In 1950, just as the Korean People's Army was in full swing, there was a man on the Korean Peninsula who was in a state of great excitement. He took a pistol from a drawer and pinned it to his waist, flew to North Korea, and declared that he would wipe out the KPA completely.
That man was MacArthur. Since the outbreak of the war, he has developed a strong dissatisfaction with the United States government and even the United Nations. He kept reporting to Washington that he must send ground troops directly to the war.
In fact, under the Charter of the United Nations, Truman's ordering of the U.S. Air Force to bomb North Korea was already an unconstitutional act. Truman knew this. Fortunately, the United States finally found an opportunity in the absence of a Soviet representative and passed a proposal to intervene in the Korean civil war in the name of the United Nations, which finally legitimized the operation.
Now that the Korean Civil War had broken out, when MacArthur brandished a pistol and told his plane pilot, Anthony, to go to North Korea immediately, Anthony thought he had heard the wrong order. But what happened next made him have to admire how bold the owner of this special plane really was.
MacArthur danced under the plane and said to many of the reporters who were sending them off: My plane is completely unarmed, there will be no fighter escort, I don't know which city it will land in North Korea, if you don't get my news tomorrow, then congratulations, this must be the most explosive news you can get.
MacArthur's words were intended to show in front of reporters that he was swearing to die. But Gulden, author of "The Korean War, the Undisclosed Truth," mocked him mercilessly: This is The Emperor of Japan, a five-star general, not to mention that he is now flying to the battlefield, even if he is traveling, the Far East Air Force cannot let him fly alone.
MacArthur's plane was the Bataan. Bataan was a province in the Philippines where MacArthur fled during World War II, leaving 70,000 U.S. troops to surrender to Japan, a disgrace in his military history. Now he named the plane Bataan in order not to forget the shame of that year.
When the Bataan first took off, weather forecasts showed storms and thunderstorms in North Korea. So the captain hoped that MacArthur would leave a day later. But MacArthur replied in a very low voice: Take off immediately. Escorted by four fighter jets, the Bataan flew toward South Korea.
In the sky MacArthur just kept smoking his pipe and didn't say anything in between. He looked energetic and didn't look like a 70-year-old at all. In the air he also issued instructions to the deputy commander of the Far Eastern Air Force to bomb the North Korean airfields immediately.
This was the first time on record that an official U.S. order was ordered to bomb a North Korean target. It should be known that in the past, the attack range of the US army was strictly controlled south of the 38th Line, but now MacArthur actually made his own opinion on such a major issue, and he was so arrogant that it also caused his future tragedies.
The Bataan's landing destination was Suwon Airfield, which had just been hit by the KPA Air Force. As the Bataan descended at Suwon Airport, another KPA Jacques aircraft came straight at MacArthur. Everyone was screaming, except MacArthur, who watched with interest the escort fighters and the Jacques fighting and shouted happily: Look, our planes are beating them.
Perhaps because of his different views on the issue, Intelligence Officer Gulton was full of admiration for MacArthur's performance this time. He said: "This was the most glorious time I had ever seen of MacArthur, and he was completely fearless. You must know that on the battlefield tens of kilometers outside Suwon, the South Korean army retreated south like a duck, and MacArthur's courage was indeed beyond people's imagination.
