Word: manila
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...Manila. Last September the 49th's Ninth squadron was the first U.S. fighter outfit to hit the Philippines. In October the Forty-niners arrived on Leyte, to base there. They could boast of having bred most of the Southwest Pacific's fighter aces, including eleven currently in action. Their biggest continuing source of pride is Major Bong, now a roving gunnery instructor who occasionally roves with his old buddies. On a sweep over Mindoro last week, Dick Bong bagged his second Jap fighter in a week, ran his score...
...raid sirens were silent, and the new factories, not yet built in 1941, were begrimed. The early battles at Wake and Manila seemed almost as distant as the Argonne...
...Luzon." That was Mindoro's chief value and every man in Dunckel's force knew it. From the San José airfields, patrols could wing far over the South China Sea, harrying Jap shipping; Luzon could be softened for invasion and General MacArthur's return to Manila. Mindoro's fields would take the load off Admiral "Bull" Halsey's carrier airmen, who even then, acting as tactical air force for MacArthur, were smashing at the Japs' Philippine airdromes...
With Leyte still unconquered, Luzon seemed farther away than it had in the first steamroller phases of the Leyte invasion. Manila was only 330 miles to the north, but any rosy dreams of New Year's Eve parties in Manila had gone glimmering. MacArthur's top men had not expected anything easy to begin with-but it seemed improbable that they had expected to go into December involved in any such uninspired dogfight on Leyte...
...surprising amount of air power for the Philippines. That, in turn, may well have slowed down U.S. Navy plans by forcing the fleet to keep extra carrier-based planes in the area; last week a carrier task force was back at the old job of beating up airfields around Manila, smashing shipping in the harbor. In one operation around Luzon, Admiral Halsey's flyers sank 20 Jap ships, shot down 72 planes...