mogami
Posts: 12789
Joined: 8/23/2000
From: You can't get here from there
Status: offline
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Too bad so many of us missed our true calling in life. So many great Generals and Admirals here at Matrix who can point out all the faults and weakness's of the guys who had the dia-advantage of actually having to make the descisions without the advise 50 years of 'armchair' commanders could have given. Military leaders always face critisim from history for ethier losing too many men (being stupid or not caring) or they are too cautious and too slow. It has been suggested that Patton was not a good commander cause he had the OB's of the enemy. Well we have them also and we're all genius's to boot. Do we have the moral courage to take resposibilty for sending men into combat and dying. The leaders so freely critized here did.
The really big strategic question of the Allied Pacific war planners was, what route should we take to Japan? Four were possible:
Through the Indian Ocean and the Straits of Malacca, led by the British fleet. This became impossible because the British command in the Far East never obtained enough force to eject the Japanese from Burma.
The short route by the Aleutians. This was ruled out by the constant foul weather in those latitudes.
A creep up on Japan by what General [Douglas] MacArthur called the "New Guinea-Mindanao axis." This plan, which General MacArthur consistently urged the Joint Chiefs of Staff to adopt, meant concentrating the entire weight of the Pacific Fleet, Army, and amphibious forces under his command and liberating the Philippine archipelago before going on to Japan.
The Navy's plan for an advance through the Central Pacific, taking key points in the Gilbert, Marshall, and Caroline islands en route; then to the Marianas; then to Formosa; and creating a base on the coast of China for the final onslaught on Japan.
If you will look at a map you can see that the Marianas, the Carolines, the Marshalls, and Gilberts make a series of great spider webs-- "made to order for Japan," as one Japanese admiral said--to catch any unwary flies that might try to cross the Pacific. These islands and atolls had been well provided with airfields, advanced naval bases, and strong garrisons. The distances between them are so short that Japan could fleet up aircraft and naval forces at will. General MacArthur believed that it would take too long to slice through this series of spider webs; we must work around them. Hence his "New Guinea-Mindanao axis" plan, which required only one big corridor, through the Solomons and Bismarcks.
Admirals King and Nimitz, on the other hand, argued against the MacArthur plan as the sole route of advance, for four reasons: it was too roundabout; it would be subject to devastating flank attacks by aircraft and warships as long as the spider webs remained in Japanese hands; to concentrate on the southwestern route would leave the enemy free to maneuver over the greater part of the Pacific; and if the Allies adopted a single line of advance, the enemy would naturally concentrate against it, whilst parallel offensives would force him to divide his forces and leave him guessing as to our ultimate intentions. Thus, the Navy favored a simultaneous advance over both routes, Central Pacific and the New Guinea-Mindanao axis, mopping up the spider webs as we proceeded. And that is what we did. The plan finally adopted for the defeat of Japan was a combination of numbers 3 and 4 of the MacArthur and Navy plans.
Keeping the Japanese off balance worked; and doing it that way meant no impairment of operations in Europe, despite the squawks of Alan Brooke and others about shortages of beaching craft. Once the Bismarcks barrier was broken, we gave the enemy no rest. MacArthur's forces pushed on to the conquest of the Admiralties, where Seeadler Harbor, Manus, became a great forward fleet base; to Hollandia, where an important airdrome was built; and along the northwest coast of New Guinea. At the same time, Admiral Nimitz's forces drove into the Marianas--Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.
En route, as a substitute for slow, deliberate, island-to-island hopping, a new strategy of "leapfrogging" was adopted. It is still a matter of debate whether leapfrogging was thought up by General MacArthur or by Admiral Wilkinson, Admiral [William F.] Halsey's amphibious force commander. Ted Wilkinson described this method of "hitting 'em where they ain't"--a baseball term invented by "Wee Willie" Keeler of the Baltimore Orioles, who hung up a batting average close to .400 in 1895. In terms of oceanic warfare it meant that instead of invading every island which held a Japanese garrison, we bypassed the strongest concentrations, such as Rabaul, Truk, and Wewak; landed amphibious forces on beaches comparatively free of the enemy; built an airfield; and, using our sea supremacy to seal off the bypassed enemy garrisons, left them to "wither on the vine." General [Hideki] Tojo, after the war was over, told General MacArthur that leapfrogging was one of the three principal factors that defeated Japan, the other two being the attrition of Japanese shipping by American submarines and the ability of our Essex-class carriers to operate for weeks and months without entering harbor for replenishment.
Prior to these operations in the spring and early summer of 1944, General MacArthur made a last attempt to have the entire Pacific Fleet committed to his New Guinea-Mindanao axis, and he "kicked like a steer" against our wasting time, as he thought, in the Marianas. But his pleas did not prevail, for three very good reasons: Admiral [Marc] Mitscher's fast carrier forces, far running and hard hitting, were not suitable for employment in the narrow waters south of the Philippines, with Japanese air bases on each side; the B-29 long-range bombers, about to come into operation, could bomb Japan itself if based at Saipan; and Saipan would make an ideal advanced base for Pacific Fleet submarines
The disagreement between General MacArthur and Admiral King as to whether the liberation of the Philippines should precede or follow the defeat of Japan was not wholly resolved until nearly the end of 1944. The Navy wished to go directly into Formosa from Saipan, bypassing all Philippine islands north of Mindanao, and then seek a base near the mouth of the Yangtze for the final assault on Japan. Okinawa was finally substituted for the Yangtze base. Concurrently, the Navy planned to strike Japan repeatedly by sending B-29s "up the ladder of the Bonins." General MacArthur, however, insisted on prior liberation of the Philippines and using Luzon for the final, or semifinal, springboard to Japan. He made the strong emotional argument that the United States was honor-bound to liberate the Philippines, where he had been nourishing resistance forces, at the earliest possible date, and that if we failed the Filipinos no Asiatic would ever trust us. He also made the sound strategic argument that loyal Luzon, sealed off by our seapower, would be a more suitable base to gather forces for the final assault on Japan than hostile Formosa, which the Japanese could easily reinforce from the mainland. To General MacArthur it appeared as monstrous to defeat Japan before liberating the Philippines as it would have to General de Gaulle to defeat Germany before liberating France.
Here is an instance where political considerations influenced strategy, and rightly so. General MacArthur's arguments were irrefutable. Happily, his strategic plan, too, was sound. From what we learned of the defenses of Formosa after the war, it would have been a very difficult island upon which to obtain a lodgment, much less a complete conquest
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 I'm not retreating, I'm attacking in a different direction!
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Here, well no, here i wait for a great pacwar-game, like you and the rest of the guys... ![]("smile.gif")
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Patton requested a transfer to the Pacific theatre so he could fight the Japanese. The request was, of course, denied, respectfully. The mind boggles at the thought of Patton serving under Macarthur! One congressman even proposed that Patton be made Secretary of War 
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