Posted on 08/04/2013 10:54:44 AM PDT by cutty
Actually the first Zero to fall intact into allied hands was in China but before Americans could come get the plane, an over exuberant Chinese pilot decided he had to have a go at it and proceeded to crash and destroy it.
It is almost like asking Willie Sutton why he robbed banks. Because that is where the money is. Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor? Because that is where the Navy was. I find it hard to swallow, that some high ranking officials did not know it was coming.
Closer to half that number.
It wasn’t like Billy Mitchell hadn’t described the attack in detail years before.
100+
25 P-40’s (B and E) each in four fighter squadrons.
18 active planes each, the rest reserve. Plus there were a few extras. Almost all were serviceable on Dec 8.
One squadron of Seversky P-35’s, maybe 20-25 or so flyable.
This all is very well documented.
What do you believe that error to have been?
On the other hand its hard to see what he could have done differently. His big contribution was to convince both the Americans and the Filipinos that the Philippine Army (a conscripted citizen army at the time) could be made effective with the pathetic budgets, few cadre and derisory training time available.
The promised money and material for the Philippine Army never materialized.
I suspect this was based on his rather limited experience with leading a US National Guard Division in WWI. The “Rainbow” division was combat effective and had high morale, even when it was inexperienced.
In his "limited" time with the Rainbow division, MacArthur became the most decorated American in that war.
This confidence in such troops was not warranted when it came to the Philippine army. The first major action at Lingayen made it painfully clear that the Philippine Army was nearly useless in maneuver battle and probably would remain so without months more of training and combat experience.
The green Filipino troops losing their nerve on the beaches was crushing but give them credit for quickly regrouping and badly mauling the Japanese on Bataan.
That put an end to any idea of protracted resistance.
FDR elevating Wainwright to commander of all forces in the Philippines is what put an end to any idea of protracted resistance because when Wainwright surrendered at Corregidor, not only did he surrender the little island fortress, he surrendered all forces in the archipelago.
All over the Philippines ?
They most certainly did.
The Philippine Army alone had 13 divisions, each nominally with 10,000+ men, plus a proportional number of service units. This includes the Philippine Constabulary.
Not all were fully mobilized, and there were many desertions, but a high proportion did show up and were present for service, at least for a while.
Add to that about 12,000 US troops and Philippine Scouts in the Philippine Division, another 5,000 or so in Coast Defense units, another 10,000 more USAAF and Anti-Aircraft (there was a whole AA regiment), two tank battalions with service personnel, the Navy personnel of two major naval bases (Subic and Cavite) and various auxiliary vessels such as the large Submarine Tender Canopus (nearly 1000 sailors right there), etc. ad infinitum for all sorts of ancillaries and odds+ends.
If you want a complete, thorough breakdown I recommend Louis Mortons “Fall of the Philippines”, quite old now but its still the primary reference.
This is one of the US Army “Green Books”, so its online -
http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/5-2/5-2_Contents.htm
Not before the Chines provided a detailed intelligence analysis to Claire Chennault, which he forwarded to the USAAF in @ August/September 1941. Along with his tactical notes on fighting the Zero. Which the USAAF did not supply to any US combat unit until - well, I’m not sure they ever did. It seems that the USAAF units all had to figure out everything in combat.
no Saturday Night Dead said that
I can see that considering that China was at war with Japan since 1937. Especially with the AVG engaging in aerial combat with the Japanese long before the US officially became involved.
My dad was in a Jap concentration camp in interior China for 3 years after the Japs invaded China where he lived in the European community with his parents. He was 10.
The Japanese were fighting a two front war. I believe that the Allied forces outnumbered their Japanese attackers.
I don’t know that I’ve ever been more depressed about my country than after I read the original article. It makes sense. The Soviets played FDR.
We knew the Germans didn’t have any aircraft carriers. We knew the Japanese did. The Germans couldn’t attack North America. The Japanese could. The logical choice would be to defeat Japan first. We didn’t. We were played by the friendly Soviets. God, I despise the Democrats even more.
McArthurs error was to cut checks he couldn’t cover. He promised to deliver a useful army with the resources he was given and of course could not.
In one sense he had no choice. He had to get the Filipinos to buy in for the sake of US strategy, so he had to, as they say about diplomats, go abroad to lie for his country.
Of course he was heroic. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t draw the wrong conclusions about what it took to make effective military units. He had very limited experience in training conscripts.
The Filipino troops were not ever up to facing Japanese combat units on even terms, even in Bataan. They managed to hold their positions, usually, only because they much outnumbered the attacking Japanese and because the USAFFE “burned up” the reliable Philippine Scouts and US 31st Regiment as “fire brigades” for counterattacks.
On Cebu, Mindanao, etc. the Filipino troops regularly could not face even lesser numbers of Japanese, and were thoroughly beaten in numerous engagements. General Sharp decided to agree to the Corregidor surrender agreement mainly because he saw no prospect of continuing the war. He was about to lose his base area at Del Monte. He was mistaken as far as whether it was better to surrender than to persist, even in a hopeless defense, as most of his US personnel did not survive Japanese captivity, but he had a perfectly accurate view of the conventional military value of his troops.
The AVG was not involved in combat until the Japanese started raiding Rangoon, Burma. That was in Jan 1942 IIRC, well after the US was at war.
They were recruited pre-Pearl Harbor, but didn’t actually fight until well after.
Nope. There is a book titled “December 7, 1941’’ by Martin Gilbert I believe(it’s been a while since I read it) in which he chronicles the events worldwide that took place on that day, that’s were I learned that. He also wrote another book “May 8, 1945’’ in which he chronicles the events of that day.
What I actually meant was that I only regarded the P-40 as a modern fighter on Dec 8, 1941. Rather than there being 100+ modern fighters as you wrote, I commented that the number of modern fighters (P-40s) was closer to half that.
On Dec 7 in the Philippines, there were 54 operational P-40E's, 18 P-40B's and 18 P-35's. The P-35's listed as operational were effectively useless due to worn out engines, worn out .30 cal machineguns, light armor and no self sealing fuel tanks but of the 18 P-35's that were listed as operational, only a few of them actually made it into combat with the others having to return to base or be abandoned due to mechanical problems.
One of the P-40 squadrons had just arrived and the engines had not yet been broken in nor guns sighted but were never-the-less listed as operational. Of the freshly arrived P-40's, only a few of them made it from scramble into combat due to brand new unbroken engines blowing out. Many American pilots would fire their guns for the first time against Japanese aircraft.
None of the fighters, P-40 or P-35 had oxygen for the pilots. Lack of oxygen limited use to about 15,000 feet. Even the P-40E's would not have lasted very long because the Japanese bombers could fly much higher than the American fighters and bomb airfields with impunity.
The book is either a typical leftist revision, or an alternate history novel. There is little difference between the two other than an alternate history novel will let you know up front that what you are about to read is fiction.
I don’t think the Soviets had as much to do with it as Churchill.
And Churchill had less to do with it than Roosevelt and Marshall.
Looking at the whole business dispassionately, from the point of view of global strategy and US national strategy, it made sense to consider the Germans the primary enemy. The US economy was far more closely tied to Europe than East Asia. Japan was powerful, but had far less economic potential than a victorious Germany. Any potential losses to Japan were, in terms of US interests, very minor. The Philippines was seen by most in Washington as much more a liability than an asset; the US government had been trying to get rid of it for two decades (an interesting point being that Philippine “nationalists” cleverly played the Washington game to keep the Americans in while loudly proclaiming a desire for independence. Quezon was very tricky).
Roosevelt kept most of his analysis very close to his chest. Most US grand strategy deliberations were never documented and even at this time are quite murky. But its clear that Roosevelt wanted a pretext to go to war, with someone, in order to justify mobilization. There were any number of deliberate provocations of the Germans and the Japanese, that must have come straight from the top.
It wasn’t fiction and I don’t know if Gilbert is a leftie.
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