jome Sea And Land Campaigns Thai Helped To Smash Japan
r
midway
June 3-6 1942
GUADALCANAL
Aug. 7 1942—Feb. 9. 1943
PHILIPPINES
Oct. 20 1944—July 5, 1945
HILIPPINE SEA
Oct. 23-26. 1944
OKINAWA
April 1—June 21. 1945^
f- v "minu Tnl Ml
When carrier and land
based planes beat back enemy
forces off Midway, they gave
lb* Japanese fleet its first
najor defeat in 350 years and
Ivrned the tide of the war.
The Battle of Guadalcanal
was the first in America's
comeback campaign. The sea
engagement of Nov. 13-15
(shown) prevented new troop
landings against the Marines.
MacArthur began his Philip
pine comeback with a landing
on Leyte and then moved up
to Samar, Mindoro and Luzon.
This campaign gave bases
to mount on invasion of Japan.
Three enemy forces were
routed when they attempted
to halt the Leyte landing op
erations. The Japanese lost 26
big ships and thereafter ceased
to be a major naval threat.
Invasion of Okinawa brought
the Yanks only 325 miles from
the Japanese mainland. The
U. S. already had airbases
here from which to bKti Japan''
when the surrender bid came.
Seneral Joseph T. Stilwell had trudged out of the
iurmese jungle into India with the bitter statement,
1 claim we took a hell of a beating and it’s
mmiliating as hell,’’ the enemy had been able to
eep a grip on Myitkyina in north Burma and block
applies for China over the Burma Road.
Now the tide was turning. After his retreat, Stil
vell had trained and equipped a Chinese army and
siarted back from the hamlet of Ledo in the Hima
layas. As he pushed through the leech-infested
iungle a road was built behind him. The British had
i Bioved down the coast, headed toward Rangoon.
There had been sporadic raids on Japanese po
rtions conceived by the British general Orde C.
i Tingate, and in March, 1944, a winged commando
• force led by America’s colorful, dashing Colonel
1 Philip Cochran and including one-time child movie
• star Jackie Coogan dropped down on vital enemy
t supply and message centers southeast of Myitkyina.
• The Chinese fought down from Yunnan to meet
I nith Stilwell’s forces and complete the new life
ine to China. In May they put Myitkyina under
y liege and took it on August 3.
r MacArthur now was ready to hit again. On Sep
y tember 15, after his bombers had thoroughly pound
I ed the island of Halmahera northwest of New
1 Guinea, his troops stepped beyond it to Moratai,
inly 300 miles from the Philippines.
, At the same time, Marines plunged onto the small
I (oral island of Peleliu in the Palau island group
So clear a path for great invasion forces massed at
ibase MacArthur had built at Hollandia.
Moratai was relatively easy. Peleliu was not.
The Marines had to overcome a counterattack on
the beachhead that was one of the war’s most vio
lent The enemy holed up in “Bloody Nose” moun
tains and came out to strike at nighf. Marine
patrols spent days trying to find one sniper.
Blood ran thick for a month while the caves were
Masted: one by one. Meanwhile other Yanks landed
on Angaur, Ngesebus and Kongauru islands in the
same chain.
When the Palaus were secured American casual
ties had reached 6,700. There were 13,500 dead and
imprisoned Japanese.
"I HAVE RETURNED"
TOR a month the flattops had been busy on the
1 Philippines, and now MacArthur was ready to
redeem his pledge.
He sent forces under General Walter Krueger
to make a surprise landing on little Leyte, midway
in the chain between Luzon and Mindanao. The
original plans had called for a first invasion at
Mindanao in November, but carrier attacks against
Leyte brought out such little opposition and guerril
las told of such enemy weakness that Nimitz and
MacArthur agreed to hit that island first, and soon.
On October 20, MacArthur proclaimed to the
Filipinos: “I have returned. Rally to me. Let the
indomitable spirit of Bataan and Corregidor lead
on.”
But Leyte became more difficult than the Ameri
cans had expected.
There was first the question of Hirohito’s fleet,
*hich had held itself aloof from battle, awaiting
a chance to strike. It saw an opportunity to break
“P MacArthur’s landings.
On October 23 two American submarines ob
served the foe’s southern fleet moving up from
Singapore for Surigao and San Bernardino straits,
and reported to Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, whose
U. S. Seventh Fleet was standing off Leyte to the
east. Then the submarines moved into the enemy
procession, sank two cruisers and damaged a third.
Fast ^carrier airmen of Admiral Halsey’s Third
Fleet, east of Luzon’s northern tip, joined the at
tack while Kinkaid’s battlewagons moved in to
battle at Surigao Strait.
Another enemy force now was steaming down
from Japan, and Halsey turned north to meet it.
Some of his planes sped to support Kinkaid’s out
numbered carrier forces attempting to hold the
enemy units pushing through San Bernardino strait.
At Surigao the officer in tactical command, Ad
miral J. B. Oldendorf, put his lighter forces on each
side of the approaching column and ran his cruisers
and battleships in a line across the strait. In this
manner he “crossed the T,”—the naval equivalent
of a hole-in-one—and the Japanese were neatly
trapped. They lost two battleships and three de
stroyers almost before they could open fire. A heavy
cruiser and a destroyer escaped, but airmen soon
caught and sank the cruiser.
At San Bernardino a running fight developed.
When contact was broken off the Japanese had lost
the pride of their navy, the new battleship Musashi.
Three of their cruisers and three destroyers also
were sunk, and another battleship was damaged.
America’s losses were heavy, too—two escort car
riers, two destroyers and a destroyer escort sunk,
four other warships damaged, 105 planes lost.
At Cape Engano, off northern Luzon, Halsey’s
planes probably sank two heavy cruisers and a
light cruiser, blew the bow off a destroyer, and
damaged four battleships and other cruisers and
destroyers.
The Navy called this second Battle of the Philip
pine Sea “one of the decisive victories of the war.”
Back on Leyte, the rains came in torrents. Tanks
bogged in deep mud and the Japanese across the
island’s mountains at Ormoc Bay became menacing.
MacArthur threw a one-two punch: he sent one
division across the island to the south of the enemy
concentration, and landed another behind the foe
in the bay. The punch worked.
Meanwhile, other forces had moved onto the ad
joining island of Samar where a well-knit army
of Filipino guerrillas had arisen to harass Hirohito’s
occupiers.
Prospects for the rest of the Philippine campaign
looked bright, and on December 15 the Yanks sped
up for another landing at the island of Mindoro.
But suddenly, on the other side of the world, the
Allied position changed.
THE NAZIS STRIKE BACK
4t\VTE’LL hang our washing on the Siegfried Line”
' ' was a popular ditty of British troops sitting
out the “phony” war in the fall of 1939, but it
took five years to make the song come true.
After the Arnhem attempt failed, the Allies set
tled down to the long, slow business of whacking
at the German’s westwalL Patton’s 3rd captured
Metz and inched toward the Saar with its rich re
serves ol coaL General Alexander M. Patch’s 7th
joined with the French 1st under General Jean de
Lattre de Tassigny to battle the German forces
still on the French side of the Rhine. In the north,
the British 2nd, the U. S. 9th under General Wil
liam H. Simpson, and Hodges’ 1st, which had made
a shambles of Aachen before entering it, plodded
up to the Roer River before Cologne.
Concentrating in secret, Von Rundstedt found »
weak spot in the Ardennes forest south of Aachen.
He struck on December 16. Soon his tanks were
shooting into Luxembourg.
The Allied civilian world gulped. As the Nazis
plowed into Belgium—while some Belgians hur
riedly nid the flags with which they had greeted
the Americans—the objective appeared to be the
fortress of Liege, and then Antwerp and the sea,,
to cut off the Yanks and Tommies in the north. A
bigger Dunkerque might be in the making.
Eisenhower calmly ordered his forces to keep
the Nazis away from the coast by pushing their
spearheads west instead of north. Patton sped up
to hammer the southern flank. Inside the Nazi
waves two U. S. islands held—one at St. Vith, the
other at Bastogne, where the 101st airborne divi
sion and other units had been sent in as reinforce
ments.
The Germans drawn in a seige ring around Bas
togne sent in a surrender ultimatum. General An
thony C. McAuliffe, the division’s acting com
mander, sent back a classic four letter replytl
“Nuts!” The Yanks fought on and held.
Von Rundstedt’s drive, hemmed in on north and
south, carved out a chunk 60 miles deep. When
bad weather hampered Allied air and tank opera
tions, Patton ordered his chaplain to pray for clear
ing skies. The clouds lifted.
Patton rescued the Yanks at Bastogne on Decem
ber 27, and by the end of the year the bulge was
being hammered on all sides.
Nevertheless the Ardennes break-through was
bitter news for Britain.
Hardly had the buzz-bombs been beaten, with
their launching platforms lost, when the Nazis in
troduced another screaming terror weapon. This
was V-2—a rocket bomb that flew into the strato
sphere at a speed greater than sound,' had greater
ranges than V-l and caused even greater havoc
when it landed.
About 50 a week now came to London. Britons
had no immediate defense. A “flying telephone
pole” (that was its appearance) came streaking
through the clouds. There was a great explosion.
And only then could civilians hear the sound of
its coming
The Nazis shot many at L,iege and at Antwerp,
too, to try to destroy Allied use of the port. There
were heavy casualties, with many pitiful scenes of
mangled women and children. But London and
Antwerp grimly continued in business. Planes
searched and bombed the new launching sites—
and weary Britons prayed they too would soon be
overrun.
THE SATELLITES FALL
'pHE Nazis scarcely had time to gloat over their
* Ardennes counteroffensive and their V-2 weapon
before the Russian* were hammering them again.
Since August, the Reds had driven the Nazis out