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MAJ Mark E Cooper
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Ryder, William Thomas (Billy), BG.
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Last Address Pinehurst, NC
Date of Passing Oct 01, 1992
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William Thomas Ryder
Brigadier General, United States Army
As a First Lieutenant he commanded the first Airborne test platoon in 1940 and was the first American officer to make a parachute jump under than emergency conditions. He made jumps into both North Africa and Sicily in World War II before being transferred to the Pacific Theater and to the staff of General Douglas MacArthur.
He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on October 23, 1992 in a ceremony attended by two of the remaining 18 members of the original test platoon, former and present members of the 82nd Airborne Division and his widow, Muriel, who he met in the Pacific while she was serving in the Red Cross there. The real father of American Airborne warfare.
No one knew, in the early morning hours of June 26, 1940, that a reputation was being born.
But when First Lieutenant William T. Ryder stepped forward on that hot summer morning at Fort Benning, Georgia, and volunteered for what to many seemed like another cockeyed scheme dreamed up by the Army brass, he secured for himself a place in history.
Ryder became, officially, the Army's first paratrooper.
On Friday, with the solemn pomp that was his due, retired Brigadier General William T. Ryder, 79, of Pinehurst was laid to rest. A military career that began in 1932 with the long gray line of cadets at West Point ended 60 years later with the playing of "Taps" among the long white rows of tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery.
But Ryder did more than just be the first man out the door of a C-33 transport flying 1,500 feet above Georgia in 1940. He set the standard and the style for paratroopers. He made them think of themselves as elite troops, the best-dressed and the toughest and the best-looking soldiers in the world.
That reputation lives on today. Although the standard Army hat is a sad-looking affair, be it the camouflage fatigue cap or the green dress hat, paratroopers at Fort Bragg wear jaunty maroon berets. And although the dress uniform calls for black shoes, paratroopers strut in highly polished jump boots. Paratroopers think they can do more push-ups and run faster and farther and fight harder when they get there.
It wasn't that way at first. Ryder was among hundreds of officers and enlisted men who volunteered for something being called the "parachute test platoon" at Fort Benning in 1940. The U.S. Army, after watching the early success of German and Russian paratroopers, wanted to see whether Americans could do it too. Ryder, who had been learning and writing about paratroopers, was chosen to command the test platoon and find out whether U.S. soldiers could cut it.
Ryder chose only unmarried men because it was so dangerous. He chose only those in excellent physical condition. He chose only experienced infantrymen and he worked them all summer. Soon the three miles a day they ran got boring, so the men themselves upped the ante to five miles a day in the Georgia heat. To simulate a parachute landing, they jumped from the backs of moving trucks. Every mistake, no matter how minor, was punished with push-ups. They studied tactics and what little was know n about parachuting. They jumped from amusement park towers that gave simulated parachute rides. They learned to pack their own parachutes while blindfolded. And they wore those dashing paratrooper boots.
On August 16, 1940, Ryder lined his hardened men up at the airstrip and they began loading. The demonstration they had seen the day before must have been weighing heavily on their minds. They had watched as a 150-pound dummy simulated a parachute drop and smashed to the ground 50 feet in front of them when its parachute didn't open.
The plane reached 1,500 feet and as it passed over the field where the rest of the test platoon watched and waited, Ryder stepped out the door and into history. He was followed by eight other enlisted paratroopers. There were supposed to be 10 altogether, but the man chosen by lots to be the first enlisted paratrooper froze and William "Red" King got the honor.
Hundreds of thousands of paratroopers followed Ryder and the test platoon, jumping into battle in Sicily, Normandy, Munsan, Vietnam, Grenada and Panama. The difference was, they had that cocky paratrooper confidence because Lt. William Ryder and those he led had the guts to go first.
Leyte Campaign (1944-45)/Battle of Mindoro
From Month/Year
December / 1944
To Month/Year
December / 1944
Description The Battle of Mindoro was a battle in World War II between forces of the United States and Japan, in Mindoro Island in the central Philippines, from 13–16 December 1944, during the Philippines campaign.
Troops of the United States Army, supported by the United States Navy and U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), made an amphibious landing on Mindoro and defeated Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) forces there. There was no significant opposition from the Imperial Japanese Navy, nor from the Japanese Army and Navy Air Forces, except for kamikaze (suicide) attacks on American ships.
The Japanese force in Mindoro was not large, and was eliminated in three days. The Army was assisted in the campaign by guerrillas from the local Filipino population.
The U.S. captured Mindoro to establish airfields there, which would be in fighter range of Lingayen Gulf in northern Luzon Island, where the next major amphibious invasion of the Philippines was planned. Ground-based fighter cover was necessary for this operation. Mindoro could also serve as the advanced base for U.S. troops going to fight in Luzon.
Battle
On 15 December, the invasion of Mindoro began. The clear weather allowed the full use of American air and naval power, including six escort carriers, three battleships, six cruisers and many other support warships against light Japanese resistance. Because of inadequate airstrip facilities in Leyte, the 503rd Parachute Regimental Combat Team came ashore in Mangarin Bay with the landing force instead of jumping. Destroyers provided fire support for the troop landings and anti-aircraft protection for the ships in the transport area. Two LSTs struck by kamikazes were abandoned and sank.
In one heroic action, the destroyer USS Moale (DD-693), under the command of Commander Walter M. Foster, went alongside the burning LST-738 (which was loaded with aviation fuel and ordnance) to rescue crewmembers. Several explosions aboard LST-738 caused damage to Moale as she pulled away. Some pieces of shrapnel were two feet square and they put four holes in Moale's hull. Gunner's Mate Ed Marsh reported that a one-gallon jar of vaseline from the LST's cargo splattered on one barrel of his twin 40 mm Bofors AA gun, providing unwelcome lubrication. Moale suffered one casualty and thirteen wounded. In addition, Moale also rescued 88 survivors.
There were 1,000 defending Japanese soldiers stationed on Mindoro. Another 200 survivors from ships sunk off Mindoro en route to Leyte were also present. The defenders were outnumbered and outgunned. Some 300 Japanese manning an air raid warning station at the island's northern end put up a stiff fight against a company of the 503rd, but except for mopping up, the island was secure within 48 hours.
Aftermath
The defending Japanese forces on Mindoro suffered some 200 killed and 375 wounded. The survivors fled into the jungles, where they lurked till the end of the war. The 24th Infantry Division lost 18 men and had 81 wounded.
By the end of the first day, Army engineers were at work preparing airfields. Two were completed in thirteen days. These airfields allowed U.S. aircraft to provide direct support for the Luzon invasion. The Mindoro airfields were also used by long-range bombers, especially USAAF B-24 Liberators, to attack Japanese shipping from Formosa to Luzon. These bombers also operated over the South China Sea, and combined with the Navy to blockade shipping between Japan and south-east Asia.
