MacArthur's MOH

We don't know what happened after the Pearl attack, except that Sutherland claims he gave orders to Bereton who claims he was denied orders. Mac's failure was in failing to see if he orders were carried out and what the results were. There are two Korea's because Mac refused to listen to his instructions and advanced north of Pyongyang when there was no reason to. He refused to listen to his intelligence because he was smarter then everyone else. I suspect that the reason Mac wanted to advance to Yalu because he in fact was thinking a provoking a war with China. I say this because the Yalu was home to Chinese hydroelectric plants. The Chinese made it clear that they would accept Korea as lost as long as the north part was left as a buffer. If you look at a map of Korea there is nothing in the north, its the equivalent of the Yukon as far as terrain and population.

 

plus the Chinese were afraid, with the US on the border, near China, it might create rebellion in China....also, I thought the Chinese were getting power from NKorea...?

 

A salute for the date correction.

Then again it kinda undercuts the argument.

Eisenhower's aircraft are caught on the ground two weeks into a German offensive, not hours after a sudden entry into a war. They have state of the art air search radar and battle tested air controllers. They gave as good as they got due to first having overwhelming superiority in numbers an in pilot quality. The reverse was true in December 1941 for MacArthur. Eisenhower quickly made up his losses, MacArthur got virtually nothing.

 

Sudden entry into war? What was on that piece of paper that MacArthur read in late November? IIRC, something along the lines of "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning." Where was Eisenhower's "Bodenplatte Warning"? Given that his aircraft, since the opening of the battle had shot down some 650 German aircraft. Heck, the German pilots themselves were not expecting any major actions given their recent heavy losses. If the German pilots are not expecting a major action, how is Eisenhower supposed to know?

Allied "state of the art radar" was incapable of picking out low-flying aircraft. The Radar sets in the Philippines had little trouble detecting the high flying Japanese aircraft.

How do you argue for overwhelming superiority in aircraft numbers and pilot quality, when it was ground fire that accounted for some 2/3rds of the German aircraft shot down? No, it was the circumstances of the attack...To defeat the Allied radar, the Germans came in very low and stayed there, as a result, they took severe losses from ground fire. The Japanese tried no such tactics, the Zeroes were sent along as escorts for the bombers because they were expecting the Americans to challenge them.

Looks as though you are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Completely different situations with completely different results.

 

You are correct that no two situations can be exactly the same, other than the results. Both occasions saw aircraft destroyed on the ground.

While Radar in PI had 'little difficulty' detecting incoming flights, they had great difficulty in properly coordinating a defense. The mistakes at Clark and other fields were made by lower ranking commanders doing the best they could with the limited resources available to them Aircraft were sent up, but not properly vectored to these inbounds, ground defenses were largely obsolete and limited in number. When the Japanese attacked the airfields they got lucky as the Luftwaffe did in 1945. Even when fighters did get airborne their results were not all that impressive.

Just as Eisenhower could not be everywhere to make every decision, neither could MacArthur. Just Eisenhower could not expect every possible action the enemy might do, neither could MacArthur.

I find it difficult to grasp how someone of your acumen can find it so difficult to understand the psychological difference that any normal person would go thru when finding themselves suddenly thrown into a war. yes they train, yes events looked ominous, yet from what I read the general feeling was war, while likely was still yet to occur. MacArthur got his war warning, yet nothing happened for over a week. You can only keep a high level of anticipation for so long after which human nature takes over.

Please explain how every misfortune that befell American forces in the Philippines is the sole province of MacArthur, while when they befall other Allied leaders they seem to be due to bad luck, mistakes made by subordinates or clever enemy action?

Every commander makes mistakes, its human nature. MacArthur made his share, but he was given a crappy hand to begin with, and without any margin for error. Even if he was R.E. Lee, U.S Grant, Alexander, Napoleon, Wellington, Sun Xzu Caesar, Hannibal and Schwarzkopf all rolled up in one he could not win this battle. Could he have done somewhat better, undoubtedly, name some general who couldn't. Other Allied generals did far worse duing the initial Axis moves like Norway 1940, France 1940, Singapore 1941-42, DEI 1941-42. Only the defense of the Philippines (and Wake) threw a serious monkey wrench into enemy plans, throwing it off schedule, requiring major reinforcement and nearly causing the sacking of the attack commander.

Let me say again, I am not a great fan of MacArthur personally, at best he was not a nice man. But after the Philippines he won every battle, every campaign until the Chinese offensive in Korea. If he was screwing up, slaughtering GI's why was he not relieved till Korea, why continuously promoted by two of the most famous US presidents and Marshall?

 

-In addition to the War warning, MacArthur had access to Purple and JN-25, yet Admiral Kimmel and General Short, who were not privy to this intel were investigated for dereliction of duty and removed from command because they were surprised. Why not similar treatment for MacArthur?

-MacArthur had an eight hour warning that we were at war, but took no action to protect his aircraft and failed to meet with his air commander even though the air commander sought to meet with him.

-The Japanese preemptive strike led to them achieving air superiority and post strike MacArthur's air power was rendered impotent, never to regain it's capability. The Japanese achieved their operational goal.
The German strikes of Bodenplatte never managed to achieve air superiority, the Germans did not achieve their operational goal, and resulted in the Luftwaffe's largest single day loss (Japanese losses were minimal) 143 pilots KIA/MIA, 70 captured and 21 wounded for a total of 234 (213 unrecoverable). The Germans themselves called the operation a failure and the outcome rendered the Luftwaffe impotent and ineffective.

-Eisenhower at the time was Supreme Allied Commander ETO, a strategic level position. He had operational and tactical commanders that should have seen to preparedness. Had Coningham, Doolittle or Vandenberg tried to see/meet with him and were refused or had sought orders he failed to issue, or had ignored intelligence warnings, you might have a point. As it was he did not have direct responsibility.
-MacArthur was an operational level commander at the time, his command USAFFE was only responsible for operations in the Philippines, was at most an Army size command, was nominally subordinate to ABDACOM when it was formed in January 1942 to coordinate strategic level operations in the theater. It was after MacArthur had returned to the Australia that he was promoted to a strategic level command, Supreme Commander, SWPA. He still had fewer nationalities and much fewer assets to manage than did Eisenhower.

-MacArthur was directly responsible for the training and employment of the Philippine forces. While much of their deficiencies can be attributed to lack of funding, they were also very, very poorly trained. He was directly responsible for the change in the war plans and manner they were employed. He lost much of their inherent combat capability by his ordered deployment of food, munitions and supply.

Actually he lost virtually every battle during the early stages of the Korean War. Most of his problems in Korea were repeats of the same issues he had during WWII. The reason he retained his command was his huge political clout. His greatest service post-1935 to the US was as Supreme Allied Commander of the Occupation Forces in Japan post WWII. He excelled there.

Two of his greatest exhibitions of pettiness (among many) are his efforts to deny Wainwright his MoH (more deserved than MacArthur's) and his insistence after he authorized the Purple Heart Medal in 1932, that he be awarded the first one.

Finally, our debate about his generalship aside, the question is about his Philippines MoH, do you really believe he rated it?

 

salute here because it zooms in on exactly how Mac was....denying an MOH to the man he ''abandoned'' .....
petty, egotistical, etc ......
I'm not arguing how good a general he was, per se, but the MOH he received was totally ridiculous

disregard

 

No

 

I agree it wasn't justified, but a PR stunt by FDR. I don't think any flag officer should get the award except in the case of death in battle by enemy action and even then you would need a good case.

As to the rest I am not going to convince you that he was competent general with deep personality flaws and I'm not going to be convince he was the anti-Christ, so lets agree to disagree.