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The official estimate of 850 Japanese defenders as shown in 503d's Field Order 4#9 (the written orders for the Corregidor operation) was far wide of the mark.  Hr. K. Ishikawa, a former private first class in the Ichinosawa battalion, one of only 40 Japanese known to have survived the 503d's 1945 assault, puts the strength at 6800 Japanese troops on the island during February 1945.  All of the thinking was conditioned by the fact that the regiment was facing a mere 850 troop garrison.  There simply was not that sense of urgency that should have been foremost in the company plans and the execution of orders. They were misled.  This was part of the reason why regiment expanded the perimeter by moving D Company to the western edge of Topside. After the banzai at Wheeler Point, which was the only organized attack in any strength during the whole campaign, the regimental commander drew in the perimeter and D Company took positions at the western edge of the parade field.  D Company would never leave these positions until they rode down to Bottomside in a few of Service Company's 2½ ton trucks and boarded LCI 545 at 3 o'clock Thursday afternoon on the 8th of March, bound for Mindoro. 

The intelligence error by 6th Army and MacArthur's headquarters, USAFFE, affected the judgment of everyone from MacArthur down to the individual rifleman.  It affected the planning before the assault and the conduct of the battle once they had landed there. That was the reason no one in D Company was unduly worried as the officers and NCO's hurried to get the platoons in position around Wheeler Point late in the afternoon of 18 February.  It was why an obvious route of attack, Cheney Ravine, was largely ignored, why the perimeter was expanded by regiment and why the company couldn't call out on their SCR 300.  There certainly was little risk involved facing a mere 850 Japanese troops.  The ferocious attack that was mounted the night of the 18th and in the blackness early Monday morning of the 19th of February came as a great and fatal surprise. Had the true facts been known at the time the company probably would never have been left out there in the first place.

Meanwhile, the Japanese under Lieutenant Endo, who replaced naval Captain Akira Itagaki (killed early on the 16th of February), had planned to attack and dislodge the paratroops from Topside, a highly unlikely prospect.  His marines would strike at night from the western end of the Rock with two columns.  The eastern column would attack first at Battery Hearn and as they stormed the Topside Barracks area, the western column would take advantage of the confusion and attack from the west to seize Topside from that direction.  At least one, and more likely three battalions of Japanese marines were stationed on the western end of the island to provide the reserve for the defense against amphibious landings expected on Bottomside.  The Special Naval Landing Forces, i.e. marines, had been safely sheltered in bombproof quarters on the western side of Corregidor, well removed from the tremendous aerial and naval bombardment preceding the 503d's assault.  The Japanese planned to man the fixed defenses near the invasion beaches with army troops and provisional naval formations, comprised in part by sailors whose ships had been sunk in Philippine waters.  These second-class troops were poorly armed and trained and were expected to withstand the heavy bombardment certain to come on the beaches and contain the landings as well as they could.  Some of these formations had one rifle for five men with the rest being armed with spears.  After the American amphibious forces stalled, the well trained and well equipped marines waiting on the western side of the island out of harm's way would swoop down from Topside and finish off the American landing forces or push them into the sea.  The defense plan was unusable after the 503d seized Topside because the Japanese reserves could not be moved or at least not until the Japanese cleared Topside.  D and F Companies faced these elite SNLF troops on the 18th and 19th of February in the largest (and only) planned attack of any size during the 503d's battle to regain the island.