Why the U.S. military should mandate officer retirement by age 50

“His actions as a General in WWII were appalling.”

Utter nonsense. Yes, the man had some serious character flaws, but his actions as a strategic commander were highly effective and produced far fewer casualties then those of Nimitz and Eisenhower.

Furthermore, it was Eisenhower who caused the surrender of Wainwright in the Philippines, and not MacArthur. It was Eisenhower’s recommendation on the war planning staff that President Roosevelt and his chiefs of staff relied upon to withhold further support to the garrison in the Philippines. MacArthur wanted to conduct a forward defensive campaign at the beachheads of the Japanese invasion landings, but he was repeatedly overruled by the war plans staff, especially Eisenhower. In the final case, MacArthur tried to make a last minute change of the war plan and make the forward defense, rather than immediately withdraw into Bataan. It worked so well, the Japanese invaders were very nearly defeated in detail after the landings on Luzon. The decision by Eisenhower and the war plans staff to withhold further attempts to resupply and reinforce MacArthur’s defensive campaign denied the defenders the ammunition needed at the critical moment when the Japanese invaders were all but broken. When the ammunition ran out, the defense began a rapid collapse back into the Bataan defensive positions.

Even after the defense fell back into the Bataan defensive positions, the Japanese invasion forces once again were very nearly defeated by the emaciated defenders of Bataan. In assault after assault on the American defensive lines in Bataan, the Japanese attackers took crippling losses of men and material. The situation grew to desperate proportions to the point where the Japanese discussed sending no further reinforcements of troops or supplies to the Philippines and instead to send them to the attacks upon the Malay Barrier. It was only at the last possible moment the Japanese decided to sen in one more substantial reinforcement to the Philippines, which finally broke Wainwright’s lines for a lack of munitions, food, medicine, and able bodied manpower.

MacArthur got it right, and Eisenhower and his backers were wrong. The same thing happened in Europe, where Patton had it right and Eisenhower, Bradley, Clark, and Hodges too often got it wrong.

Australian RINOs , eh? The perspective of history is filled with bias and I admit mine. I see MacArthur as a brave soldier and an egomaniac whose persona became perception in a nation looking for a hero.

As an army officer, MacArthur focused on the ground and even that was more planning than reality. In a sense, this campaign proved the adage of the horseshoe. The Japanese never had adequate logistic support, and the American supplies did not help those stranded on Bataan. The failure to resupply was certainly out of MacArthur’s hands, but the initial failure to stage and employ resources was typical–haphazard staging driven by numerous plans and no final decision until it was too late. In fairness, any transition from peace to war is fraught with uncertainty.

The defense of the Philippines was a debacle, and it was an intractable problem given the political and logistic realities. However, I still believe that not attacking Formosa and not deciding on one course of action set in motion the ultimate result.

MacArthur did focus on retaking the Philippines, but many would say that his motivation was to remove the stain of that defeat. Ultimately, his triumphant return was predicated by the same logistical nightmare that defeated Japanese forces throughout the Pacific. The Japanese had no manufacturing base or transport capability to hold anything.

The Japanese Penny Men spent their lives in wave after wave of suicidal attacks, gaining ground inch by bloodstained inch, only to find themselves abandoned to starve or make that final miserable stand rather than face the shame of surrender. That fanatical devotion, so impenetrable to Western understanding, was the final justification for the mushroom clouds that ended their dreams of empire and released the last of those Philippine captives from slavery on the Japanese islands.

“The Japanese never had adequate logistic support....”

The Japanese had logistical support enough to conquer one of the largest expanses of the world ever seen in such a short campaign of conquest. This was due in large part to the weakness of the Allies in the conquered regions. Still the Japanese were outnumbered by the British Commonwealth forces and still managed enough logistical supply to hand their superior enemy a sound defeat.

The deficiencies of the Japanese armed forces and logistics began to be apparent with the near failure of their invasion of Luzon. Conversely, the deficiencies of the American ability to reinforce and supply the Philippine defense forces was all too apparent. This deficiency was well known and integrated into the war plans long before the war and the Japanese invasion. War planners in Washington argued the pros and cons for years whether or not to attempt the relief of the Philippines. It was MacArthur who attempted in vain to persuade the war planners and President Roosevelt to plan for forward opposition to the amphibious landing forces. Washington City authorities denied their approval and a timely creation of the Philippine territorial army as the Philippine President also vacillated giving his own approval.

The Japanese intelligence officer/s inside the Philippine government (baber and so forth) knew full well the internal debate going on for years about these matters before the war. It was the American decision to move forward with the creation of the Philippine army a few years earlier than originally contemplated in preparation for the Philippine independence which added another prompt for Japan to also move forward its timetable for launching the Pacific War.

Japan had earlier planned a start of hostilities against the United States in about 1944. When the United States began its post Washing naval Treaty expansion of the U.S. Navy surface combatants in the late 1930s and later embargoed oil and steel imports used for the Japanese armed forces military campaigns in China, the Japanese moved the war plans forward to Spring 1942. When MacArthur was given the command to begin the creation of the Philippine army with the first traiing classes graduating in Spring 1942, the Japanese moved the war plan forward again until the November-December 1941 launch window was finally implemented on 7 December 1941. This date was chosen in part to preempt the ability of MacArthur to complete the training and equipping of the first echelon of the new Philippine army in March 1942. MacArthur appealed endlessly for more troops and supplies with little success.

So, the situation MacArthur and his command found themselves in during the Philippine Defensive Campaign was not of his doing. The blame rests squarely upon President Roosevelt, President Quezon, the war planners in Washington D.C. (including Eisenhower), and the Philippine pacifists who thought they could persuade President Quezon and the Japanese not to invade the Philippines by offering no threat to the Japanese war plans in the Pacific War.

Despite all of this, MacArthur’s plan to oppose the Japanese invasion at the beachheads succeeded until the handicaps imposed by the Washington and Manila governments took effect with the failed supplies of troops and munitions.

Yes, MacArthur failed the Army Air Corps 10th Air Force. However, we now know by hindsight the 10th Air Force B-17 bombardment squadrons were ill prepared to sink the Japanese invasion force as was originally contemplated by pre-war doctrine. 10th Air force was also a fraction of the strength of the U.S. Pacific Fleet forces that interdicted Formosa in 1944-445, so there was little chance the 10th Air Force had any chance of decisively interdicting the Japanese invasion forces in 1941. Preservation of the 10th Air Force may have helped significantly during the defensive campaign, but it ultimately would have failed due to the chronic shortages of maintenance supplies and reinforcements of replacement B-17 aircraft. It was simply too little too late to change the outcome without the establishment of a convoy route to the Philippines. The U.S. Navy was not prepared to do so and sought to avoid the Japanese effort to compel the U.S. Pacific Fleet into an early and decisive fleet engagement with a victorious outcome for Japan.

Consequently, MacArthur and his command were abandoned by the war planners due to the assumption right or wrong naval relief forces could not successfully conduct a convoy operation to the Philippines.

The Japanese logistical line of communications failed by 1944-45 due to the U.S. submarine warfare finally remedying failed pre-war submarine warfare doctrine and faulty torpedoes, and because of MacArthur’s brilliant island hopping campaign enabling effective air interdiction of those Japanese lines of communication. These accomplishments were well beyond the scope of MacArthur’s command and its establishment in the Philippines of 1941-42.

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