Trent Telenko

History Friday — MacArthur: A General Made for Another Convenient Lie.

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One of the important things to know about General Douglas MacArthur was that almost nothing said or written about him can be trusted without extensive research to validate its truthfulness. There were a lot of reasons for this. Bureaucratic infighting inside the US Army, inside the War Department, and between the War and Naval Departments all played a role from MacArthur’s attaining flag rank in World War 1 (WW1) through his firing by President Truman during the Korean War. His overwhelming need to create what amounts to a cult of personality around himself was another. However, the biggest reason for this research problem was that, if the Clinton era political concept of “The Politics of Personal Destruction” had been around in the 1930’s-thru-1950’s, General Douglas MacArthur’s face would have been its poster boy. Everything the man did was personal, and that made everything everyone else did in opposition to him, “personal” to them. Thus followed rounds of name calling, selective reporting and political partisanship that have utterly polluted the historical record and requires research over decades to untangle.

Case in point is the aftermath of the Sandakan Death March, where the Australian Army and in particular it’s commander General (eventually Field Marshal) Sir Thomas Blamey, blamed MacArthur for the cancellation of “Project Kingfisher” rescue mission and by extension the deaths of those POW’s.

Sandakan Death March

To understand these charges against MacArthur requires a little back ground. Sandakan was a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Northern Borneo that took 2345 British and Australian prisoners captured in Singapore in Feb. 1942. These Australian and British POWs were shipped to North Borneo in order to construct a military airstrip as well as their POW camp. “Project Kingfisher” was a daring plan in late 1944 by which an the First Australian Parachute Battalion would have rescued the 1900 or so British and Australian POW left alive there in January 1945.

Unfortunately, due to combination of official indifference in both Australian high command and intelligence circles, plus disputes with MacArthur’s Headquarters over whether Australian plans to drop the 1st Parachute Battalion were either realistic or had enough resources, PROJECT KINGFISHER never got off the ground. It was finally and officially cancelled in March 1945. The failure to free these POW resulted in a series of Japanese death marches in January and May 1945 for which there were only six Australian survivors by August 1945.

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History Friday: MacArthur’s Mission X

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I have stated in an earlier Chicago Boyz column that:
“One of the maddening things about researching General Douglas MacArthur’s fighting style in WW2 was the way he created, used and discarded military institutions, both logistical and intelligence, in the course of his South West Pacific Area (SWPA) operations. Institutions that had little wartime publicity and have no direct organizational descendent to tell their stories in the modern American military.”

Today’s column is the story of one of those “throw away” logistical institutions, one that started as MacArthur’s “Mission X”, what became the small boats and coastal freighter fleet that served MacArthur from 1942 through 1947 as Supreme Commander Allied Powers (SCAP) in post-war Japan.

Mission X Small Boats Moving Supplies Forward from a Liberty Ship
A Liberty ship and two captured Japanese sampans discharge and load cargo at an unnamed advanced base.

Small Boats and Coastal Freighters

General Douglas MacArthur had three more or less distinct types of coastal shipping pools operating with the World War II (WW2) Southwest Pacific Area (SPWA) theater’s 7th Fleet:

1) Large vessels that were US Army or War Shipping Administration vessels assigned to Army including Dutch East Indies tramp steamers and Vichie French vessels (along with freighters commandeered by MacArthur as floating storage when they arrived with intentions of return). These were the Army Transport Service (ATS) vessels that were, under a 1941 reorganization, integrated into the Water Division of the US Army Transportation Corps. They were manned by American and; Australian merchant seamen in part, but primarily by the US Coast Guard on newer ship after mid-1944.
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2) The small ships and boats section with watercraft of less than 1,000 tons displacement, almost exclusively of local SWPA origin with some built for the U.S. Army in Australia’s small boatyards, that were essential for operating in the coral filled waters of Northern Australia, the Coral Sea, Papua/New Guinea and the scattered islands of the Philippines. They were crewed primarily by a mix of citizens from Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, some as young as 15-years old after February 1943, due to a world wide merchant seaman shortage.
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3) The US Army Engineer Special Brigades (ESB) in LCVP and LCM landing craft. Each US Army Engineer Special Brigade — and MacArthur had three in the Philippines, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Brigades — was equipped to transport and land a division in a “Shore to shore” operation of under 135 miles. (which was the practical maximum overnight range of a LCM combat loaded with a M4 Sherman tank.) These brigades required a force of 7340 men, 540 LCMs and LCVPs, and 104 command and support boats to move that division. You can find an excellent site dedicated to the ESB’s here — http://ebsr.net/ESBhistory.htm

Of the three coastal shipping pools, the second was the only one MacArthur had for the first 18 months after he came to Australia. It was made up primarily of anything the Australians would let “Mission X”, what later became the US Army Small Ship Service (USASS), impress from Australian harbors. Two and three mast sailing ships, tugs, fishing boats and 40 year old coal powered tramp steamers less than 1,000 tons fit to be hulks were the main components of that fleet.

This small boat “fleet” operated in the face of Japanese air superiority without even Destroyers for escort — the USN did not allow any US Navy warships past Milne Bay. If these small watercraft had escorts, they were Australian motor launches, US Navy PT-Boats and US Army ESB landing craft gunboats.

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Mobilization for WW2 — A Revisionist History Triple Book Review

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Most histories of the American World War 2 (WW2) military mobilization are firmly based in Keynesian economics. There is now a new emerging counterpoint evaluation of that era, using the “Regime Uncertainty” school of political economy. The following is a review of three works in that school that provide both a cultural/political context and a nuts and bolts view of how the American military mobilization of 1940-43 was paid for.

See the following book titles/Amazon.com Links:

1) Depression, War, and Cold War: Challenging the Myths of Conflict and Prosperity (Independent Studies in Political Economy) by Robert Higgs,

2) The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes , and

3) The previously mentioned “Keep From All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II,” by Jim Lacey

All three books subscribe to the “Regime Uncertainty” school of political economy in evaluating the Great Depression and the World War Two economic rebound. This school challenges the gross domestic product (GDP) measurements of World War Two as highly flawed and contends that while actual consumer GDP increased through out the war, much is what the Federal government counts as GDP — ammunition for instance — was a flat economic loss.

This school of thought also contends the late 1940s post-war economic recovery in America was very much a matter of the dismantlement of FDR New Deal regulatory structure — and removing “Regime Uncertainty” from “Rule of Men” regulatory fiat — as the major factor in the post World War Two private sector economic boom.

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History Friday — MacArthur’s Fighter Drop Tanks

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One of the key technologies for developing air superiority in World War II was the fighter auxiliary ‘drop’ fuel tanks. They made deep penetration, fighter escorted, heavy bomber raids possible. Those raids forced Axis fighters to fight more numerous and increasingly better American fighters at a disadvantage, allowing the June 6th 1944 Normandy D-Day landings in Europe under Allied air superiority. For reasons having to do with both intra-service and inter-service politics, technical reasons, training and doctrine, plus plain good luck, MacArthur’s South West Pacific Area (SWPA) theater had such drop tanks in wide service on P-38 fighters during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (24 March 1943), and on P-47’s during June-August 1943. Meanwhile, several months later and 1/2 a world away on the 14 Oct 1943, during the SchweinfurtRegensburg mission over Southern Germany, the B-17’s of the 8th Air Force were unescorted because their P-38’s and P-47’s lacked drop tanks. This lack caused 20% of the attacking force — 60 B-17’s, and 600 airmen — to be lost.

Auxiliary ‘drop’ fuel tanks weren’t secret. They were common to most American fighters both Navy and Army in the early to mid 1930’s. Nor were they unknown around the world, as the Germans demonstrated in them in Spain early in 1939 (and forgot them for the Battle of Britain in 1940). They were also standard for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and were responsible — along with “long of lean” fuel control techniques — for the A6M3 Zero’s incredible range in 1941. Yet by the time of SchweinfurtRegensburg mission, fighter “drop tanks” were unavailable for the 8th Air Force in England. The USAF did a lot to gloss this fact over in the post war narrative, but modern internet search engines will let you see the real facts from declassified documents hiding behind their self-serving unclassified institutional histories.

The 165 Gallon Lockheed Drop Tank in Front of a P-38 Lightning Fighter dated Nov 1943
A 165 Gallon Lockheed Drop Tank in front of a P-38 Lightning Fighter

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History Friday — MacArthur’s Plywood Fleet

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One of the more interesting “official narratives” from WW2 involves the US Navy PT-boat, its usefulness in WW2 combat and General Douglas MacArthur. This public narrative centers on three events and a post-war claim. The three events are the sinking of PT-109 with future President Kennedy aboard, MacArthur’s escape from the Philippines in a PT-boat and later return to Corregidor in one, and Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s claims that the PT-boat was ineffective in combat. Like a lot of other narratives in and around MacArthur, there are issues of post-war institutional agenda and extinction, decades long classification and just plain lying by selective reporting via the services of the Joint Army Navy Assessment Committee (JANAC). This is a narrative that can now be now pealed back by diligent internet research.

The story of the birth, service and death of the PT-Boat in WW2 was closely linked to General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was made the Chief of Philippine Armed forces in the mid-1930’s after his terms as US Army chief of Staff. What most people do not know is that while he was there, according to Hiroshi Masuda 2012 book MacArthur in Asia: The General and His Staff in the Philippines, Japan, and Korea, MacArthur pushed to have up to 200 British motor torpedo boats for Filipino Naval forces and arranged for a Filipino government contract with Vosper Thornycroft for one of their “Q-Boats.” He also sent letters to the Navy Department stating he wanted to use a US design, but would settle for the British one if he had to. This influenced then Naval Chief of Staff Adm. Leahy, and later Pres Franklin Roosevelt’s defacto chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to fund two small PT-boat units.

PT-658 in the Final WW2 PT-Boat Configuration

PT-658 in the Final Rocket-Gunboat Configuration Prior to Operation Olympic

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