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The American Defeat at the Apoo Beachhead: Learning to fight
Learning to fight: analysis of the Battle of the Apoo Beachhead
The heavy fighting at the beachhead cost the 11th PA, 12th PS and 23rd PS Divisions between a third to half of their infantry strength. Japanese losses were similar and in some cases, such as a battalion of the 47th Regiment of the 48th Infantry Division that loss approached 80%. But the fierce fighting failed in the end to hurl the Japanese back.
The Japanese had several important advantages. The first was their landing site. The Americans were set up to attack a landing at the center of the Gulf from three sides, with the armored / cavalry force to provide the final push to to the beaches. However the Japanese landing on the eastern side of the Gulf, with a river between them and three of the four American formations, and immediately engaged the 12th Infantry Division (PS) splitting it almost in two, forcing it to react to events instead of launching a counterattack when the Japanese where most vulnerable. In addition the Japanese beachhead was only 8 kilometers from thick jungle in an area with only one road. Thus the American force had to attack across a river and through jungle, and particularly in the jungle, communications breakdowns, inexperience, some poor leadership at the junior level and even battalion level and inability to coordinate the counterattack properly led to failure. The American force was forced to attack and thus be defeated in detail, and the final effort simply added more casualties.
Other problems were the Japanese were simply better armed, managed to get more firepower into the fight, had more skill with their mortars, machine guns (and many more of both) and managed to finally get nearly 3 brigades of heavy guns ashore that overpowered the American artillery. American tanks found that the Japanese tanks were vulnerable (indeed losing 15 M3 Stuart tanks, mostly to anti-tank guns against Japanese losses of 36 tanks, mostly to American artillery, heavy machine guns and a a brief company sized tank battle between the Japanese 7th Tank Regiment and the US 194th Tank Battalion).
But the counterattack failed. Although potentially the Americans and Filipinos still could have pushed the Japanese back into the sea, it would have wrecked all four of the combat formations of the I Corps to do it while the Japanese attack from northern Luzon and from Lamon Bay threatened its northern flank and rear. The attack also used up staggering amounts of artillery ammunition, nearly all that had not yet been moved to Bataan, and Eisenhower decided in the end that there was simply too high a risk of destroying the cream of his army that he can never replace with Japanese naval and air domination already in effect.
But the heavy damage to the 48th Infantry Division and the fact that it too is forced to use up nearly all of the supplies it landed with buys Wainwright the time to break off the action.