Quote:
Originally Posted by John Dudek
MacArthur was basing his military suppositions on the belief that there would be no war in the Pacific until after the monsoon season was finished, sometime after September, 1942. Given the amount of US money, men, supplies and material already in the pipeline, it's safe to say that MacArthur would have had 200,000 well trained, well equipped, Filippino Troops ready to contest any Japanese invasion by that time frame. Marshall assured MacArthur that he would have priority of all the things on his military shopping list, except 90mm anti aircraft guns, as they had not yet cleared their ordinance trials.
It takes time to build and train an army of that enormous size. Unfortunately, that was one commodity that MacArthur never had in his favor.
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Marshall might have been able to supply a lot of things to MacArthur, but well trained Philippine troops was not one of them. MacArthur claimed he would have those troops before the next Spring, yet he had to know that was impossible, he had to know that he was lying to Marshall because he didn't even have a training program in place after five years of being responsible for training the Philippine Army. Hell, there were generals in Washington, including Eisenhower, who knew he was lying.
MacArthur wasn't a novice general, he knew it would take time to train troops. If he hadn't been able to do it in the previous five years, how the hell did he expect to do it in less than a year? Mac just bought into the false hope, along with Roosevelt and Marshall, that the B-17's would be able to bluff the Japanese and that he actually wouldn't have to produce those 200,000 well trained Filipino troops. Turned out he was dead wrong.