The day President Roosevelt died,
USS LSM 51 proceeded on a mission described in Time Magazine as one
of the oddest of the War. The earlier taking of Caballo was
the inspiration for the plan by which the 38th Division cracked Fort
Drum. Caballo was a horse-shaped rock and most of its garrison had
been knocked off within a few days. A band of 60 survivors,
however, had been able to take refuge in two huge mortar pits which
resisted all efforts of infantry, engineers and artillery. They
were of reinforced concrete and at least 20 feet thick, another
case of an installation built by Americans and improved by the
Japs. A plan was formulated by LTC Fred C. Dyer of Indianapolis,
IN, G-4 of the 38th. An LCM was fitted with a centrifugal pump and
two tanks capable of holding more than 5000 gallons of liquid. A
special mixture of two parts Diesel oil and one part gasoline was
mixed and then pumped into the tanks. The mixture of oil and gas -
2400 gallons of it, was then pumped in the pits. Tracer bullets
were fired and set fire to the pits. Only charred Japs were found
when the flames died down.
This was the plan selected by BG
Robert H. Soule, assistant division commander, as the best for
reducing Drum.
Training and preparation for the
landing were begun a week before Drum D-day. On Corregidor a
reinforced platoon of riflemen from Company F, 151st Infantry and a
platoon of demolition men from Company B, 113th Engineers, made
repeated dry runs to school each man for his individual job when he
stepped aboard Drum. On the Corregidor parade ground the surface
of Drum's deck was simulated. Dummy guns and air vents were built
and each rifleman was assigned to cover a specific opening in the
surface of the fort. every gun turret, every air vent, every crack
in the surface was to be under the sights of an M1 or a BAR so that
no enemy would be able to come topside. The men went through the
dry run until they could do it in their sleep.
Some engineers practiced planting
explosives at strategic intervals on the rock. Others went through
the motions of dragging a fire hose from the LCM to the deck of the
battleship-fort. The LCM was scheduled to pull alongside Drum in
the same manner used in the Caballo operation. The sally ports were
ruled out as possible points of entrance when a naval reconnaissance
force, attempting a landing from a PT boat, ran into machine-gun
fire from the tunnel. This made it necessary to work from a ship
larger than an LCM, so the 113th Engineers went to work on an
especially designed wooden ramp, running like a drawbridge from the
tower of an LSM. The ramp was necessary since the 40-foot walls of
the island would prevent troops from landing in the usual manner.
Three sailors had been killed in
the attempted PT landing and this got the Navy's dander up. To pave
the way for the taking of the fort, dive bombers were called in to
knock out the large guns on its top deck. On Wednesday, April 11, a
cruiser steamed up and bombarded the 6-inch gun emplacements with AP
shells. The cruiser broadsides weren't enough to breach the fort,
but they did shut up the remaining guns.
April 13 - a Friday - was the day
selected and H-hour was set for 1000. At 0830 the troops loaded
from Corregidor's south dock walking a narrow plank from the pier to
an LSM. The engineers carried 600 pound of explosives and the
infantrymen were loaded down with rifles and bandoliers of
ammunition. In the crow's nest, towering above the landing ramp, a
BAR man kept lookout and below him a light machine gun was set up on
an improvised platform. The BAR and the machine gun could give
covering fire to the men who were to land. At 1000 hours on the
nose, the LSM pulled alongside Fort Drum. It was a ticklish job to
maneuver the squat, bulky ship snug and tight against the island and
to hold it steady there.
As the LSM inched up on the port
side of Drum, three LCVPS manned by naval personnel came up
alongside her, bows first and with motors racing pushed against her
side and shoved her as flat as possible against the cliff side.
As soon as the LSM was close
alongside the fort, sailors standing in the well deck let down a
ramp by means of a block and fall. Other sailors (Milton C. Browne
and William B. McGuffie) rushed ashore across the ramp, carrying
lines which they fastened to the Jap-held gun turrets or any other
available projections. The LSM was made secure. These sailors were
the first Yanks aboard Drum. Just after them came the infantry
riflemen in single file up the circular ladder to the tower and from
there, helped by sailors, onto the ramp and across it to the flat
top of the fort.
Despite the strong lines from ship
to fort and the pushing of the LCVPs, the LSM pitched and rolled and
the ramp scraped precariously back and forth over the concrete. The
operation was at its touch-and-go stage. The LCM which had been
used in the Caballo invasion was brought in behind the larger LSM.
A line attached to a fire hose was thrown up to the engineers on the
LSM and relayed by them to the deck of Drum where other waiting
engineers grabbed it and pulled up the hose.
The infantrymen had deployed
according to their previous briefing on Corregidor, each man
covering his objective. Every vent had its rifleman. No Jap could
raise his head above the surface of the deck without running the
risk of having it blown off, and the engineers went to work. They
planted their explosives to do the most good in the least time.
Particular attention was given to the powder magazine which lay
below the surface of the first level, protected by a 6-inch armor
plate under a layer of reinforced concrete.
All this while the same Diesel oil
mixture that had been used on Caballo was being pumped from the LCM
into the fort. It was like a high colonic enema given at sea to
some ugly, gray Jap monster of the deep. As minute piled on minute,
more and more oil - 3,000 gallons in all - was squirted into the
bowels of Drum. In 10 minutes, the job of the engineers was
finished. Thirty-minute fuses were lighted and the engineers and
riflemen began to file back onto the LSM. Suddenly an unidentified
engineer shouted, "The oil line's busted!"; By this time all the
men were back on the LSM.
LTC William E. Lobit, CO of the
151st called for volunteers. "Six men, up here. Let's go." More
than six men fell in behind him and took off up the ladder and
across the ramp to the island. The oil, still pumping from the LCM
which had pulled about 100 yards away, shut off the instant the hose
connection broke apart. The LCM pulled in again and engineers hung
over the side and repaired the break. By good luck, the hose was
still above water, held up by a floating oil drum to which the next
to last section had been lashed.
Col. Lobit and his men snuffed the
fuses and stood by to re-light them as soon as the break could be
repaired. It was while they were waiting that the first and only
opposition to the combined oil enema and demolition job developed.
An evidently near-sighted Jap sniper, hidden in one of the 6-inch
gun turrets on the port side opened up. His aim was bad on the
first two shots and gave away his position without doing any damage
to the Yanks. Sailors, manning the LSM's 20-mms were ready and
anxious to spray the turret, but a red-headed (Ens Treece) yelled
from the bridge for them to hold fire. Oil was leaking from an
aperture in the turret and if a shell ignited it, our own landing
party, the LSM, the LCM and the LCVPs would probably all be blown to
hell along with the Japs. The sailors held their fire.
The sniper opened up again and a
bullet cut through the fatigue jacket of SGT Mack Thomson of
Springfield, MO, the colonel's driver and radio operator. Thomson
had been standing amidships unaware that he was a target. The
bullet made seven holes, passing through the outside of the jacket,
the baggy pocket and a sleeve. Thomson wasn't even scratched.
Another sniper bullet grazed the back of CPL Vincent Glennon's right
hand. Glennon, an aid man from Gary, IN, had dropped behind a
ventilator for protection at the first sniper shot. The bullet went
through the light, thin metal of the ventilator and creased his
hand, drawing no more blood than a pin scratch. A sailor, Steve
Bukovics, a PA native, had worse luck. A Jap shot split the
fittings that connected the three air hoses to the gyroscopic sight
of his 20mm gun and several pieces of the scattered wreckage were
embedded in his throat. Army and Navy medics teamed up to give him
an immediate transfusion and to dress his wounds. He, Glennon and
Thomson were the only casualties. A bargain-basement price to pay
for Fort Drum.
By now the leak had been repaired.
Col. Lobit and his men relit the fuses on the island and got back
safely to the ship. The lines from the LSM to Drum were cut and all
the ships pulled away. Drum had received its quota of oil and the
late invaders stood off in the bay to watch the show. In 30
minutes there was a slight explosion, not much more than a 4th of
July token. Nothing else happened. Disappointment was written on
the face of the GIs and the sailors. The job would have to be done
over. But before they could even phrase a gripe, the second
explosion came. In the time of an eye wink it seemed as if the
whole island of El Fraile were blown out of the sea.
First there was a cloud of smoke
rising and seconds later the main explosion came. Blast after blast
ripped the concrete battleship. Debris was showered into the water
throwing up hundred of small geysers. A large flat object, later
identified as the 6-inch concrete slab protecting the powder
magazine was blown several hundred feet into the air to fall back on
top of the fort, miraculously still unbroken. Now the GIs and
sailors could cheer. And they did. As the LSM moved toward
Corregidor there were continued explosions. More smoke and debris.
Two days later, on Sunday, a party
went back to try to get into the fort through the lower levels.
Wisps of smoke were still curling through the ventilators and it was
obvious that oil was still burning inside. The visit was called off
for that day.
On Monday the troops returned again. this time they were able to
make their way down as far as the second level, but again smoke
forced them to withdraw. Eight Japs-dead of suffocation- were found
on the first two levels.
Another two days later another
landing party returned and explored the whole island. The bodies of
60 Japs-burned to death-were found in the boiler room on the third
level. The inside of the fort was in shambles. The walls were
blackened with smoke and what installations there were had been
blown to pieces or burned.
In actual time of pumping oil and
setting fuses, it had taken just over 15 minutes to settle the fate
of the "impregnable" concrete fortress. It had been a successful
operation in every way but one: The souvenir hunting wasn't very
good. Story filed by SGT Thomas J. Hooper, Field Correspondent.
Other war correspondents coming on board included Walter Simons,
Chicago Tribune, Lindesay Parrod, New York Times, Frank Kelly, New
York Herald Tribune, Guy Richards, New York Daily News.
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