets at the defenders they departed. Anderson quickly sent his men against the defenses, but again heavy defensive fire met the GIs, forcing them to hit the cold dirt. It seemed the airmen had missed the main defenses on both their attacks. Anderson recalled his men. One of his platoons was out of ammunition, and the other two were pinned down by not only the defenses atop Hill 205, but by hostile units on neighboring Hills 200 and 208. At 3:45 p.m. the 4th Ranger Company joined with Company I, which had moved into positions to the right. At 9 p.m. elements of the 4th Ranger Company moved to positions 1,000 yards southwest of Sin’gong-ni to link up with friendly forces and fill a gap in the perimeter. The Americans settled in for the night.
At dawn on March 24, the 4th Ranger Company launched a resolute attack with 2nd Platoon in the vanguard. During the night the 674th Airborne Field Artillery Battalion and the 999th Field Artillery Battalion had shelled the hilltop. The Chinese and North Korean troops had actually used the barrages as cover to slip away in the darkness, leaving behind seven of their dead, two heavy machine guns, two light machine guns and a copious cache of ammunition. Anderson and his men met no resistance when they swarmed onto the peak that morning.
The occupation of Hill 205 ended the fighting in and around the drop zone. Still, the Reds had not been trapped. The operation’s ground forces had to get moving.
Growdon’s armor-infantry task force advancing from Seoul ahead of the main body of I Corps troops, was given 24 hours to link up with the 187th Airborne Regiment at Munsan-ni. After meticulous preparations the task forces moved out from Seoul at 5:30 a.m. on March 23.
Slowed by mines, blown bridges and by scrap metal the Communists had ingeniously buried in the road to set off mine detectors and force sappers to halt the column while they lost time digging up hubcaps, a frustrated Growdon, at 11 a.m., sent a tank platoon ahead of the main column through a dry riverbed. After rumbling just 2,000 yards this mini-column blundered into and was halted by yet more mines. Just before noon Growden ordered Team D of the 6th Medium Tank Battalion to veer westward in an unsuccessful attempt to locate an alternate route to Munsan-ni. It was 5:30 p.m. before the task force made radio contact with the 187th. Yet more mines and increasing small arms and mortar fire further slowed Growdon to the point he was not able to link up with the 187th until 5 a.m. on March 24. It had been an expensive trek for TF Growdon, which lost four M-46 tanks, one quarter-ton truck and an armored car to mines. Two M-46 tanks had also been disabled by artillery fire. After the two UN forces merged, they were re-supplied by a truck convoy and conducted relatively uneventful patrols in search of any substantial, enemy presence nearby. By nightfall it was clear the way was open for the eastward advance, but time was running out.
As part of Operation Courageous, Tomahawk’s main purpose was to prevent the Chinese from withdrawing across the Imjin River. The linkup of the 187th and the armored forces at Munsan-ni had been too late to prevent that from happening. The 187th’s advance was so slowed by a multitude of mines, however, that it took too long advancing with the intent of attacking the Chinese forces’ rear area. Furthermore, it was now preoccupied with unavoidable resupply efforts. Still, its commanders remained determined to try and close with their foes.
The 187th struck out eastward at 6:20 p.m. on March 24, slowed by poor roads and driving rain. It was dawn on the 25th before the column began to encounter the Chinese. The Communist forces had apparently received inaccurate intelligence on the advancing Americans, for they were set up outside the town of Sinch’on to defend an attack from the south rather than the west, and withdrew eastward. The U.S. forces pursued, catching up with the rear of the Chinese column 1,000 yards farther down the road in the village of Parun-ni. Supported by heavy machine gun and field artillery the 187th pushed through Parun-ni and cleared an adjacent ridge line of dug-in infantry by noon. At 12:30, 20 Chinese died in a futile counterattack.
By this time the weather was causing both sides to have considerable difficulty with their weapons. M-1 rifles and carbines, BARs and most machine guns were soaked and inoperative, leaving the Americans little to fight with except handguns and grenades. Still, the column moved eastward in pursuit of the enemy, encountering Communist troops in increasing numbers in confused fighting against a surreal backdrop of violent electrical storms east of Parun-ni on the afternoon of March 25. The sounds of battle were frequently drowned out by peals of thunder—unsurprising considering much of the fighting was done with bayonets attached to waterlogged shoulder arms. At 1 p.m. the Chinese launched a determined counterattack against the 187th’s Company G. Gunnery Sergeant Ervin Muldoon had somehow managed to keep his heavy machine guns dry, and for two hours he expertly directed killing volleys at waves of hostile troops as they assaulted his unit from the front and both sides, exposing himself to hostile fire while he managed his weapons with such skill that the massive counterattack failed.
PFC Eugene Estep was particularly effective not only in reacting to Muldoon’s direction, but in using his own initiative. When two men manning one of the .30-caliber machine guns were wounded Estep grabbed the gun and moved it to a nearby spot where he had noticed a particularly heavy enemy concentration approaching. Opening fire on the attackers at the last possible moment, he poured sweeping volleys into them at near point-blank range, piling up heaps of Chinese dead in front of his position for 45 minutes until he was mortally wounded. Nearby, Muldoon did the same from his own cover-bereft position when a second gun’s team was wounded, ignoring the danger as he hammered away at the frontal attack until he, too, was killed. By the time of their deaths Muldoon and Estep had virtually single-handedly broken the massed banzai-style attack.
“It wasn’t just that he personally killed a lot of the enemy while risking his own life, nor was it the fact that he directed the fire in such a way as to break the back of the Chinese attack,” Sergeant Earl Hinebaugh recalled. “Rather it was the leadership he displayed that made the difference. The valor and leadership he displayed are something of which the Army might well be proud.”
Muldoon and Estep were both posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
As soon as the last charge was beaten back, the Communists again fled eastward with the 187th in pursuit. Catching up at 4 a.m. on March 25 just outside Parun-ni, the Americans heavily engaged the enemy in a daylong firefight that ended with the Communists being forced off the ridges bracketing the town. By this point the rain had finally stopped, and with evening approaching the fighting died down as the Chinese again fled, laboriously and slowly along muddy roads, to the east. U.S. troops took advantage of the respite to meticulously clean their rain-soaked weapons and return them to combat readiness. It had been a tiring, tearing trek, but the men of the 187th steeled themselves to fight again in hopes of cutting the main road to Uijeongbu and trapping their quarry.
On the morning of the 26th the heavens opened again, soaking the area and slowing the 187th’s pursuit while the Reds were coming under fire from the U.S. 3rd Division to the south. By nightfall the Regimental Combat Team was still three miles short of the Uijeongbu road. The following day dawned with clear skies and the column headed out for its next immediate objective—Hill 228 overlooking the Uijeongbu road. With the Communist forces now approaching and preoccupied with previously uninvolved American forces just to their south, the chances for the 187th reaching the road and trapping the Communists looked reasonable.
The plan was for the 187th’s 1st and 3rd battalions to directly assault Hill 228 while the 2nd Battalion covered the attack’s northern flank. The offensive kicked off at 7 a.m., but it took eight hours to wholly secure the approaches to Hill 228. By this time the assault on the main objective had already commenced. The southern slopes of the elevation were too steep for the attackers, so the whole force charged up the northern slope at noon under air and artillery cover. About 400 Chinese occupied the promontory’s summit. They were especially well supplied with hand grenades, but by using enveloping moves the attackers outflanked and neutralized the defenders’ positions individually. Also, the Chinese seemed to have developed a great fear of hand-to-hand fighting with the much bigger Americans, and would abandon their foxholes at the sight of a bayonet charge. The difficulty advancing up the muddy hillside, coupled with a shortage of small arms ammunition, forced the U.S. to halt their attack just after 6 p.m. A cargo aircraft did manage a pinpoint paradrop of ammunition, but with darkness gathering the besiegers elected to stay put until morning.
The RCT resumed its drive up the slope of Hill 228 at 7 a.m. on March 27, under fire from artillery sited on the Uijeongbu road about 6,000 yards to the north. Return fire from the 187th knocked out this gun at 4 p.m. By this time additional elements of the RCT had overrun Hill 148 just to the east. March 28 was spent clearing additional nearby high ground of hostile forces, neutralizing the last pockets of resistance by about 6:15 p.m. On this day alone the 187th killed 237 Chinese and captured 20. A Belgian battalion arrived on the afternoon of the 29th to reinforce the RCT, which had achieved its objective of cutting the Uijeongbu road and the main hostile force’s route of retreat, thus successfully concluding Operation Tomahawk. It was the last combat parachute operation of the Korean War. During its course an estimated 4,208 enemy troops were killed or wounded.
Tomahawk ensured the overall success of Operation Courageous, stopping a massive offensive detected by Ridgway’s intelligence operatives before it could kick off. Thanks to the 187th Regimental Combat Team’s resolute success in carrying out Tomahawk it made possible subsequent Operation Rigged, which destroyed additional forces and supplies, positioned UN troops on defensible terrain and set up Ridgway for further depredations on the key logistics area in what was called the Iron Triangle, bordered by the towns of Ch’orwon, P’yonggang and Kumhwa. Without Operation Tomahawk and the 187th Regimental Combat Team 1951 might well have been a banner year for the Eastern Bloc.
GREAT REPORTING AND ACCOUT OF ‘TOMAHAWK’ AND COURAGEOUS OPERATIONS. AND A NEEDED RECOGNITION OF BOTH Muldoon and Estep were both posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.