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Black Tuesday over Namsi: A True History of the Epic Air Battle of the Korean War
This edition has been replaced by a newer, expanded & corrected hardcover published by Helion Books, titled Black Tuesday Over B-29s vs. MiGs the Forgotten Air Battle of the Korean War, 23 October 1951. EJM
- GenresHistory
278 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 29, 2016
I was really interested in reading this because one of the men lost was my great-uncle: Julius E. O'Neal, LTC, USAF. It was a hard read because there was so much that made me angry towards the military. It was also a little tedious at times, but I was also reading it specifically to learn more about what happened to my great-uncle.
It's very well written and well-researched. I'm grateful to Earl J. McGill for taking this on and writing about a situation that hasn't gotten the attention it should from "the forgotten war" that I think many in America (especially in the government) would be happy to pretend never happened.
It's very well written and well-researched. I'm grateful to Earl J. McGill for taking this on and writing about a situation that hasn't gotten the attention it should from "the forgotten war" that I think many in America (especially in the government) would be happy to pretend never happened.
December 22, 2017
This was an interesting book. The author started the first chapter with a snippet of the action over Namsi and then went back to lay the ground work for why the mission occurred the way that it did.
I did enjoy McGill’s personal insight into some of the Namsi mission and his use of first person snippets to add realism to his story. Unfortunately I found parts of the book repetitive. McGill mentions various mechanical aspects of the MiG and B-29s as if he had not mentioned them before, which makes me think that the book was written in sections with several days in between or his article for the VFW magazine was used and he had forgotten the inclusion of the information as he fleshed out the magazine article to book length.
Even with these knocks, I did enjoy the book and found the bibliography to be useful in my research. Even though the book focuses on one specific mention, it would serve as a good primer to all strategic bombing operations in the first year of the Korean War.
I did enjoy McGill’s personal insight into some of the Namsi mission and his use of first person snippets to add realism to his story. Unfortunately I found parts of the book repetitive. McGill mentions various mechanical aspects of the MiG and B-29s as if he had not mentioned them before, which makes me think that the book was written in sections with several days in between or his article for the VFW magazine was used and he had forgotten the inclusion of the information as he fleshed out the magazine article to book length.
Even with these knocks, I did enjoy the book and found the bibliography to be useful in my research. Even though the book focuses on one specific mention, it would serve as a good primer to all strategic bombing operations in the first year of the Korean War.
June 19, 2018
Superbly crafted, fascinating history.
Colonel McGill is likely the finest historian of aviation working today. There is real art in his almost unique ability to convey enormous amounts of research in beautiful, fascinating prose. I completed this book and immediately read it again. There is a lot to absorb here, but it reads like a pilot you a story over coffee. The writing feels effortless, and the author endeavors to remain invisible as he weaves the diverse threads required to reveal a complex, controversial event that was not well understood even by the participants. I have been studying military aviation for 50 years and completed three tours in Korea, but Col McGill has cleared the murk and given me the first real understanding of the air war over Korea. I would also highly recommend McGill's "Jet Age Man." I read it twice too, and that is simply not my habit.
Colonel McGill is likely the finest historian of aviation working today. There is real art in his almost unique ability to convey enormous amounts of research in beautiful, fascinating prose. I completed this book and immediately read it again. There is a lot to absorb here, but it reads like a pilot you a story over coffee. The writing feels effortless, and the author endeavors to remain invisible as he weaves the diverse threads required to reveal a complex, controversial event that was not well understood even by the participants. I have been studying military aviation for 50 years and completed three tours in Korea, but Col McGill has cleared the murk and given me the first real understanding of the air war over Korea. I would also highly recommend McGill's "Jet Age Man." I read it twice too, and that is simply not my habit.
October 8, 2023
Earl J. McGill's 2008 Black Tuesday Over Namsi: B-29s vs MiGs--The Forgotten Air Battle of the Korean War, 23 October 1951, revised and expanded in 2012, is a fairly brief but highly engaging and informative treatment of the B-29 raid whose disastrous outcomes showed that the age of daylight raids of massed formations of bombers--especially piston-engined bombers--at last, scarcely half a dozen years after its heyday, was over.
Regarding the Korean air war, McGill knows whereof he writes. Although he did not happen to fly in the fateful October 23rd mission to the new enemy airfield up near the Yalu river, as a B-29 copilot he flew plenty of other combat runs, and not long after the terrible fiasco of the 23rd, his unit was slated to try Namsi again, and McGill remembers the final moments before planned takeoff from Okinawa that "rainy day" being "without a spare word spoken" and "none of the kidding around or usual jokes," with him "fe[eling] the cold clutch of real fear, and never more alone" (2013 Helion paperback, page 172). Fortunately, though, after an unusual delay ordered by the tower, suddenly the next transmission "was [his] salvation: 'Return to your parking spots, all daylight bombing has been canceled, by order of General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Chief of Staff[,] USAF'" (page 173).
Spared from that dreaded repeat attempt on the MiG base at Namsi which would have been so unlikely to end up less deadly than the previous one, McGill over fifty years later is able to give a well-rounded account of a mission whose utter failure forced a complete change in U.S. Air Force doctrine. "Black Tuesday," after all, sent nine mighty B-29 bombers from Kadena on Okinawa to knock out an important new airfield in the far north of North Korea, with the chilling result--aside from not destroying the target--that "[t]hree...were shot down over the target area and three more so severely damaged that they were forced to make emergency landings at a forward base," with "only one of the remaining three escap[ing] major damage" (pages xix-xxi). In addition to the six huge aircraft, "27 lives were lost," and "[t]wenty crew members were wounded and eight taken prisoner" (page xxi).
And lest we see the percentage of aircraft lost--which indeed is three times higher than that of the disastrous Second World War raid on Schweinfurt (page 186) that shook the Eighth Air Force to the core--but try to shrug off the Namsi mission as being a small one of "only" nine planes, McGill reminds us that "[d]uring the Korean War, the usual load was forty 500-pound bombs" (page 103)...meaning that during the previous war, putting that much tonnage on target would have required a force of four or five times as many B-17s. In terms of ordnance to be delivered, therefore, it indeed was quite a sizable mission. The utter failure of this raid, and the staggering proportion of its aircrew and planes lost, thus showed that great changes in doctrine were needed.
Actually, though, the chapter truly detailing the 23 October 1951 Namsi raid from both U.S. and Soviet records and also many firsthand accounts is seventh of the book's nine. While McGill begins the book with a first chapter titled "The Mission," which indeed gives a very broad overview of what happened that day, when--amazingly, considering the death and destruction--"[t]he actual battle lasted fifteen minutes" (page 32), he then steps back and in other very useful chapters gives us the crucial context needed for really understanding not only what happened but why and how it happened.
Chapter Two, "The Korean Air War," naturally begins with the ground war and then swiftly brings in the evolving American engagement. Chapter Three, "The Combatants," informs us about both the then-secret involvement of Soviet military forces flying out of China and also the U.S. crews, whether "retreads" called up again after their discharges after the Second World War or youngsters recently joined. Chapter Four, "The Machinery of War," gives very useful details on the capabilities and employment of five major pieces of technology: radio and radar, SHORAN, anti-aircraft artillery, the B-29, and the MiG-15. Chapter Five, "Prelude to Disaster," discusses missions in the previous half year that should have warned American planners against their overconfidence. Chapter Six, "Target: Namsi Airfield," explains the seeming importance of the new MiG field at the time. And after the gripping Chapter Seven, "Black Tuesday, October 23, 1951," McGill gives us an eighth chapter on "Aftermath" and a thought-provoking concluding one on "Analysis, Conclusions and Reflections."
Now, there were a few quirks that I simply could not help noticing. Although the writing itself was good, mechanics--things like whether in American English a period goes inside or outside of closing quotation marks, for example--were a tad weak, and these repeated distractions were very noticeable. Somewhat surprisingly, the "Notes and References" section also struck me strangely, for although every note in each chapter was numbered, there actually were no such numbers in the chapters themselves, making it harder for the reader to go back and chase things down. This would have been so easy to fix, just as punctuational matters would have been cleared up by any even halfway competent editor.
Still, despite some mechanical problems that are fairly minor but which do detract with repetition, Earl J. McGill's Black Tuesday Over Namsi: B-29s vs MiGs--The Forgotten Air Battle of the Korean War, 23 October 1951 is highly enjoyable and interesting. Very heavily illustrated with contemporary black-and-white photos, diagrams, and some maps, the book is lively and thorough, a very solid read of 4 or perhaps just short of 4.5 stars for those interested in military aviation or the Korean War.
Regarding the Korean air war, McGill knows whereof he writes. Although he did not happen to fly in the fateful October 23rd mission to the new enemy airfield up near the Yalu river, as a B-29 copilot he flew plenty of other combat runs, and not long after the terrible fiasco of the 23rd, his unit was slated to try Namsi again, and McGill remembers the final moments before planned takeoff from Okinawa that "rainy day" being "without a spare word spoken" and "none of the kidding around or usual jokes," with him "fe[eling] the cold clutch of real fear, and never more alone" (2013 Helion paperback, page 172). Fortunately, though, after an unusual delay ordered by the tower, suddenly the next transmission "was [his] salvation: 'Return to your parking spots, all daylight bombing has been canceled, by order of General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Chief of Staff[,] USAF'" (page 173).
Spared from that dreaded repeat attempt on the MiG base at Namsi which would have been so unlikely to end up less deadly than the previous one, McGill over fifty years later is able to give a well-rounded account of a mission whose utter failure forced a complete change in U.S. Air Force doctrine. "Black Tuesday," after all, sent nine mighty B-29 bombers from Kadena on Okinawa to knock out an important new airfield in the far north of North Korea, with the chilling result--aside from not destroying the target--that "[t]hree...were shot down over the target area and three more so severely damaged that they were forced to make emergency landings at a forward base," with "only one of the remaining three escap[ing] major damage" (pages xix-xxi). In addition to the six huge aircraft, "27 lives were lost," and "[t]wenty crew members were wounded and eight taken prisoner" (page xxi).
And lest we see the percentage of aircraft lost--which indeed is three times higher than that of the disastrous Second World War raid on Schweinfurt (page 186) that shook the Eighth Air Force to the core--but try to shrug off the Namsi mission as being a small one of "only" nine planes, McGill reminds us that "[d]uring the Korean War, the usual load was forty 500-pound bombs" (page 103)...meaning that during the previous war, putting that much tonnage on target would have required a force of four or five times as many B-17s. In terms of ordnance to be delivered, therefore, it indeed was quite a sizable mission. The utter failure of this raid, and the staggering proportion of its aircrew and planes lost, thus showed that great changes in doctrine were needed.
Actually, though, the chapter truly detailing the 23 October 1951 Namsi raid from both U.S. and Soviet records and also many firsthand accounts is seventh of the book's nine. While McGill begins the book with a first chapter titled "The Mission," which indeed gives a very broad overview of what happened that day, when--amazingly, considering the death and destruction--"[t]he actual battle lasted fifteen minutes" (page 32), he then steps back and in other very useful chapters gives us the crucial context needed for really understanding not only what happened but why and how it happened.
Chapter Two, "The Korean Air War," naturally begins with the ground war and then swiftly brings in the evolving American engagement. Chapter Three, "The Combatants," informs us about both the then-secret involvement of Soviet military forces flying out of China and also the U.S. crews, whether "retreads" called up again after their discharges after the Second World War or youngsters recently joined. Chapter Four, "The Machinery of War," gives very useful details on the capabilities and employment of five major pieces of technology: radio and radar, SHORAN, anti-aircraft artillery, the B-29, and the MiG-15. Chapter Five, "Prelude to Disaster," discusses missions in the previous half year that should have warned American planners against their overconfidence. Chapter Six, "Target: Namsi Airfield," explains the seeming importance of the new MiG field at the time. And after the gripping Chapter Seven, "Black Tuesday, October 23, 1951," McGill gives us an eighth chapter on "Aftermath" and a thought-provoking concluding one on "Analysis, Conclusions and Reflections."
Now, there were a few quirks that I simply could not help noticing. Although the writing itself was good, mechanics--things like whether in American English a period goes inside or outside of closing quotation marks, for example--were a tad weak, and these repeated distractions were very noticeable. Somewhat surprisingly, the "Notes and References" section also struck me strangely, for although every note in each chapter was numbered, there actually were no such numbers in the chapters themselves, making it harder for the reader to go back and chase things down. This would have been so easy to fix, just as punctuational matters would have been cleared up by any even halfway competent editor.
Still, despite some mechanical problems that are fairly minor but which do detract with repetition, Earl J. McGill's Black Tuesday Over Namsi: B-29s vs MiGs--The Forgotten Air Battle of the Korean War, 23 October 1951 is highly enjoyable and interesting. Very heavily illustrated with contemporary black-and-white photos, diagrams, and some maps, the book is lively and thorough, a very solid read of 4 or perhaps just short of 4.5 stars for those interested in military aviation or the Korean War.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews