whether or not we could repair the damaged locks of the harbor basin. We decided
it was unfeasible. We decided that it was too far for the troops to come in on
small landing craft. In the end, we decided to take a chance on landing the troops
directly from LSTs. We knew that once they beached, the LSTs would be stuck
for 12 hours until the next tide. This turned out to be the best plan. We were
lucky.
We also spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to bring in a large supply of
fresh water. We learned from intelligence sources that the fresh water for all the
area between Inchon and the Han River, received its water supply from Seoul
through a single pipeline. The North Koreans could simply turn off the water at
Seoul and dry us up. There were no deep wells in the area, and the shallow wells
produced only brackish and contaminated water. Accordingly, we spent a lot of
time trying to procure tankers to take in fresh water. But the only tankers available
in the Pacific Theater were vessels that had transported oil. After three steam
cleanings, the tankers were tested and the water was still covered with oil slicks.
We knew it would make our troops sick. The dilemma was whether to count on
trying to treat brackish water that was highly contaminated with dangerous bacteria
or to take in fresh water that contained some oil and would therefore nauseate the
troops. As it turned out, the North Koreans did not think to turn off the fresh
water and it continued to flow. All our prior planning proved unnecessary; we did
not need our tanker-transported water at all.
Another major problem was to assemble enough floating bridging to span the Han
River, which in the vicinity of Seoul was a mile wide. It took every piece of
floating bridging in the Pacific Theater to span the Han River Even then, there
were three different types of bridges involved. We had to plan on setting up forge
shops after the landing and manufacture connectors to get these bridges to link up
with one another.
We were faced with still other problems. One was to assemble enough explosives,
such as the snakes we had used to clear minefields in World War II, against the
eventuality that we had to clear underwater obstacles to reach the beach.
Intelligence reports held that the entire area at Inchon was full of mines and
underwater obstacles. Fortunately, these reports were highly exaggerated and we
faced an easier problem than we had expected.
We were also fortunate that the enemy resistance we expected was grossly
overestimated. This made those of us who planned the invasion happy because, as
I have mentioned, MacArthur's idea was to have the planners go in on the first
wave. In retrospect, this had the desired effect. It caused us to think carefully
about the safety of our troops knowing that we would be the first troops to hit the
beach.
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