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[Despite warning, the planes were destroyed on the ground.

McArthurs legacy is overrated.]

The Japanese attacks occurred *9* hours after Pearl Harbor. That’s not a very long time. Just what was the history of near simultaneous attacks that the Japanese mounted? Had there been anything like that previously? Did anyone think the Japanese, whose recent history was of applying the coup de grace to tottering empires (China and Russia) in fairly small-scale wars was capable of these slashing maneuvers across many thousands of miles at once? In fact, was it thought conceivable that such maneuvers could be conducted at all, let alone by the Japanese?

I’m inclined to think this represents a serious case of presentism as well as Monday morning quarterbacking. I’d be surprised if anyone at that time thought the Japanese were capable of near-simultaneous attacks at far-flung locations. This distance between Pearl Harbor and the Philippines is over 5,000 miles. The attack on the Philippines came 9 hours after Pearl Harbor. Was this something that *anyone* thought the Japanese were capable of doing? Wasn’t it the predominant view that the Japanese were incapable of flying aircraft competently? Was the US at the time capable of such simultaneous attacks? Why would they expect the Japanese to be? What was MacArthur’s fuel and spare parts situation? Could he afford to waste fuel and spare parts on recon in force missions when he might be cut off from resupply for the duration of the war?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/12/countdown-pearl-harbor-attack-twomey-anniversary/
[If you read the American magazines and newspapers in 1941, it’s amazing how the Japanese were considered a funny, curious people, who were technologically inept. They were supposedly physiologically incapable of being good aviators because they lacked a sense of balance and their eyes were not right. It was even believed that the Japanese were bad pilots because, as babies, they would be carried on the backs of their big sisters and got bounced around, so their inner ear was knocked askew. [Laughs]

Kimmel also didn’t have a sense of the looming power of aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers were only about 20 years old as a weapon. It was hard to imagine how much damage could be inflicted if 350 planes suddenly arrived from the sea, because that had never happened before. Nobody had put together a fleet with so many aircraft carriers at one time as the Japanese did on December 7.

We have to remember that in that day and age there were no satellites peering down, revealing all. So when the Japanese set sail on November 26, 1941, we did not know that. In their journey 3,000 miles across the Pacific, they never encountered a commercial ship, a search plane, a warship, and were never seen from above. It was the essential ingredient of their plan. They had to achieve surprise. If they didn’t, everything would have failed.

I don’t think there will be another Pearl Harbor because the ability to detect movement of armed forces is so much better, not just with satellites but also with listening devices and the ability of nations to suck up the radio transmissions of their opponents.]

What was MacArthur’s fuel and spare parts situation?

Suboptimal but capable.

Could he afford to waste fuel and spare parts on recon in force missions when he might be cut off from resupply for the duration of the war?

Yes. At the crack of dawn U.S. fighters took to the sky patrolling for the expected Japanese attack force. The sun rose but no sign of the Japanese.

By midday, with no sign of the Japanese and unaware that the Japanese planes were grounded on Formosa ~6 hours due to bad weather, the U.S. fighters running low on fuel had to return to base for refueling.

The American's bad luck is while on the ground being refueled, that just happened to be when the much delayed Japanese attack force arrived.

The gods of war just happened to favor Japan that day.

The attack on the Philippines came 9 hours after Pearl Harbor. Was this something that *anyone* thought the Japanese were capable of doing?

The round trip from flight kaohsiung , in Formosa (Taiwan), to Manila, is 1,100+ miles. The P40 would run out of fuel half way through the return trip, and the P39 could not make the trip one way without a strong tailwind. The American military had no idea that the Japanese Navy had a fighter, the Zero, that could not only make the round trip, but had enough range to spare to loiter in an assembly area while forming up, and to engage in combat at the midpoint. Given that Japan’s fleet carriers had to have been at Pearl Harbor, the expectation was that the Philippines would face only unescorted bombers for several days.