Watching his expression, there was no mistaking his elation.The Battle of Leyte Gulf is the largest naval battle in the Pacific, and the largest naval battle in recorded history. “Both men seemed calm,” Chickering short-waved, “but MacArthur borrowed a canteen and his hand trembled as he held it to his lips. He saw it from a cruiser standing in to shore an hour after the landings, sitting placidly on the flag bridge puffing his pipe.”Īnd when the General came ashore at Red Beach, TIME’S Bill Chickering, veteran of the Gilberts and the landing on Bougainville, was waiting on that “toughest beachhead” to report MacArthur’s arrival with President Osmeña:
Walker went on to tell how General MacArthur got his first view of the Philippines-”a gun-rocked coast backed by rolling hills. Loyal Filipinos helping us from the first moment of landing.” “The beach where I am was perforated by both mortar and artillery fire at landing.
“All landings seem to have come off well,” Walker reported. And there the monitors of the Blue Network picked them up-recorded them-wrote them down-and wired them east by fast overland telegraph-to reach TIME’S editors in New York in less than an hour’s time… Army Signal Corps circuits to San Francisco. Walker’s words flashed across 7,000 miles of ocean via U.S. “It was virtually perfect weather for the landings.” “American power came back to the Philippines today over the glass-smooth, grass-green waters of Leyte Gulf under a tropical sun coming through an ominous haze lit by yellow flashes and the blasting of guns,” that message began. Last Friday John Walker of TIME’S Battlefronts department handed his first dispatch from the Philippines to an Army short-wave broadcaster. 30, 1944, letter from the publisher, TIME explained how the process worked: But the troops weren’t the only Americans there - TIME correspondents were also in the area, sending dispatches back to the office.
The battle was also a crucial step in General Douglas MacArthur‘s making good on his famed 1942 “I shall return” promise to the Philippines.
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