"Better Than MacArthur": Defending the Philippines

Someone already wrote up a version of it over on the warships1 forums. And the World Turned Upside Down -aka. HMS Eagle and Escorts Get Thrown Back in Time and Decide 'Sod Messing About, Lets Just Nuke the Buggers'. Now granted it doesn't have as nice a fleet as the The Conveniently Well Equipped Fleet but it does makes up for it with a certain appealing directness. :D

Simon

Very nice little story. After two nukes destroying the forces meant to invade Malaya and the Kra peninsula Eagle and escorts are returned to 1961 [I think they come from] only to find there are butterflies and it's a little different and more modern than the one they left. I think the author actually grossly underestimated the impact as he has the fall of Malaya and Singapore only delayed a few months but quite a good read.:D

Steve
 
Your observation reminds me of this paragraph from Edmonds' They Fought With What They Had:
Nor was their B-17 the Flying Fortress that ended the war over Germany with its power turrets, heavier armor, and tail guns. These B-17Cs and Ds could only protect themselves adequately in full squadron formation in level flight, but the way the men had learned to fight them during the first days—one, two, or three ships over the target—they might as well, as General O'Donnell says, have been flying spotted ponies.​
It would be neat to simulate a scenario of the B-17s arriving over the Formosa airfields in time to catch the Japanese aircraft on the ground. Perhaps even these "spotted ponies" may have been able to make a difference . . .

Actually, the Japanese had a hard time even with the early model B-17's. Simply put, they could (and did) fly above the effective fighting altitudes of most Japanese fighters of the time. The rifle-caliber machineguns that dominated Japanese fighter armament in 1941 also weren't much threat.

Eventually, of course, the handful of B-17s will be shot down / destroyed on the ground / crash / etc. They might easily run out of bombs even sooner.

I've not discovered a satisfying answer as to why MacArthur did not launch those strikes, or why he was given any respect afterwards, when even FDR was recorded as fuming about the matter.

The best explanation that I've encountered is that Mac had an agreement with Philippine President Quezon to try to keep the PI neutral. Note that Quezon paid Mac a very large sum of money at almost the same time Mac ordered Quezon to be evacuated from the PI in some of the extremely limited transport available. Yes, this would have been treason. So? Mac was a living God on Earth, far above petty things like orders or oaths.

Would the powers that be have been willing to build the indigenous defenses of the Philippines with an eye toward insurgency and harassment to complement existing strongpoints?

Absent Mac, the PI would almost certainly get less support (equipment, etc.) from the US than OTL. More is out of the question.

Thing is, isn't it illegal for an officer to surrender his unit except if it's about to be destroyed?

I'm unaware of any such provision in the Articles of War (the equivalent of the UCMJ at the time). As you noted, there was a serious concern that the Japanese would slaughter their prisoners if all US forces didn't surrender. In fairness to Mac, they probably would have made the same demand and same threat even if Wainwright wasn't in overall command. Not that the Bataan Death March was a significantly better fate...
 
You forgot the 25 'Go on,make my day!' fleet subs:p
That's lovely, if they have the new My God, It Actually Works! torpedoes.:p (Or they've got about 30 Christ, These Things are Old & Small! boats, which ended up in Britain OTL, which, by terrible oversight,:p did have working torpedoes as standard equipment.) It would also help if Cast & Hypo have the latest Maru Code Decoder Rings from their Crackerjack boxes.:p

Translation: supplies of Mark X torpedoes, instead of Mark XIV, would have been a huge help. Also, not having a Customs guy in San Francisco be a moron & copy a Japanese merchant (maru) codebook so clumsily the Japanese couldn't help but notice...:eek::eek:
Launch the strikes against southern Formosa on December 8th. The worst that happens is you lose half the bomber force
Absolutely right. Moreover, just preseving the a/c to serve as LR recce could have helped the subs...
U.S. forces had lots of AvGas that it had waited to long to move as well, so it was used to burn the rice:eek::eek::eek:
:eek::eek::eek::eek::confused::confused:
Let me put one thing out at the start; the Philippines could NOT be held.
No, the object is to make it as hard as possible. So, a few to add to your list.

Medicine: have it shipped in before the attack. If the P.I. are expected to hold, this would seem simple common sense. It wasn't done.:rolleyes:

Ammo: same. A lot of it was no damn good.:eek: And there wasn't enough.:rolleyes:

Prepare defensive positions & roadblocks: There weren't any.:eek::rolleyes: Even after Japan said she wasn't going to honor the Treaty:rolleyes: (London or Washington, I can never keep straight which). There weren't even plans for any.:eek::confused::confused::rolleyes: Nor materials collected.:rolleyes:
One of the reasons the Philippines wasn't more heavily fortified in OTL was the Washington Naval Treaty which barred the Americans from fortifying them and the Japanese from fortifying Formosa.
Well, no. It had expired, & Japan had long before 1941 declared she wasn't going to abide by it. Actually, IIRC, it was 1936.
A/c maintenance: add technicians. (There weren't enough of them.) And, hell, at least make sure the fighters' damn machineguns would work at altitude!:eek::rolleyes: (I've read they either clogged from Cosmoline, or froze;:rolleyes: I don't recall which.)

Cryppies : Evacuate them!!:eek::eek::eek::rolleyes: Christ, which moron thought sending them out as infantry was a good idea?:eek::confused::confused:

ComAsFlt: Fire Hart. His dispositions were awful. Maybe that's because his ComSubAs, Doyle, was more/less ignorant of Asia (tho apparently Wilkes wasn't...), but hell, couldn't any of them read a damn chart?:eek::confused::confused: Hadn't they heard Lingayen Gulf was the expected landing zone? Didn't they know where Formosa was?:eek:

Deploying all six of his Sugar boats in Lingayen Gulf, 10-12 fleet boats in the approaches, & 10-12 off Formosa, Hart might have actually accomplished something. (As godawful as the Mk 14 was, as lousy as prewar training & doctrine were, maybe not a lot...:rolleyes:) They might have gotten a shot at a CV. They could've sunk a few transports. (Jim Coe & Moon Chapple proved that.) If nothing else, they could have boosted morale by fighting.

Move South: On Day One, all of Hart's ships, especially Holland & Canopus, should have moved to Tawi Tawi. The difference in operating distance to the patrol areas in the SChina Sea was trivial, & it would have forced IJN ASW a/c to work much harder.

Any wrench thrown in the Japanese timetable could only spell crisis pretty soon down the line. The P.I. holding longer could have really buggered the Malaya op. Loss (even due to damage) of even one CV could have tipped the balance at Coral Sea, with knock-ons at Midway.

How much time does it take to realize that MacArthur is a complete imbecile
OTL, it took more than four years of war.:eek::eek::rolleyes: (Very well said, tho.:cool: I wish I'd said that.)
 
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