A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HOUGH I have never heard it remarked
upon, surely the oddest feature of the Korean war (I mean the oddest • from a purely military point of view) is the complete immunity of United Nations warships from attack by hostile aircraft. For nearly three years now major units of the United States Navy and the Royal Navy have been operating in Korean waters, often clos6 enough inshore to engage and be engaged by coastal batteries; yet no serious attempt— indeed I think no attempt of any kind—has been made to bomb them. It must have occurred to the Communists that this would be a good thing to do; and it is hardly an enterprise from which their Russian patrons would be likely to restrain them. No doubt in the early stages nothing was possible because the Communists had no air-crews trained for the job; but there has been plenty of time to train them since. It teems strange that the only opportunity of inflicting major damage on their enemy, as opposed to merely containing him, should have been so studiously neglected by the Communists.
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