The United States developed research into combat aircraft more than any other country in the immediate postwar period. However, the conflict in Korea took them by surprise; their armed forces were poorly equipped.
Korea, occupied by the Japanese until 1945, had been divided in two at the end of the watchtower on either side of the 38. parallel. The southern part was occupied by the Americans; the northern part by
Russians. The two areas were to reunite quickly, but the political opposition between the USSR and the United States soon caused
to abandon such a prospect in the near future. Eventually, North Korea and South Korea became two independent states. Officially autonomous, your two countries retained the ideology of the occupier:the North remained communist; the South kept American troops for protection. On June 25, 50, the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel and routed the southern army. The Communists. hoped to see the Americans withdraw their troops.
South Korea asked for help from the United States. In fact; it took the official form of a sort of UN expeditionary force (the assembly having condemned the North Korean aggression) with a large majority of American air and naval land elements. To this were added French, Belgian, British, South African, Turkish, Greek contingents, among others. But these troops could only intervene gradually. In the meantime, the delicate situation of the South Koreans was turning into a tragedy. In August, they only held a small perimeter in the south-west of the peninsula, around the city of Pusan. There was only one airfield available outside the city, that of Taegu; in Pusan itself, two tracks were laid out. American air forces were stationed in Japan, but the distance (160 to 800 km) posed a problem, limiting free time above the objective. Koreans In a few weeks, this country became the scene of a major confrontation in which the Westerners risked suffering a considerable defeat.
These events fanned the confrontation between capitalist and communist nations. possessed the atomic bomb since 1949, had enormous conventional forces and began mass production of jet planes The West was moving towards new types of planes, but the atmosphere was first disarmed moreover, there was a lack of money. The Western aircraft industry had suffered the repercussions of disarmament. Its workforce in England had fallen from 2,000,000 workers to 140,000.