What if Macarthur's escape from the Philippines failed?

I was one of the posters who mentioned the idea of the SWPA as a "backwater" theater in the absence of MacArthur, but I would like to clarify that concept.

If MacArthur, for whatever reason, had not commanded in the SWPA, I believe that the war in 1942 would have played out essentially as it did historically. The Japanese would still move into the islands north of Australia and the US would still react as it did, bolstering it's forces in the islands between Hawaii and Australia, and in Australia itself. Coral Sea and Midway would most likely be fought, as historically, and the Guadalcanal campaign would play out as it did in 1942-43. This is because the US definitely had to at least contain the Japanese advance toward Australia and the South Pacific.

Once the Allied goal of containing the Japanese advance and securing Australia had been achieved, it's my belief that further Allied offensive activity in the SWPA would have ceased. This does not mean that there would be no combat in the area at all; The Allies would have to keep the strong Japanese forces at Rabaul neutralized and this would mean constant activity, mostly in the air, but also naval raids against that strongpoint and it's outlying bases. For that reason, considerable air and naval assets would need to be based in Australia and the lower Solomons.

But the main axis of the Pacific Allied counter-offensive would have been through the Central Pacific as originally envisioned by the old war plan Orange. This required a strong carrier air component and thus would not hyave been launched until the latter half of 1943. In that sense, the Japanese would have been granted some breathing room, between the end of the Guadalcanal Campaign in February, 1943, and the invasion of Tarawa in Novenmber, 1943.

But, historically, the summer of 1943 was not particularly a time in which either side launched major offnsives in the South Pacific. The Americans advanced to New Georgia in the Solomons, mainly to secure advanced bases to aid in the defense of Guadalcanal in June, and Lae-Salamaua on New Guinea was captured in early September by Austrlian and US troops to relieve the threat to southwestern New Guinea. The US needed this time to consolidate it's gains and buildup it's forces as well, so giving the Japanese some months breating space was unavoidable.

Thereafter, however, the Central Pacific offensive would have occupied the attention of the Japanese Navy. It would not have mattered had the Japanese Army attempted to consolidte a strong defensive position in the SWPA, since the Allies would not have attacked in that area. In any case, the Japanese Army was primarily concerned with the war in China and it would have been unlikely to have sent much in the way of reinforcements to a "backwater" theater in which Japanese bases were being harrassed mainly by air and naval raids. The Japanese Navy was hardpressed in he Central Pacific and woud not have been able to spare many naval assets for the SWPA. After about July of 1944, the Japanese would have found it becoming increasingly difficult to keep their garrisons supplied in the SWPA and they would have either evacuated or abandoned them to their ultimate fate.

 

Thanks for the further clarification.
I agree with the points you raised. I think "backwater" might not be the appropriate term to use. "Holding action" is the term that comes to mind.
SWPA would have just enough resources and troops allocated to hold the Japanese at bay while forces are concentrated in the Central Pacific for a massive blow at the Japanese defensive perimeter there.
As you've said, the Japanese were extended and after losing the initiative at Midway, they could only react to US moves.
What we've mainly discussed is the US plan against the Japanese. Did the British have any plan they proposed to the Americans on how to handle the Japanese?
I'd think that without Mac's overbearing presence, the British would have a better say on how the fighting in the Pacific should've been conducted.

 

As far as I know, the British had no plans for action in the SWPA, the Pacific was solely a US responsibility until late in the war. When Wavell was proposed by the US as the ABDA commander in early 1942, he and the British were initially reluctant to assume the responsibility. ABDA's propsects were not viewed as good, and they felt the US might be setting him up to take the rap for failure. After the ABDA command collapsed in March, 1942, the command arrangements were reorganized and MacArthur took over responsibility for Australia and the SWPA.

To the best of my knowledge, British strategy in South East Asia was, until 1945, to maintain an active defense of India and do nothing else in Asia or the Pacific. They did not feel that Burma or China were worth the effort of defending or retaking. The defense of Australia was recognized as an American responsibility, as, initially, Churchill was willing to write Australia off, if the Japanese invaded; the US was not. Late in the war, there was some British interest in launching an offensive to retake Singapore, but nothing came of it. Except for the loan of the RN carrier Victorious for a few months in 1943, and the participation of the BPF near the end of the war, the British had no active role in the Allied Pacific offensives. Other posters might have more details, but I believe this is an accurate summation of the British strategy position in the Pacific.

 

The UK did have a plan for countering Japanese aggression, it was code-named Matador, but was never implimented in time. They dithered around trying to figure out just how to use it, and never did.

There appears to have been some confusion as to when or if its use should be put into action.

 

Operation Matador was a pre-war British plan for preempting the Japanese invasion of Malaya. The idea was to outflank the invasion by invading Thai territory at the top of the Kra isthmus. It required accurate intelligence of the Japanese time table for invasion, which, in the event, the British had, but the available forces were stretched very thin. It also required that the British invade a neutral country without a declaration of war. When the Japanese invasion became imminent on December 5, 1941, London, aware that the Japanese Malaya invasion convoy had sailed, gave permission for CinC Far East Brooke-Popham to implement Matador at his descretion. General Percival, the British ground commander, recommended that it be initiated, but Brooke-Popham got cold feet, and decided against it. As it happened, that was probably the wrong decision since the Japanese landed where Operation Matador anticipated.

Matador was strictly a plan for the regional defense of Malaya and had nothing to do with Australia or the SWPA.

 

my post said nothing about Australia, only in reply to your section thus:

"To the best of my knowledge, British strategy in South East Asia was, until 1945, to maintain an active defense of India and do nothing else in Asia or the Pacific. They did not feel that Burma or China were worth the effort of defending or retaking."

Which the Matador plan was designed to exactly, defend Burma and South East Asia. The fact that it was scuttled by dithering around, and not supplying the troops and material for implimentation of said plan, doesn't mean it didn't exist (if only on paper and wishful thinking).

 

The whole gist of the thread is about the Allies actions in Australia and the SWPA after the beginning of the war, and the early months when Allied plans had to be reshaped in light of the realities of the early Japanese successes. Obviously my statement conforms to this period.
Operation Matador was dead and forgotten by December 8th, 1941.

 

It was still your post which brought up South East Asia and Burma, and that was what I was responding to. The fact that it started out as Austrailia and SWPA didn't stop you from adding in the other area, and it doesn't negate my reply either. But, that said I don't think either of us are going to loose too much sleep over a plan which was neither supported nor implimented.

 

Hey DA, brndrt1, I think you're both right but are just operating in different wavelengths.
Take a look at it this way. Had Matador been implemented on time, the British would've had an opportunity to blunt the Japanese offensive. Blunting such an offensive would force the Japanese to divert assets and adjust their timetable. In essence, a successful British action here would, in effect, delay the Japanese entry into the SWPA.
Now a question: would the British have anything forces to spare to expand on the Matador operation if the British had been successful?
The only thing forces immediately available for the British would have to come from India and these would be mostly troops. One source I found stated that the Allies had less than 700 first line aircraft compared to the 3,000 that the Japanese had mustered. So what would be needed is airpower.

At the start of the Pacific War, Japan enjoyed superiority in first line aircraft, carriers and combat experience of aircrew. The Japanese Army and Navy air forces had a combined strength of 3,000 first line aircraft compared to 668 for the Allied forces. The navy had 3,500 first line pilots while the Army had 2,500 with an average of 500-600 flying hours. Japanese Navy had more aircraft carriers than the US Navy, ten to three. The Japanese had superiority over the air forces of the three Allied nations at the start of the war, so that within five months Japan had neutralized the American, British and the Dutch forces in the Far East.

 

But not by much. The Japanese anticipated that the British might launch a "Matador-Type" operation and had contingency plans to seize airbases further into Thailand to counter such a tactic. Given that British forces were stretched very thin in just defending Malaya, it's dubious that trying to defend even more territory would have proved very helpful; it might even have hastened the collapse of Malaya defense itself.

Not really. The British hoped to throw back the Japanese landing attempt and thereby gain some time, but in reality, the multiple Japanese landings further south still would have cut off the British forces in Thailand. In a sense, the Japanese overestimated the British forces in Malaya as much as the British underestimated the Japanese. The British estimated it would take 48 battalions to successfully defend Malaya, and they had only 32 at the outbreak of the war. More importantly, they were short of fully trained troops and the British officers proved woefully inept militarily. Furthermore, they also had no armor and few trained anti-armor formations or weapons. Percival based his defense on the concept of preserving his troop units at the expense of giving up territory, believing that the British were sending reinforcements, and that there would come a day when he would stop the Japanese and need troops to launch a counter-offensive. Some reinforcements did arrive (just in time to become POW's), but Churchill quickly wrote Malaya/Singapore off, hoping only for an heroic defense to the last bullet.

As for aircraft, the important numbers in Malaya were 156 and 500. The former being the number of "first-line" British aircraft available, and the latter being the number available to the Japanese. Still the British might have accomplished more in the air if they had implemented a "British-style" air defense system (some of the equipment was available in Singapore), but the British air staff proved as inept as the British Army, and hampered the air defense as much as it helped.

 

The Brits had a variety of plans, but these revolved around defeating the Japanese army on Indias border first, and then retaking Burma. British naval power was firmly committed to 'Europe First' and they had no equivalent of the US Adm King to filch ships and men away from the main effort for a earlier offensive against Japan.

In 1945 they did intiate a set of offensive actions, but these were small compared to the current US operations.

 

British plans to "defeat the Japanese Army on India's borders" required that the Japanese actually attack India's borders, which they didn't do until March, 1944 (Operation U-GO). It wasn't until U-GO played out in early July, 1944, that the British began preparing for an offensive into the Arakan in Burma. In the event, the British offensive didn't gain much traction until January, 1945, after which the depleted Japanese forces, worn-out, and bereft of supplies, were quickly pushed back into southern Burma. For most of the war, the British were content to defend India. At no time prior to the defeat of the Japanese in the SWPA by American and Australian forces, did the British entertain any plans to launch offensives in The SWPA, or the Japanese occupied territories in the NEI, Singapore, or Borneo.