PRESIDENT TRUMAN ANNOUNCES THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN - AND THE IMPENDING END OF WORLD WAR II - AUGUST 14 , 1945 .
National Archives
In the late afternoon of December 26 , 1944 , our forces on Mindoro were informed that a Japanese Task Force consisting of a battleship , a cruiser , and destroyers were headed toward us . The air groups were alerted to load up with bombs and attack them before these ships came close enough to fire their guns onto the island . The 58th didn ’ t have any bombs available so it was decided that the available planes would just strafe the ships with machine gun fire . We only had the 32 planes available from the 69th & 311th squadrons since the 310th had not arrived from Morotai . Of the 32 planes , one was lost attempting to take off from the unfinished strip at night and one was lost when it struck a hole in the taxi strip which broke a wheel . Thirty were able to reach the target . During this time , the Japanese fighters and bombers were attacking the airfield so the planes would have to wait for a lull in the attack to try to take off . While the attacks would occur the combat runway lights would be off and not turned on until the attack stopped . It took about an hour to get all the planes airborne .
There was a moon but it was not too bright since there was a cloud layer several thousand feet thick at about 3,000 feet . In the faint light , the planes were able to find the task force instead by picking up the wake left by each ship . The P-47s attacked from low altitude until each plane ran out of ammo . At this point , most of them tried to fly to
Leyte Island to land , but a few returned to Mindoro because of a lack of fuel . Besides the heavy anti-aircraft fire from the ships , there were numerous Japanese planes trying to shoot at them from above . The Japanese fighters were able to start fires on several destroyers and apparently one of them blew up .
It was later ascertained that the battleship was actually a heavy cruiser with a light cruiser and six destroyers . Some of the survivors from the ships related that the fighters had knocked out the anti-aircraft weaponry and the gun sighting controls on all the ships , so when the ships came in range of the island their fire was ineffective . Other groups , like the B-25s and P-38s with bombs were very effective when they
28 AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY