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Laddar... December 8, 1941: MacArthur's Pearl Harborav William H. Bartsch
   Ingen/inga Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.  Shrike58 | Apr 3, 2007 |  inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
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Ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, "another Pearl Harbor" of even more devastating consequence for American arms occurred in the Philippines, 4,500 miles to the west. On December 8, 1941, at 12.35 p.m., 196 Japanese Navy bombers and fighters crippled the largest force of B-17 four-engine bombers outside the United States and also decimated their protective P-40 interceptors. The sudden blow allowed the Japanese to rule the skies over the Philippines, removing the only effective barrier that stood between them and their conquest of Southeast Asia. This event has been called "one of the blackest days in American military history." How could the army commander in the Philippines--the renowned Lt. Gen. Douglas MacArthur--have been caught with all his planes on the ground when he had been alerted in the small hours of that morning of the Pearl Harbor attack and warned of the likelihood of a Japanese strike on his forces? In this book, author William H. Bartsch attempts to answer this and other related questions. Bartsch draws upon twenty-five years of research into American and Japanese records and interviews with many of the participants themselves, particularly survivors of the actual attack on Clark and Iba air bases. The dramatic and detailed coverage of the attack is preceded by an account of the hurried American build-up of air power in the Philippines after July, 1941, and of Japanese planning and preparations for this opening assault of its Southern Operations. Bartsch juxtaposes the experiences of staff of the U.S. War Department in Washington and its Far East Air Force bomber, fighter, and radar personnel in the Philippines, who were affected by its decisions, with those of Japan's Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo and the 11th Air Fleet staff and pilots on Formosa, who were assigned the responsibility for carrying out the attack on the Philippines five hundred miles to the south. In order to put the December 8th attack in broader context, Bartsch details micro-level personal experiences and presents the political and strategic aspects of American and Japanese planning for a war in the Pacific. Despite the significance of this subject matter, it has never before been given full book-length treatment. This book represents the culmination of decades-long efforts of the author to fill this historical gap. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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 Google Books — Laddar...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)940.54History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- Military History Of World War IIKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg: (3.5)
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Flash forward a decade, and since then Bartsch has apparently become rather angry, as this attempt to give the synoptic picture of the state of American military aviation in the Philippines on the verge of war swings a big ax. While Bartsch concludes this work with some throwaway barbs at Douglas MacArthur, many people come in for abuse. From the hapless commander of the 24th Pursuit Group (one Orrin Grover), to General Hap Arnold (for emphasizing aerial offense over aerial defense), to Secretary of War Stimson (for allowing himself to have hope that the Japanese could be deterred by a few bombers), to the American electorate (for not owning up to their imperial responsibilities), they all come in for criticism. This might make more sense if Bartsch made the arguement that the best thing we could have done in the Philippines is to have granted Manila early independence, thus allowing that state to declare neutrality; though maybe then Bartsch should take President McKinley to task for having ever made the Philippines a colony. That's not where Bartsch is going though, even if he admits that there never much hope of creating a proper aerial defense of the islands in the time available. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if he really understands the strategic realities of the whole situation.
The point here is that if Bartsch had been more concerned with doing the sort of factual analysis he did in his earlier book, instead of going off on a counter-factual tangent in the hunt for the guilty, the conclusions might have been different. Bartsch might have admitted that while MacArthur could had been better prepared to make an early move towards breaking the dagger aimed at his throat (Japanese air power in Formosa), it had been doctrine that the B-17 was the cutting edge of American coastal defense doctrine, and that the bombers should be saved to repel an actual invasion. This is not to mention that an actual raid on Formosa seems likely to have been a forlorn hope, seeing as Bartsch does a fine job of convincing the reader that the thirty-five B-17s in the islands were not much of a cohesive fighting force. Maybe the men of the US Far East Air Force could have obtained an "incredible victory;" more likely they hit at air and that's the one shot they get. Everyone would have felt better about themselves but the strategic odds were still lousy, and to pretend otherwise does no one any service.
Having unburdened myself of these feelings of exasperation, why should you even consider reading this book? Mostly because Bartsch has done his narrative homework and gives you a tense countdown to disaster on Dec. 8, starting September 1, 1939 until the day of doom. I really believe that the pity and tragedy of it all inspired Bartsch to seek the justice of accountability on behalf of the men caught in the disaster, and if such is the case I respect his passion. However, the historian also has to play the pathologist and that means keeping in mind that in the long run we're all dead, and sometimes you're just screwed. (