What If the Philippines Held Out Longer?

The US could have probably held out considerably longer on the Bataan peninsula if food, gas, and munition stocks had been moved inside defendable positions in a timely manner. What if MacArthur and company had done that? The Bataan Peninsula held out until April 9, 1942 and Corrigedor until May 6. Let's say the US forces have enough additional food and ammunition to hold out an extra three months.

Now granted, their food and ammunition isn't the only consideration. As the Japanese cleaned up the rest of the loose ends of their parameter in the Pacific, they would undoubtedly focus more power on the Bataan peninsula. In the April/May 1942 time-frame they had a lot of additional firepower and manpower to call on if they needed it. On the other hand, a limited front would make it difficult to use very much additional power, and the spread of 'victory disease' might delay the realization that Bataan was not going to crack in an acceptable time-frame without additional forces.

The key date to watch is early June of 1942. Assuming that holding the Philippines longer doesn't somehow butterfly away the US victory at Midway, the US would emerge from that battle with something approaching naval parity with the Japanese, and with US forces holding out precariously in the Philippines. That would probably lead to intense political pressure on the Roosevelt administration to try a rescue effort, especially with the 1942 midterm elections approaching.

So, what happens? My gut feeling is that any attempt to rescue the Philippines in the aftermath of Midway would result in the US Navy getting its butt severely kicked. Just no way to get there without going through too much strongly held Japanese territory. And I think the top commanders of the navy were smart enough to figure that out. At the same time, the longer those guys held out, the greater the political pressure to rescue them would get. At some point it might divert resources from Operation Torch toward building toward a rescue effort.

Where do you think this would go? How long could the Bataan Peninsula hold out given a best case scenario in terms of getting weapons and supplies there? How would the US react in terms of trying to rescue US forces there? What would the political consequences of any actions be?
 
Minor thread necromancy, but this is an interesting question...

First of all, I'm not sure how Midway is not butterflied away by the PI holding out longer. On the other hand, if the US holds out on Bataan, there will be enormous pressure for the US Navy to do *SOMETHING*. By the way, I also think this scenario butterflies away the Doolittle Raid, so instead of having USS Enterprise and USS Hornet unavailable for combat ops in your timeframe, they are available along with USS Lexington and USS Yorktown (I'm assuming USS Saratoga is still in drydock due to submarine attack, and USS Wasp is still in the Atlantic).

Now, as I recall, didn't Kido Butai deploy with 5 carriers into the Indian Ocean circa late March/early April 1942? If this is the case, and if the USN decides to mount a major op, they have overwhelming superiority. Of course, I doubt the IJN would deploy to the Indian Ocean in this scenario.

But then again, if they are not making much progress in the PI, what would happen to the forces that historically took down Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies? Wouldn't they reinforce the Philippines? And if so, would the US, or rather, ABDA Command, heavily reinforce Java, Sumatra, and Malaysia with ground and air forces, rather than shipping those forces to Australia/New Zealand? Perhaps instead of the Americal Division in New Caledonia, we see the Amerimal Division (American Forces in Malaysia) deployed to Malaysia?

So, even if the IJN wins a major victory against the USN - which I don't think we can necessarily assume - they are behind the 8-ball in terms of their historical expansion.

Those are just some random thoughts - you're the expert on this subject, though, so odds are you can spot some flaws :)
 
I doubt that, had the Bataan salient held out longer, that Japan would have proceeded with her conquests like OTL.

Though there wasn't much flex in her invasion timetable, there was SOME flex. In fact the Japanese themselves were quite surprised with the speed of their initial conquests. Even given additional American supplies, the Japanese are probably going to delay their further operations, shifting troops back from the recently conquered DEI around late March/ early April 1942 to deal with the Bataan problem. Not to mention elite carrier air wings providing air support.

There's also a morale issue there too. Keep in mind that American morale was substantially lower than the Japanese.

Even with extra supplies, I doubt the Bataan Peninsula could have held out for much longer, a month tops IMHO.
 
I don't know about that...US infantry formations had significantly superior firepower to Japanese formations...all it would take would be a couple of massacres a la Alligator Creek or Edson's Ridge (Guadalcanal IOTL) to give the "Battlin' Bastards of Bataan" a major morale boost, right?
 
If Bataan holds out longer, and the KB doesn't go to the Pacific I imagine this leaves the door open for Sommerville to do something with his FEF in May '42.

The Japanese were very lucky, the whole house of cards could have come down very easily.
 
Perhaps if MacAurthur broke up the army and had it scatter into the hills of Luzon instead of bottling them up on a Peninsula, then the Japanese would have to deal with a nasty guerilla war. Of course, Japan at the time simply would have retalitated ten fold against the Filipinos for every raid.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Bataan was irrelevant. As cold as it sounds the defenders of the Peninsula had been written off from Day One.

Nobody in the U.S. chain of command had the slightest delusion of what going back to the Islands was going to require, and no one had thought that the Islands were defensible for close on a decade.

Even the impact on IJA operations would not have been remarkable. Even if the Peninsula holds until September (which would have been a warrior effort straight out of Homer), it makes no difference at all. The troops are totally defensive, they have no way to interfere with the supply lines from the DEI or Indochina. The military utility of the Philippines to U.S. ended when Clark was overrun & Subic rendered untenable ending any chance of offensive operations.
 
So Bataan is no Singapore in the sense that holding it allows the Navy to operate? Where is that 'concrete battleship' fort?
 

Bearcat

Banned
So Bataan is no Singapore in the sense that holding it allows the Navy to operate? Where is that 'concrete battleship' fort?

Corregidor is at the mouth of Manila Bay - but holding it only denies the IJN the use of the port. Unfortunately, the IJN advance was so rapid that by the time the PI fell, Manila Bay had largely become irrelevant.

You need big PODs pre-war, at least on the order of CalBear's excellent Pacific War Redux TL, for the PI to stay potentially relevant into late '42.
 
Military versus political

Militarily, a US holdout in the Philippines would have been irrelevant largely, with the exception of denying Manila Bay to the Japanese and tying up a division or two. And, yes the US military pretty much wrote the Philippines off prewar, after congress refused to let them build up US-held Guam as a base to counter the Japanese in the Marshalls.

The problems for both sides would be primarily political. The Japanese historically lost face because the US held out so long. I believe that the Japanese commander was essentially cashiered. The longer the US held out, the more pressure there would be on the Japanese to end the holdout. As I recall, the Japanese initial bottled up Bataan with a relatively small holding force and then brought additional forces in after they mopped up Malaya/Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. They would have probably brought in even more if the holdout lasted longer, even though it didn't make a lot of sense militarily.

For the US, the problem would be that as the US forces held out longer, the pressure to rescue them would mount, but there was no practical way to get there without either unlocking the Japanese-held island chains or rendering them harmless by using carriers to neutralize Japanese air and naval power on them. Neither option was really in the cards in the summer of 1942, but at the same time if the garrison fell in say August 1942 without the US having made an effort to save them, then the Democrats would probably be hurt in the midterm elections in 1942. It would also make it much more difficult for the US to implement a Europe-first strategy, and especially plan for Operation Torch, because that would be seen as somewhat of a betrayal of the soldiers on Bataan.
 

Larrikin

Banned
Bataan

The peninsular held as long as it did because the IJA diverted troops from the PI to the DEI to take advantage of the rapidity of their success on Luzon and in Malaysia. The divisions used to take Singapore were so thoroughly chewed up that they needed to be reconstituted before they could be used elsewhere, the units in the PI not so much.

Bataan fell when the IJA replace those units that had been taken away.
 
One thing is that if Bataan holds out longer, so does the southern PI. One of the biggest mistakes (well one of many) that MacArthur made was putting Wainwright in charge of all the troops in the PI. The Japanese said surrender all or we don't take the surrender at Corregidor, everybody gets killed. With 2 separate commands, Wainwright can't tell the rest of the PI to surrender. In order to secure the southern islands, more troops, landing craft etc are needed and more US & Philippine troops can go in to the bush with better preparation for guerrilla activities.

Because of the relatively inflexible Japanese timetable and their limited resources (in items like troop transports, landing craft) as well as numbers of troops, this will have an effect somewhere. I could see that the fortification or even garrisoning of some of the islands taken from the British/Australians like the Solomons could be seriously delayed making the Allied advance start closer to the original Japanese mandates &/or advance more quickly.
 
Why did the rest of the army in the Phillippines surrender?

I know Wainwright was their general and all, but I was under the impression all officers swore never to surrender their unit while it was still capable of fighting.

Were ALL of them intimidated by the threatened massacre of Corregidor?
 
Why did the rest of the army in the Phillippines surrender?

I know Wainwright was their general and all, but I was under the impression all officers swore never to surrender their unit while it was still capable of fighting.

Were ALL of them intimidated by the threatened massacre of Corregidor?

I think that the threatened massacre was a big reason, if not the big one. That would be a heavy burden for the other officers who surrendered their units.

I'm not sure if the forces in Mindanao were actually under Wainwright's command. Some of the truth about the battle for the Philippines might actually be myth mixed with truth.
 

burmafrd

Banned
With more supplies, especially food and medicine and artillery ammunition, the battle would have gone slower for certain. The retreat would have been slower down the peninsula. This would have looked bad for the IJA as vs how totally triumphant the IJN had been. And that rivalry was deadly serious. Therefore the call would have gone out earlier for more troops, and at a greater level then OTL. More troops there mean fewer elsewhere, and that is important when added to the shortage of transport ships. How much of an effect all told? Probably not major, but certainly something.
 
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