Combat· World War II
Southern Philippines (Operation VICTOR)
The VICTOR operations of 1945 cleared the southern Philippine islands, with Mindanao as the main objective and the Sulu Archipelago stretching toward Borneo.
Marine aviation organized as MAGSZAMBOANGA, combining the dive bombers of MAG-24 and MAG-32, the Corsairs of MAG-12 and MAG-14, and the PBJ medium bombers of VMB-611. Marine air worked in unusually close partnership with Filipino guerrillas under Colonel Wendell Fertig, and intelligence gathered by Lieutenant Colonel Keith McCutcheon enabled an unopposed Army landing at Parang. Marine planes flew more than 20,000 sorties on Mindanao alone. As elsewhere in the Philippines, the Marine role was aviation support rather than ground combat, so only scattered individual losses are recorded and no consolidated Marine casualty figure exists.
Podcast episodes on World War II
Record no. 581