Survivors watched from the water as exploding torpedoes caused part of the flight deck to collapse, a horror captured in the ship’s war damage report: “Intensity of fire remained such as to insure that the ship was practically gutted in the next hour.” 2 The skipper had no choice but to order his ship abandoned just 38 minutes after the attack. Machine-gun rounds exploded, ricocheting off bulkheads. The carrier’s hangar deck, filled with racks of torpedoes and armed planes fueled to capacity, erupted in an inferno. #Linguan gulf driver#“A tremendous explosion shook the ship so violently it seemed as if a gigantic pile driver had hit us,” recalled Chaplain Robert Anderson. The threat from suicide planes had crystallized four days earlier when a twin-engine bomber crashed through the wooden flight deck of the escort carrier Ommaney Bay (CVE-79). To block MacArthur, Japan had unleashed its infernal new weapon, kamikazes-a monsoon of metal and flesh that rained down daily on U.S. forces had seized the islands of Leyte and Mindoro, but the ultimate prize still eluded MacArthur-the main island of Luzon, home to Manila, the political and cultural heart of the Philippines. He had traded the worn-out PT boats that had spirited him, his family, and his aides to safety for an armada of 818 aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and transports-the largest invasion force the United States had ever put to sea in the Pacific.ĭespite that power, the same tension that had marked MacArthur’s escape years earlier clouded his return. His fortunes since had changed dramatically. Two years, nine months, and 29 days had passed since MacArthur had climbed aboard a patrol torpedo boat and slipped away under cover of darkness, forced to watch in despair as the silhouette of Corregidor vanished on the horizon. troops prepared to storm the beaches of the Philippine island of Luzon. General Douglas MacArthur was anxious in the predawn hours of 9 January 1945, as U.S.
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