Mud and Clear Skies

As an invasion, the U.S. descent upon the Philippines was still a sensational success. But as a continuing military operation it gave every sign last week of being definitely behind schedule. The battle for Leyte, now wallowing along in the tropical rainy season (which will last for at least two more months), had settled down to a dogged slugging match in the mud.

With Leyte still unconquered, Luzon seemed farther away than it had in the first steamroller phases of the Leyte invasion. Manila was only 330 miles to the north, but any rosy dreams of New Year's Eve parties in Manila had gone glimmering. MacArthur's top men had not expected anything easy to begin with--but it seemed improbable that they had expected to go into December involved in any such uninspired dogfight on Leyte.

Over the Ground. Normal mischances of war could account for some delay. The Philippine roads had deteriorated under Jap occupation; they went from poor to bad under the pounding of U.S. equipment. Surprisingly, many U.S. maps of Leyte turned out to be incomplete or wrong on ground details. But beyond that there was the dogged, slow defense of the Japanese, who fought as though they never hoped to win--or to stop fighting.

One way or another, the enemy had managed to scrape up a surprising amount of air power for the Philippines. That, in turn, may well have slowed down U.S. Navy plans by forcing the fleet to keep extra carrier-based planes in the area; last week a carrier task force was back at the old job of beating up airfields around Manila, smashing shipping in the harbor. In one operation around Luzon, Admiral Halsey's flyers sank 20 Jap ships, shot down 72 planes.

Off schedule they might be, but MacArthur's troops were still on the track, still rolling in the right direction. Last week on Leyte fresh infantrymen of the 32nd ("Red Arrow") Division (see ARMY & NAVY) cracked the Japanese strong point at Limon, took the town and neatly pulled the plug at the top of the north-south road along which last-ditch Japanese defenders are strung all the way down to Ormoc.

Over the River. Plunging on with the momentum of their winning drive, the men of the 32nd pushed 1,000 yards south of Limon, took the enemy by surprise and forced the crossing of the Leyte River, seizing a bridge on the road. But the Japanese were not panicked. The Imperial 26th Division struck back in a vicious counterattack, U.S. troops halted the attack, but their own push was slowed to a walk.

While the infantry and artillery still painfully dragged themselves and their weapons through the mud, the rain lifted, and clearing skies over the Philippines again hummed with the angry sounds of air war. In one day the Japs tried to slip nearly 50 planes over U.S. installations on Leyte. P-38 pilots had a field day knocking down 35 of them; ack-ack did for seven more.

In a more successful night attack the Japs sneaked nine bombers in over the important air base of Morotai, south of the Philippines. U.S. officers admitted casualties and damages; the enemy ebulliently claimed 74 planes burned on the ground.

Over the Sea. Victory of the week--even greater in immediate results than the pulling of the Limon plug--came when U.S. fighter bombers, P-40s and 47s, jumped a reinforcement convoy of three Japanese transports and a destroyer off Masbate Island, in the Visayan Sea northwest of Leyte. The Yankee fighters barreled straight in, let the bombs go at close range, then strafed the crowded transport decks while screaming soldiers leaped overboard to get away from the spreading fires and the strafing.

A destroyer and two transports burned and sank; the third transport was beached. General MacArthur's headquarters estimated that 3,500 of 6,000 troops headed for the Leyte battle lines had been killed or drowned. Two days later another convoy was smashed, with 2,000 men killed. That brought to 17,000 the total of Japanese lost at sea in disastrous efforts to reinforce the Leyte garrison. But other reinforcements have slipped through. And even the 17,000 lost showed the determination of the enemy to continue forcing every possible delay into Douglas MacArthur's Philippine timetable.

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