Best US result at Pearl Harbor -> Philippines saved?
- Thread starter naraht
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The Kido Butai either being sunk or its airwings so devastated that they are incapable of combat operations. If the carriers are put out of action, Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga should be able to steam to the Philippines and provide adequate support. But even then, four light carriers of Zeroes, plus land based fighters from Formosa will be a serious problem for the USN.
Fixing the Mark 14 torpedoes would also be a major help, since submarines could wreak havoc much sooner on Japanese shipping to the Philippines. MacArthur also having his air force in the air when the attack comes would also be good. Proper coordination is another.
Fixing the Mark 14 torpedoes would also be a major help, since submarines could wreak havoc much sooner on Japanese shipping to the Philippines. MacArthur also having his air force in the air when the attack comes would also be good. Proper coordination is another.
MacArthur shouldn’t have even waited for the attack, he should’ve been doing his best to disrupt it before it even left port.
Most of the light carriers embarked A5Ms instead of A6Ms and their aircrew were nowhere as well trained as Kido Butai's were, so I wouldn't view them as too much of a threat. The Formosa based air might pose a bit more of a problem, but note the dismal performance of 4th Ku's land based bombers against Lexington in February '42; given that those boys flew out of Rabaul to attack Lex off Bougainville and were slaughtered, flying out of Formosa to engage a US task force off Luzon would be even dicier.
Brereton repeatedly requested permission to pre-emptively strike Formosa, but Mac for whatever reason known only to himself, denied him. One wonders what would have happened if Brereton decided to go ahead regardless ("I'll do it now and apologise later").
I'm not sure even that would be enough to see the carriers sent that far south that fast and long, the pre-war last revisions to the warplans didn't plan on a "through-ticket" relief attempt, so you'd need for things to go so extraordinarily well that the US decides they can completely neglect fleet train and forward base requirements for sustained deployments. I guess you could see something along the lines of Coral Sea staged to intercept particular invasion convoys, but the US carriers really can't just hang out in the south pacific without more like '43 levels of fleet auxiliaries even if the Kido Butai is on the bottom.
Best case scenario? The initial Japanese attacks, at Oahu, Maylasia, Wake, & Luzon are soundly defeated. At the end of January the Japanese offensives are in tatters. Instead of declaring war on the Dutch East Indies Tojo & his cabinet reign in disgrace & a new government asks the US and Britain for a cease fire and eventual peace talks.
The wet dream scenario of the USN is: US reconnaissance out of Oahu after the War Warning of 27 November is effective. Nagumo does not know it but Kimmel does not order the fleet backing PH on the 5th. Instead Adm Pye correctly guesses the probable track of the Japanese strike force. When the Kido Butai stands by to launch aircraft at first light on the 7th the destroy screen frantically signals enemy ships in sight to the west. Guided by the radar of the US battle ships ten miles to the west US destroyers are charging into torpedo range, firing illumination rounds over the ships of the KB. When the illumination rounds detonate the US battle line of the old obsolescent Standards open fire from the west with 12" & 14" guns. Silloutted by the dawn the Japanese fleet is thrown into confusion, dodging torpedos launched by the intermingled USN and IJN destroyers. The Japanese ships that are not sunk or left dead in the water are hunted for the next two days by Halsey and Fletchers carriers following a pack of scouting cruisers.
Similar fantasies can be written for a successful execution of Operation Matador in northern Maylasia. Or the US in the Philippines.
The wet dream scenario of the USN is: US reconnaissance out of Oahu after the War Warning of 27 November is effective. Nagumo does not know it but Kimmel does not order the fleet backing PH on the 5th. Instead Adm Pye correctly guesses the probable track of the Japanese strike force. When the Kido Butai stands by to launch aircraft at first light on the 7th the destroy screen frantically signals enemy ships in sight to the west. Guided by the radar of the US battle ships ten miles to the west US destroyers are charging into torpedo range, firing illumination rounds over the ships of the KB. When the illumination rounds detonate the US battle line of the old obsolescent Standards open fire from the west with 12" & 14" guns. Silloutted by the dawn the Japanese fleet is thrown into confusion, dodging torpedos launched by the intermingled USN and IJN destroyers. The Japanese ships that are not sunk or left dead in the water are hunted for the next two days by Halsey and Fletchers carriers following a pack of scouting cruisers.
Similar fantasies can be written for a successful execution of Operation Matador in northern Maylasia. Or the US in the Philippines.
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Anyone wanting to understand the Pacific War should study WPP - 46 early in their reading. It represents the final culmination of the old ORANGE War Plans. Or how the applicable portions of the RAINBOW Plan would be actually executed. Nimitz used it as his guide for the battles of 1942 & early 43, and as his template for the central Pacific offensive starting with Operation GALVANIC in November 1943.
A pby squadron exec officer at Midway gets drunk and stupid on November 30th. Punishment is a 1000 mile long range recon on December 1st. Spots Kido Butai. Makes intelligent decision to not close beyond verifying 6 carriers and then waits till he is 300 miles away from them to warn Midway by coded transmission. Smart Intel officers figure out will arrive Oahu on Sunday. All plans made accordingly. British notified. December 6th Oahu time operation Matador launched. On December 7th Japanese fleet attacked by US surface forces before dawn that sortied on the 6th when all telegrams and phone lines were mysteriously down in Oahu. British recon flights off major targets detect invasion fleets hours before arrival and airstrikes heavily damaged fleets such that invasion of Singora, Patani, and Khota Baru fail when faced with Matador forces and alert defenses at Khota Baru. B 17's from Manilla hit Japanese airbases in Formosa before strikes take off. Force Z held in reserve since it is expected airsrikes and ground troops will do the job. Due to being ready for war for a few days Marine gunners and spotlights on Midway engage Japanese bombardment force and sink one destroyer and damage another. This is of course not happening but would have shortened the war.
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Probably discover the high altitude bombing techniques of the US Army Air Force of 1941 don't work. But, thats still better than getting caught trying to load bombs at Clark Field while command control & dicip[line of the fighter squadrons break down and they all land late morning tired and looking for the breakfast they had missed six hours earlier.
Actually Brit air recon had spotted the Japanese invasion fleet and covering force the previous day. Unfortunately several key commanders dithered. Air strikes were not made ready, and Operation Matador delayed repeatedly until too late. They did send a message to the US, which reached Marshal. Stark, and Roosevelt the evening of the 6th. Describing the Japanese convoys headed south into the Gulf of Siam.
They found them on the 6th Malaysia time and on the 7th Malaysia time the scout plane was shot down before it could report. I meant they spot them confirmed 3 hours from their target with enough time to launch air raids.
Like following his Rainbow 5 standing orders and the personal note from Chief of Staff Marshall, hand-delivered by MG Brereton, to execute air attacks on Formosa immediately on the commencement of hostilities? The Formosa air campaign should have been planned in detail prior to 8 Dec 41 (Philippine time) so missions could be automatically executed.
Not any way to "save" the Philippines regardless of what happens at Pearl, if the rest of the Japanese plans go as designed. The USN can not hope to force its way through the Taiwan Strait, not with a total of 18 F2A Buffalo and 32 F4F Wildcat fighters (assuming the Sara arrives as schedule, otherwise its 18 Buffalos on the Lexington and 14 Wildcats on the Enterprise) against well over 100 A6M fighters and 150+ G3M and G4M based on Taiwan. Fleet gets blown to Mars.
The only way I see the Philippines being "saved" here is if the defenders hold out on Bataan and/or in the southern islands while the other fronts go much better (ie KB gets smacked off Pearl as mentioned by several previous posters), leading to the holdouts being relieved a year or so into the war.
Short answer: Probably nothing, possibly MacArthur might try to sack Brereton, but Brereton would eventually be exonerated because he would have been following standing Army war plans (Rainbow 5), as well as Army Chief of Staff Gen Marshall and Air Force Chief Gen Arnold's direct orders from October and those delivered immediately after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Actually it wasn't MacArthur who initially refused to authorize Brereton permission to attack Formosan airfields. It was MacArthur's Chief of Staff, newly promoted MG Sutherland, acting on the near-comatose MacArthur's behalf for the first 8 hours after hearing of the Pearl Harbor attack who denied Brereton permission to execute his Rainbow 5 orders. This sad situation was even worse when you take into account Brereton outranked Sutherland by 5 months.
At 0500, Brereton attempted to see MacArthur, but was denied audience by Sutherland. Reports were that the MacArthur was in a zombie-like state, stunned into shock because his grandiose proclamations of Japanese action no earlier than April of 42 and his lackadaisical defense preparations had turned to shit. At this point, despite MacArthur and Sutherland's confused inaction, Brereton should have taken the initiative to execute his Rainbow 5 standing orders, reinforced by the personal directive from Army CoS Gen Marshall to be ready to bomb Formosa as soon as the war started, a message Brereton had hand-delivered to MacArthur on 4 November. Shortly after 0500, a telegram from Marshall arrived, ordering the execution of Rainbow 5. Sutherland instructed Brereton to prepare his aircraft for operations, but to stand by before taking further action. Brereton should have pulled rank, ordered his bombers to attack Formosan airfields and assembly areas ASAP and then informed Sutherland once the B-17s were in the air that Rainbow 5 was in effect.
At 0800, Air Force Chief, Gen Arnold telephoned Brereton and warned him not to allow his aircraft to be caught on the ground. Instead of just sending up his planes to burn up fuel flying around the local area, Brereton should have sent any B-17 remaining on the ground to commence offensive missions, and staggered his defensive fighter patrols so they all wouldn't have to land to refuel at the same time, where they were caught on the ground and destroyed.
Wikipedia gives a good account of the details, page down to "The attack on Clark Field": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines_campaign_(1941–1942)
So going back to the question, "What would have happened if Brereton has decided to go ahead?" Brereton could have been somewhat of a hero instead of a minor historical character who allowed his air force to be caught on the ground for naught. Maybe his B-17 wouldn't accomplish that much actual damage, but they'd at least have been used for one of the reasons they were stationed in the Philippines in the first place, and they might have disrupted the Japanese timeline and operational plans a bit. Even if Formosan airfields were socked in by ground fog, some targets may have been visible by the time the B-17s arrived overhead. Even if this was at 20,000 feet and bomb accuracy was poor, harassing Japanese positions on Formosa would be better than losing your air force on the ground before lunch on the first day of the war. It may have been a case of doing something, anything, but not just doing nothing while awaiting orders.
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Actually, there was no way to save the Philippines (period). "Guardians of Empire, the U.S. Army and the Pacific 1902-1940", by Brian McAllister Linn, gives a depressing account of U.S. military policy in the region from annexation until WW2. As early as 1907, the Philippines were seen as a millstone, not an asset. Outside of a handful of politicians and military officials, that included MacArthur, it was widely known that if Japan decided to occupy, they couldn't be stopped. The Philippines were "written off" by the mid-1920s. The greatest hope of all knowledgeable with the region was that the promised Philippine Independence would occur before a war with Japan developed, and if that wasn't possible, U.S. would at least be able to "hold the line" in the Pacific at Alaska, Hawaii and the Panama Canal. The Philippines and Guam were recognized as hopeless causes that wasted scarce resources, but politically, the Philippines couldn't just be abandoned without a severe loss of face. The USN was a bit more realistic in their efforts, and were able to minimize their assets that would probably be lost by fielding only a skeleton Asiatic Fleet.
