"MacArthur's Pearl Harbor" AKA the Dec 8, 1941 destruction of FEAF air power at Clarke Field is the subject of this thread.
(Photo: Destroyed P-35 fighters on Clark Field) 1/
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. The biggest being that if the Clinton era 2/
political concept of “The Politics of Personal Destruction” had been around in the 1930s through 1950s, Gen. MacArthur’s face would have been its poster boy.
Everything he did was personal & that made everything everyone else did in opposition to him “personal” to them. Thus
3/
...followed rounds of name calling, selective reporting & political partisanship that have utterly polluted the historical record and require lots of research to untangle.
A case in point is the Dec. 8th 1941 attack on Clark Field and the massacre of the FEAF B-17 force. 4/
This 2007 article by Michael Gough titled “Failure and Destruction, Clark Field, the Philippines, December 8, 1941″ is a good example of the accepted narrative of the Clark Field attack.
The biggest is the assumption 19 B-17D's (w/o tail guns or self-sealing fuel tanks) of the 19th Bombardment Group could have done anything useful before dying horribly.
Just...no.
Both the blame MacArthur for not making a decision on the loss of the FEAF at Clark field, 6/
and the USAAF’s “If only the B-17’s struck first” propaganda defending General Hap Arnold’s and General Marshall’s reputations post-war, just are not supported by the facts.
7/
Let' suppose at 0330 8 Dec 1941, HQ USAFFE gave Gen. Brereton permission to launch his bomber force at Clark (19 B-17s) against the Japanese facilities on Formosa.
What damage would have been inflicted on the Japanese?
Absolutely Nothing...because Formosa was fogged in.
8/
The 19th Bombardment Group B-17's would have returned to Clark field at 8:00am on 8 Dec 1941 to get refueled and been on the ground when the delayed by fog IJNAS air strike arrived to destroy them.
9/
More modern evaluations — AKA less colored by immediate post-war reputation protection and organizational agendas — of the FEAF performance are more telling.
The best look at that I have seen on that debacle is in Chpt 10 of Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat 10/
edited by Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris, which evaluated the real readiness of the Far Eastern Air Force on Dec 8, 1941.
That essay, titled “The United States in the Pacific” by Mark Parillo, addresses the FEAF Philippines performance starting at page 296.
The bottom line was that the B-17 force at Clark field did not have:
1) The photo intelligence to effectively strike Formosa with 12/
...the limited number of bombs available at Clark Field. There were no pre-war overflights of Formosa, no human intelligence and thus no intelligence photos for inexperience photo interpreters to work from,
2) The B-17 did not have the accuracy to strike ships at sea. 13/
3) Nor did the B-17 force have the logistical chops in its supporting P-40 fighters. Which lacked both coolant & O2 for high altitude operations & had no drop tanks to conduct escorted strikes w/B-17s.
14/
5) The B-17 force at Clark Air field were pre B-17E models lacking tail guns and powered turret guns. Thus they were dead meat for Japanese A6M Zero/Zeke fighters with 20mm cannon on Formosa. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-17_Flyi… 15/
6) There was no effective ground early warning system at Clark Field, as Captain Chennault’s exercise-tested-as-effective telephone, radio & binocular equipped ground observer system was drummed out of the Army Air Service as a threat to the Bomber Mafia clique’s B-17 budget. 16/
The B-17 force was sold as a high value “force in being” to the War Dept. & Gen Marshall in particular, such that it made the force’s commitment without a clear high-value target — like a Japanese invasion convoy — a non-starter, given a lack of clear targets on Formosa. 17/
The B-17s were billed a strategic force in being not to be committed lightly. MacArthur didn’t commit them & got his head handed to him.
In 20-20 hindsight, the best option after skipping on the dawn launch of Dec 8th would have been to send B-17s and many P-40s to Mindanao
18/
for a try on Dec 9th.
But had MacArthur dropped his B-17s on Formosa Dec 9th, swarms of vengeful A6M Zeros would have clawed them out of the sky on their return trip to Clark field.
Which they could have done, as they were both faster than B-17s and had the range to trail 19/
them all the way to Clark Field. And MacArthur would have been dinged for committing them before he knew what he was up against.
Sometimes everything you do is wrong, including nothing.
Such was the case for MacArthur on Dec 8th 1941. 20/
The pattern of Axis versus Allied air power in WW2 was that the two major Axis powers had made the transition to 1st-generation piston-engined monoplane fighters & bombers. It took a year of these advanced aircraft being in service before they could be used to best advantage 21/
Germany & Japan had that time, in combat, to make that transition. The FEAF at Clark Field didn't.
Clark field was too close to a modern, combat tested Japanese airpower to survive & nothing Gen MacArthur did or didn’t do would have changed that.
and in September, 1,202 KIA and 649 WIA, i.e. 1.85:1.
These numbers strongly exceed any previous campaigns dating back to the Crimean War, and do not include non-combat deaths due to disease or exposure."
2/3
Late 20th Century combat saw one dead for every four wounded.
Russia is suffering between one and 3/4 to one to something like one and 4/5ths to one killed to wounded at Povrovsk.
Gosh, remember all those 2023 US Navalist accounts that denied - DENIED, I tell you - that drones from containerships would ever, ever, be a threat and that I personally was delusional for saying so publicly.
One in every five US Naval vessels are defenseless to Chinese drones, surprise launched from Chinese merchant & fishing vessels, because the
every CNO since 1989 didn't want USN logistical officers to get a captaincy and compete for flag ranks.
Instead of dealing with reality, the USN flags send out minions on X to say "de-lu-lu" things like this⬇️
Because the USN Flags from the Aviation, Surface and Sub communities don't want to have logistical officers get flag ranks and spotlight their professional delusions🤮🤮 3/3
The missile is currently active aboard Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, America-class amphibious assault ships, San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships,
2/3
Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships, Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ships, and littoral combat ships (LCS).[6]"
This was a US Navy procurement disaster in the age of drones.
3/3
"Western Experts" on X who claim drones are a "Ukraine War unique fad" are complete fools⬇️
"Among the sensitive targets of September 2025:
• 1,895 ‼️ enemy wings of the Orlan, Zala, SuperCam, Lancet types, Molniya kamikaze wing, Shahed, Gerbera.
• 455 enemy pilot launch points and 738 crew antenna units.
• 150 mobile EW systems and 9 self-propelled EW systems.
• 2,124 self-propelled vehicles (armor, logistics, rocket artillery, auto-moto vehicles, MLRS).
2/3
• 394 cannons and howitzers.
• and much more weaponry, assets, depots, shelters, etc."
The #1 counter-battery weapon on the 2025 battlefield isn't ballistic or rocket artillery.
The Russian Legioner armored vehicle is an interesting reinvention of the 1940's Red Army BTR-152 or US M3 Scout car.
It says a great deal about the defense industrial infrastructure limitations of the Russian Federation.
1/
The three 6x6 BTR-152 photos and drawings and one 4x4 M3 scout car photo will give you an idea of what is available to the 2025 Russian defense industrial base.