With the naval battle of Leyte Gulf under way, activities on the airfield were further hampered. Construction crews attempted to lay a base of coral on the airfield for the steel matting at the same time that Navy planes used the field for emergency landings. About a hundred aircraft used the field on 25 October, and twenty-five of these were destroyed in crash landings, one of which set the fuel dump afire at night.[9] In spite of enemy air raids, the landing of naval aircraft and the wrecked planes littering the airstrip, construction continued. By 30 October some aircraft were arriving and making satisfactory landings on the runway, which at that time had nearly 4,000 feet of matting.[10]
On 27 October the Fifth Air Force took over the mission of supplying air support. Because of the poor condition of the airstrips and the scarcity of available aircraft, however, it was announced on 31 October that only “sporadic bomb support by the heavy bombers” and strafing could be accomplished. Work on the airstrips had barely got under way at the end of October.[11]
At the same time General Casey, commanding the Army Service Command, painted a dark picture of the future. He stated that the construction of airfields in the Dulag area would require more effort than had been anticipated during the planning phase, since the Japanese, contrary to expectations, had placed little or no surfacing material on the runways and since soil conditions were such that an eight-inch sand and gravel base covered with steel mat would be required to support bomber traffic.[12] Furthermore, the labor crews that were to have been used in airfield construction were being diverted to road building, still further reducing “the already insufficient amount of engineer effort available for drome construction.”[13] Aside from labor shortages, the chief causes for the disappointing delay in airfield construction were poor soil conditions, enemy air raids, and rain.[14] Under such inauspicious circumstances, the Allied Air Forces undertook the mission of furnishing air support on Leyte. Because of the poor condition of the airfields, only a token force from the Fifth Air Force was able to come in.
Much ingenuity was exercised by the engineers in overcoming difficulties. In enlarging the Tacloban airstrip, one of the greatest impediments to progress was the limited supply of coral for surfacing the runways. The engineers conceived the idea of having the dredge Raymond, which had been brought forward to dredge the navigational channel, used to pump coral from the channel bottom onto the runways. The 2,800-horsepower pumps could transport solid matter one mile through pipes that extended across the bay and onto the land, and they could also raise the dredged matter as much as 300 feet above sea level. The engineers found that this pipeline was the quickest way to transport material to the Tacloban airstrip, though mechanical difficulties sometimes developed.[15]
Despite constant work on the morasses that constituted the San Pablo and Buri airfields, these strips continued to be in a generally unusable condition. Finally, on 25 November, ASCOM dropped all construction work on them. The Fifth Air Force, however, felt that it was necessary to continue using the Bayug airfield, and at least one aviation battalion remained at work on that strip.
When work on the airstrips at Buri and San Pablo was abandoned, the Sixth Army units thus released began the construction of a new airfield on the coast at Tanauan, midway between Tacloban and Dulag. This field became operational on 16 December 1944.[16] The fact that the main part of the Fifth Air Force was unable to displace forward to Leyte made it possible for the Japanese to reinforce their Leyte garrison and thus prolong the campaign.
Although his engineers, before the opening of the campaign, had protested vigorously to General Headquarters against the establishment of a major base upon Leyte, General Krueger felt constrained to take the responsibility. Said he:
There is no doubt that if I could have made adequate airdromes available on Leyte as scheduled we would have had ample air forces on hand to stop all Jap reinforcements from coming in. But this proved to be impossible, because of terrific rains that flooded all level areas on the island. In consequence, we lacked the air support necessary adequately to support the operation. This was not the fault of the Allied Air Force, however, but mine.[17]
Base Construction
After the assault troops had cleared the beach areas, a perplexing problem came to the fore. In the plans for the Leyte operation General Krueger had assigned to the various commands areas for such facilities as their supply dumps and hospitals. Upon arrival on Leyte, the Army Service Command discovered that many of the sites were swamps; the tactical situation delayed reconnaissance for others.