Having kicked off the war at Pearl Harbor, our book club for Samuel Eliot Morison's The Two-Ocean War, a history of the USN in WWII, continues into Chapter 4, a survey of what else the Japanese were up to in the Pacific in the first few months of the war.
This chapter opens with a section that I almost really like, pointing out the execrable performance of MacArthur in the Philippines. And then the last word has to go and spoil it. Now, MacArthur is a complicated character, and I think his campaign in New Guinea was one of the great overlooked military masterpieces (unfortunately, it looks like it gets about 4 pages in Two-Ocean War, but the account in Morison's New Guinea and the Marianas is very good) but I also think he should have been sacked the instant he set foot on Australian soil. Based on this account, the performance of the Japanese air attack on the Philippine airbases is one of the very best of the entire war, and the sort of thing that even fairly rudimentary defensive measures could have gone a long way to mitigating. Also, there's not even a hint of acknowledgement that the whole plan was bad from the start. Whatever people may have thought the B-17 could do in 1941, it was not an effective anti-shipping platform and probably couldn't have done all that much to the air bases on Formosa, either, even if MacArthur hadn't let them get destroyed on the ground.
For fairly obvious reasons, Morison gives only the briefest account of the Malaya campaign, which was if anything even more badly conducted than the defense of the Philippines. After reading a book on it, I came away with the impression that the RN had done the best of the three services, and they lost two battleships.
But then we come to the campaign in the Dutch East Indies, which is one of the bits I like best in History of US Naval Operations, as it's almost totally neglected in most histories of the war, even more so than the Philippines. His description of Java Sea is excellent, finding just the right balance between detail and brevity. The one thing that stood out to me is how ineffective the Japanese torpedo attacks are, as my main reference frame for that is the fighting around Guadalcanal, where they did significantly better. But it's nice to finally see Morison hit his stride.
Comments
Everything I've read strongly indicates that every country facing Japan greatly underestimated the Japanese military & people and that very few people thought the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor* or the Pacific empires of the European countries.
Regarding Malaya, the British regarded the jungle as too thick for troops to move through it. The fall of Singapore was caused by the fact that most of the freshwater supply was on the mainland, not the island where the British, Australians and Indian troops set up the final defense line. Once the freshwater started running out Percival didn't have really have any other option then to surrender.
It didn't help that the British had stripped their Pacific forces for the war against Germany.
Nobody really expected that Pearl would get hit at the start of the war. The same is not true of the various colonies in the Far East, and I think it's reasonable to be harsher to the commanders there.
The detail on the Dutch East Indies and Japans's campaign was definitely useful for me. I guess in general aside from the loss of force Z, and that the Philippines fall this whole early phase of the Pacific Theater is rather vague to me so it's nice to get a more cohesive overview.
"But then we come to the campaign in the Dutch East Indies, which is one of the bits I like best in History of US Naval Operations, as it’s almost totally neglected in most histories of the war, even more so than the Philippines."
The Philippines, Malaya and Indonesia only get 24 pages, when Morison points out that at least the first and last were each more important than Pearl Harbor. This just makes me want to read The Rising Sun in the Pacific.
I don't know a ton about Archibald Wavell, but knowing that he abandoned British Somaliland for Aden and Montgomery dominating synopses of British victories in Africa, I get an (inaccurate) sense of him getting chased east across the world by the Axis when Morison describes him being called "home" from the short-lived ABDA. I believe he was moved directly to India instead.
Yeah, Morison's discussion of MacArthur sees the halo-polishing in full effect. I'm not sure why the US Navy's official historian is so eager to make excuses for an Army general - this particular Army general least of all.
I also have to reiterate a question I had earlier, to wit: Where did Morison get the idea that the abandoned "Thruster" plan was still the Navy's current thinking by the time of WW2? That hadn't been the plan for 6 or 7 years (IIRC) by 1942, when Morison was first commissioned to write the Navy's official war history, so I don't see why or how it would even have come up in his research.
@Le Maistre
The short (very) version is that Wavell lost the confidence of Churchill after a succession of defeats in North Africa and Crete and Greece. After the ABDA, which had no chance, was defeated Wavell was appointed C in C of India and then Viceroy of India, being replaced by Claude Auchinleck, who won the 1st Battle of El Alamein and helped put Montgomery in the position of winning the 2nd Battle of Alamein. I've read both Churchill's 6 volume history of WWII and the autobiographies/biographies of some of the senior British officers of both the Army & Navy. I think that Churchill had an overrated belief in his knowledge of the military and never seemed to accept that the British military could fail or be defeated despite doing everything right. That resulted in Churchill forcing senior officers to be re-assigned even if they were really the best choice for the position
RE: underestimateing the Japan
Keep in mind, that her big flashy victories had been at the expense of China & Russia - who militaries were no well respected
I wonder how much memory of the joint Siberian expedition (or E Med / Red Sea patrols for the British) was still around in the early 40's.
@Le Maistre Chat
Yes, the disasters in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies were separately larger and more consequential than the attack on Pearl Harbor; and yes, Morison devotes less time and page count to dealing with both the PI and DEI combined than he does to PH. But keep in mind that Morison was the US Navy historian, writing an account of the US Navy's war. So he spends most of his time here on the handful of actions that the US Navy fought in (and the conditions under which said actions were fought), and less on the collapse of the Army in the Philippines or the British and Dutch defenses of Malaya and the DEI respectively. Not because those things are unimportant, but because they're out of scope.
Hello, all. I'm back after a week of illness and a week of catching up with life.
I very much like how Morison handles the Reader's Digest condensed version of the ABDA command, its battles, and its failures. He does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of explaining what the failure modes were, but also not making an excuse because of them. He assigns blame where it belongs, but also doesn't dwell on it. Sort of a "We got our asses kicked, and here's why."
I also thought he did a good job with the chart showing the one battle. It amused me to read the line "Keep a finger on the chart".
Belushi TD
This did nothing to change my opinion of Mac.... he was, first and foremost, interested in Mac. Followed by his troops, then by whatever someone above him might dare to request of him.
Agree, the description of Java Sea was great. Wish he'd managed more than a sentence for USS Marblehead dodging air attacks at Makassar Strait.