World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: Bold Stroke

The eastern Philippines were swept by typhoons which kept airfields deep in mud, often cut visibility to zero. The western Philippines were drier. Aircraft operating from there could fight on schedule. But how to get there? And when? Douglas MacArthur decided on the bold stroke.

Between U.S. forces on Leyte and the inviting western island of Mindoro was the whole complex of the Visayan Islands, largely held by the Japanese. On many of the islands (see map), Filipino guerrillas working with U.S. officers had seized control of great areas, which dominated some of the straits. Within these areas there could be no Jap airfields, few or no observation posts. So the bold stroke would not be a desperate stroke.

On the rain-lashed east coast of Leyte, an assault convoy was assembled. Its mission: to land on Mindoro, set up airfields overlooking the South China Sea, com plete the job of bisecting the Philippines begun at Leyte.

The Challenge. “It’s pretty much of a challenge,” said stocky, black-haired Brigadier General William Caldwell Dunckel to his force of fighting men and service troops. “I assume every man in this force is a ground soldier. He’ll have to fight as such.” The men knew that General Dunckel, a staff officer on his first overall command mission, knew what he was talking about. Dunckel’s knowledge of the Philippines was already famed on Leyte.

In prewar tours of duty, he had inspected countless islands, memorizing tactical details. His sketch maps, from memory, of the Ormoc valley on Leyte were better than anything previously available.

Dunckel had visited Mindoro in 1930. Said he, with a characteristic nervous tic of the left eye: “It’s like a saucer tilted toward the sea. High and difficult mountains shelter it. This is the dry season, but clouds generally overhang the mountains.

It’s big — 95 miles by 50. It’s also very close to Luzon.” That was Mindoro’s chief value and every man in Dunckel’s force knew it. From the San José airfields, patrols could wing far over the South China Sea, harrying Jap shipping; Luzon could be softened for invasion and General MacArthur’s return to Manila. Mindoro’s fields would take the load off Admiral “Bull” Halsey’s carrier airmen, who even then, acting as tactical air force for MacArthur, were smashing at the Japs’ Philippine airdromes.

The Good Old Navy. The task force set off on its 550-mile push through the inland seas. G.I.s quietly rejoiced for their Navy—it was all over the place, close by and below the horizon.

There were battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and a force of jeeps—the first aircraft carriers to be risked in the narrow waters of the inner Philippines.

When the protecting rain clouds parted, the force made a feint toward the open sea, in the hope of throwing the Japanese off the trail if any Japs were looking. Then the task force wheeled and squeezed through Surigao Strait, steaming over the drowned hulks of Jap warships sunk in the great October battle.

The night was undisturbed, except for an alarm touched off by two U.S. landing craft, homeward-bound from the Ormoc beachhead. The next morning, too, was so calm that U.S. Navymen began to smell trouble. At 3 p.m., they sighted it—enemy planes.

The Wounded Go On. Navy Corsairs and a barrage of ack-ack saved the jeep carriers from damage. Out of the setting sun later that day came another strike. It was met by Corsairs and Wildcats, and Army P-38s flying from Leyte. This time some of the Japs got through, although seven were destroyed. Among the men wounded by bomb fragments was the boss, General Dunckel. He got himself bandaged up, said he saw no reason to rule himself out of the play.

There was another tense day at sea, but this time the Jap was quiet. There was a reason: his fields on Luzon had been pounded into temporary uselessness by Vice Admiral John S. McCain’s planes, flying from Third Fleet carriers in the Philippine Sea.

The third morning was payoff time: the convoy was off Mindoro. As the sky lightened behind Mindoro’s peaks, destroyers and rocket ships raced inshore, laying down a barrage on the flat, inviting coast. No settlement was to be shelled unless Japs were detected, and none were.

Crowds of Filipinos, some bearing the Stars & Stripes, ran down one sector of the beach and halted the bombardment. The first assault wave landed dry-footed on the steep, grey beach. Not a shot had been fired against them. An hour later, Zero fighter-bombers turned up, but half were shot down.

The troops pushed quickly inland. The firm, dry soil made Mindoro seem like heaven after the mud of Leyte. Within three days they were eleven miles inland and had seized San Jose and its airdromes, while U.S. and Aussie engineers began work on other airfields. On Mindoro’s flats and in its valleys there was room, and need, for plenty of them.