The 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment was a parachute infantry unit of the United States Army first activated during World War II. It formed the parachute infantry element of the 11th Airborne Division. Its mission on Leyte was to take and hold the passes through the mountains in the center of the island, and engage and reduce the Japanese forces in the area, ultimately in support of the battle of Ormoc simultaneously ongoing. The 511th performed this mission during harsh monsoonal weather in the steep, heavily forested terrain, emerging shortly after Christmas of 1944 onto the Ormoc plain.