Philippines Holds Out Until Rescued

[DaleCoz]

What could have changed to make holding out somewhat more feasible?

The most obvious one was planning from the start to make a stand on the Bataan Peninsula and positioning supplies for that stand. Holding out on the Bataan peninsula had long been the preferred US strategy, but MacArthur thought, falsely, that the Philippine Army had improved enough that it could defend all of Luzon, defeating the Japanese on the beaches.

Once it became obvious that the Filipino Army couldn’t stop the Japanese, the US had to scramble to get supplies and troops back into the peninsula. They succeeded too much with the troops and too little with the supplies, especially food. Doing a pre-planned and well-organized fallback would have probably bought the defenders some time.

How much time would they need? How long would it have been before the US could reasonably rescue the Philippines?

Historically, the Bataan peninsula fell in April 9, 1942 and Corregidor fell in early May 1942. At that time, the Japanese had naval dominance in the eastern Pacific, had
taken Singapore and the Dutch East Indies and seemed unchallengeable.

The Battle of Midway came from June 4 to June 7, 1942 and was a decisive US victory historically, but that victory really just restored the US to naval parity with Japan. If the Philippine garrison was still holding out, I doubt that the US could have launched a rescue mission for several additional months. I’m not even sure where they would have started out from at that point. Maybe Australia, though that would have required a big buildup.

There would have been intense political pressure for a rescue expedition, of course, with that pressure growing every day the garrison held out. With mid-term elections coming up in November, the Roosevelt administration would have probably been hurt badly if the Philippines had fallen during the campaign season—any time after maybe mid-August That pressure might have forced the US to move resources from the European theatre to the Pacific, though by mid-1942 the US didn’t have a lot in the European theatre to begin with.

My educated wild guess is that the US couldn’t have tried for a rescue before late October 1942 at the earliest and it would be a slog. Going through the Central Pacific was probably not possible that early, not with the Japanese holding several island chains we would have to breach. Going Australia/New Guinea, then to the southern Philippines would have also been a hard path. We could have done either way, but with the initial offensive starting in October 1942 and really gaining power in the second half of 1943.

But again, could the Philippines have held out that long under any reasonable scenario? From old and possibly faulty memory, I believe that the army figured the Philippines would have to hold out six months on their own before a rescue. Let’s assume that a planned fallback to Bataan would have given the garrison adequate supplies to hold out six months, after which they would be running out of food and ammunition unless more supplies came in.

Historically, Bataan held out roughly four months, but the troops there were near starvation for at least a month before the fall and rations were tight even before that. Figure that the historical fiasco meant adequate food for three months. A planned, well-organized fallback would, all other things being equal, mean that the Bataan soldiers would be near starvation and running low on ammo by early June instead of early March and if the historic pattern held, the peninsula would fall in early July, with Corregidor making it until very early August 1942.

Not long enough. Not even close. Worse, the Japanese would be making a very determined effort to take the peninsula starting in mid-March. Historically, the main Japanese focus once US forces reached Bataan was to take Malaysia/Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. They left a weak force to try to take Bataan on a shoestring effort and failed miserably, then, once they had taken the rest of their objectives, came back to finish the job at Bataan.

That means that holding out until early July was unlikely if the Japanese met their objectives elsewhere and concentrated on Bataan. Even if Bataan did hold out until July, that’s still at minimum six months before the US could break through for a rescue, and that is being very optimistic.

So a planned fallback with existing resources would have helped, but not enough. What else could have been done? The garrison would need to hold out until at least early 1943, I would guess. How could we get from July 1942 to there? Maybe a different allocation of resources. The US put an enormous effort into building a force of B17s in the Philippines, with the idea that the B17s would be able to dominate the seas around the Philippines and take a toll on any Japanese attack. In reality, the B17s were, at that stage of the war, essentially useless against naval targets and many of them were caught on the ground early on anyway. Militarily, they were a complete waste of scarce resources. An equivalent effort to bring in torpedo bombers and dive bombers, plus fighters to support them might have helped.

For that matter, if the US strategy remained falling back to the Bataan peninsula and holding out there, there is no reason the US couldn’t have spent the last several
months of peace building up food and ammunition stocks there. I’m still not sure that would be enough, though.

One big missed opportunity: the US had at its disposal a converted ocean liner capable of delivering a complete army division at one pop. Roosevelt offered to use it to get a national guard division to the Philippines, but McArthur turned it down, probably not realizing that if the liner wasn’t used to deliver those troops it was going to be used in a different theatre, rather than used to deliver supplies to existing troops in the Philippines. The liner ended up delivering a very good British division to Singapore just before the city fell, essentially taking them directly into Japanese prisoner of war camps. Total waste of a major shipping resource.

Let’s say that the liner delivers the promised division to the Philippines. The US now has essentially double the American army troops it had in the Philippines historically at the start of the war—historically we had around 31,000 US army troops there, counting over 11,000 Philippine Scout troops, Filipinos who were part of the US army, well-trained and well-equipped. The additional US troops could just mean more eventual US prisoners of war, of course, essentially subbing in US troops for the British division landed and lost at Singapore, but the division would make the Japanese conquest of Luzon more difficult.

A rule of thumb in the early Philippine campaign: The US troops, including the Filipino Scouts were roughly a match for the Japanese given equal forces. The Filipino army troops were close to useless initially—poorly trained, poorly equipped, with little unit cohesion. They got better pretty quickly and did some hard fighting in the battle for Bataan, but the US Army and especially the Filipino Scouts played a major role in backstopping them even then.

So essentially doubling the trained and equipped troops available would make the US defense of the Philippines much more effective. It might have actually made defending all of Luzon feasible, at least in the short run. The Japanese were grabbing for a huge amount of territory and doing it on a shoestring, with the troops and planes that pushed the US into the Bataan peninsula historically quickly moving on to attack the Netherlands East Indies, actually moving the timetable for that attack forward a month because supposedly the US in the Philippines were essentially out of the war, with just a mop-up operation left.

Another possibility: the Japanese don’t get as lucky as they historically did in destroying US fighter plane forces early on. Of course, the US fighters and the B17s stationed on Luzon were vulnerable because airfield defenses were totally inadequate and while the US had seven radar systems in the Philippines, only two were operational.

The more I think about it, the more I think that holding out in the Philippines long enough to get rescued would have required that the other Allies did better, though the things I’ve talked about might have helped some. The Dutch East Indies had limited military potential, but the Brits had a lot of scope to do better in the Malaysia/Singapore campaign.

It was pretty obvious that the Japanese were going to attack, and the timing was reasonably clear. They were going to wait until the bulk of their merchant shipping was back in Japanese-controlled waters. That meant that the Brits had a pretty good timetable for the attack. At that point, the Brits needed to get at least some high-quality divisions to Malaysia. That would mean postponing their late 1941 offensive in North Africa, but better that than losing Malaysia/Singapore. The Brits had also moved the bulk of their submarine fleet in the Far East to the Mediterranean. That need to be moved back so that they could threaten Japanese supply routes during the invasion.

There are quite a few other things the Brits could have done, but I won't go into that too much because otherwise this becomes "How Does Singapore Hold Out', which, while interesting, is a discussion for another time.

 

[Japhy]

I hate to seem disrespectful by not writing out a long thought out explanation of this but here's it in brief:

As early as the mid 1920's it had become clear that there was no way to relive the Philippines in the event of war. Without massive domestic industry and resources on hand in the islands theres no way any garrison can maintain the supplies needed and that could not be built and frankly, has not even been built in the modern day to do so, I'm not even sure the necessary raw material is on hand there. Furthermore, the US Navy would not risk its limited assets on a relief expedition in the time frame you're discussing. Even with the allies doing better elsewhere the war is occurring over a truly mind-blowing series of distances, with so much to hold, even in a best case scenario, no one can really risk a total asset loss of several carriers, the surface force and the transport capacity that would have been needed. And the assets that would be needed would not be in the hands of a US Navy capable of using them probably until late 1943. The Far East Air Force disaster is actually pretty easily avoidable but the best outcome there is that there's some extra B-17s in Theater to help with the bring medical supplies in/Fly Wounded Out cycle that would be filled by B-24's and B-25's that had to be shoe-stringed to Australia later on. The simple losses of attrition and the fact that there was only one Air Base in the Islands capable of maintenance and repair on the necessary scale (And even then with limited stocks) means the Bombers and the Fighters are still doomed, and most likely doomed within the first three months unless in the Bomber's case they flew out. .

In the broadest strategic sense the best case would have been a smaller US Garrison, a smaller Philippine Commonwealth Military that was properly trained, and leadership that recognized the logic of the situation rather then MacArthur and his financially driven fantasies in War Plan Rainbow.

 

[DaleCoz]

I hate to seem disrespectful by not writing out a long thought out explanation of this but here's it in brief:

As early as the mid 1920's it had become clear that there was no way to relive the Philippines in the event of war. Without massive domestic industry and resources on hand in the islands theres no way any garrison can maintain the supplies needed and that could not be built and frankly, has not even been built in the modern day to do so, I'm not even sure the necessary raw material is on hand there. Furthermore, the US Navy would not risk its limited assets on a relief expedition in the time frame you're discussing. Even with the allies doing better elsewhere the war is occurring over a truly mind-blowing series of distances, with so much to hold, even in a best case scenario, no one can really risk a total asset loss of several carriers, the surface force and the transport capacity that would have been needed. And the assets that would be needed would not be in the hands of a US Navy capable of using them probably until late 1943. The Far East Air Force disaster is actually pretty easily avoidable but the best outcome there is that there's some extra B-17s in Theater to help with the bring medical supplies in/Fly Wounded Out cycle that would be filled by B-24's and B-25's that had to be shoe-stringed to Australia later on. The simple losses of attrition and the fact that there was only one Air Base in the Islands capable of maintenance and repair on the necessary scale (And even then with limited stocks) means the Bombers and the Fighters are still doomed, and most likely doomed within the first three months unless in the Bomber's case they flew out. .

In the broadest strategic sense the best case would have been a smaller US Garrison, a smaller Philippine Commonwealth Military that was properly trained, and leadership that recognized the logic of the situation rather then MacArthur and his financially driven fantasies in War Plan Rainbow.

I think that for the core issue we're saying almost the same thing with a different emphasis. Me: All the stuff I can come up with gets us the garrison holding out until maybe July/August 1942 and no realistic rescue effort could start until maybe October 1942 at the earliest and it would be a risky/shoestring effort and a slog. You: The assets necessary for a rescue wouldn't be available until late 1943 and the US wouldn't risk scarce resources for a rescue before then. Hopefully that's a fair summary of what you are saying.

Assuming that is a fair restatement, I think we're reaching the same conclusion: A rescue is unlikely to have happened soon enough so whatever troops we put in the Philippines were going to be lost. I do have a couple minor quibbles, though. First, the US did historically risk scarce naval assets, including carriers, battleships and heavy cruisers at Guadalcanal in the Autumn of 1942. Granted, the Guadalcanal battle was not a risk on the scale that a full-scale attempt to rescue the Philippines garrison would be, but when I mention the possibility of a US rescue attempt starting in October 1942, I'm visualizing something peripheral to put the US in a better position for the main offensive--essentially Guadalcanal written a little larger and oriented to position the US for a later rescue attempt. I agree that that main rescue attempt would not come until late 1943 unless the US won another lopsided Midway-style victory in late 1942, and even one Midway stretches probability rather much.

I do have one possible further disagreement: I think that the historic US strategy in the Philippines was perhaps morally questionable, but strategically necessary given what the US knew at the time. The nightmare scenario for the western Allies was that Japan would attack the Dutch East Indies and British possessions while leaving the US alone. That would lock up over 90% of the world's rubber, potentially make the Japanese much stronger in the long run and weaken the Brits elsewhere in the world, while quite possibly not giving the US a reason to declare war. To keep the Japanese from doing a DEI and Brits only strategy, the US had to make the Philippines appear to be a threat to Japanese lines of communications to the southern resource area they intended to conquer.

Did the Roosevelt administration see Philippines defense in those terms? Maybe not as bleakly as that, but they were aware that as the US got stronger in the Philippines, it did constrain Japanese actions to some extent. Roosevelt felt, and I think correctly, that if left unchecked the Axis were an existential threat ultimately to the US and the US needed to be fully involved in the fight. I think he preferred to deter Japan and concentrate on defeating Germany, but a Japanese attack in the Far East but not on the US would be a disaster.

Did the Japanese seriously consider attacking the Brits and the DEI without going after the US too? A more rational leadership would have, but I'm not sure the Japanese did.

Roosevelt had some idea of Japanese thinking, but I suspect his mental model of them was much more rational than their leadership turned out to be and he hoped that strong US postures in the Far East would cause them to do the rational thing and back off. A rational Japanese leadership would have seen the choice as attacking the US and getting ground to pieces by its much superior industrial power or bypassing the Philippines, in which case the US would keep building up there until it could control the sea lanes to the Dutch East Indies. Either way, the Japanese would lose. Logical choice there: Don't start the war that they couldn't win.