TACLOBAN FALLS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 251, 23 October 1944, Page 5

TACLOBAN FALLS

CAPITAL OF LEYTE

Important Airfield Also Captured

Rec. 10. WASHINGTON, Oct. 22. American forces in the Central Philippines have captured Tacloban, capital of Leyte Island, and Tacloban airfield. This is announced in General Mac Arthur's latest communique, which says that the ground forces on Leyte advanced in all sectors to an average depth of four miles.

Strong enemy defences, which had been prepared with concrete pillboxes and artillery positions, were skilfully enveloped by infiltration and the enemy was forced to withdraw. Direct assaults were thereby avoided and our casualties consequently remained light. The enemy is already showning signs of lack of manoeuvrable cohesion in the face of the skilful attacks of our local commanders.

The •communique says that the 24th Corps, in the southern sector, seized Dulag and its aerodrome and is pushing toward San Pablo, in the Leyte Valley. Two strong enemy counter-attacks were repulsed. rj Enemy air activity against the beachhead and shipping has been limited to dawn and dusk raids by small groups of aircraft. Three enemy bombers were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire from ships. . The communique also reports attacks by General Mac Arthur's bombers on islands in the Central Philippines. Heavy bombers from the Dutch East Indies dropped 43 tons of bombs on enemy headquarters at Davao, Mindanao Island, and on the aerodrome at Maladan, causing fires and jexplosions. General Mac Arthur, after an inspection of the American positions, said progress could not be better.

.".. Americans Drive Inland American troops who landed on Leyte Island are driving inland behind tanks and flame-throwers, reports William Dickinson, United Press correspondent at General MacArthur's headquarters. Japanese resistance is increasing as the enemy recovers from the initial shock of the assaμlt, but it is nowhere sufficient to stem the biggest American Army in the Pacific. The Japanese are also confronted with the possibility of a major rising by tens of thousands of Filipino patriots, and it is expected that guerillas will provide major aid. The American attack appears to be directed along a 20-mile front on the north-eastern side of the island northward from Dulag to th£ Tacloban area. If continued, the drive would cut across the 15-mile-wide waist of Leyte to the west coast, splitting the estimated force of 15,000 to 20,000 Japanese defenders at the northern end of the front.

The Washington correspondent of the New York Herald-Tribune says military experts see a possibility of a Japanese withdrawal from the Philippines to. Formosa rather than risk heavy shipping losses by establishing another Tokyo express similar to that used to supply their forces on Guadalcanar. It is pointed out that the Japanese have no longer enough shipping to send down in face of the strong concentration of American sea and air power.

American forces captured Tacloban airfield five hours- after swarming ashore, reports . the correspondent. After inspecting the airfield Lieutenant-General G. Kenney said it was a fairly typical Japanese type. It was too small for large planes, but fighters might operate from there in a very few days. The correspondent said that the victories in the Tacloban area*have given the Americans control of the strait leading to the inland sea of the archipelago.