In the three enemy forces, first, the small one with two fast new battleships first sighted coming eastward through the Sulu Sea; second, the middle force found moving eastward through the Sibuyan Sea, and, third, the northern force, coming down from Japan or the Yellow Sea, later smashed by the Third Fleet, were the following:
Three or four carriers, ten battleships, at least twenty-one cruisers and between twenty-seven and thirty-two destroyers. There may have been more destroyers than this figure. The total is at least sixty ships and probably sixty-seven.
The Third Fleet, in addition to its victory off Formosa, sent a carrier task group to assist units of the Seventh Fleet under Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid in striking a force of enemy battleships, cruisers and destroyers that had come through San Bernardino Strait and plunged southward to close range against escort carriers of the Seventh Fleet off the Leyte Gulf.
They were trying to get through the small carrier screen to the landing areas, where General MacArthur’s troops are engaged on Leyte and Samar.
Admiral Nimitz reported that the Third Fleet Task group, which had been drawn down from the north Tuesday afternoon, shared with the escort carriers under Admiral Kincaid credit for inflicting the following damage:
One heavy cruiser was seen to sink, four battleships were heavily damaged by bombs and left the scene at low speed trailing oil; one destroyer was left dead in the water. Later around midnight this enemy force withdrew northward and tried to get back through San Bernardino Strait into the Sibuyan Sea. It was here that at least one cruiser was caught during the night by surface units of the Third Fleet. It was damaged and the American service units sent it to the bottom.
Carrier planes were continuing to carry the damaged enemy force yesterday through the Sibuyan Sea.
One of the fiercest battles was the one late Monday when the small Sulu force penetrated almost to Leyte at the very eastern edge of the Mindanao Sea. The enemy apparently had succeeded in bringing in more land-based air power from the north, probably from Formosa and Ryukyu, and these planes joined in this battle, which nevertheless ended in a decisive defeat for the enemy, who finally turned back, routed.
It was probably in this and the other Seventh Fleet engagement off Leyte Gulf and the Surigao Strait that our escort carriers listed by General MacArthur were hit.
He said one escort carrier was sunk and others were damaged.
It seems clear that the three enemy forces planned to go into action at the same time. The Sulu force, with two battleships, one cruiser and four destroyers, was sighted by submarines Monday and attacked by our carrier planes as it headed for Mindoro and Leyte.
The carrier force did not stop it, although they did considerable damage. The Sibuyan force was sighted west of the Palawan Islands at about the same time and was kept under heavy air attack throughout the afternoon in the Sibuyan Sea. Several of its ships, consisting of four battleships, ten cruisers and thirteen destroyers, were hit by bombs and torpedoes. Nevertheless, it kept coming, passed through the Sibuyan Sea and got out into the Philippine Sea, or Western Pacific, through the San Bernardino Strait.
NOVEMBER 4, 1944
BATTLE TO OPEN ANTWERP IS WON; U.S. DRIVE EAST OF AACHEN GAINS; RUSSIANS 7 MILES FROM BUDAPEST
By DREW MIDDLETON
By Wireless to The New York Times.
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionary Force, France, Nov. 3—The long, grim struggle to open Antwerp to Allied shipping is over. British marines and infantry overran most of Walcheren Island today, including the bulk of the important gun positions, and the Canadians mopped up the last German units holding out south of the Schelde estuary this afternoon, after the bulk of the German garrison had surrendered at 7:30 o’clock this morning.
With this pocket eliminated and the Germans on Walcheren Island fighting for their lives, the Schelde is free from German shelling and the dangerous task of sweeping the mines from the Schelde River can begin. By late this month Antwerp, the greatest port in northwestern Europe, may be open to convoys of the Western powers.
Between the Schelde and ’s Hertogenbosch the Allies’ battleline is slowly advancing. Three new bridgeheads, one American, one British and one Polish, have been established across the Mark River and Canal in the face of heavy enemy fire. Thus the two bridgeheads eliminated by the enemy on Tuesday and Wednesday have been replaced by three new ones and once again Allied forces are striking north toward the Moerdijk bridges over the Meuse (Maas) River.’
FIRST ARMY ADVANCES
American First Army troops, fighting what is described here as a “strong local action,” took the town of Schmidt, about three-quarters of a mile east of a line drawn north and south through Vossenack, which was captured yesterday.
The American First Army had captured 199,834 prisoners up to midnight Thursday and may have passed the 200,000 mark today in the fighting in the Huertgen Forest. The American Third Army has now captured more than 100,000 Germans. Its total up to Oct. 31 was 102,340.
By the time the Canadians had stormed and mopped up Knocke, Heyst and Zeebrugge this morning, the clearing of the Schelde pocket had netted 12,344 prisoners, and perhaps another 1,000 were taken this afternoon. Lieut. Gen. Eberding and 1,800 prisoners were rounded up in the pocket Thursday. The captives taken in this area pushed the prisoner total of the Canadian First Army to more than 200,000.
ENEMY RESISTANCE COLLAPSES
German resistance on Walcheren Island dissolved today as battle-hardened British marines and infantry dug out sedentary German fortress battalions from their positions with mortar, grenade and rifle. Flushing was entirely cleared of the enemy, and Lieut. Col. Rheinhardt, garrison commander, and several hundred of his men were taken prisoner. Most of Flushing had been taken by last night, and today the Tommies combed out the few snipers left in the town.
The marines, who landed at West-kapelle and pushed out to the north and south, advanced within about 3,000 yards of the infantry around Flushing, and almost the entire rim of the island, from Domburg around to Flushing, now is in the Allies’ hands.
Two four-gun batteries of 250mm. coast defense guns north of Westkapelle, which has been held by the British for the past forty-eight hours, were taken today and others were captured Thursday. Domburg, a smaller but tactically, more important town than Flushing, was entered late yesterday from the rear, and the German garrison there dug out by an assault that swept down the cobbled streets from the east, instead of from the west, where the enemy expected it.
The prisoner “bag” today is believed to have been large, although no exact figures are available here. During Wednesday’s fighting 600 Germans were captured.
The Germans have declared Arnemuiden, midway between Middleburgh and the Walcheren end of the causeway, an open area because of the hospitals located there. The Allies have agreed to this declaration.
The Canadian patrols that proceeded into the islands of Noord Beveland and Tholen to the north of Zuid Beveland and Walcheren took more than 200 prisoners from a convalescent “stomach” battalion, all of whose soldiers were suffering from stomach trouble. The Germans form such battalions to facilitate dietary arrangements.
The most important sector between Walcheren and ’s Hertogenbosch is on the Mark River, across which the three new bridgeheads have been thrown. [The Associated Press placed these bridgeheads northwest of Oudenbosch, immediately to the east and north of Oosterhout.] The Germans are shelling the new bridgeheads and also are counter-attacking all three, evidence of the importance they attach to the line of the Mark River and canal, their last defensive position south of the Meuse.
The Canadians are still held by the Germans south of Steenbergen, while the British grip on the south bank of the Meuse to the east of the sector is slowly expanding. Here, too, the enemy is fighting stubbornly and ably.
German artillery fire is delaying progress throughout the front. American engineers built a bridge across their sector of the Mark, only to have it destroyed by shell-fire.
Extensive minefields and machine guns firing on fixed lines are hindering the American advance in the Huertgen forest. Pillboxes encountered south of the minefields and the Vossenack position are being methodically wiped out by self-propelled guns and grenades. Generally the progress is slow and it would be unwise to expect any rapid advances in this sector.
Today’s advance covered no more than two and a half miles through the forest.
SEVENTH ARMY PUSHES ON
Both the American Seventh and the French First Armies are making progress in the south. Baccarat was captured by French troops of the Seventh Army yesterday. Since then six other villages, Demeurve, Bazier, Noussoncourt, Menil-sur-Belvitte, Reclonville and Maxainville have been taken, the first two by the French and the others by the Americans.
These gains, won in the rugged country east of the forest of Mondon, followed some heavy fighting in the Grand Bois Glonville, where the enemy lost a number of tanks, three in one small action, and many men. The advance to Baccarat represented a five-mile gain.
East of Bruyere the Germans are being cleared from the forests despite heavy opposition from strong points.
The American drive toward Raon l’Etape is also progressing well. This advance toward the Schirmeck pass through the Vosges Mountains, was made in the Rambervillers and Mortagne forests and along the Rambervillers-Raon l’Etape road.
The weather broke enough this afternoon to allow the British Second Tactical Air Force to fly more than 400 sorties, most of them in support of the Canadian First Army. Spitfires and Typhoons harried the Germans north of Breda with rockets, bombs and machine-gun bullets attacking several buildings, one of which exploded.
The remaining heavy gun positions were attacked on Walcheren and two tanks were destroyed.
In the day’s only important air clash a British Tempest probably destroyed a German jet-propelled Messerschmitt 262.
NOVEMBER 5, 1944
GERMANS CHASED FROM ALL GREECE
Allies Report Enemy Fleeing into Yugoslavia—Only Stragglers Remain
By The Associated Press.
ROME, Nov. 4—British troops and Greek patriots have driven the Germans completely from Greece, Allied Headquarters announced today.
An RAF officer said it was believed the last German rear guards had crossed over into Yugoslavia Thursday night—thirty-eight days after British troops landed on the rocky western coast of the Peloponnesus Sept. 26. It took the Germans twenty-seven days to overrun the little country in the spring of 1941.
It was an almost bloodless victory for Allied arms, for so eager were the Germans to clear out, and so well did the guerrillas do their work, that British ground forces were unable to bring the rear guards to battle until they had overhauled the retreating columns in northern Greece.
Before that sharp, short engagement at Kozane, fifty-eight miles southwest of the port of Salonika, British and patriots had swept across the Peloponnesus and on Oct. 14 seized the capital of Athens by a combined assault from sea and air in which American transport planes took part.
An Allied announcement today said that additional British troops had landed near Salonika, which previously was freed by patriots, and other troops were moving up to the northern Greek port by land. These forces also reported that no German troops remained on the mainland except a few stragglers.
Tonight the Germans, who may never get back to the Fatherland in view of the strong Yugoslav and Russian Army positions in Yugoslavia, were still on the run out of Albania and Serbia.
A German broadcast said German troops had strong positions in northern Albania and were engaged in street fighting with “Communist elements” in the capital of Tirana itself.
Those Germans who fell back into Yugoslavia were under attack from Yugoslav partisans at Bitolj, thirteen miles north of the Greek border, and at Skoplje, seventy miles farther north, Marshal Tito’s headquarters announced. Both towns were declared under siege.
Reconnaissance pilots who went out looking for Germans in Greece were unable to find any, they reported, but in the last twenty-four hours small columns were spotted near Lake Prespa, just across the border in Albania.
The reconquest of Greece ended three years and six months of Nazi rule, during which it was estimated 500,000 Greeks had died from starvation, executions and mistreatment.
NOVEMBER 8, 1944
ROOSEVELT AND TRUMAN ELECTED TO PRESIDENCY AND VICE PRESIDENCY DEWEY CONCEDES
By ARTHUR KROCK
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who broke more than a century-old tradition in 1940 when he was elected to a third term as President, made another political record yesterday when he was chosen for a fourth term by a heavy electoral but much narrower popular majority over Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York.
At 3:15 A.M. Governor Dewey conceded Mr. Roosevelt’s re-election, sending his best wishes by radio, to which the President quickly responded with an appreciative telegram.
Early this morning Mr. Roosevelt was leading in mounting returns in thirty-three States with a total of 391 electoral votes and in half a dozen more a trend was developing that could increase this figure to more than 400. Governor Dewey was ahead in fifteen States with 140 electoral votes, but some were see-sawing away from him and back again. Typical of these were Wisconsin, where he overtook the President’s lead about 2 A.M., Nevada where Mr. Roosevelt passed him at about the same time, and Missouri.
In the contests for seats in Congress, the Democrats had shown gains of 11 to 20 in the House of Representatives, assuring that party’s continued control of this branch. In the Senate the net of losses and gains appeared to be an addition of one Republican to the Senate, which would give that party twenty-eight members—far short of the forty-nine necessary to a majority.
Despite the great general victories by the Democrats, the popular vote will evidently show a huge minority protest against a fourth term for the President. Tabulations by the press associations indicated that the disparity between the ballots cast for the two candidates will be so small that a change of several hundred thousand votes in the key States, distributed in a certain way, would have reversed the electoral majority. At 4:40 A.M. the Associated Press reported 16,387,999 for Mr. Roosevelt and 14,235,051 for Mr. Dewey from more than one-third of the country’s election districts. This ratio, if carried through, would leave only about 3,000,000 votes between the candidates.
One of the most interesting struggles for the Presidency was that in Wisconsin, where Mr. Dewey took an early lead, lost it and regained it again. Wisconsin is the State where the late Wendell L. Willkie made his stand for renomination, posing the issue of “isolationism” versus “internationalism.” He ran last in the Presidential primary and expressed the belief, in then withdrawing from the race, that isolationism controlled the thinking of Wisconsin Republicans.
WALLACE PROVES RIGHT
The popular vote ran so close until after 11 o’clock that even the most optimistic supporters of the President were cautious in their claims. But Mr. Wallace was not so timorous. He established a national record as a forecasting statistician by announcing at 9:30 P.M. that the President had been re-elected by a large electoral majority, that he had been given a Democratic House with a “mandate” to carry out his war and post-war program and that “bipartisan isolationism has been destroyed.”
When Mr. Wallace issued this statement few were ready to accept his conclusion. But an hour later he had become a major prophet.
NOVEMBER 12, 1944
V-2 Is Aimed At Allied Armies; Speed Is ‘3,500 Miles an Hour’
By The Associated Press.
LONDON, Nov. 11—The German V-2 rocket bomb, described as a thirteen and one-half ton wingless projectile that cuts through space at a maximum speed of 3,500 miles an hour, has been falling in Allied sectors in Belgium and France as well as in Britain, front dispatches approved by Army censors said tonight.
A number of these new vengeance weapons, which cannot be heard coming because they ar
e faster than sound, fell in one United States Army sector alone in less than two days, and the rate has increased at various intervals, said a dispatch from an Associated Press correspondent. The censor deleted the origin of the dispatch. In another dispatch, from which the censor also had deleted the dateline, a Canadian Press correspondent, in describing this “eeriest weapon yet produced in the war,” said the Germans had been bombarding an Allied sector in Belgium. The correspondent was not allowed to say where the bombs fell, but the missile was termed poor in accuracy.
Today’s German communiqué said the V-2 still was being fired at Antwerp in Belgium and at London.
The new German reprisal weapon was described by the correspondents as being about forty-six feet long and five feet wide, and less effective than the V-l, the robot bomb first used against England. The warhead contains almost a ton of explosive, and the fuel used to propel it weighs nine tons. It is shot from concrete ramps almost vertically, reaches a height of twenty miles before beginning a great arc toward its intended target. At the height of the arc it is fifty-five miles from the earth and attains a velocity of 5,000 feet per second, or approximately 3,500 miles an hour.
Allied experts were quoted as saying that the V-2 was not as effective in destructive power as the V-l because of the huge crater it made, reducing the blast. The robot bomb digs hardly any crater, going off on contact with maximum effect.
The V-2 also is a much more complicated and expensive weapon than the robot bomb, a product which takes an immense amount of machining. The warhead is not encased in heavy metal and there is no shrapnel effect, the Canadian Press dispatch said.
ROCKETS ARE NOT ACCURATE
The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945 Page 129