Reasons for loss of Philippines, May 1942

Yes, Mac stepped on his crank enough and finally learned what he was doing was wrong at the cost of many US and Australian lives in the SWPA. He finally changed his style of attack and used his assets more wisely and the Allied body counts dropped. Duh. A moron could figure that out. I can think of a lot of things to call him, but genius is not one of them.

The reason of the loss of the Philippines is that the powers to be left US forces there to die was because of an old military maxim, never re-enforce sure loss. Sad but true. That and the Jap(ane)s(e). They had a lot to do with it too.

 

The US Navy's prewar plan was to abandon the Philippines. The last version of War Plan Orange, which formed the basis of the Rainbow Plan, envisioned a multi year advance through the central Pacific suspiciously similar to the "island hopping" that actually occurred. Even after the dissolution of prewar armament treaties that had restricted base development in the western Pacific the USN made no significant effort to improve Manila or Cavite. (They built no drydocks at all, for instance, feeling that anything they built would just end up helping the Japanese.)

While MacArthur did learn later on, he was a nearly a lone voice calling for the defense of the Philippines in '40 and '41. Which is to say he was actually a little slow on the uptake there. Try to imagine what might have happened if the sort of rapid advance to relieve Manila MacArthur envisioned had actually been undertaken. (And we'll even delete Pearl Harbor for the sake of argument.)

The US will have to send a massive convoy of supplies and troops. Our lines will be long and exposed, and we'll need to send a fleet to protect them, specifically the Pacific Fleet. The combat efficacy of naval units degrades noticeably over both time and distance from their base of operations due to things like hull fouling, crew fatigue, and the expenditure of fuel and food.

The Pacific Fleet at the end of 1941 consisted of 9 20kt Battleships (Pennsylvania, Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia, Nevada, Oklahoma, Maryland, California, and Colorado [if available]); 3 30kt Fleet CVs (Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga); and a variety of cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and auxiliaries. The DDs in particular will be at the end of their range, even with underway refueling. (Earlier plans had envisioned the BBs towing them to conserve fuel.) The three carriers each opperated a group of about 72 aircraft at the time, so that gives you about 216 carrier aircraft, more or less. (We'll ignore scouting and land based aircraft for now, since anything the Navy brings or MacArthur has left can easily be matched from Japanese fields.)

The Combined Fleet will have 4 30kt Battleships (Kongo, Haruna, Hiei, and Kirishima); 4 25+kt Battleships (Ise, Hyuga, Nagato, and Mutsu); and two older 20+kt Battleships (Fuso and Yamashiro). They'll also have 5 30kt Fleet CVs and one in the high twenties (Hiryu, Soryu, Zuikaku, Shokaku, Akagi, and pokey BB converted Kaga.) Add to this two shiney new light carriers and a pair of older ones that the US can't match (Shoho, Zuiho, Ryujo, and Hosho); and more than enough of everything save cruisers to at least equal the Pacific fleet and you can begin to see the problem. The carriers carry slightly fewer planes than their American counterparts, but there are so many more of them that the US will be outnumbered every bit of 2-1 in carrier aircraft. And in the early war the IJN was trading more or less 1-1 with the USN, so the numbers favor them heavily.

Further, they're more or less in home waters.

Now, the US could conceivably have shifted assets from the Atlantic Fleet. The two North Carolina class BBs could conceivably have been rushed over, if you don't mind leaving the RN to bottle up both Germany and Italy. (They'll probably have to give up their ill fated defense of Singapore, which will be all to the good anyway.) Several 20kt wagons could also join the fray: Texas, New York, New Mexico, Mississippi, Idaho) but only if you don't mind inviting everyone to shell the Eastern Seaboard. (Hey, maybe somebody will take out Yankee Stadium. This is looking better and better.) And yes, there are a few CVs that could also be moved. (Yorktown, the compromise design Wasp, and the incredibly green Hornet.) And if you don't mind providing another target you could, perhaps, also send Ranger. But you can't really do any better than rough parity, and a fair chunk of the flyers will be really really green.

So even if you denude the Atlantic completely you can't really do much better than about a 10-6 ratio for some reason. And you can't even do that well in the critical flight decks and aircraft. (You'll always have fewer flight decks.) The IJN can even bring short legged coastal subs to party with the US in restricted waters at strategic choke points. And Halsey will be in charge of the CVs. (Well, that's familiar, at least. Will someone move him to the battle line? That's where he wants to be anyway.)

Well, lets see . . .

If I were the IJN I'd have submarine pickets concentrated in the Babuyan Channel, the Sibuyan Sea, and the Suriago Strait. Vice Admiral Kondo seems a logical choice to lead the battle line. Lets drop them into the Sibuyan Sea where they can react to any American advances through restricted waters. We can put Kido Butai in relatively open waters west of Mindoro. They can support actions against MacArthur from there, while still being relatively safe from counterattack. If Halsey and Pye decide to go south Kondo will be ideally positioned to cork the bottle on them and Kido Butai will be close enough to move to assist. If they try to go north Nagumo will have lots of time to dash north and maybe even coordinate with land based air from Formosa. Either way, the USN will be facing a fresher better positioned IJN with good local support.

Suffice it to say I don't like the odds, even if it's possible. I think the IJN was very much hoping we'd do it. (Tsushima 2, if you will.) Thankfully, everyone but MacArthur had other plans even before the shooting started.

 

I'd like to see some basis for that if anyone has it?
The impression that I got (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that the US expected to blast the Japanese out of the sky while the USN would send the IJN to the bottom of the Pacific. it was only after Pearl Harbor that the full retreat was on.

See, I don't get this. Why would the US push the confrontation with Japan (the embargo) if they didn't think that they were ready to fight them?

Did anyone really think that Japan would back down & lose face?
Why not delay the start of the war by 6 or 8 months to continue building up, as the US could outproduce & outbuild Japan by 6 or 8 times at least?
By mid '42 they can start the ball rolling and still have the PI as a base.

I do think that they could have won the battle if they were determined to win it.

However they would need to have a proper plan & prepare well in advance.

 

Absolutely incorrect.
All of the troops were in Malaya before Dec 7 except for 5 brigades + ~3 (2 Ind + 1 Aus brigade equivilent) that arrived during January. Nothing arrived in February. (Singapore surrendered on 15 Feb)

The 8 brigades (or equivilent) that arrived:

3 Jan
Indian 45th

13 Jan
British 53rd (+ Hurricanes)

22 Jan
Indian 44th
7,000 replacements (~2 brigades worth)

24 Jan
1 Aus battalion + 1,900 replacements (ie ~ 1 brigade worth)

29 Jan
British 54th
British 55th

All together about 25,000 combat troops arrive in Jan.
All of the Indian troops were poor quality, unmotivated, poorly equipped and basically untrained so as to be almost useless.

There wasn't anywhere near "85,000 more British".
There were 6 battalions of British + 3 brigades that arrived (~15,000 combat troops). Had they not been sent to Singapore they would have been sent to Burma, not Australia.
There were only about 3 brigades worth of Australians, well over half the troops were Indian.

And even had the British wanted to abandon Malaya there is little chance of extricating a large portion of the troops already there.

Not much at all. There were more than enough aircraft available to send to Australia. The goal is to engage the Japanse air force defensivly as much as possible to start to weaken it through attrition.
By the time the Japanese approached Singapore ther were a large number of aircraft that were withdrawn to the DEI anyways.

Singapore/Malaya is the key roadblock to the Japanese, the goal should be to defend it properly, not abandon it, as an early withdrawl would allow the Japanese to invade the DEI & Burma even quicker.

 

What he said: War Plan Orange Sending the fleet to the PI was no longer an option after WW1 as the Japanese Mandates blocked the way. They had to be taken first, that required additional CV and amph. ship. Planners estimated they could go in the offensive in 1943.

Never underestimate the power of stupidity! The Japanese were seen as little, yellow men with bad eyesight and bandy legs, unimaginative copycats incapable of even defeating the Chinese. The 'white man' was regareded as way superior by default. And it didn´t end there.

The Brits ignored the possibilty of an early attack because their own buildup would be complete until mid-42, while FDR wasn´t the only one how thought the Japanese were sort-of remote controlled by the Germans.

Simply put, the Allies overestimated themselfs and underestimated the Japanese.

 

There are a number of reasons including:

1. Command incompetence. Brereton was poor in terms of air power. His biggest weakness was little spine to stand up to MacAuthur's CoS, Sutherland. Sutherland, Chief of Staff is another. He is the commensurate bureaucrat. Overly officious, meddling and, insufferable he ran MacAuthur's commmand on a daily basis with an iron fist and lots of military incompetence. MacAuthur himself led from the rear like Gamelin in France and, other generals who still had a WW 1 mindset.
It was a recipe for inaction, lethargy, and poor performance up and down the chain.

2. There was still a peacetime mindset that prevailed initially. That is, the troops and officers were set in a routine and continued to follow it. The urgency of war and the need to take initiative and get things done hadn't set in yet.

3. The lack of a proper orgainzation to support the combat units really didn't exist in the PI at the time. The US Army lacked engineers, and mobile supply units to support the field forces. The two available light tank battalions were squandered on useless small attacks and often lost due to lack of support by engineers and supply units.

4. Japanese tactics were unexpected. The rapidity of Japanese movements and their disregard for traditional flanks and a solid front were things the US really didn't grasp. Because of that the US could not exploit the weakness of those tactics while at the same time they disrupted US operations greatly.

 

The USN had already acknowledged pre war that it would be at least 6 months before they could reach the Philipines in strength and that was if they still held out. Mac should have known that in the event of war he was going to be on his own for at least that long and prepaired for it. It's pretty clear he didn't or if he did his preperations counted on the additional materials and time that he was hopeing for.

 

War Plan Orange-3 called for a defense by delaying action of only Bataan and Corregidor, and that is where all the US supplies had been positioned. The terrain of the Bataan peninsula was well suited for a delaying action. MacArthur was convinced that he could defend from the beaches and moved much of his supplies forward. These supplies were lost when the forward defense failed. With the loss of supplies, Bataan could no longer be held. So much for genius.

 

What do you do if you are the man in charge and you know you haven't the resources to prevail---perhaps you make a try anyway knowing as an American that it worked to stand up against such forces as "the British" in our war of Independence. A general has to do something especially with the U.S. just having been turned to engage in war, but without the production and trained supply of troops and the necessary equipment.(Was this a John Wayne move?) Remember, we had to be persuaded to war as there was a strong isolationist attitude to be overcome and the necessary economy had to be raised out of the dirt literally (getting up steel production), arranging factory production for war had not occurred in time to supply those sent to the Pacific. Perhaps we need to remember that MacArthur went to war "with the military we had" and later when things were bustling in the economy other generals got to go to war with at least the war supplies likely to be needed to match those we would face. We cannot make little of MacArthur's efforts without this being considered. Because there is so much what if on the net here I simply ask if the Japanese had not been engaged early on by MacArthur what would they have been doing? Should they have been left free to damage us elsewhere as they did at Pearl Harbor? If you study MacArthur's upbringing I would doubt that he had a mind for anything but military matters having lived soldiering since his boyhood. He fully understood his risks, gamble and future prevailing but had little choice but to engage at a bad time.

 

Thanks MCoffee that's exactly my understanding of the situation. Had MacArthur stuck to the plan, the Japanese would have been tied up and would have had to commit additional forces to a long drawn out campaign. This would have had a negative effect on their ability to conduct other operations. MacArthur overestimated his abilities as a general, modified the strategy and his troops paid the butchers bill.

 

Louis Morton's The Fall of the Philippines details the prewar defensive plans and MacArthur's request to change those plans to defend the entire archipelago.
HyperWar: US Army in WWII: Fall of the Philippines [Chapter 4]

 

Would Morton's Fall of the Philippines be a good starting text for beginning to read more in-depth about the events there?
Thanks,
Ryan

 

But, as someone pointed out further up on the Thread, the U.S. War College had already deemed it unfeasible to hold the Philippines, due to lack of ability to effectively reinforce it. And that was BEFORE aircraft.

Mac, you are right, was, at least starting out, (and this was also true of most older Allied commanders) a relative dunce when it came to aircraft use.

And, as far as "genius"--I definitely qualified that with MILITARY genius He was NO political genius.And, yes, he learned some of his modernization lessons at the cost of thousands of lives.
As I said once before, in total agreement with you on this point: not a likeable guy.



I won't reply directly to the correction as to numbers of British troops landed in Malaya/Singapore "just before the surrender." But the total number that surrendered, was 85,000. I believe I used the phrase "85,000 or so" as to how many landed in the final days.

As to the value of holding Burma versus protecting Australia. I don't know. A vulnerable-looking Australia was a strong temptation to Japan to press southward. They were already grappling with a Chinese army.

but these asides I'd made before, were meant as only that: to show those "what ifs" people talk about. There are so many of those, we don't really know what would have happened. I believe my main point, was the same as the poster: that the "what ifs" weren't going to change much.

Profligate use of human lifes, vast numbers of troops, and massive industrial output were key to victory. But

you just have to compare the numbers, as Manchester does, as to which commanders were most frugal with their troops' lives. In the final analysis, in those counter-attack campaigns, it was Douglas MacArthur. Yes, a lot of troops died, but he just had a natural "knack" for planning strategies.
This doesn't make him a genius, per se, just someone with military genius. There was just this incredible egotism and rationalization of Far Right dovishness (even when it was a threat to security in the theater in question), that was always there, always working against his military aggressiveness in Philippines I.

Then there was that devastatingly dumb repeat of failures in regard to aircraft.

I don't know if the emphasis on Burma wasn't exaggerated. But definitely, there were far too few troops to beef up Australia, anyway, even if they'd not been used elsewhere. But would the Japanese have been as aggressive against Australia itself, had it been more beefed up earlier? And with that western area more difficult, they'd have pulled troops out of the CBI area, not put more in. So, I don't know. And, after all, most of those more eastern campaigns, were very slow going, still in progress right at Hiroshima, anyway.

 

Just want to say, too, that there are different forms of military genius. Slim, after all, was to become a genius, of sorts, in turning that rebellious Indian force into a hard-fighting outfit.

And the British were still calling those guys "boys" going into the war!

NO WONDER they LOST Burma! (Not to the Japanese--but to the nationalism of India and Burma).

 

I guess I should correct that--a composite American, British and Chinese force was chased out of Burma at the start, led by Gen. Stillwell. They went back in, bogged down for almost the entire war, until Gen. Slim came into his own, and began to rout the Japanese, on foxhole at a time, out of the jungles of Burma.

 

As a further correction, the composite ABDA(American, British, Dutch, Australian) force was under the overall command of British General Archibald Wavell, not Stillwell. Chiang Kai Shek would offer two Chinese armies to Wavell, but Wavell turned him down. When the ABDA Command was dissolved in late February, 1942, British General Harold Alexander as GOC(General Officer Commanding) of British forces, although Alexander deferred most military matters to William Slim, and he would exercise vague control over two Chinese armies under General Joseph Stillwell.

And it was not so much a matter of Slim "coming into his own", as it was waiting for reinforcements and re-training his soldiers to fight a "jungle war". Had his troops been properly equipped, supplied, and, trained for jungle warfare, 1942-42, would likely have turned out a lot differently.