Reasons for loss of Philippines, May 1942

It is my understanding that all US subs used the same type of torpedoes, less sure about surface ships but it would seem praticle that they also use the same type. I have heard of fewer failures for surface units, but then they had fewer oppertunities.

 

The S boats had the older torpedo's that were reliable (though inferior in every other catagory). Thus when the S boats were skippered by a good captain and managed to get off a shot, they would at least punch a hole in the target. But as history ordained, these hits were far and few between.

The story of the US subs in the defense of the Phillipines can be summed up as:
Bad doctrine
Eqmt failures
Horrific torpedo performance
Uneven quality of the CO's
Bad luck.

Remember though. Even if none of the above was true, all they could do was draw blood and slow down the Japanese.

 

That would have been huge. Had the Phillipines managed to tie up more major Japanese naval units or air units supporting their ops things could have turned out differently further south, and subsequently elsewhere. The whole point of WPO was to delay the enemy along the way, to minimise his offensive war plan's success while the US could build up their forces. Their were no delays in the Japanese plan to take the PI, in fact, after the initial landings no assistance was required either from the IJN or the Japanese air forces, freeing these units up entirely for southern ops.

 

This depends on the time the US raid is launched. If the US bombers are enroute and arrive after the Japanese strike has taken off there will be no aerial opposition to the raid as the Japanese Zeros available are escorting their own bombers enroute to the PI.

 

Considering the numbers and experiece/training of the B-17 crews, not a great deal would have been acomplished by a successfull raid. Then again anything would be better than being caught on the ground.

 

On January 1, 1942 MacArthur was offered and accepted a payment of $500,000 ($7.5 million in current value) from President Quezon of the Philippines as payment for his pre-war service. MacArthur's staff members also received payments: $75,000 for Sutherland, $45,000 for Richard Marshall, and $20,000 for Huff. Eisenhower, after being appointed Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, was also offered money by Quezon, but declined. These payments were known only to a few in Manila and Washington, including President Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, until they were made public by historian Carol Petillo in 1979. The revelation tarnished MacArthur's reputation.

It gives a lot of motivation to his famous catch-phrase "I will return" doesn't it.

source: wiki

Of course the debacle at Pearl Harbor sealed the Philippines doom, but USAFFE forces there could have done a better job and tied more Japanese forces down longer if Mac had done his job properly.

No, I really don't care for MacArthur. Don't get me started on him.[/QUOTE]


Well, I'm no great fan of his, either. Quezon was a major believer in the idea of a neutral Philippines. The money you're referring to, I'd seen reference to, as well. It was a part of Quezon's attempt to set up a neutral and independent Philippines, probably ahead of the United States' plans. He saw the war as an opportunity to speed it up, no doubt.
MacArthur seemed to see himself as personally connected to the Philippines. I doubt that money was the over-riding incentive to him by the time he left in March, as it had been shortly after Pearl, when he himself believed in the possibility of sparing the Philippines from participating in FDR's war--as had Quezon.
His setting aside of WPO was, indeed, possibly the single biggest mistake of his military career. However, the most catastrophic short-term thing, was the failure to adequately protect the air bases within 24 hours of Pearl.
But then, that happened over and over, all over the world, primarily on the Allied side. Time and again, higher officer-dom can be faulted for being caught with their pants down when it came to adequate fore-warning of air bases and preparation to avoid being caught on the ground.
A lot of "what-if"-ing is required to bring a more satisfactory outcome to the Philippines in 41-42. About the best I can see, is it might have lasted longer, though this is even debatable. Use of WPO--not setting it aside--as well as things like placement of the Marines on Corregidor: I've seen writings by persons involved, to the effect these things would have impacted on the campaign. Bataan might have lasted another few weeks or days, while Corregidor might have required yet another wave of Japanese landings. The thing is, though, the Japanese had nearly unfettered access. Any change on our part, might have been countered by one on their part. Singapore had already fallen, as well as Sumatra and Java. They had forces freed up to send in, if need be. I sometimes think the "strange surrenders" that occurred after Corregidor, slowed the final official date of Japanese occupation, about as much as anything else might have. The Japanese considered June 9, 1942, as a stopping date of hostilities with regular U.S. forces, though it's clear guerrilla activity continued unabated, with major guerrilla attacks occurring on Leyte and Negros islands as early as June 15.
It depends on how far back you start with the alternative history scenario, as to how much impact you have.
Remember, too, that MacArthur actually thought, when he went to Australia, that a counterattack could happen in a few weeks. There was nothing there, however, with which to launch a counter-attack, and wouldn't be for many months, even years. Meanwhile, Australia itself had come under attack. 85,000 British troops that could have been landed there, had been sent to Singapore instead--just in time to be captured by the Japanese. MacArthur wasn't the only one screwing up.
MacArthur was of an earlier generation that took a long time to realize the value of aircraft. That was another big part of it. Those guys were just too slow on the draw in that whole area. From British forces in Norway in '40, to French plans for another war with Germany in '39, aircraft took a back seat at critical junctures.
As to the return campaign, sadly, from the standpoint of the feelings of the people there under Japanese occupation, the return itself could probably have been bypassed or delayed. A more direct thrust using forces set aside for the return to the Philippines, could have captured Palau and the Marianas. From there, Japan could have been bombed heavily earlier in the war than happened, and this could have possibly shortened the war slightly.
But it was unthinkable to MacArthur to not come back. And, given the fates of the US POWs there, and what could have happened had we not returned when we did, it's perhaps unthinkable to anyone else.
Still, the thought crosses the mind: if we'd been able to hit Japan directly earlier, and ended the war earlier, would the Philippines have been better off, overall? Look what happened to Manila, for example. Might that not have happened?
Some equally heinous crime against humanity might have supplanted it.

 

Just want to add one additional thing about the MacArthur staff that also inspires a bit of contempt, as well as suspicion, about them.
Charles Willoughby, (aka Karl Waldenbach, as William Manchester noted in American Caesar) was MacArthur's Chief of Intelligence during the Philippines campaign and later.
According to an August 19, 1952 New York Journal article by Frank Kluckhohn, ("From Heidelberg to Madrid--the Story of General Willoughby"), Willoughby admired Franco and not only this, had a medal from Mussolini.
Now, it's true that Italy surrendered in 1943-- or, at least, tried to. But through April, May and June of 1942, it was still very much AT WAR with the United States. The medal issue is discussed by Kluckhohn in that same article:
"One evening, not long after the occupation [of Japan] began [in 1945], there was a raid on the Hotel Marunuchi by American M.P.'s looking for a ring of black-market operators. Unfortunately, the MPs disturbed the occupants of a suite where General Willoughby was having dinner with the stranded Italian Fascist Ambassador to Japan and members of his staff. While serving as military attache in Ecuador, Willoughby had received a decoration from Mussolini's government--the Order of Saints Maurizio and Lazzaro. The General was furious at being disturbed in his entertainment, and gave the M.P.s a good piece of his mind...".
Kluckhohn also notes:
(1) that John Gunther observed Willoughby-Waldenbach (he was of German origins) toast Franco as "the second greatest General" (the first being, of course, MacArthur);
(2) that, in 1936, in a lecture in Madrid, Willoughby had proclaimed himself "a fellow Falangist" (the Falangists being the main followers of Franco during his victory to become Fascist dictator of Spain with German and Italian military assistance during the Spanish Civil War).

My point-I think this is still on topic for this thread--is that, possibly, another cause of the defeat in the Philippines, was the quality of MacArthur's military staff. The Far Right sympathies among MacArthur's social cadre in Manila only enhanced the potential for their kind of thinking to wreak, at least, confusion, if not havoc with U.S. military planning in anticipation of a war with Japan.
These are just things that I've not seen brought up in regard to the MacArthur staff.
Be it noted, (Kluckhohn also tells us) that Willoughby did engage in active combat on Bataan, "he had rallied a company whose captain had fallen [badly wounded] under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire and led it back into action"; he also "engaged in heroic actions" at Buna later, for which he was awarded the DSC.
Yet his ties with the wealthy elites in Manila going into the war--and his assistance in getting them off the hook for collaboration with the Japanese after the war--all suggest he was part of the atmosphere that was more interested in an accommodation with Spain and Japan, and neutrality for the Philippines, than for active war for FDR against Japan, at least in those very early days.
This kind of thinking may have been, to some extent, pivotal in regard to supplies for the (late-re-enacted) WPO-based tactics on Bataan. A lot was made, even in Jan. 1942, of Philippines provinces' "independence" of the U.S. war effort; and some, incredibly and infamously, were allowed to deny food supplies to our forces retreating into Bataan. Again, in MacArthur's command post, there was, seemingly, still that fascination with the idea that maybe a neutral Philippines might still happen, somehow.

A similar atmosphere, to some extent, pervaded the upper classes of Singapore, by the way, in 1941. The Japanese were associated with anti-communism, and that put them in pretty good graces with the upper elites. And, in the end, too, the proof is in the pudding: while some elitists suffered under Japan, most of them did pretty well.

 

The pre-war US Army officer corps did possess a fair amount of 'deadwood' within its ranks. Due in part to slow promotion rates and a overreliance on seniority for what promotions there were. Also the military has allways drawn to it the more conservative members of our society, especially in peacetime. During the thirties leaders such as Franco and Mussolini, and yes even Hitler, were seen by some as reasonable alternatives to the political and economic chaos that seemed to be overtaking the world at that time. For many in the west, the way we look at Islamic Fundamentalism today, is the way they viewed communism then. The history of these men are now laid bare to us, but in the early to mid '30s they appeared as 'men of action' and even patriots to their homeland's in a time of uncertainty.

It was also common for military men serving in foreign diplomatic assignments to give or receive medals to one another. When not at war with each other, military officers saw themselves in something of a brotherhood despite comming from differing countries. The comming war would test those beliefs greatly as it was a war of conquest and extermination by those who started it. Recall also that Doolittle and his pilots attached medals given by the Japanese government to American servicemen before the war to the bombs dropped on Tokyo and targets in 1942.

Finally it should be understood that there was almost no possible way for the Phillipines to hold out against a determined Japanese assault. Even if the US Pacific Fleet had not been attacked on Dec.7th, 1941. This was due in part to the treaties that the US signed, and for the most part honored that limited defensive preparations in the region, and to the limits of money available due to the depression of the 1930's. No question more could have been done with what was there, but with europe brewing up in the late 30's, there simply was not enough to go around. In Pearl Harbor there were on paper 2 US army divisions, plus attachments, defending the islands and fleet base. Yet these units were in reality just a collection of battalions who had never trained together on anything much beyond the company level, and had not even unpacked all their artillery. If this was the defence of the US primary fleet base, how could the Phillipines be much better?

 

In short we were not geared up for war, we were greatly over extended past our ability to resupply our forces in equipment or men, and many who suffered this loss came from the South and New Mexico, as they were the first available troops to draw upon for the new war. It was a sad mistake in how much our troops had to suffer as a result. My dad took me with him a couple of times he traveled around to visit veterans that continued to suffer from their ailments in the post war years. All of them we visited were people he knew before the war. Starvation and war wounds continued to take their toll for years after, amongst the troops that served on Bataan and Corrigidor. My dad considered himself so fortunate that he was drafted at a later date for his term of service and missed being in this group. I was 7or 8 years old when I visited these veterans with my dad and some were very ill for years. At that age it was a while before I understood how starvation damaged so many things in the human body. I will not forget their sacrifice. Assigning of blame for this event is counter-productive because if you blame MacArthur, others may have had a better tactic or two but we still could not resupply our troops there and we only had troops in limited numbers, and our troops did not know how to fight in the jungles, had limited air support, were out gunned to begin with and were at best a wild shot at succeeding with little or no preparation. Perhaps if we want to learn a lesson from this, we need to maintain a ready and well trained army even in peacetime, and should not let economic concerns reduce our capacity as the Great Depression did for our entry into WWII. In that way, we might have avoided this. It took time for us to gear up to match the efforts of the Japanese aggression. In the meantime great American soldiers suffered a great deal.

 

You made some good points Victor, I guess from my perspective, they were ill used. They would have been sacrificed and suffered regardless. It's just that, had they had a better commander they could have achieved so much more for their sacrifice. An extra month, forcing the Japanese to commit more of their resources to the conquest, etc. all could have greatly influenced the course of the War in the Pacific and possibly have saved lives in the long run.

 

Perhaps you are right but I see so many things against the possibility of their success, a month more may have made the difference but a month later the Japanese would be even more prepared as well. They established their foothold first and were entrenched. I think it is what may happen in many wars we have been involved in, we make a few mis-steps before we get the organization to go for success. Many were angry with MacArthur but once re-supply was established he did conduct successful campaigns going forward. No doubt he faced a great deal of pressure after Pearl Harbor to do "something".

 

Let's face it. The United States was simply ill prepared both in terms of men and material to do any meaningful defense of the island against the overwhelming forces of the Japanese. None of the US defense of the island did much of anything even to slow down the Japanese advance. It would have been militarily prudent to have simply vacate all the US forces from the island and regroup somewhere else until a better opportune time much like what was done in Dunkirk.

 

You know, that is a very good point, along the lines of what I've been thinking about regarding, for example, the landing of those British and Anzac forces at Singapore, rather than sending them to Australia to beef up those defenses there. Churchill admitted in his Memoirs that he sent them in for political, not military, reasons. He was trying, he said, to placate John Curtin, the then-PM of Australia.
This is one of those "what ifs" of course. But what would have happened if they'd been available when MacArthur arrived on Australia?
It sounds like--almost could be an "either/or" situation for them. Had MacA arrived in Australia with them there, wouldn't he have been in an even bigger hurry to re-occupy the Phils than originally? Then, their fate might have been sealed by being sent into Mindanao in convoys that might have had little or even no chance of arrival in the face of superior Japanese naval and air forces at the time. Instead of dying in POW camps in Malaya or elsewhere, they might have gone to the bottom of the sea instead.
What a choice it might have been for them.
Also, without as much opposition higher up in the Asian area, the Japanese would have come down much faster and harder on the Philippines.
Or--well maybe not. After all, the 85,000 or so arrived just days before the surrender, so they probably didn't affect the Japanese plans enough to have freed up any Japanese troops for the Philippines.
Had they not been there, Singapore would have fallen, maybe 24 hours or so earlier. And, had they been in Australia--and the Japanese knew it--might this not have caused them to reconsider attacking Australia in the first place?
I mean, part of the Japanese boldness against Australia was because they well knew of its weakness at that point. With 85,000 more British, though no more tanks, on Australia, Milne Bay might have looked a lot less appealing to them.
I'm sure others have looked into this. But maybe that means, after all, that a heavier effort would have been extended against the Philippines, with the resultant, possible, earlier fall. They might have placed heavier emphasis on Mindanao and the Visayas, to be sure they were beefed up there for a possible counter-attack from Australia by a British forc e led by...MacArthur? Hmmm...who WOULD have led such a force? Wavell, of the ABDA command? He was still on Java, at the time Singapore fell, but not much longer.
But MacArthur would have been in a position to use his political pull in DC--or, at least, FDR's political fear of him--to put pressure on to be high up in the echelons of command of the relief expedition.
From HIS standpoint, "I shall return" would have been absolutely required, to fulfill his rhetoric. And the pressure woud have been strong to have sent at least part of that large British force from Australia, up to Java and points north.
The idea of withdrawal to shorter lines, too, for the Philippines forces, is interesting.
What if some portion of the Bataan force could have somehow been withdrawn to Mindanao? Earlier in the campaign, this might have been possible, but no one could put together a plan to do it. Everything was in chaos. The Japanese were everywhere, in the sky, too. How many could have survived under heavy air attack, to go down the Legaspi peninsula to Samar, Cebu, and on down to Negros and Mindanao?
I've tried to picture something along the lines of using paratroopers to temporarily recapure Jolo Island, to give some breathing space, if you had all those forces on hand in Australia. Could some of the US forces have then been withdrawn via submarine, more so than could be done from Manila Bay?
And, God, what about all those Hurricanes that were sent to Singapore or Malaya, instead of to Australia. How much of an impact might those have had, later in the campaigns for DEI and the Philippines if they were in Australia, living to fight another day?
And what about that original, pre-War and very early-War idea of Quezon and the upper classes and those Franco buddies in MacArthur's command--to neutralize the Phils and keep them out of the War altogether? Might this have allowed the withdrawal of US forces, though humiliating, to Australia? Could Spain have really intervened with the Japanese? The Spaniards were cozy with Hitler--but perhaps not cozy enough. That might not have phased the Japanese much. What would Spain have been able to use for leverage? The pledge to join the Axis? That might have impressed Hitler, but would it really have helped Tokyo very much? So, it appeared an impractical plan, at best, and it was dawdled with too much, apparently.

 

The Japanese used Mindanao as a jumping-off point to take Jolo Island. One reason they could do so, is that the U.S. force on Mindanao was so small and weak that it couldn't counter-attack even the light Japanese garrison on Zamboanga. But if a part of the Bataan force were able to get down to Mindanao, perhaps such a counter-attack (we're talking late December 1941), could have been mounted, and the Japanese occupation of Jolo Island temporarily thwarted, due to their initial force on Mindanao being forced off.

Trouble with that is, it doesn't jibe, time-wise, with when the (no longer sent to Malaya) British force would have been available on Australia to come up and occupy Jolo and then allow U.S. subs to frequent Mindanao sufficiently to withdraw a sizable number of U.S. troops.
Spanish intervention might have been relatively popular with the upper classes in the Philippines, but how well would it have gone over with the poorer vast majority of Filipinos? Would this not have meant going from U.S. jurisdiction, to Spanish jurisdiction?

Also, the Japanese liked having the use of those Philippines air and naval stations to back up their attacks elsewhere, as well. Would the prospect of that area of the Pacific front being totally neutral to both sides, have been valuable enough to them to cause them to agree to a Spanish intervention to get U.S. forces withdrawn and an independent Philippines (under Douglas MacArthur?) created a few years earlier than it actually was?
OK: send MacArthur to Australia with the rest of the U.S. forces.
Does that change the dynamic any vis a vis a neutral Philippines?
And--what's to keep the Japanese from attacking the neutral Philippines later, anyway? After all, Holland, Luxemburg and Belgium all professed neutrality in 1939 and 1940--and it didn't stop Hitler from bombing and invading them, just like every other nation they dealt with in Europe.
What reason would we have to think the Japanese wouldn't have regarded Hitler as an excellent role model in that regard, as well?
One might argue back, however: SO WHAT? The Philippines fell to the Japanese anyway.
But, we'd have had to counter-attack anyway, and the losses might have been heavier in the retaking from the promise-breaking Japanese than they were in the actual events. However, the original, occupying force would have been spared, at least in the short run, their ordeals. Though they might have swapped that, for a dark fate as part of the re-occupation invasion.
But maybe, overall, U.S. lives would have been spared.
It's just that, again, getting the Japanese to go for it, even in the short run, seems difficult. They'd probably have to give up the pincers concept of attack on the DEI, for example, in favor of a one line approach down Malaya and Singapore, through Sumatra and Borneo, to Java. How likely was that?

Also, if we're back to the idea of withdrawing some of the Bataan garrison to Mindanao, and using Jolo as a forward sub base to withdraw portions of the garrison -- how long could that last?
Even if we use the December 1941 time-frame, the Japanese would, sooner or later, have come back to Mindanao and Jolo both. Possibly, they'd have tried to hit Jolo first, with devastating air attacks from naval aircraft. They wouldn't necessarily have to be back on Mindanao to neutralize--militarily--Jolo Island as a forward Allied base. So the prospect of a sizable force being withdrawn, seems bleak. Timing would be everything--as it was at Dunkirk, and, to a less successful extent, at Crete. If we did everything right . . . but who would we be kidding, at that early stage, we (the US forces) were still inexperienced and not doing much right.
Time would be of the essence. There just was nothing available on Australia, yet, even in this scenario.

If we tried to retake Jolo Island later, as the Philippines campaign had progressed some, and after the British were landed on Australia (not Singapore), we could use the paratroopers from Australia. That larger force on Mindanao (composed partly of our beloved refugees from Bataan) could then temporarily dislodge the Japanese on Zamboanga, Mindanao; and, with sufficient surprise, the Australia-based British paratroopers could capture Jolo and provide that forward sub base from which to withdraw those Bataan refugees and perhaps the Mindanao garrison--including, hopefully, somehow, through some additional change in tactics or thinking, some of those B-17s discussed earlier in this thread.

But again, time would be of the essence. The Japanese had almost undisputed control of the air and sea around the Philippines at that point.
But if you could get enough people down from Bataan without horrific losses to air attack en route, and if you could organize a sizable enough number of subs to get in and out of Mindanao to Jolo and then to Australia (or, perhaps, to Java and then to Australia), it might work out, overall, to be a saving of Allied lives.

 

Maxs, for the love of all that is holy, please use a larger font. Most of us are old farts who have to call the grandkids in to read the fine print on the label. Your post sounded interesting until my tied old eyes started to cross.

 

Well I thought I was using larger font than that. My previous post seems much larger font. I don't seem to be able to get it changed with edit this time around. Sorry. Maybe you could use "View" in your browser and "change font size". I'm sorry about the error or whatever it was that changed the font size. Also, thanks for reading and sorry to be so wordy.

 

Hey your just starting out, we cut new guys alittle slack till they get to 10 posts

 

I edited it for a larger font. If some of you want a larger font, let me know. I'm visually challenged myself and quite sympathetic to some of you.

 

Hello again to all who have read this thread.
When I look back on all the comments on MacArthur, I just have to say--
You know, he had a lot of faults, and it's hard to actually like him. But you just have to notice, over and over, what a genius he had for military activity. Manchester pointed out how low the casualties were in all his counter-attack campaigns, though, of course, Philippines I was a major, tragic blunder
For example, when I was citing his interest in the idea of the neutral Philippines, I and others were noting that neutrality would have spared the Phils a lot of pain. And, since the Phils were going to fall anyway, why not spare them all that pain?

If one were regarding one's self as a sort of adopted Filipino leader, as MacArthur did during that time, the Philippines was home, and was a top priority. Its people's well-being was paramount, even over military considerations.

But what this really reveals about MacArthur, was his early realization that the Philippines was indefensible in 1941-2. He could size it up, and see this, very quickly. It is this quality of military genius, that you just have to give the man.
He had a lot of faults, including trying to play politics (in the mirror-reverse, the way Churchill, in many ways a consummate politician, repeatedly tried to play "general"--usually with similar devastating results), but, aside from the mistakes he made in Manila in 41-42, MacArthur was a successful military strategist.
Seeing his tampering with the far right in Manila in 40-41 as a far-sighted thing, a way to try to spare a Philippines campaign from occurring.
A Phiilippines campaign that we've seen in this thread and others, was hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. MacArthur seems to have taken that reality in, very early on, in one glance. Maybe that's the best explanation for his toying with neutrality.

 

He was a fast learner that's for sure. One thing that must have gnawed at his mind though was the seeming abandonment of the PI right after Peal Harbor. I dont think he or his staff understood just how bad the losses were and the USN was helpless to follow through on their prewar plans.