When North Korea captured a U.S. Navy electronic
surveillance ship, the USS Pueblo, in international waters in 1968, it was
perhaps the worst security breach in U.S. history. One of the potential
responses to North Korean aggression, drafted and approved by top military
officials, was nuclear war.
The USS Pueblo was positioned in international waters (this
is disputed by North Korea, of course) in January of 1968, using electronic
means to intercept North Korean signals and messages. On January 23rd, North
Korean ships opened fire on the Pueblo, which tried and failed to flee. The
captain surrendered, and both the crew and ship were captured.
That the crew were held (and tortured) for a year was bad
enough, but the ship held an enormous amount of U.S. intelligence data. Worst
of all, it held several devices used to decode encrypted U.S. military
messages. Much later, the Navy would learn that the loss of the devices was
compounded by the fact that the infamous Walker Spy ring was at the time
already selling codes and other information to the Soviets.
The result of all this was a tense period during which the
U.S. tried to figure out what the North Koreans were up to, the extent to which
the U.S.S.R. and China were involved, and whether North Korea was planning an
invasion of South Korea. During this same period, North Korean commandos were
crossing the DMZ to attack targets in the south, including an attempted attack
on the South Korean president’s house. It wasn’t quite Cuban Missile Crisis
tense, but there were some white knuckles in the war room to be sure.
Diplomacy won out, with the U.S. basically waiting out the
crisis until the Koreans released the prisoners, with some diplomatic help from
the Soviets. Military aid to South Korea was increased, and the practice of
leaving spy ships unarmed and alone while monitoring potentially hostile
targets was brought into question. Today the USS Pueblo is a floating museum in
Pyongyang – they gave back the crew but not the ship.
Recently declassified documents reveal the U.S.’s
contingency plans, both for dealing with the capture of the Pueblo and for
responding to a hypothetical North Korean invasion. The military’s view of the
situation was somewhat less diplomatic (which is their job, after all). They
wanted to send a bunch of ships to Wŏnsan to flex their muscles and intimidate
the North Koreans, but U.S. forces were a bit preoccupied in 1968, what with
the Vietnam War and all. No ships were sent.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff then considered invading North
Korea, bombing the living hell out of them with B-52s until their air force was
simply nonexistent. Then the land troops would move in. Analysis showed that
China and the U.S.S.R. were very likely to intervene in some way. The plan
accounted for this. However, this plan would have required the U.S. to pull out
of Vietnam almost entirely (it required 12 divisions of troops and 40 tactical
bomber squadrons). In all they developed five military plans to deal with the
situation, varying in timing and specific troop disposition. These plans were
called Fresh Storm.
Then there was the nuclear plan, called Freedom
Drop. It was developed by CINCPAC, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, who at
the time was Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp (Sharp was succeeded later in 1968
by Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., father of Senator John McCain). The Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the plan, so the potential responses
included all-out nuclear war against tactical military targets – the Joint
Chiefs delayed informing Sharp of the approval, however.
The warheads in such a situation would be delivered by
Honest John rockets and Sergeant missiles, each with a maximum yield of 70
kilotons (very roughly five times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb). It would not
have been a happy ending for anyone on the Korean peninsula.
You can see the documents themselves at the National Security
Archive, hosted by George Washington University. Tip of the hat to Mark Strauss of Smithsonian Magazine, whose tweet this
morning pointed me to the documents. The documents were uncovered by Jack
Cheevers in researching his book Act
of War.
On a somewhat related aside, the general of U.S. forces in
South Korea at the time was a Rhodes Scholar who wore a patch over one eye. His
name? General Charles H. Bonesteel III.
