MacArthur

Discussions on WW2 in the Pacific and the Sino-Japanese War.
PF
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MacArthur

#1

Post by PF » 07 Jul 2015, 15:21

http://rethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/2 ... 0766819573

What need else be said? laughable ego..if it wasnt so tragic USA Lives lost Dec-1941-April 1942 or Nov/Dec 1950

Hoist40
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Re: MacArthur

#2

Post by Hoist40 » 09 Jul 2015, 01:07

(The Philippines in the 1930’s had its own parliament within the US Empire while training to get full independence later – this makes it approximately the equivalent of India in the British Empire at the same time).
No it was not the same as India, the US had agreed to give full independence to the Philippines while the British had not given any agreement to India about independence. Also the Army that MacArthur was training was for when Philippines became independent of the US in 1946. The India Army on the other hand was a army to keep India part of the British Empire.
His air force was destroyed on the ground, despite the clear warnings that have been sent to him after Pearl Harbor.
His air force was in the air on the morning when the attack on Pearl Harbor was learned. The Japanese planes did not come due to fog in Taiwan. They came later when many of the US planes had to land to refuel. Half the bombers were caught on the ground, the other half had been dispersed to southern Philippines. Half the fighters were also caught on the ground mosty due to the air warning system not being complete, much of the equipment and specialized personnel were either on ships coming to Philippines or waiting in the US for shipping.

No attack on Taiwan was carried out due to a lack of targeting information for the bombers, two B-17’s were being converted to photo planes but were lost on the ground.
And he failed in the one place where he had years to prepare his troops and his strategy.
Wrong, MacArthur was not responsible for the defense of Philippines until late July 1941 when the Philippine Army reserves were called up and the US and Philippine Army was combined. This was too late to change the situation due to the lack of material and training time for the new combined army.

Due to a lack of money there was not enough facilities to call up all of the 30 Philippine Army regiments at the same time, so even when authorized in late July 1941 the first ten did not get called up until Sept, the next ten in Nov and the finial ten until after Pearl Harbor. Not enough time to get an Army consisting of six month boot camp soldiers organized into ten reserve divisions.

Note. The President of Philippines and the senior US Army officer in Philippines (not MacArthur) requested calling up the Philippine Army reserves in September 1940 when the US Army Reserves and US draft was started but Roosevelt refused


Delta Tank
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Re: MacArthur

#3

Post by Delta Tank » 14 Jul 2015, 23:02

What is laughable is that article!!

A Historian wrote that??

Unbelievable!

Mike

steverodgers801
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Re: MacArthur

#4

Post by steverodgers801 » 15 Jul 2015, 21:35

Mac was responsible for changing the defense strategy of withdrawing to Battan to trying to defend the whole island,, and the subsequent loss of tons of supplies being over run because of the inability to move them in time. Mac as the officer in charge also was responsible for allowing the air force to be hit on the ground since he failed in ensuring that the planes did leave. It is likely Sutherland who prevented Berenton from communicating. but since Sutherland was Mac's right hand man, the blame is his

Delta Tank
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Re: MacArthur

#5

Post by Delta Tank » 15 Jul 2015, 21:55

Steverodgers801, you need to read more, everything you just wrote is basically false. And no, I am not going to look up all of the things that you got wrong and post the correct information here. I have already done that on this forum a couple of times, you need to find them and read them.

Mike

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Re: MacArthur

#6

Post by Mil-tech Bard » 16 Jul 2015, 17:09

Steverodgers801,

When you push passages like the following as "Great historical research" --
What saved MacArthur was his unrivalled ability with propaganda. He far surpassed his nearest allied military rivals General’s Patton and Montgomery. In fact he could be more closely compared to Joseph Goebbels, both in ability, and in veracity. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin would have acknowledged their equals in the ability to tell a big lie. The lengths his propaganda team went to put his earlier fantasies to the pale.
You pretty much nuke all your credibility from the get-go.

This is something Adm. King or General H.M. Smith might have said of MacArthur, which is consistent with the naval annex of the "He had horns, hooves and pointed tail" MacArthur hating crowd.

NB: Such histrionics are typical of people who hated MacArthur at the time and, to hell with historical accuracy, bent the post-war narrative to suit their identity issues.

MacArthur did nothing other American officers and generals of the time didn't do. He simply did them on a larger scale...and got away with it. Which is the real reason why the "horns, hooves and pointed tail" crowd hated him.

His so-called "theft" of freighters from Nimitz during the Leyte campaign is a classic hit on MacArthur from the "He had horns, hooves and pointed tail" MacArthur hating crowd. As far as I have been able to gather, this is like giving MacArthur a speeding ticket at a Demolition Derby. Some WW2 logistical "Demolition Derby crashes" for you to consider --

o LeMay stole six freighters for the 20th Air Force as a private fleet to move equipment from Hawaii and San Francisco to Guam/Saipan to keep his B-29's running.

o General Swing's 11th Airborne Division was known as "General Swing's 8,000 thieves."

o The Big Red One, 1st Infantry Division, took "grand larceny -- auto" too new heights in France.

o The USMC saw stealing US Army supplies & equipment as their God given right.

o And the biggest "crash' of all was Adm. King refusal to sent Pacific Destroyers to the Atlantic to provide convoy escorts in early 1942, so he could have his Guadalcanal campaign. This failure COST thousands of lives, over a million tons of shipping (depending on the time period used to measure the losses) and made a 1943 invasion of Europe impossible.

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Kingfish
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Re: MacArthur

#7

Post by Kingfish » 16 Jul 2015, 18:18

Mil-tech Bard wrote: o And the biggest "crash' of all was Adm. King refusal to sent Pacific Destroyers to the Atlantic to provide convoy escorts in early 1942, so he could have his Guadalcanal campaign. This failure COST thousands of lives, over a million tons of shipping (depending on the time period used to measure the losses) and made a 1943 invasion of Europe impossible.
How do you deem this a failure?

Was Op Watchtower militarily unsound?
The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
~Babylonian Proverb

Delta Tank
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Re: MacArthur

#8

Post by Delta Tank » 16 Jul 2015, 18:53

Kingfish,

Operation Watchtower? I thought it was called "Operation Shoestring"! :-) Hey, I could not resist. Was it militarily unsound?? Good question, just because it succeeded does not mean the plan was good or militarily sound.

Mike

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Re: MacArthur

#9

Post by Kingfish » 16 Jul 2015, 21:11

I'm not judging it's "soundness" based on the success, but rather the underlying reason for launching it in the first place.

It was clear that the IJN was planning on establishing an airbase on Guadacanal.
Should King have waited until they had Betty's flying out of it?
The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
~Babylonian Proverb

Delta Tank
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Re: MacArthur

#10

Post by Delta Tank » 16 Jul 2015, 22:28

Kingfish,

Kingfish wrote:
It was clear that the IJN was planning on establishing an airbase on Guadacanal.
Should King have waited until they had Betty's flying out of it?
Short answer no, but what other options were open to Admiral King? I think they should of waited until the marines had packed the ships correctly, you know put the engineer equipment that was needed to finish the airfield, which was one of the main reasons for the assault, where they could unload it quickly. That the US Navy had the strength to stay at least long enough to off load essential equipment and supplies, you know, like food!

It was damn near a disaster.

Mike

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Re: MacArthur

#11

Post by Kingfish » 17 Jul 2015, 14:27

Delta Tank wrote:Kingfish,

Kingfish wrote:
It was clear that the IJN was planning on establishing an airbase on Guadacanal.
Should King have waited until they had Betty's flying out of it?
Short answer no, but what other options were open to Admiral King? I think they should of waited until the marines had packed the ships correctly, you know put the engineer equipment that was needed to finish the airfield, which was one of the main reasons for the assault, where they could unload it quickly. That the US Navy had the strength to stay at least long enough to off load essential equipment and supplies, you know, like food!

It was damn near a disaster.

Mike
While the above makes perfect sense, we are looking at this with 20/20 hindsight, a luxury the Watchtower planners did not have. It's worth noting that no one thought the entire airbase would have been captured intact without a shot being fired, and the prospect of a protracted battle to take it influenced the composition of the assault waves.
The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
~Babylonian Proverb

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Re: MacArthur

#12

Post by Delta Tank » 17 Jul 2015, 15:21

Kingfish,

I don't know, but if they would of war-gamed their plan (I am sure they did), would they have not have realized that the US Navy did not have the necessary combat power to stay long enough to off load the equipment and supplies that the marines needed. One of the big reasons for the invasion was to finish the airfield and put our planes on it, yet the equipment to do that was loaded in such a way they could not get it quickly, so obviously the US Navy believed they could stay long enough to get that equipment on shore, but they did not. What I just said has nothing to do with resistance, they obviously believed they had the necessary strength to defend the transport area from attack, but in the end, they departed in a hurry. So, how did they come up with this invasion plan that was obviously flawed? Or did someone lose their nerve? That can happen.
Long time ago had a conversation with a Marine Colonel over the Pacific War. It went like this, "What is more important, a marine infantry battalion or a destroyer?" The answer was a destroyer, it took two years to build one of those and we can make a private in 16 weeks. Being the ultimate smart ass I responded with that it took 18 years and 9 months to make the recruit before he began training. So, I always keep that mind set in the back of my mind when examining all things navy.

Mike

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Re: MacArthur

#13

Post by Mil-tech Bard » 17 Jul 2015, 15:50

This is the cost of the Adm. King's diversion of USN Destroyers to Operation Watchtower --
"In the first eight months of 1942, German submarines sank nearly 400 Allied freighters and tankers along the U.S. Atlantic coast with a loss of more than 5,000 merchant seamen and sailors—twice the number of fatalities at Pearl Harbor."
That is the opening sentence to Michael Gannon's "OPERATION DRUMBEAT: The Dramatic True Story of Germany's First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in WWII" on the US Naval Institute web site here:

http://www.usni.org/store/books/history ... n-drumbeat

The German U-Boat "Second Happy Time" lasted from January 1942 to August 1942, cost the Allies 3.1 million tons of shipping, with 2/3 of the 609 ships lost in that period being off the US Atlantic coast.

Phillip Payson O'Brien's more recent book "HOW THE WAR WAS WON -- Air - Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II" makes clear from the historical record at the US national archives that King did this solely to get a separate US Navy theater going in the Pacific -- AKA Operation Watchtower.

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Kingfish
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Re: MacArthur

#14

Post by Kingfish » 17 Jul 2015, 18:39

Mil-tech Bard wrote:This is the cost of the Adm. King's diversion of USN Destroyers to Operation Watchtower --
"In the first eight months of 1942, German submarines sank nearly 400 Allied freighters and tankers along the U.S. Atlantic coast with a loss of more than 5,000 merchant seamen and sailors—twice the number of fatalities at Pearl Harbor."
That is the opening sentence to Michael Gannon's "OPERATION DRUMBEAT: The Dramatic True Story of Germany's First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in WWII" on the US Naval Institute web site here:

http://www.usni.org/store/books/history ... n-drumbeat

The German U-Boat "Second Happy Time" lasted from January 1942 to August 1942, cost the Allies 3.1 million tons of shipping, with 2/3 of the 609 ships lost in that period being off the US Atlantic coast.

Phillip Payson O'Brien's more recent book "HOW THE WAR WAS WON -- Air - Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II" makes clear from the historical record at the US national archives that King did this solely to get a separate US Navy theater going in the Pacific -- AKA Operation Watchtower.
While I don't dispute the figures given, they should be considered in context. Despite our experience in the first world war, and the even more recent experience of our Allies in the Atlantic, We did not adopt a convoy system right away. This led to very heavy losses:
For instance, in 1942 before our convoying got under full way, world-wide losses from enemy causes amounted to 7,713,000 gross tons, of which about 70% were independent ships.
Contrast that with the next sentence:
The next year though, with shipping largely in convoy, losses were reduced to 3,210,000 gross tons, of which about 34% were independents.
Still very heavy but a considerable improvement nonetheless

Source: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/Adm ... index.html

Furthermore, common sense procedures such as mandatory blackouts along the coast were not observed, adding to the needless losses (Miami being notorious for this).

Certainly the PacFlt DDs would have helped, but again context needs to be considered. For the first half of '42 the IJN was running riot across the Pacific and SE Asia, a fact King could in no way ignore.
The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
~Babylonian Proverb

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Kingfish
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Re: MacArthur

#15

Post by Kingfish » 17 Jul 2015, 18:47

Delta Tank wrote:Kingfish,

I don't know, but if they would of war-gamed their plan (I am sure they did), would they have not have realized that the US Navy did not have the necessary combat power to stay long enough to off load the equipment and supplies that the marines needed. One of the big reasons for the invasion was to finish the airfield and put our planes on it, yet the equipment to do that was loaded in such a way they could not get it quickly, so obviously the US Navy believed they could stay long enough to get that equipment on shore, but they did not. What I just said has nothing to do with resistance, they obviously believed they had the necessary strength to defend the transport area from attack, but in the end, they departed in a hurry. So, how did they come up with this invasion plan that was obviously flawed? Or did someone lose their nerve? That can happen.
Long time ago had a conversation with a Marine Colonel over the Pacific War. It went like this, "What is more important, a marine infantry battalion or a destroyer?" The answer was a destroyer, it took two years to build one of those and we can make a private in 16 weeks. Being the ultimate smart ass I responded with that it took 18 years and 9 months to make the recruit before he began training. So, I always keep that mind set in the back of my mind when examining all things navy.

Mike
Resistance (or the anticipation of it) most certainly factors into the equation. The planners had a finite amount of lift available, of which combat troops and equipment took up a considerable amount. This obviously meant less space for prime movers and rear area personnel, two requirements for a speedy and efficient unloading of cargo.
The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
~Babylonian Proverb

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