The renewed effort of the Chinese Communists against UNC ground forces in late May continued sporadically the following month. A number of new records were set by Marines flying CAS assignments under the Fifth Air Force. During the intense mid-June attacks on the ROK II Corps area and adjacent X Corps sector, MAGs-12 and -33 pilots chalked up some busy days. Between 10–17 June, Marine, Navy, and Air Force aircraft had flown 8,359 effective sorties, the bulk of this massive FAF effort to buttress the crumbling ROK defense. Of this number, Marine sorties totaled 1,156, or nearly 14 percent. (Combat sorties for the 1st MAW throughout June came to 3,276 despite 23 days of marginal to nonoperational weather.) Marine pilots scored as high as 48 percent of a single day’s interdiction strikes made by FAF. This occurred 15 June when the 1st MAW flew a record-breaking 283 sorties, followed by another peak 227 sorties the next day. Actually, when the ground situation in the ROK II Corps front began to deteriorate on 12 June, the new Fifth Air Force commander, Lieutenant General Samuel E. Anderson, “waived the [3,000 foot] minimum-altitude restrictions on his fighter-bombers and ordered his wings to give all-out support to the Eighth Army.”[460] The Seventh Fleet commander, Admiral Clark, likewise kept his carriers on line for seven days and ordered its naval pilots to “team with Marine and Fifth Air Force airmen for a close-support effort exceeding anything up to that time.”[461] When the ROK II Corps defenses cracked open on 15 June, temporary clearing weather “allowed General Anderson and Admiral Clark to hit the Reds with everything they had. FEAF planes flew a total of 2,143 sorties of all kinds for the largest single day’s effort of the war.”[462] [460] Futrell, _USAF, Korea_, p. 631. [461] _Ibid._ [462] _Ibid._ Commenting on this heavy action period, 14–17 June, a dispatch to General Megee from the new FAF commander, who had succeeded General Barcus the previous month, noted: The figures are now in. From 2000, 14 Jun 53, to 0001, 17 Jun 53, Fifth Air Force units flew a total of 3,941 combat sorties. The cost was 9 pilots lost, 11 aircraft lost, 11 aircraft major damage, 42 aircraft minor damage. The results: 1 enemy offensive stopped cold. I very deeply appreciate the splendid efforts of all members of the 5th AF at all levels. Only a concerted team effort made the foregoing possible.[463] [463] CG, FAF msg to CG, 1st MAW, dtd 17 Jun 53, in 1st MAW ComdD Jun 53 (Vol I), p. 3 and App., IV (Vol III). This came, incidentally, only five days after receipt by the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing of the Korean Presidential Unit Citation.[464] The award cited the wing’s “outstanding and superior performance of duty” between 27 February 1951 and 11 June 1953. During this period Marine fliers executed more than 80,000 combat sorties for UNC divisions.