The complicated operation included a ground element, with the remnants of the 16th Infantry Division attacking from their mountain positions in concert with the airborne landings. The attack was scheduled for 5 December, but poor weather grounded the transports and 14th Area Army issued yet another delay order, moving the assault to the 7th. Sixteenth Infantry Division never received the order, but moved out late. Their attack on 6 December still came a day before the paratroopers arrived.

Gen. Shiro Makino organized the thousand-odd starving survivors of his 16th Infantry Division into a single battalion and led them on a harrowing march through the jungles and mountains. Led by a Filipino guide, they emerged to catch the Americans by surprise. They killed many of the rear-area troops still in their beds around Buri airfield, captured the strip and then dug in to await the American counter-attack. By nightfall it still had not come; unknown to the Japanese, the Americans had written off the airfields as useless and stopped their efforts to repair them.