http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/failureanddestruction.aspxFailure and Destruction, Clark Field, the Philippines, December 8, 1941This article is a description of the disaster in the Philippines and the parts played by some individuals in it. In its last sections, I discuss possible reasons for the disparity in punishment meted out to the officers surprised at Pearl Harbor and officers who, knowing that war had started, failed to prevent or blunt the disaster that hit their commands.
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Convinced that the Japanese would be unable to attack before April 1942, MacArthur was confident that the Philippines defenses would be proof against the assault.[7] On December 5, 1941, in a meeting with British Admiral Tom Phillips, the commander of the Royal Navy detachment at Singapore, MacArthur spoke confidently, "The inability of an enemy to launch his air attack on these islands is our greatest security.... [N]othing would please me better than if they would give me three months and then attack here ... that would deliver the enemy into our hands."[8] As it turned out, the Japanese didn't please MacArthur. They attacked three days later.
According to Richard L. Watson, author of the chapter about Pearl Harbor and Clark Field in the Army Air Force History, Army Air Forces in World War II: Vol. 1: Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942, "about 90 pursuits" were in the islands.[9] Bartsch (2003)[10] presents a more detailed inventory (see table 3). The USAAF had 71 P-40Bs and Es, the only "modern" pursuits, in the islands. The other pursuits, the P-35As, lacked adequate armament, armor, and self-sealing gas tanks. The B-18s that appear as equipment of the bomb groups were inadequate bombers and were used as transports.
News of War Comes to the Philippines, December 8, 1941 Army and Navy officers in the Philippine Islands learned about Pearl Harbor within minutes of the attack. William Manchester, in his generally positive recounting of General Douglas MacArthur's life, American Caesar, [11] and Stanley Wientraub,[12] more critical of the general,[13] agree that t
he first official news of the attack was a phone call to Admiral Thomas Hart, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Asiatic Fleet.
"At 0230 of the 8th (0800, 7 December, Pearl Harbor time),"[14]
about five minutes after the Pearl Harbor attack began, a Navy radioman in Manila heard the famous "This is no drill" message. He passed it to the officer of the day who telephoned Admiral Hart in his room at the Manila Hotel. The ringing telephone woke Hart at "just a few minutes before"[15] or "a few minutes after" 3:00 AM .[16]
Commercial radio broadcasts were the army's first source of information about Pearl Harbor.[17] Bartsch credits Pvt. Harry Seiff, the 20th Pursuit Squadron's (PS's) cook, as being the first soldier at Clark to hear about Pearl Harbor.[18] News spread rapidly, and Brigadier General Richard Sutherland, General MacArthur's chief of staff, telephoned MacArthur in his penthouse of the Manila Hotel at about 3:30 AM.[19]
Less than an hour and a half after Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall, USA Chief of Staff, sent a radiogram to MacArthur. Handed to MacArthur at 5:30 A.M., Manila time,
the message stated, "hostilities between Japan and the United States ... have commenced.... Carry out tasks assigned in Rainbow Five... ."[20]
Characteristic of the reporting of that confused morning, the extent of Army-Navy interactions is unclear. Manchester states, "Hart neglected to share this vital information [Pearl Harbor] with MacArthur or any other Army officer."[21] Weintraub writes that Hart's chief of staff, Admiral William R. Purnell, "rushed the news to General Sutherland...."[22] Bartsch (2003) agrees with Weintraub's account. "Twenty-five minutes later (at 3:55 AM), he (MacArthur) received confirmation of the attack through Admiral Hart."[23] Given Manchester's bias toward MacArthur, he might be expected to favor interpretations that suggest the people around him failed the general; in this case, the Navy failed to inform him. Weintraub and Bartsch, more critical of the general, go in the other direction, citing evidence that MacArthur had been well informed.
The author of the chapter about Clark Field in the Air Force History states, "Base commanders received prompt notification and all units were placed on combat alert."[24] Perhaps, but the notification was not always prompt. The 34th PS based at Del Carmen Field (see table 1), did not receive news of Pearl Harbor until about 8:00.[25] And, as would be expected, many individual soldiers learned by word of mouth. Ed Whitcome, then a B-17 navigator, writes,
I was on the way to breakfast at the mess hall [at Clark Field] a block away. It seemed that it would be just another day of preparing to go to war until somebody said, "There is a rumor that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor."[26]
The Army history probably has it right, when it says,
By breakfast, the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor had reached all ranks. The men had for so long accepted the fact that war with Japan might come that the event itself was an anticlimax. There was no cheering and no demonstration, but "a grim, thoughtful silence." [Reference omitted.][27]
Decisions Not Made and Messages Not Forwarded When informed about Pearl Harbor, General Brereton drove to see General MacArthur to request permission to carry out the planned-for bombing of Japanese bases on Formosa. Arriving at USAFFE Headquarters at 5:00, Brereton did not see MacArthur. Manchester says that Sutherland told Brereton that MacArthur was in conference with Admiral Hart and could not be disturbed;[28] Bartsch states that Sutherland told Brereton that MacArthur was in conference;[29] Weintraub writes that Sutherland had Brereton "cool his heels" before telling him that MacArthur was unavailable.[30] As Brereton left USAFFE Headquarters, Sutherland told him to go ahead with his plans and that he would secure MacArthur's permission for the attack.
Time was critical. Clearly, an attack should be launched before the Japanese struck. Neither that attack nor any other was forthcoming.
Brereton returned to USAFFE headquarters at about 7:15. Again, Sutherland prevented his seeing MacArthur and told Brereton that MacArthur had not responded to his request for permission to attack Formosa. When Brereton pressed Sutherland, Sutherland went into MacArthur's office, quickly returned, and said MacArthur had denied the request. "The General says no. Don't make the first overt act."[31]
The words "first overt act" play a major role in understanding, interpreting, or explaining away
the events of December 8, 1941. For this discussion, the words originate in a "war warning" that General Marshall sent to Army commanders on November 27, 1941: "... hostile actions possible at any moment.... If hostilities cannot, repeat, cannot be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act...."[32]
Sutherland and MacArthur cite compliance with that message as a
reason for denying Brereton permission to launch the bombing attacks. Certainly bombing Formosa would have been an overt act.
Brereton's argument that Pearl Harbor had been an overt act did not persuade Sutherland. Neither did Sutherland's knowledge, not shared with Brereton, that Japan had already bombed Davao, a port on the Philippine island of Mindanao. After the bombings of Pearl Harbor and Davao, hardly anyone – except Sutherland and MacArthur – would characterize a subsequent American strike as the "first overt act."
Another reason has been suggested
MacArthur's reluctance to issue orders. In Bartsch's words:
Some have speculated that MacArthur may have hesitated to attack Formosa in deference to Pres. Manuel Quezon's alleged hope that the Japanese would not attack the Philippines if MacArthur did not attack them first. On the other hand, Quezon reportedly told Maj. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in ... 1942: "...
MacArthur was convinced for some strange reason that the Philippines would remain neutral and would not be attacked by the Japanese."[33] [/b]
MacArthur had been a serving officer in the U.S. Army since July 1941, when he resigned his reign as Field Marshal of the Philippine Army.[34] As a U.S. Army officer, he was subject to Marshall's command to initiate RAINBOW 5, which included air attacks on Japanese targets. His cavalier disregard of that order hardly squares with his self-portrayal as the embodiment of West Point's credo "Duty, honor, country."[35]
At about 8:00, Brigadier General Gerow in Marshall's office telephoned MacArthur to ask if he had received the cables that Marshall had sent earlier in the morning. MacArthur said yes and offered no explanation for his having not responded sooner.[36] Gerow said, "I wouldn't be surprised if you got an attack there in the near future."[37] To which MacArthur responded, "tell General Marshall that 'our tails are up in the air.'"[38]
Tails had been "up in the air. On the night of December 7-8, as on several nights during the preceding week, the Iba radar (the only operational radar in the Philippines) had detected airplanes flying from the north. At a little after midnight, 1st Lt Hank Thorne, commanding officer of the 3rd PS , led a flight of six P-40Es into the air, and, guided by radar, attempted an interception. Iba radar lost radio contact with Thorne's flight and the radar operators watched as path of the American pursuits intersected that of the Japanese. The P-40 pilots saw no airplanes[39] and returned to Iba to make the first night landing at that field in the lights of cars and trucks shown on the runway.
A few hours later, at 4:00 A.M. or so, and after news of Pearl Harbor had arrived, the pilots of the 17th and 21st PSs at Nichols Field on the outskirts of Manila, were sitting in the cockpits or beneath the wings of their P-40Es. At Iba, the pilots of the 3rd PS in their P-40Es, and the pilots of the 20th PS in their P-40Bs were in a similar state of readiness at Clark. The 34th PS at San Carlos Field, equipped with woeful P-35As, had not been alerted in the pre-dawn darkness.
Sleepy and on-edge, pilots wondered about the war. When would it reach them? Would their machine guns fire? (many had never been fired in flight). How would their heavy, slow-climbing pursuits perform? (on interception training flights, U.S. bombers had simply flown away from them at altitudes over 20,000 feet).
A little before 8:00 A.M., Iba radar informed the Air Warning Service (AWS) at Nielson Field that at least 30 Japanese aircraft were flying south over Luzon apparently headed for Clark Field. The warning service teletyped that information to 24th PG headquarters at Clark.
Major Orrin Grover, commanding officer of the 24th PG, scrambled two squadrons – the 17th at Nichols Field and the 20th at Clark – and sent them to patrol at 15,000 feet over Tarlac, 21 miles north of Clark. In his after-action report, Grover wrote that he ordered the 34th to patrol over Clark in its P-35As[40] in case any Japanese planes broke through the 17th and 20th. There is no other indication that the order was given to the 34th. In any case, no such order reached the 34th, which was on the ground at San Carlos when the Japanese attacked four hours later.
The takeoffs of the 20th PS and the 19th BG from Clark were something of a miracle. Downwind, crosswind, and into the wind, accelerating P-40Bs dashed around and between lumbering B-17Cs and Ds in hair-raising near-collisions. All the pursuits and bombers got safely into the air.
Orders for the 19th BG were as much up in the air as were the bombers. Brereton returned to his office from his 7:00 rebuff by Sutherland to tell his staff that they could send three B-17s on a photoreconnaissance mission over Formosa. Brereton's staff questioned the need for the reconnaissance flights. According to Captain Allison Ing, on the FEAF staff, target folders were complete enough to plan bombing attacks.[41]
At 8:00, Brereton called Sutherland. Fifty minutes later, Sutherland returned the call to say, "Hold off bombing Formosa for the present."
Sutherland also told Brereton not to call again. Maybe an hour later, after receiving reports of Japanese bombing of cities north of Clark, Brereton ignored Sutherland's instruction, and called again. At 10:00, Sutherland reiterated that no offensive mission was authorized.[42] All that changed, 15 minutes later. MacArthur, himself, called Brereton and authorized strikes on Formosa.
Brereton's staff went ahead with plans to dispatch 3 B-17s on the photoreconnaissance flight as soon as the necessary cameras arrived at Clark from Nichols and to launch a bombing attack to arrive over Formosa at last light in the afternoon. Charts for the bombing attack and overlays that located Japanese airfields were prepared for the briefing of pilots and navigators. The preparation and distribution of those charts is rather convincing evidence that the photoreconnaissance flights were not necessary for the bomb mission. (Bartsch,[43] in discussing Brereton's actions on December 8, points out that the three B-17s would have made a bigger contribution as members of the planned bomb mission than in a not-entirely necessary reconnaissance.)
Two and a half hours after the frenzied 8:30 takeoff from Clark, essentially every aircraft in the islands was on the ground, being serviced or ready for takeoff. The pilots of the 17th and 20th PSs had flown back to Clark, along with the B-17s of the 19th BG. The 3rd at Iba, the 21st at Nichols, and the 34th PS at San Carlos, had remained on the ground.
The outward appearance of a normal peacetime day in the FEAF disappeared at 11:27 A.M. Iba radar picked up a flight of aircraft over the Gulf of Lingayen on the west coast of Luzon, north of Iba Point and reported the sighting to the AWS at Nichols. By 11:37, AWS teletyped the radar report to 24th PG Headquarters at Clark Field.
And from here, the course of warnings and messages and orders grows blurry. Records of teletyped and radioed messages and orders are obscured in or have been lost from, understandably, poor records[44] and what are surely self-serving after-action reports.[45]
What is certain is that no American pursuit intercepted a single Japanese bomber.[46] It's also certain
the 19th BG 's B-17s and the 20th PS's P-40Bs were on the ground, when Japanese bombs began to fall at 12:35.[47] As Whitcomb, then a B-17 navigator, writes,
"The first notice we had at the 19th Bombardment Group Headquarters was when someone screamed, 'Here they come!'"[48]
Defeat in the Philippines Fifty minutes after the first bombs fell on Clark, the Japanese flew back to Formosa, leaving Americans confronting death and wounds, destruction and damage, fire and smoke, and demoralization. When the Japanese flew away,
half the B-17s and one-third of the P-40s were destroyed, and two of the four P-40-equipped pursuit squadrons were eliminated as combat units. As surely as if all its planes had been destroyed, the fifth pursuit squadron, the 34th, equipped with P-35As, had also been eliminated from the war. Its pilots knew their planes were deathtraps in aerial combat with Japanese fighters.
Two days later, on December 10, the Japanese bombed and strafed Nichols and Del Carmen Fields, leaving those bases in shambles and destroying about half the remaining P-40s and all but five P-35As. Three days after war's start, the Japanese had eliminated U.S. airpower from the Philippines at the trifling cost of a few aircraft and their crews.
On the afternoon of December 8, MacArthur had announced that B-17s would strike Formosa the next day. That attack was not launched. Indeed,
the B-17s, intended to play the major role in defending the Philippines by striking and eliminating Japanese bases, never played that role.
The destruction of American aircraft on the ground inflicted a "fatal blow" on the FEAF[49] and American prospects in the Philippines. At Pearl Harbor, the carnage had ended as the last Japanese attacker flew away. Rescue and repair began, the wounded were aided, and except for those who died from their wounds, there were no more casualties. Certainly, the loss of several battleships dealt a blow to U.S. prestige and morale, but the absence of those ships was to make little difference in the war. The consequences of the Japanese attacks in the Philippines were more far reaching.
Without air support, U.S. and Philippine troops mounted a resolute defense against the Japanese. Only on April 9, 1942, more than a month after the Japanese had expected to complete their conquest, did the combined U.S. and Philippine forces, having suffered 20,000 deaths, surrender on Luzon. More deaths and suffering awaited them. Only half the 20,000 Americans that went into Japanese captivity survived the war; some were murdered outright, some were tortured, many died of overwork, maltreatment, and absence of medical care. [50],[51] A larger proportion of captured Filipinos died.
The surrender of the Philippine Islands marked the largest surrender of U.S. troops and the largest loss of U.S. territory in history. It extended the reach of the Japanese Empire 1,000 miles into the Pacific, and the Naval Base at Cavite, near Manila, the excellent harbors on Manila Bay, and the American airfields were valuable additions to Japanese naval and military strength.
Neither the successful launch of the planned bombing attacks against Japanese bases on the first day of war or the loss of fewer U.S. airplanes in the initial Japanese attacks would have saved the Philippines from conquest. U.S. forces in the Philippines were simply inadequate to block the Japanese.
Nevertheless,
a successful U.S. attack might have caught some Japanese planes on the ground and might have disrupted or reduced the ferocity of Japanese attacks. Preserving more U.S. aircraft would have left the U.S. with a striking force – the B-17s – and some aerial defense – P-40s. Instead, U.S. air power in the Philippines was rendered toothless before it could strike a blow.
