Complicating things further was the situation in the Los Baños area. At the time, Los Baños was 25 miles behind enemy lines, and that was the good news. The bad news was the Japanese forces in the immediate area. In addition to an estimated 250 Japanese troops who guarded the compound, there was a Japanese company two miles east of the camp composed of approximately 200 men in possession of two 105 mm guns and four machine guns. Additional artillery was stationed south and west of the camp.

Most troubling was the Japanese 8th (“Tiger”) Division, containing anywhere from 9,000 to 11,000 combat-ready troops, stationed approximately seven miles south of Los Baños. One of its battalions was camped in the Alaminos area, only a 90-minute march away. Additionally, though intelligence sources had been able to provide good and credible pictures of the camp and its immediate surroundings, the planners could only guess at the condition and the exact number of internees at Los Baños. Surprise, speed, and above all timing, were essential. If any one part, especially the amphibious force, was delayed, the rescue could result in disaster.

Adding to the pressure was the urgency of a rescue. Earlier liberations at Japanese prisons revealed that the Japanese, had, under orders, massacred prisoners. The orders for the execution of the internees at Los Baños could come at any moment. Thus, while the 11th Airborne’s staff was preparing for the main strike, a second and separate contingency plan was developed simultaneously by Maj. Jay D. Vanderpool, an Army officer who was serving as guerrilla coordinator in the Los Baños area.

Vanderpool, who had been operating behind enemy lines for several weeks, was a personal representative of MacArthur, whose extraordinarily broad orders were contained in a radio message the major received shortly after he arrived at his assigned guerilla camp: “VANDERPOOL FROM MACARTHUR: DO WHAT WILL BEST FURTHER THE ALLIED CAUSE.” As Vanderpool later noted, the risks of the lightly-armed guerrillas associated with a rescue of internees at Los Baños were immense, “but if the executions started we might have no other choice.”

The day of rescue was set for Feb. 23, 1945. On Feb. 18, Maj. Henry A. Burgess, commander 1st Battalion, 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, whose unit was at that time involved in heavy fighting along the Genko Line, received orders to disengage and prepare for the Los Baños raid. A member of the Wyoming National Guard, Burgess had been called to active duty when the Guard was activated in February 1941. In November 1941, he was ordered onto a troop ship bound from San Francisco for the Philippines. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, the troop ship was ordered back to San Francisco, thus narrowly escaping the fate of those he was now assigned to rescue. In 1943, Burgess joined the 11th Airborne and had been in command of the battalion in combat for only 15 days when he received his orders for the raid. Burgess had never heard of Los Baños and was unaware of its importance.

Reporting to division headquarters for his briefing, he later said, “I was shocked to learn that only our battalion of about 412 men and officers was expected to make the raid.” But even though his battalion was small, even by paratroop standards, it was the strongest one numerically in the division. The paratroop drop was assigned to 1st Lt. John M. Ringler’s B-Company as, with 93 men, it was the strongest in the battalion.

After a series of briefings in which he learned that the drop zone was small (1,500 feet by 3,200 feet) compared to the standard drop zones, and was bordered by treacherous hazards such as the camp’s barbed-wire fence, high-voltage lines, trees, and railroad tracks, Ringler developed a plan that called for the unit to jump from a height of 500 feet. This would both make the paratroopers difficult targets for the enemy and increase the chance of a safe landing for all the men.

On Feb. 21, 1945, Staff Sgt. John Fulton, a radio operator attached to one of the guerrilla units operating behind enemy lines near Los Baños, transmitted a message that read in part: “URGENT HAVE RECEIVED RELIABLE INFORMATION THAT JAPS HAVE LOS BANOS SCHEDULED FOR MASSACRE.”