How One Pilot's 'SUICIDAL' Night Landing Saved 40 Wounded From Burning Island

April twenty-ninth, nineteen forty-two. Eleven twenty-seven post meridiem. Above the Bismarck Sea, Lieutenant Junior Grade Thomas Pollock tightened his grip on the control column of PBY Catalina Boat One as fires from Corregidor lit the horizon like a malevolent sunrise. Through the scratched plexiglass windscreen, he could see flames consuming what remained of the Rock, orange and red tongues licking at ammunition dumps, fuel stores, and the shattered remnants of American
resistance in the Philippines.
What the Japanese forces ringing the fortress did not know was that in the next forty-five minutes, two flying boats would attempt what military planners in Australia had labeled borderline suicidal. Land on open water at night. Load forty-six souls including critically wounded personnel and Army nurses. Take off again before Japanese artillery could find the range. All while fires burned bright enough to illuminate every detail for enemy gunners on Bataan, just two miles away.
The mathematics of survival were brutal. Corregidor had endured one hundred and forty-three days of siege. Today alone, the Japanese had celebrated Emperor Hirohito's birthday by firing approximately ten thousand shells and bombs at the five-square-mile island. Every anti-aircraft battery was destroyed or silenced. Most of the coastal guns lay wrecked. The hospital tunnels overflowed with wounded. Water was rationed. Food was running out.
And yet, forty-six people were about to bet their lives that two obsolete patrol planes could slip through the Japanese blockade, land in hostile waters under a full moon, and escape before dawn revealed them to every enemy gun within range.
The story of how Pollock came to be here, flying through darkness toward a burning island that official Washington had already written off, began two weeks earlier in Perth, Western Australia. The transformation from routine to audacious started with a simple question posed by Lieutenant Commander Edgar T. Neale, commanding officer of what remained of Patrol Wing Ten.
Could two PBYs make it to Corregidor and back?
February nineteen forty-two. Pearl Harbor smoldered. Wake Island had fallen. Guam was lost. Singapore would surrender in days. The Japanese advance seemed unstoppable, swallowing territory at a pace that stunned even the most pessimistic Allied planners. In the Philippines, American and Filipino forces fought a desperate delaying action on the Bataan Peninsula while Corregidor, the fortified island at the mouth of Manila Bay, became the last stronghold.
General Douglas MacArthur had evacuated to Australia on March eleventh, leaving Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright to command the doomed garrison. MacArthur's departure by PT boat through Japanese-controlled waters made headlines. His promise, "I shall return," became instant legend. But for the eleven thousand troops still holding Corregidor, MacArthur's promise meant nothing without supplies, reinforcements, and some hope of eventual relief.
None were coming.
By April, Washington had made the cold calculation. Corregidor could not be held. The Philippines could not be saved. Every resource would go toward building forces in Australia for the eventual counteroffensive. The men and women on Corregidor would have to surrender when ammunition ran out and hunger made further resistance impossible.
But not everyone accepted this verdict. Admiral Thomas C. Hart, commander of the decimated Asiatic Fleet, argued that certain key personnel, critical intelligence documents, and a handful of nurses should be evacuated while evacuation remained theoretically possible. The Navy had already used submarines to pull out a few dozen people. President Manuel Quezon of the Philippines, Commissioner Francis Sayre, and selected staff had escaped that way. On April eighth, a submarine had evacuated twenty-seven naval officers and men.