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Post by D Kydell on Dec 9, 2009 17:11:07 GMT 8
From reading your site it appears Macarthur did not implement WPO until too late.
If this plan had been followed, with supplies placed in Bataan early, troops not split between the various Philippine Islands and other preparations correctly made, would this have made much difference to the amount of time the defenders could have held out? And if so, would this have made any major difference to the way the war was conducted in the Pacific Ocean?
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Post by Jim Y on Dec 9, 2009 17:54:13 GMT 8
I suspect it would have made a month to two months extra time. As to the overall impact on the war, I would say very little as the front lines had advanced past the Philippines.
This is just my personal opinion. Someone with Military training could probably help you more
Jim
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Post by okla on Dec 9, 2009 23:51:17 GMT 8
Hey Guys....I have always figured that by Bataan/Corregidor holding out for another two or three months, that the headlong drive by the Japanese toward the south might have been stunted to one degree or another. Maybe they wouldnt have made it to the Solomon Islands,etc. Maybe no Guadalcanal crucible would have been fought. The way it did turn out, by Bataan/Corregidor holding as long as they did, might have been the reason the enemy didnt have enough horses to break thru at Kokoda Pass in New Guinea in the summer of 1942. They came within a hair of taking Ports Morseby. This didnt happen, maybe, because the one regiment or division needed for a victory was licking its wounds and refitting up in Luzon after the fall of Corregidor. Aint conjecture and second guessing fun? ? I love it.
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Post by EXO on Dec 10, 2009 8:15:36 GMT 8
Though the Japanese had bypassed the Philippines, they were still denied Manila Harbor, and that was a major issue for them.
It's hard to conjecture, but I understand that it had taken months and major efforts to gather together sufficient landing craft to invade Corregidor, and that essentially the Japanese had lost most of them. Once Skinny surrendered, of course, it didn't make much difference.
Throughout the war, the Japanese suffered from their failure to build a good landing craft, no more so than in the second wave which attacked Corregidor - it was almost completely wiped out.
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Post by DKydell on Dec 10, 2009 17:50:54 GMT 8
So if I am understanding correctly, its not the fact that the Japanese could not use the harbour that would have been a major problem to them, its rather that the American resistance tied up/destroyed needed resources such as landing craft, as well as soldiers.
These then could not be used in other battles that were underway.
You are right! Conjecture is fun. In your opinion, how long do you think Corregidor/Bataan could have held out if the proper preparations had been made?
(As an aside, I am glad that this site exists to bring some balance. Throughout my school years the US was portrayed as bombing Hirsoshima/Nagasaki, but not one mention of the Bataan death march or the sack of Manila. Only found out about that once I found this site)
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2009 0:10:07 GMT 8
It wasn't the Japanese who beat the Filippino-American forces, it was primarily starvation and disease. Had MacArthur invoked WPOIII on 8 December, 1941, his quartermasters could have shipped enough foodstuffs, medicine and ammuntiion into Bataan to hold out for over six months time. When one considers how much food was simply abandoned because of a lack of transport, the timeline could have been increased even more. The Central Rice Depot had hundreds of thousands of tons of rice that could have been shipped into Bataan, but was not because of Filippino government prohibitions preventing rice to be shipped from one province to another.
Warehouses stocked with canned foods in Manila were thrown open and given over to civilians, rather than be left to the Japanese when the US Army failed to ship them out. Likewise in military instalations like Fort Stotsenberg, where the speed of the USAFFE retreat prevented thousands of tons of food, clothing and material from being sent into Bataan.
MacArthur's indecision at a crucial moment caused the destruction of his army from starvation and disease. At the outbreak of war, he decided not to invoke WPOIII, but instead chose to attack the Japanese invaders with his half trained Filippino-American Army and was soundly beaten as a result. The only reason that any foodstuffs and medicine made it into Bataan, was because MacArthur's Quartermaster General Beebe took it upon himself and without orders to secretly begin sending supplies into Bataan from the very beginning of the war.
Had MacArthur's forces held out into June or July of 1942, it could have caused a major change in how the war was militarily planned and waged from Washington. As a result, President Roosevelt would have been under enormous public pressure from the civilian public to find some way to bring relief and reinforcements to the men on Bataan.
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Post by okla on Dec 11, 2009 1:42:34 GMT 8
Hey Guys...I have always felt that the failure to move more supplies (while we still had the opportunity) into Bataan and Corregidor bordered on criminal negligence. The topper in all this was the failure to move the rice at the Cabanatuan because of some governmental prohibition. This is assinine. In case folks were'nt aware of the fact, there was a war on and the enemy was at the gates. Why somebody in authority didnt just say "to hell with the regulations" and move that rice to Bataan will always perplex me. That whole month of December was a comedy (for lack of a better word) of errors. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Murphy's Law in the extreme. Lucky for our guys was Homma's fixation on Manila and not the destruction of the Amer/Fil forces sideslipping into Bataan. When i think of that monumental traffic jam at San Fernando and it's vulnerability to air attack I still get cold chills. Conjecture raises it's ugly head again. Postscript...One thing that I have never gotten straight in my mind was the water situation on Corregidor at the end of the siege. Somewhere I have gotten the idea that there was only enough fuel to run the water well pumps for a limited time (I have 30 days stuck in my mind for some reason) and with no water all the food and medicine in the world aint gonna be of much help. Is there some learned person out there who knows anything about this water supply problem. If our side had plenty of water, adequate food and had beaten off the Japanese landing attempts our guys might have kept the cork in the opening to Manila Bay for some time to come. Any enemy forces left in the PI in an attempt to overcome this Amer/Fil resistance would be just that many not involved in operations in New guinea and the Solomon Islands. Its easy for me to sit here in Tulsa, Oklahoma and conjecture (there's that word again), but surely there could have been some way to knock those three Japanese tanks (one being a captured American Stuart type) out or at least prevented them from getting to the Matlinta Tunnel complex and thereby allowing our forces to overcome the enemy infantry assault. After all we did have the invaders vastly outnumbered and there was no shortage of small arms ammo as I understand it. I gotta go with Lt Ray Lawrence's opinion that we capitulated a bit too soon. That info that reached the commander in Malinta that "tanks were on the island" apparently tipped the balance in what direction out defense would go. Had Genl Wainwright known that there were only three armored vehicles on Corregidor and not a panzer regiment I betcha ole' Skinny would have conjured up some method to knock those tanks out, be it molotov cocktails, dynamite, some type of buried explosive,etc. With the tanks gone, our sheer weight of numbers should have been enough to take care of the vastly inferior number of enemy infantry. It has been speculated that Genl Homma would have been forced (if he was still in command) to resort to a strategy of starving the Amer/Fil forces into submission. It is most difficult for me to accept that a fanatical foe like the Japanese would sit back and await starvation to solve their Corregidor problem. With a serious lack of landing craft, the Nipponese just might have pulled an armada of surface ships within bombardment range (since the vast majority of Corregidor's coastal artillery was already knocked out) and just pounded the "rock" into submission. Here again, these ships would not have been available for operations in the south. I could go on and on, but am getting a headache. That Cabanatuan rice situation is going to prove fatal in my case, methinks.
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Post by The Phantom on Dec 11, 2009 7:14:01 GMT 8
Okla, a partial answer to your above question about the water supply on Corregidor after the siege started.
From "THE U.S. ARMY IN WORLD WAR II" "THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES"
"By the end of April the main Power Plant was operating at only a fraction of it's capacity and General Moore estimated that Corregidor would be without power in another month.
The supply of water, already critical, became the most important single problem for the men on Corregidor. It was the dry season and there had been no rain for months. The level of the reservoirs on the islands dropped rapidly and there was no way to replenish the supply. Enemy shells were constantly striking the pumps, puncturing the water pipes, and damaging the Power Plant. So frequently did this occur that it was possible to pump water into the reservoirs only one day during the month of April. The rest of the time either the pumps or the Power Plant were out of commission.
So serious had the water supply situation become by the end of the month that the daily allowance for personal use had been reduced to one canteen. For men who had to do heavy physical work in the open on a sun baked tropical island where the temperature soared to over 100 degrees during midday, and where the dust from explosions lay heavy, the lack of water was not only a major inconvenience, but a serious threat to health.
Men used their slim ration of water with the greatest care, took "handkerchief baths". Captain Gulick wrote, "I washed myself with a cup of water and by standing in a basin, saved the water to use again on, first, my underwear, and then my socks. Order of laundering was very important, the dirtiest item came last...." Showers became a rare luxury, and the men spoke of them with as much longing as they did of steaks smothered in mushrooms, french fried potatoes, crisp salads and Ice cream."
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Post by EXO on Dec 11, 2009 10:01:06 GMT 8
I am inclined to the view that it WAS the fact that the Japanese could not use the harbour that was a major problem for them.
Though what would happen later would indelibly characterize the war as a logistic one, the Japanese early logistic efforts in the Philippines were severely constrained by their inability to bring shipping directly into Manila Bay. Most of what needed to go into and out of Manila had to be brought in via Subic Bay, then overland to Manila.
It seems to me that in this respect, Corregidor had an effect on the Japanese war effort which extended far beyond the tactical circumstance existing at the mouth of Manila Bay.
On another issue by another Guest, that of the rice reserves which were lost to the war effort, this was a cost of having to deal with the Quezon clique. There was a law passed by the Philippine Commonwealth Government that rice was not to be transported beyond provincial boundaries. This law was designed to 'stabilize rice supply' (ie maximize profits for the ruling political and business dynasties) and was clearly a major constraint placed upon the entire country by President Quezon's protection of private commercial interests. This was one of the many political costs of placing US personnel in a foreign country, and of dealing in a country where politics was almost entirely an euphemism for cronyism, insider trading, theft, fraud and influence peddling.
After reading into the era, it seems to me that in 1941-42, Quezon (and his cohort) did more to constrain the defense, order and good government of the Philippines than did the Japanese. Had MacArthur and he not been friends for many years, I wouldn't have convicted MacArthur had he taken out a gun and shot Quezon on the spot.
Ah, the joys of speculative history indeed!
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Post by okla on Dec 11, 2009 23:46:31 GMT 8
Hey EXO....I cannot disagree with a thing you have said, but one would think that even Quezon and his so-called clique, cronies,etc , with the Japs ready to take over and rape his country, would have thrown all those self serving regulations,etc to the wind and tried to put first things first, i.e., repulsing the invaders from the north. As I have said in numerous posts on this forum, those days of December 1941 will continue to plague me as long as I study this period of history. Again, I agree with you completely. The MacArthur/Quezon relationship complicated matters "over and above" our collapsing military situation. I have even read that President Quezon was threatening a possible "separate peace" with the Japanese. I don't know how serious this "threat" was, but as I understand it, he (Quezon) did broach the subject with MacArthur (or maybe even FDR). I am beginning to feel the first symptoms of another December 1941 headache. I'm outta here. Thanks for hearing my rant on this subject.
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