No, he didn't override Rainbow-5, it was still in effect. If we had had another year before war started it might have been revised, but not until the PI had the forces needed to hold out for a year.Hoist40 wrote:But Roosevelt had overrode War Plan Rainbow 5 when he called up the Philippine Reserve Divisions and ordered a defense of Philippines.
And Philippines would have been in danger of invasion if the US had declared war on Japan because Japan had invaded British/Dutch colonies.
The Japanese paradigm for war with the US was the Great All-out Battle. The USN would come charging across the Pacific into Japanese-controlled waters. The Fleet would be attrited by submarines, airplanes, destroyer attack, etc., and when we arrived the intact Imperial Japanese Navy would be waiting for us. They WANTED us to try and relieve the PI in 1942, it was their wet dream. Weirdly enough, Yamamoto Isoruku killed that dream at Pearl Harbor.