Re: The Philippines; The Forgotten Campaign?

BF Lake wrote:
"Brad Meyer" <bradm110@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pk4mf3hj6jbk8bfiqsphkrian2v7scmcdg@xxxxxxxxxx

None of this shows that _anyone_ saw any part of the PI as a basis of
further advance. None of your refs give any indication that taking any
part of the PI was for the purpose of securing any sort of base for
further advance.

More a case of finding something for Mac to do rather then finding
something that really needed to be done. It would have been
interesting to see how the command arrangements worked out had there
been an invasion of Japan. Mac did not want to subordinate himself to
CINCPAC and King would not let the fast carriers be controlled by the
Army. Leyte was a foretaste of what could have happened during an
invasion of the Home Islands.

Pretty sure it is all to do with airplanes! --B-29s that is. (We keep
ignoring the influence of the strategic bombing advocates) Not sure of the
way it was for ranges etc, but we know that in early 45, Arnold wanted
carrier air from 3rd Fleet to escort the B-29s from Tinian etc to Japan but
carrier air could not be freed up for this, so the B-29s had to do
ineffective high-level bombing for some time.

The reason carrier air was tied up was that army air could not support the
army on the ground worth beans,(some sorry story there) and they needed the
carriers to hang around. Halsey finally got the army to accept some land
based marine air units who were effective and eventually the carriers were
freed up. This was before Iwo Jima was available for escort fighters.
This and Iwo Jima allowed the bombers to finally do effective low level
bombing. Was the "advance" all to do with blockade and strategic bombing
in hopes it would work with an opposed invasion as a last resort?

If the PI were not fully smothered from Japanese air activity from US air
bases on land, could the "advance" farther north have been possible? By
invading the PI, those planes were supposed to be neutralized. Would
Japanese air from the PI not be a threat to the Okinawa campaign?

Ships during the Okinawa campaign retired to Leyte for logistics and R&R.
Was Ulithi getting too far back by then?

It seems more like the PI was not for a base for the invasion of the
homelands , but just another lily pad in the leap-frogging ploy to get near
enough, where Okinawa was near enough but Luzon was not. You could not
by-pass the PI but had to smother its airfields from bases ashore in the PI.
No need to occupy all the islands to do that. But you had to occupy some to
get your own airfields. Occupying Luzon was the goofy part. But, since the
US army air was so useless at keeping the Japanese air off the backs of the
US ground forces, you have to wonder if the plan to smother the other
islands with army air would have worked . Maybe Luzon invasion was
required just to clear those airfields since the carriers could not stay
there forever to do the smothering. (which they were good at)

Regards,
Barry

I just looked at a cool wall-sized world map.

The PI are the wrong way to get to Japan from the Marshalls and Mariannas. Definitely a sidestep.

Dan
.

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