Nickdfresh,
MacArthur had more talent than the vast majority of American generals. His time as Chief of Staff of the Army and Filipino Field Marshal ensured that he saw the full spectrum of conflict, vice just the military.
But he was flawed. Not as flawed as the stereotypes or naval historians would have you believe, but flawed.
First, Mac was a political critter who used his influence to bend the rules in his favor. But name me an American general who did not. In this, Mac was simply brasher and more successful in intra-service politics than most. Hold that thought.
Second, MacArthur was pretty much a zero defects, results now, kind of general. So were his subordinates like Kruegar, Kenney, and Eichelberger. Mac also set up his subordinates to get into cat fights for his favor. The General Walter Krueger/General Eichelberger mutual hate fest was the classic example. MacArthur's command style was a profoundly political, low trust, in group versus out group one to that forced men he didn't know or trust to blurt out truths to MacArthur during their personal/turf related cat fights in front of MacArthur and his loyalists.
Whatever this style's defects, it let him out politic Admiral's King and Nimitz on returning to Luzon in lieu of Formosa despite having the most pro-Navy President in American history.
Next, MacArthur did not go to the front at either Bataan or Buna.
However, after being burned twice over criticism for that, MacArthur went to the front far too often for a three or four star's job description, too include exposing himself to Japanese rifle fire. Admiral Barbey had to throw MacArthur off one of his light cruisers during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. When it looked like Kurita's gunline would break through the Taffy CVE groups and reach the transports. The man literally stood on the bridge of naval ships at General Quarters under Kamikaze and torpedo attack.
MacArthur was a pompous ass, but he was physically fearless and had the courage of his convictions...whatever they were at the moment.
Finally, MacArthur wasn't even the worst political general in crossing dicks with the office of the President.
This "honor" goes to one Major General George "Little Napoleon" McClellan, who ran as a Copperhead Democrat in 1864. McClellan had Pres. Lincoln planning a "Win the Civil War after I am voted out of Office" military campaign between Nov 1864 and inauguration (March?) 1865 with Generals Grant and Sherman.
On the plus side, MacArthur was functionally one of the most humanitarian of America's WW2 generals as well as it's best practitioner of both irregular warfare with the Alamo Scouts/6th Rangers/AIB Philippines Section at the low end of war and high tech warfare -- which we call "Suppression of Enemy Air Defense" today -- at the high end of war with his Section 22 radar hunters.
There were Army and Navy flag officers around while Mac was alive who thought MacArthur had horns, hooves and a pointed tail. A lot of people since then reading what those powerful men said blame MacArthur for a lot of things he didn't do, simply because they don't like what was written about MacArthur. They confuse their feelings about those words towards Mac as the truth. It does not mean they were right.
The thing to remember about official histories dealing with MacArthur is that when Mac was very, very good, his bureaucratic enemies were bad. And when MacArthur was awful, they were worse...and what they did "while being worse" wasn't documented in those official histories.
As far as the Chinese in Korea were concerned, everyone from the JCS on down thought Korea was won and the Chinese were not coming in the Winter of 1950. MacArthur's error here, like he and his military peers with the Japanese nine years earlier, was being part of conventional group think.
See:
Refighting the Last War: Electronic Warfare and U.S. Air Force B-29 Operations in the Korean War, 1950-53
Daniel T. Kuehl
The Journal of Military History, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 87-112
Society for Military History
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1985712
Pg 88
...The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) approved sending two additional B-29 units to FEAF, and on 8 July 1950 FEAF Bomber Command was formed. Although these units had no atomic capability, they could conduct conventional bombing operations, and within a week they were engaged in combat. By the end of July the first two units which SAC had sent to the Korean theatre, the 22d and 92d Bomb Groups, were augmented by two additional units, the 98th and 307th Bomb Groups. As the United Nations (U.N.) forces retreated into the Pusan Perimeter, FEAF/BC operated in support of a three-fold mission: close air support of hard-pressed U.N. ground forces, interdiction of North Korean lines of communication, and destruction of North Korean war-related industry.'
The B-29s systematically wrecked nearly every significant industrial installation in North Korea within a matter of weeks, and by late 1950 the bombers were almost out of targets, due to the U.N. advance into North Korea and the JCS-imposed prohibition on operations across the Yalu River. The 22d and 92d Bomb Groups were even returned to the United States in October, as the Air Force looked towards an end to hostilities.2
PG 92
John T. Fahrquhar, unpublished study, "Eyes of the Ferret: Strategic Aerial Reconnaissance in the Korean War," who cogently observed that one of the major organizational failures of the Air Force during the war was the lack of a body devoted to managing the overall reconnaissance program, in marked similarity to the Air Force electronic warfare program
Notes:
1. John Pimlott, B-29 Superfortress (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1953), 52;
James F. Schnabel and Robert W. Watson, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Volume III, The JCS and National Policy, The Korean War, Part I (Washington: JCS Joint Secretariat, Historical Division, 1978), 179;
Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-53 (Washington: GPO, 1983), 45-46, 87, 179;
Far East Air Forces Bomber Command (FEAF/BC), "Heavyweights Over Korea," Air University Quarterly Review 8 (Summer 1954): 99-100;
Curtis E. LeMay, with MacKinley Kantor, Mission with LeMay (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 485.
and also see:
Raiding the Beggar's Pantry: The Search for Airpower Strategy in the Korean War
Conrad C. Crane
The Journal of Military History, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 885-920
Society for Military History
http://www.jstor.org/stable/120555
pg 889
O'Donnell had commanded a wing under LeMay in
those operations, and though SAC planners preferred destroying the targets
with demolition bombs, O'Donnell and LeMay wanted to repeat the
urban area firebombing they had executed against Japan.5
This became apparent as soon as O'Donnell arrived in Tokyo. When
he was introduced to MacArthur, the airman quickly proposed "to do a
fire job on the five industrial centers of northern Korea." When
MacArthur asked for more details, O'Donnell said that they had learned
in World War II that bombing tanks, bridges, and airdromes was useless.
Instead of such "infighting," MacArthur should announce to the world
that communist reactions to his pleas for peace forced him to use
"against his wishes, the means which brought Japan to its knees." His
declaration of intent to burn the industrial cities of North Korea would
also serve as a warning to get all noncombatants out, and systematic
attacks would begin after twenty-four or forty-eight hours. MacArthur listened
to the whole presentation and replied, "No, Rosy, I'm not prepared
to go that far yet. My instructions are very explicit." He did agree to
bomb military objectives in those cities with high explosives, and added,
"If you miss your target and kill people or destroy other parts of the city,
I accept that as part of war." MacArthur's sentiments about indiscriminate
firebombing would be echoed by later Joint Chiefs of Staff targeting
directives.
and
Pg 893
Stratemeyer's action was very timely, because on 26 September the
Joint Chiefs of Staff suspended the strategic campaign due to the success
of the UN counteroffensive, and ordered MacArthur to concentrate his
Air Forces on targets to assist the tactical situation. Though MacArthur's
headquarters requested that it retain the two reinforcing bomb groups
until 8 November, by the end of October targets were so scarce that a B-
29 chased an enemy motorcycle rider down a road with single bombs
until one obliterated him. Accordingly, MacArthur on 25 October authorized
the return of the 22d and 92d Bombardment Groups to the United
States, and to their primary focus on Strategic Air Command's Soviet targets.
and
Pg 893
The JCS were also concerned about the political implications of an all-out bombing of the
North Korean capital of Pyongyang, and asked MacArthur on 29 September
to consult them before mounting any such operation. Stratemeyer
was planning a mission with one hundred B-29s against the
remaining military targets there, but MacArthur assured the Joint Chiefs
that he had no plans to attack the city unless it became a "citadel of
defense," and was "trying to end the campaign with as little added loss
of life and destruction of property as possible." The cessation of the
strategic campaign also stopped raids on the North Korean power plants,
which Far East Air Forces had just begun without clear guidance from
Washington. 12
Notes:
5. Vandenberg to Stratemeyer, 3 July 1950, Redline Message, TS 1814, LeMay
Diary #2; Maj. Ilarold D. Jefferson, "Development of FEAF Bomber Command Target
System," FEAF Bomber Command History, 4 Jul-31 Oct 1950, vol. 1, book 1, File
K713.01-1, AFfIRA.
12. JCS to MacArthur, 8 September 1950, JCS 90943; JCS to MacArthur, 26 September
1950, JCS 92658; and JCS to MacArthur, 29 September 1950, JCS 92986,
Outgoing Messages, Box 9, 15 June 1950-19 January 1952; and MacArthur to JCS, 30
September 1950, C 65036, Incoming Messages, Box 1, 19 May 1950-August 3, 1951,
RG 218. CINCFE to Department of the Army (DA), 21 September 1950, CX63904,
File JCS Outgoing, July 1950-April 1951, Reel 186; and CG FEAF to CG FEAF Bomb
Command, 22 October 1950, AX 2607, File FEAF In, October 1950, Reel 180,
MacArthur Archives. USAF Historical Study No. 71, Operations in the Korean Conflict,
94; O'Donnell to LeMay with handwritten comments, 20 August 1950, File FEAF
1, Box 65, LeMay Papers; Futrell, USAF in Korea, 188-94. For a detailed listing of the
results of the strategic campaign, see USAF Historical Study No. 71, Operations in the
Korean Conflict, 87-89.
For an apples to apples comparison of American Military strategic surprise, there is the comparison of Ike with the Ardennes in the winter of 1944 and MacArthur in Korea during the winter 1950.
After all, both Ike & Mac had air superiority in winter facing an enemy with strategic surprise on their side.
Well only Ike had it, since the FEAF's F-80 and F-84 jet fighters faced Mig-15's in Chinese & Russian hands starting November 1950.
See -
(
http://www.airforce-magazine.com/Magazi ... sians.aspx)
And of course there is signals intelligence, where Ike had Ultra to watch the Germans...while Mac had the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) to watch the Russians and the Chinese.
You know, the signals intelligence agency so ineffective and Russian spy ridden that Truman replaced it with the National Security Agency (AKA NSA or "No Such Agency") in June 1952?
See --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
And finally, MacArthur Korea had no where near the photoreconnaissance capability Ike had in the Ardennes due to the elimination of photo squadrons in the post-WW2 draw down (See Fahrquhar note above).
In fact, in addition to all of the above, MacArthur faced a level of political micromanagement by the Truman Administration, through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that would have made Ike resign or get fired when he objected.
The latter was exactly what happened to Mac.
