Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [132]
IN THE PHILIPPINES, the landmasses being contested were much larger than the islands or atolls on which the Americans had been fighting for so long, save Papua New Guinea. Since the Japanese had nothing like enough men to defend everything, Krueger possessed much more scope for manoeuvre than American attackers on Saipan or Peleliu. Yet, just as Sixth Army’s commander criticised his subordinates for missing chances to bypass Japanese strongpoints, so Krueger’s critics complained of their general’s lack of drive and imagination. In particular, he was accused of lacking an eye for terrain—failing to identify key features and secure them ahead of the Japanese. Reality probably lay somewhere between the two claims: the high command was without flair, and many infantry units were slow. Whatever the causes, the protraction of the campaign bred recrimination.
Most serious of all for MacArthur was the frustration of his fundamental justification for taking Leyte: its exploitation as an aircraft and logistics base. The waterlogged plains were wholly unsuitable for intensive aircraft usage, and even for stores depots. Kenney’s Fifth Air Force, charged with supporting and protecting Sixth Army, possessed 2,500 aircraft, yet two months after the invasion hardly any of these could operate from Leyte’s landing grounds.
It is a shocking indictment of MacArthur and his staff that they chose to ignore forecasts of these difficulties, submitted long before the landings. On 10 August 1944, Col. William J. Ely, executive officer of Sixth Army’s engineers, delivered a report in which he highlighted the “soil instability” of Leyte Valley, and the impossibility of accomplishing vital engineer tasks—above all airfield construction—with the troops available, at the height of the rainy season. “Perhaps we can mud and muddle through again on a shoestring,” wrote the colonel gloomily, “but the shoestring must be frayed by this time and if it broke we may lose our shirt as well as our shoe.” Ely’s commanding officer strongly concurred with this report, which was forwarded to SWPA HQ—and dismissed. The rejection of prudent professional advice about the shortcomings of Leyte as a forward air base reflected reckless irresponsibility by the supreme commander and his staff.
By 21 November, the appalling weather infected even MacArthur’s notoriously bombastic communiqués with gloom. “Another tropical typhoon371 with continuous rains is lashing Leyte,” declared one bulletin. “Bridges are washed out, streams are torrents and roads have become waterways. All traffic air, ground and sea is fraught with great difficulty and hazard and battle conditions are becoming static.” Almost twenty-four inches of rain fell on Leyte in November, double the customary monsoon dose. Few of the men on the mountains, Americans or Japanese, had effective shelter. That winter of 1944, providence was ungenerous to the Allied armies both in Europe and Asia, subjecting Eisenhower’s and MacArthur’s forces alike to weather which crippled their operations. In adverse conditions, it is vastly easier for defenders to hold ground than for attackers to advance.
Engineers exercised heroic ingenuity to overcome the airfield problem. The Japanese had never laid hard surfaces on their strips. The Americans scoured the island for suitable material. At Tacloban, it was found that a naval dredger’s mighty 2,800-horsepower pumps could move solid substances a mile through hoses. Coral was shifted directly from the seabed offshore to the airfield. Yet still it proved a massive task to create serviceable landing grounds: “A battalion [of engineers] could accomplish no more in a month than a platoon could have carried out in a week under good weather conditions.” Two airfields had to be abandoned, and a third did not become operational until 16 December.
The Japanese