The Philippines Stand

The Philippines were ready. For days before the war began, the guns had been manned and the planes had stood alert. The Philippines were still ready. After a week of heavy bombing, of fierce scraps on Luzon beachheads, of dogfights among black bursts of ack-ack, of desperate aerial assaults to hold Japanese ships off the coast, the Philippines stood fast.

For all his losses the Jap had little to show this week. He had done a decently good job of bombing; he had smashed up some buildings, some airplanes. He had managed to grab a precarious foothold on a beach 260 miles from the center of Luzon's resistance. But the Army's Far Eastern Commander, lean, brilliant Lieut. General Douglas MacArthur, and his grizzled Navy sidekick, Admiral Tommy Hart, had been waiting with their knives out.

As professional fighters they could afford to regard the enemy's effort with an appraising eye, to commend him for some military virtuosity that the world did not realize he possessed. They could afford it because they had given him a thumping good round. They had made an impressive start on the proof of a proposition that many strategists had believed insoluble: the Philippines can be held;

At Clark Field alongside Fort Stotsenberg, 50 miles northwest of Manila, the gun crews had just finished their noonday Monday dinner when the Jap struck. Well-trained but combat-raw, the gunners spotted a precise formation of 52 planes high in the blue sky. They watched, began to wonder. Then they knew.

Across the field, in a wicked, jagged line, the bombs struck. The mess truck, rumbling back to quarters, disappeared, and with it the drivers.

"We stood up and had a kind of a relaxation period," one of the gunners said later. "We all said: 'I never knew what war would be like....This is it. Let's get busy....' We wished we could fire a couple of rounds to get over that tense feeling, but we held our fire till all of a sudden the pursuits started coming in over us.

"I just yelled to the fellows to stay low, keep calm and keep firing....None of us were really excited after the first minutes when the bombers caught us. We were too busy--and it felt good to be firing....We just said:.'Get those bastards out of the air,' and we kept at it till we knew we'd run them off. After it was all over we knew we had stood up to them."

In the Air. Through that day and the following days, the Jap struck in many places from the air. He bombed Nichols Field, just south of Manila, time & again; in one raid alone he lost eleven planes. He struck at Cavite, the Navy's base on Manila's south harbor; there he wrought heavy damage, barely missed the base's commander, weather-beaten Rear Admiral Francis Rockwell.

Youngster officer-pilots of the new Philippine Air Force sailed into the Jap with a daring and skill that popped the eyes of their opposite numbers from the U.S. One army flight of three jumped 20 Jap planes, knocked out three, chased the rest, picked up a straggler on the way home and sent him down in flames. A bombing flight lumbered serenely through heavy ack-ack fire to unload on warships, then kicked off altitude and strafed a landing party on the beach.

A few German Messerschmitts were sighted and some pilots reported whipping past white pilots in dogfights.* On the ground, soldiers picked up many Jap duds, found some marked "Frankfurt 1916." But there was no conclusive evidence that Nazis were fighting alongside the Japanese.

Out of Manila. Little soldiers in mushroom helmets were soon assaulting the beaches and U.S. soldiers were meeting them, but for the first part of the week Manila busied itself with its own problems. Overnight, on orders from General MacArthur's headquarters, the islands went on a war basis, with censorship, rationing and all-night blackouts.

Thickly populated areas were evacuated. Manila residents swarmed in orderly droves to the hills, in commandeered trucks and busses. American and Filipino businessmen made their rounds as air-raid wardens and special policemen. Long lax in its air-raid precautions, Manila, like many another Philippine town, quickly caught on.

On the Beaches. The Jap put down troops at Aparri, whence a road leads to Manila 260 miles south (see map). He established a flying field, landed planes. To the invader's left was the wild, unexplored territory of headhunters and pygmies.

It was far to the heart of the Philippines' defense, but soon the invader was catching hell. U.S. pilots raided his field. Ground troops, with a good supply road at their backs, slashed savagely at his landing party. But he still kept his hold on Aparri this week.

At Legaspi, 210 miles southeast of Manila, the invader also got ashore, but between him and Manila lay nasty country with a rudimentary road system, and on the far side of it MacArthur's men waited.

At Vigan there was another landing party. From Douglas MacArthur's terse communiques it appeared it was under control.

On Lingayen Gulf, long regarded as one of the best beachheads for an enemy on the island, the Jap found defenses to fit its importance. He tried to land 154 motorboats of soldiers in the first attack. To stop them MacArthur interposed a division of his pride & joy, the new Philippine Army.* It sank most of the Jap boats, routed the others. After three days of fighting, not a Japanese soldier had reached shore alive.

At Sea. Tommy Hart's submarines were busy, but the returns would not be in for a long time, for subs work slowly to stalk their game.

Over the sea, the returns came faster, and they were more decisive. Off the north coast, heroic Captain Colin Kelly (see p. 25) jumped the pagoda-topped battleship Haruna, 29,330 tons of modernized fighting machine, sent her down with three bomb hits. Farther west, a Navy pilot, Lieut. Clarence A. Keller, picked up the Haruna's sister, Kongo, tailed her until bombers came to his assistance. They damaged the Kongo, but apparently failed to sink her.

Early in the week Army flyers sank a Jap transport, damaged two others as they were putting off their landing parties. Later MacArthur had better news: his flyers had sunk three more--loaded with soldiers this time--and had damaged three others. For reinforcements and supply, the Jap was apparently not doing too well.

The Targets. In the first phase of invasion, the invader was either feeling out defense or trying a multiple assault in the hope that the Filipinos (for whom he dropped circulars) would revolt. There was no sign of an uprising. When little President Manuel Quezon appeared on the streets this week, after a bombing raid, Filipinos poured to the curbs, cried: "Long live Quezon," with tears in their eyes. From the back country began to trickle stories of civilians joining their troops, swinging their bolos, and of invaders found decapitated.

The Jap raided a field at Batangas in southern Luzon over mountains from Manila, perhaps in preparation for a landing there. He bombed targets on Davao Gulf. He returned again & again to the targets on Luzon.

From years of spying in the Philippines, the Japanese flyers knew what targets to go after, where each target was. The raids did plenty of damage, especially at Cavite and at the Navy's Olongapo repair station. Fifth columnists lighted flares during blackouts, but the best guess was that the Filipinos knew most of the agents, and soon had them rounded up.

This week an officer suggested to General MacArthur that the U.S. flag on Army headquarters was a fine marker for raiding airmen, suggested it be brought down. Said Douglas MacArthur: "Take every other normal precaution for protection of the headquarters, but let's keep the flag flying."

* Cracked others: "They were just scared Hippos" (new Air Forces lingo for "Nippos").

*Organized by Douglas MacArthur (last published strength 160,000) and not to be confused with the small force of veteran professional Philippine Scouts, founded by his father, Lieut. General Arthur MacArthur, in 1901.

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