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