Posted on 10/14/2011 5:00:10 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Bro,
I agree with what Cougar says.
In the USSR, Stalin was willfully blind and did not order needed defensive measures. In a tightly controlled, top down organization like the prewar Red Army that effectively prevented any local commander from doing much on their own.
In the US case, everyone knew war was coming with Japan, it is clear from the headlines we are seeing, even with hindsight. Commanders in turn, had the authority to defend themselves as needed.
But, we did not have unified commands, vital reenforcements were a day lkate and a dollar short, our Army commanders were not up to the task and our Navy commanders, while better, were short on ships. Communications were poor and even then not adequately used. Theater commanders were not “in the loop” and our response to vital intelligence was poor. We were still operating by peacetime rules and the enemy was not.
MacArthur’s Medal of Honor should be revoked, and I wish it were possible to do a posthumous court-martial for his dereliction of duty in defending the Philippines.
I am not nearly as critical of MacArthur as you folks are.
As a boy I admired him, and still think he was a fine general, especially when you compare him to his contemporaries.
And who were those?
Well, during the Second World War the United States (read: FDR) created seven 5-star rank officers.
They were:
Note first that MacArthur came fourth on this list, after the politicians Leahy, Marshall and King and before Nimitz, Eisenhower and Arnold.
Second, note that on this whole list, MacArthur and Nimitz are the only real "fighting generals", since even Eisenhower today is mentioned more for his political skills than military prowess.
Indeed, you might even consider MacArthur as both a "fighting" and "political" general, though his political skills seem, well, exaggerated to us today.
But I would argue that MacArthur's political, ahem, "skills" were exactly what was needed in his time and place.
And the proof of my argument is: the greatest political actor of all time, President Franklin Roosevelt, kept, promoted and rehired MacArthur on several occasions.
Finally, we should note that "Hap" Arnold is in a class by himself -- and around that revolves the point of this whole discussion!
In 1941 the US air forces were, in effect, an orphaned child, with no "parents" to protect them, no history to guide them.
To the Army units where they were assigned, they were not the "air force", but rather the "air farce".
The Army was at least somewhat jealous and envious of air force prima-donnas, and more interested in using them as ground troops than fighter pilots.
This, I think, somewhat explains why General Walter Short in Hawaii expected, planned and trained for exactly the attack which General MacArthur received in the Philippines.
And in both scenarios, the first event is Japanese destruction of the US air farces, releasing those troops to fight as infantry.
Of course, everyone learned from brutal experiences, and by war's end the air forces had well proved their tactical and strategic value, such that no Army general in 1945 had the same attitudes as those of Short and MacArthur in December of 1941.
If you presented that in the form of a Question in the News I wouldn't have gotten more than half credit. Eisenhower I knew. After thinking about it I would have figured Marshall, his boss, would have to at least equal him in rank. Nimitz makes sense, but I would have missed King. Arnold, maybe if you gave the total number of 5-stars. Yes, MacArthur would have made my list. Leahy, no way. Very interesting that the appointments were made on consecutive days in December. Ho, ho, ho. I'm glad there were no batons involved.
I don't think it is fair to class Ike as a political general rather than a fighting general. His natural people handling abilities were honed while commanding the invasions of North Africa, Sicily and France. I understand those operations involved considerable fighting.
You are partially correct. Part of the problem in both Hawaii and the Philippines was in ground commanders not appreciating how to properly defend their air assets. That was an institutional problem.
MacArthur himself was a bigger problem. He was pulled out of the Philippines, given the Medal of Honor, and made Southwest Area commander for PR reasons, to give the public a war hero when we needed one.
However, his actions in December 1941 are not the actions of a hero.
-When notified of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he froze and was out of communication with his staff for HOURS.
-He did not implement the detailed war plans for an organized withdrawal to the Bataan peninsula, instead mounting a weak defense of the beaches followed by a hasty withdrawal.
-Critically, he did not move supplies to Bataan to enable his force to hold out. Tons of food, medicine (including quinine for malaria) and ammunition were instead destroyed in the retreat. Additional supplies were captured by the Japanese.
Under the war plan he was supposed to move supplies on December 8th, when war broke out. He did not start until the 23rd, two days before the Japanese occupied Manila.
Frankly he should have started in November when we started pulling the Marines from China.
The plan with supplies was to hold out for six months. That we held out for four was a miracle. Given that performance, had he moved the supplies simply according to plans, we may have been able to hold out for nine months or more and become a huge drain on Japanese resources, forcing them to pull troops from elsewhere.
Here is good short article on the supply situation on Bataan.
http://www.corregidor.org/_morton/html/lm_05_02.htm
-When notified of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he froze and was out of communication with his staff for HOURS.
At 2:30 am, Manila time Asiatic Fleet Headquarters recieved the message "Air raid on Pearl Harbor. This is no drill". MacArthur received this message inside an hour after that. General Lewis Brereton, the air commander for MacArthur immediately was pressing for permission to send B-17s stationed in the P.I. against Japanese bases in Formosa. General Richard K. Sutherland, MacArthur's chief of staff refused to allow Brereton to see MacArthur, but told him to go ahead and get the bombers ready to fly pending MacArthur's go ahead. Two hours later, so around 5:30, Brereton was still not allowed to see MacArthur and was told to stand by for orders. By 10:00, Brereton still had received no orders and telephoned MacArthur's headquarters to try and get approval for the mission. Brereton's bombers were still on the ground at 12:20 when Japanese planes from Formosa (54 bombers and 36 Zeros) attack these bombers at Clark field destroying two squadrons of B-17s and one squadron of P40s. MacArthur had 8 hours and 40 minutes (minimum) to do ANYTHING, but managed to drag his feet long enough to let his air force get destroyed.
-He did not implement the detailed war plans for an organized withdrawal to the Bataan peninsula, instead mounting a weak defense of the beaches followed by a hasty withdrawal.
In place at the time was War Plan Orange which as you said called for the concentration of force on the Bataan peninsula. While this was not a perfect plan, it was designed to allow the American and Filipino forces to hold out until they could be reinforced by troops from America (though it is questionable if this would have worked out, it would have given them a lot better change of success than what MacArthur did). Instead he tried to defend the beaches with Filipino forces that lacked the training and the equipment showing that he didn't even have a rudimentary understanding of the preparedness of his own troops.
-Critically, he did not move supplies to Bataan to enable his force to hold out. Tons of food, medicine (including quinine for malaria) and ammunition were instead destroyed in the retreat. Additional supplies were captured by the Japanese.
Aside from the fact that much of the supplies were not at Bataan where they were supposed to be because of MacArthur's foolish "defend the beaches" strategy, even when there was a dire need to move these supplies to Bataan this was not done. Some of this can be blamed on the panic that ensued when the Japanese landed and was making short work of the defending forces. Trucks fled to Bataan without frieght and railway workers deserted in large numbers. But additionally, and this explains why these supplies were not being moved in that time between December 8th and December 24 (when MacArthur suddenly ordered that WPO-3, the original War Plan Orange was in effect), there were laws in effect in the Philippines that prohibited the movement of rice and other foods from one province to another. MacArthur and Philippine President Manuel Quezon both insisted that these laws be enforced despite the fact that a land invasion was inevitable. As a result in depots like the one at Cabanatuan, around 10 million tons of rice was abandoned and left to the Japanese. At the end of the first week alone, the defenders at Bataan were already on half rations.
The suffering of those men on Bataan, their eventual surrender, and death and abuse of the Bataan Death March rest squarely on MacArthur's shoulders and his ineptness as a commander.
Even more unfair would be to contrast Ike's competent military leadership at the end of the war with MacArthur's in December 1941.
Indeed, if you compare Ike's landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France with MacArthur's island-hopping through the Pacific, I'd be willing to bet that you could not prove one did a measurably better job than the other.
Indeed, has anyone even counted up all the landings MacArthur made?
But sure, if you want to switch Ike from "political general" to "fighting general" go right ahead.
But then I'd have to say that the "fighting component" of MacArthur's work was far higher and the "political component" far less than Eisenhower's.
The bottom line remains that MacArthur's contemporaries are the six other 5-star rank officers, and compared to others in that group, I'd still say as a "fighting general" Mac looked pretty good.
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