Flaming Oil

Balikpapan Bay was still a multiple booby trap of Japanese mines when a U.S. engineer detachment sailed in. Aboard two LCMs, the engineers safely threaded their way to the Jap-built pontoon wharves, tied up, then raced the length of the narrow beach to begin rebuilding Sepinggang airstrip, just captured by the Australian 7th Division.

Three days later, short, balding Major General Edward James Milford's slouch-hatted Aussies held an 18-mile-long beachhead which included virtually everything of importance in southeastern Borneo. They had taken Balikpapan, the "Ploesti of the Pacific," then made a three-mile westward dash across the bay to secure the city's extensive harbor. Driving 13 miles northeastward, they had won the two hard-surfaced, 4,000-foot runways of the area's second important airfield, Manggar airdrome. North of Balikpapan, they had cut off the big Pandansari refinery district, in ruins from the terrific pre-invasion Allied air and naval bombardment.

As at Okinawa, the landing operation had been met by only sporadic opposition. Jap plans to flood the beaches with burning oil misfired, but farther inland the Diggers were stopped in their tracks by a flaming river of oil roaring down a ravine. Also paralleling Okinawa, the promise of bitter fighting and high casualties lay ahead. The Japs were digging in along the hills for a last-ditch defense of Samarinda, their last oil-producing area in southeastern Borneo.

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