Osprey's Leyte 1944

The war in the Pacific was one that, for the army, suffered from several factors. One was the distance that had to be covered. Unlike Europe where armies had to travel at most, hundreds of miles, the distances in the Pacific meant thousands. Secondly, each battle pretty much required an amphibious landing. Third was that the Pacific theater was not the number one priority of the Allies so frequently there was insufficent manpower or materiel to undertake the sorts of operations that they had hoped.

On the plus side, the Navy had a greater presence in the area so was usually available for pre-landing bombardment as well as gunfire support. Then there was the situation for the Japanese. They tended to believe their propaganda rather than use proper reconnaissance to determine facts on the ground. If their pilots say they had sunk the entire American fleet, the Japanese admirals and generals planned as if it were so. Then the Japanese supply system was pathetic at best. Thanks to US airpower and submarines, their ability to resupply and move troops dwindled drastically as the war progressed. Not to say that Japanese soldiers were not tenacious and inventive, as they very much were, it is just that their situation could have been better.

So then we have two commanders in the area, MacArthur who wanted to invade the Philippines and Nimitz who wanted to invade Formosa and use that to strangle the Japanese supply lines and therefore their war economy. The wrangling back and forth was considerable, but MacArthur finally won out once Nimitz realized that he would not be getting the men, materiel and ships needed for a major operation like invading Formosa.

MacArthur chose Leyte as the best place to make a landing as it seemed to be relatively weakly defended, and that was very true. However, he overlooked the Japanese tenacity and their ability to supply reinforcements. Even this late in the war, the Navy couldn't be everywhere and the Japanese were able to bring in considerable reinforcements during the battle for Leyte. Another was that the invasion was at the start of the monsoon season and already minimal roads quickly turned into swamps, bogging down troops and making logistics a real nightmare. It also set back the time table for getting airfields built as the Navy could not keep carriers in the area all the time. The 5th Air Force was able to provide some units, but the lack of prepared fields and the need to abandon some due to the heavy rains meant that air power wasn't what MacArthur wanted.

The result of all this was an incredibly difficult campaign to take Leyte and provide a stepping stone for the later invasion of Luzon. What was envisioned to take weeks took months and while the results were sometimes in question, the Americans finally succeeded.

Leyte is one of those campaigns were most people don't get past the naval battles during the landings. it had to be one of the more difficult operations that the Army had to conduct and it resulted in some units shining and others being removed from combat. It showed that the rest of the war against the Japanese was only going to get more difficult and that was very much the case.

The story of this campaign is superbly told and thanks to some great period photos, artwork and maps, we are able to follow the campaign from beginning to end. It makes for a great read of what one might consider a 'forgotten' portion of the war in the Pacific. It was a book that I very much enjoyed reading and one that I can highly recommend to you.

June 2015

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