AHC: MacArthur Contained in 1944 (no Phillipines Campaign)

With a PoD in 1944, and late as possible, how can MacArthur's campaign to retake the Phillipines as a whole (Luzon, etc) be prevented? What would be the effects (short, medium, and long term)?
 
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No Return to the Phillipines

The only things I perceive would be failure in New Guinea or MacArthur not becoming commander of the SW Pacific. Like Mac of not he could portray (sometimes accurately) an issue being a moral imperative. He sold the American people on the return and making it a priority. FDR knew bypassing them for long would be politically very difficult.
 
Even without MacArthur, taking the Philippines made strategic sense.

You are either playing the short game or long game. In a short game, you want to go directly to Tokyo Bay. But is the US navy capable of wiping the Japanese Navy plus their land support in 1944?

For the long game, you strangled Japan, meaning route to oil, which is the Philippines. That is why in OTL the Japanese already committed their Battleships in Leyte and Surigao Strait rather than waiting for the US to go to Tokyo Bay before they commit their remaining Carriers and Battleships.

In political terms, It would have been dicey. The Japanese by end of the war would have handed their weapons to the Filipinos instead of the USA. There was no need to hand Philippines independence when the Japanese already let them declare it in 1943 and the Japanese were letting the Filipinos run their own Republic. US loses all its OTL influence to the Philippines, meaning no more basing rights.

For the Philippines politically, the 2nd republic would have continued rather than transfer to the 3rd Republic.
 
Even without MacArthur, taking the Philippines made strategic sense.

You are either playing the short game or long game. In a short game, you want to go directly to Tokyo Bay. But is the US navy capable of wiping the Japanese Navy plus their land support in 1944?

For the long game, you strangled Japan, meaning route to oil, which is the Philippines. That is why in OTL the Japanese already committed their Battleships in Leyte and Surigao Strait rather than waiting for the US to go to Tokyo Bay before they commit their remaining Carriers and Battleships.

In political terms, It would have been dicey. The Japanese by end of the war would have handed their weapons to the Filipinos instead of the USA. There was no need to hand Philippines independence when the Japanese already let them declare it in 1943 and the Japanese were letting the Filipinos run their own Republic. US loses all its OTL influence to the Philippines, meaning no more basing rights.

For the Philippines politically, the 2nd republic would have continued rather than transfer to the 3rd Republic.

Amen. Mac tends to get flak for returning to the Philippines (among many, many other things), but while individual battles may be critiqued - regarding, say, the necessity of taking this or that little island - on the whole the decision was strategically and politically sound.
 
With a PoD in 1944, and late as possible, how can MacArthur's campaign to retake the Phillipines be prevented? What would be the effects (short, medium, and long term)?

This clearly leaves Mac in charge through most of 1944 & implies the S Pacific campaign is left intact. That leaves a Army HQ & several corps of ground forces underused, plus all the support echelon, air, and naval support, for the late 1944 offensives. I suspect that means a portion of the US forces in the S Pacific region are repositioned for the final campaigns vs Japan in the central and east Pacific. That leads to less brought from the US or Europe.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
There's also the significant point that once the US was ashore

Even without MacArthur, taking the Philippines made strategic sense.

You are either playing the short game or long game. In a short game, you want to go directly to Tokyo Bay. But is the US navy capable of wiping the Japanese Navy plus their land support in 1944?

For the long game, you strangled Japan, meaning route to oil, which is the Philippines. That is why in OTL the Japanese already committed their Battleships in Leyte and Surigao Strait rather than waiting for the US to go to Tokyo Bay before they commit their remaining Carriers and Battleships.

In political terms, It would have been dicey. The Japanese by end of the war would have handed their weapons to the Filipinos instead of the USA. There was no need to hand Philippines independence when the Japanese already let them declare it in 1943 and the Japanese were letting the Filipinos run their own Republic. US loses all its OTL influence to the Philippines, meaning no more basing rights.

For the Philippines politically, the 2nd republic would have continued rather than transfer to the 3rd Republic.

There's also the significant point that once the US was ashore in strength and the Japanese naval and air forces were defeated, the PI was about the only place in the entire Pacific where the locals were capable of contributing significantly to liberating themselves, and even providing manpower for future operations, if needed; not something the Allies would have found in Taiwan, for example.

And without (at least) Mindanao and Luzon (and Mindoro to connect them, essentially), there's no real cork in the bottle in terms of Japanese sea lanes south of Okinawa that can be taken in a timely fashion; certainly the Allied air power based in the PI in 1944-45 made a huge difference in terms of choking off Japanese commerce from SEA, including POL from the occupied NEI and the resources of Malaya and Indochina.

And if the goal is Mindoro-Luzon-Mindanao in 1945, Leyte is 1944 is the best option for an entry point to the archipelago from the east.

Best,
 
Made an adjustment to the OP; taking small islands like Peleliu, which was part of the original plan for (re)establishing airfields in the archipelago is compatible with the OP, so long as there's no US army landings to retake Luzon, siege Manilla, etc.; getting weapons to Fillipine resistance is also fine, so long as the campaign is significantly less destructive than OTL.
 
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