Omar Bradley was another fine general. Beloved by his men and one of the few who could get super-sized egos like Patton and Montgomery to cooperate.
Mark Clark? I won't disagree. He lost more men taking Anzio Beachhead than MacArthur lost taking the entire Pacific. And he was callous about it, too!
LS, your take?
One interesting thing is that both MacArthur and Bradley each made one massive blunder in their careers, and it was the same one. Both occurred after a brilliant campaign led to a massive route of the enemy, Mac following the Inchon invasion, and Bradley at the Battle of the Bulge. Both refused to believe that the enemy was capable or launching a winter counter attack, even after it was clearly happening.
Still, most great generals have made at least one blunder.
“After gory and costly battles in places like Guadalcanal and Tarawa, he discovered the magic of bypassing islands and leaving enemy strongholds to die on the vine.”
Guadalcanal & Tarawa were Navy/Marine Corps operations, not under the command of MacArthur. I’m sure he noticed those mistakes, but they weren’t his.
The “Dugout” tag comes from his departure from Corregidor — which was ordered.
Probably his biggest mistake was abandoning the planned defense of Bataan & Manila Bay by initially opposing the Japanese landings in Northern Luzon. That cost him men & materiel when he should have been husbanding his resources. Given the Navy’s predicament after Pearl Harbor, relief wasn’t coming, so it probably made little difference.
MacArthur probably made a few mistakes in the early operations on New Guinea, but he learned very quickly from those.
All-in-all, a very capable theater commander.
Guadalcanal was crucial in preventing the Japanese from advancing farther south towards New Zealand and thereby severing the supply route to Australia. Tarawa was all on Nimitz.
McArthur wasn't involved in either the Guadalcanal or Tarawa campaigns. Both of them were CINCPAC (Nimitz) shows.
MacArthur had little to do with the island hopping and bypassing campaign, which was largely carried out in the Central Pacific by Nimitz. And War Plan Orange, which laid out the general approach, was not authored by MacArthur.
He was an excellent military proconsul post-war.