Ghost Flames: Life and Death in a Hidden War, Korea 1950-1953

Abstract

Abstract : Amphibious operations exploit the great facility and inherent flexibility of movement and maneuver that the sea affords in order to concentrate military power at the decisive time and place ashore.1 Such operations are founded on sea control, regularly capitalize on surprise and enemy weakness, and are usually carried out in support of broader operational and campaign objectives ashoresevering enemy land lines of communication, establishing lodgments for follow-on forces, establishing control of choke points or denying the enemy use of decisive physical points, outflanking less mobile enemy land forces, and the like. We are wont to identify amphibious operations with amphibious assaults, especially those executed during World War II, when the assault was refined to a high art. In truth, however, militaries have for many centuries found it useful to conduct an olio of amphibious operations during peace as well as war. Appropriately, therefore, in addition to the assault, U.S. joint doctrine identifies four other categories of amphibious operation: raids, demonstrations, withdrawals, and those in support of other kinds of operations with objectives of conflict prevention or crisis mitigation (e.g., disaster relief and noncombatant evacuations).