Sea Control - Sea Control 181 - The Amphibious 8th with MG Pat Donahoe and Prof. Don Chisholm

Episode Date: June 7, 2020

Links:1. Joint Operational Warfare, Theory and Practice by Milan Vego2. US Navy Operations in World War II, Vol. XIII by Samuel Eliot Morrison3. History of the 2nd Engineer Special Brigade4. The US Army Campaigns of World War II - Southern Philippines5. MacArthur Reports - Operations of the 8th Army in the Southern Philippines6. MacArthur's Amphibious Navy

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today we're discussing how the U.S. Army's 8th Army came to be known as the Amphibious 8th. My first guest is perhaps best known for his work as a former instructor at the U.S. Naval War College, Major General Pat Donahoe, now Deputy Commander for Operations, U.S. 8th Army in Korea. Welcome, sir. Hey, it's great to be with you, Jared.

Thanks. Thanks, sir. And we're re-recording this, a little technical difficulties there, but I'm going to ask you again. You actually did start your career with U.S. Navy. Is that correct? I did. I was a naval midshipman at Villanova my freshman year back in 1985.

As all good naval midshipman, I was doing those incredibly beneficial things like studying the 1200 psi d-shaped boiler of the knox class frigate taking calculus and physics and as a history major i realized that i was academically way over my head i really didn't care about the steam cycle and so um for all you good catholics out there i i sound i signed out of the navy program on the uh on ash wednesday my freshman year so i gave up the navy for lent yes sir you just gave me a unpleasant flashback when you mentioned steam cycle my second guest is the Stephen B. Luce, Professor of Naval Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, Professor Donald Chisholm. Professor Chisholm, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?

Thanks, Jared. Been at the Naval War College now for 20 years on June 5th, so very close to that. Started out as a political scientist teaching at public research universities through a series of serendipitous contacts and ended up on a one-year appointment at the War College in 2000. And over the last couple of decades, I have completed my conversion from political science scientist to a teacher of operational planning and naval historian. And if I'm not mistaken, Major General Donahoe is one of your first students. Is that correct? It was. It embarrassed me now to think what he must have seen in the classroom around the fall of 2000. At the same time, it shows that even the government can survive a bad education.

And I'm still appealing the D I got on my JMO paper. Thank you both again for agreeing to join me today. The campaign that we're going to be covering is the Eighth Army's campaign through the Southern Philippines, mostly forgotten amongst the many other battles of World War II. We'll be discussing it through the lens of Professor Milan Vigo's Space, Time, and Force. Professor Vigo is an institution at the Naval War College and in the field of operational art. You can find a link to his book in our show notes. So, gentlemen, we're going to start with time and really some strategic context. General, before we talk about the Eighth Army, we should really talk about the Sixth and their campaign up to this point in the war.

What had the Sixth Army been doing up to this point? We have Lieutenant General Walter Kruger, and he's the commanding general of the Sixth United States Army, which includes the First Corps, which there's a young Eichelberger who's commanding the First Corps at that point. Their codename is the Alamo Force. They're the ones who neutralize Rabaul. So as you look at Operation Cartwheel, as they're coming up to isolate really the naval and air center that Rabaul is, they move across New Guinea and up through the Solomon Chain as they conduct that operation. And so, again, they're then leading across New Guinea, and they are the first element to go into the Philippines. And so they move into the Philippines. At the same time, the Eighth Army is getting established. And then Eichelberger moves over from First Corps to command Eighth Army. Of course, the interesting piece there is Eichelberger is not judged all that well by Kruger in the New Guinea campaign when Eichelberger goes up to fight at Buna. And so now you have this interesting personnel dynamic between Kruger, who is kind of sees himself as the senior commander of the two armies that will be fighting in the Philippines.

So it sets up an interesting series of personal engagements. Is this a Montgomery Patton type dynamic that we're talking about? I mean, I think there's a little bit to that. I don't think it gets to that level of animosity, but clearly Kruger sees himself as the better of the two. when Eichelberger is, you know, student to his teacher. Thank you. So my preliminary research uncovered some good Samuel L. Morrison quotes about MacArthur's authority to actually conduct the operations in the Philippines beyond his initial at Leyte.

The best among these was, it is still somewhat of a mystery how and whence General of the Army Douglas MacArthur derived his authority to use the United States forces to liberate one Philippine island after another. What is Morrison getting at here? Well, first off, right? I mean, you've got a series of strategic level meetings that get conducted back in Washington, D.C. over the conduct of the war in the Pacific. And so you have this, you know, the well-known Nimitz versus MacArthur decisions that are going to have to be made at the strategic level. Who gets the resources?

What campaign should be the focus? And really, you have this follow-on decision that we're just going to have two parallel campaigns and only the resource-rich United States can actually do that at this time in history. And then MacArthur, given his personal predilection to his entire being is wrapped up in going back to the Philippines to really recover his personal reputation by going in and relieving that stain on his reputation by going back in and liberating the Philippines. And so he makes a personal appeal to the president of the United States. And so it really is on that conversation that he gets really the permission in his own mind. And we see this throughout the rest of his military career, right? The authorities that MacArthur needs are the authorities he gives himself. Yes. So otherwise, time did not seem to be a critical factor for the Americans in a strategic sense in this campaign. But operational tempo was critical to the success of a lot of these operations. Professor Chisholm, would you agree with that statement? I think I might want to qualify a little bit.

Once at the Casablanca conference in January of 43, the president drops on the allies that we're going to seek unconditional surrender, both Germany and Japan. And that obligates us to a considerable effort. And the Japanese, of course, are not very interested in an unconditional surrender, looking for a negotiated end, as they started out with. So now you're going to have a problem of sustaining the fight once the fight in Europe is over. How do you do it in the Pacific? How do you keep the public engaged? And so I think at a national strategic level, there was concern that we'd better get it over with pretty quick. And of course, these planters are not very much aware of what was coming down the pike

from the Manhattan Project. So they had to think, you know, strictly conventional forces. At the operational level, they're looking to speed things up before the rains come. You know, you get April, May, and June in Mindanao. In some areas, you're getting 40 inches of rain per year. I'm sorry, per month, my mistake. And so I think there were a number of imperatives there to speed things along. Operational tempo was key, but then the Japanese were back on their heels anyway, and they couldn't move.

They're sitting there waiting to delay us. It's about the best they could do. Hey, Don, let me chime in because I think this concept of tempo is central to the 8th Army's campaign. When you look at the operational tactical tempo that 8th Army operates on, it is really unprecedented. And you've got this large force that is in this constant contact with the enemy. They're operating at ranges from hundreds to thousands of miles across the Philippine archipelago. And you have a 44-day period where Eighth Army conducts an amphibious assault every day and a half. So the number of operations and the distances between locations demand this skill with the Eighth Army staff.

You know, they're forced to tightly manage assets and sequence operations within the constraints of not only time and space, but the limited shipping available that they have. And then the logistics and the support to sustain this group of simultaneous operations across this incredible space. And it's just absolutely unprecedented. And I think that's why this campaign is so rich for lessons for us today. Thank you, sir. So I wanted to move over to space there, and you touched on a lot of the factors at play here, General, already. So the Philippines, specifically the Visayas, when you observe the Philippines on a map, you only see the main islands. Depending on the map scale, I've been flipping through Google Images the last few days to just confirm my bias.

They look like about six to ten islands. In reality, the archipelago is thousands and thousands of islands, thousands of individual straits running between them, and multiple seas to include the Sulu Sea, Bohol Sea, South China Sea, and many more. The area the 8th was being asked to take was 600 miles east to west, 400 miles north to south. Again, hundreds of islands in that space. General, how would you describe that terrain on those islands from a ground combat perspective? Yeah, so 7,107 islands in the Philippines, 880 of them are occupied by people, right? And so you have the three major geographical areas in the Philippines, right? So Luzon in the north, that's where Manila, the capital city is, the large island of Mindanao

in the south, and then the group of islands lying between them known as the Visayas, and I'm probably mispronouncing that because I'm from New Jersey. But you've got these islands, and Don already touched on how wet and jungle-oriented these are. But each one of these islands is very specific, especially the smaller ones. Small landing area, small beach area that goes in for anywhere from 100 meters to a couple of kilometers and then climbs into these very, very hard-to-get-at mountainous terrain. And you have that at repetition throughout 7,000 islands. And so as you look at this tempo that you're going to have to generate to go in, get across the beach, get across the mangrove swamps, and then get into the high ground, You have a series of tactical problems that Eighth Army takes on through, you know, vigorous training program, but then also through unique organizations with a tank infantry team supported by incredible firepower to get past the natural defensive nature of the terrain.

And Don already talked about it, too, is that the Japanese are on their heels. They're incapable of really defending 7,000, even the 880 islands that are occupied by folks. And so the terrain here is dominant. And then you lay on top of that, the climate, and it's a daunting, daunting task for the liberators. And Professor, how about the terrain from a naval perspective? Well, from the Navy's perspective, you're obviously dealing with the archipelago. As you pointed out, Jared, there are a whole lot of small straits, but it also made it easier to go from one point to another. What hasn't entered our conversation yet is Dan Barbee, and we will get to that with the 7th Amphibious Force in support of 8th Army here. They actually found that they had navigational problems. As good as the intelligence was on the Philippines, given our previous colonial record there, and a fellow some people might know by the name of Chick Parsons, the fellow who ran the submarine special missions in and out of the Philippines to support the guerrillas, we had pretty good intelligence, a lot more than we had on other islands in the Central Pacific and spots in New Guinea. So from the Navy's point of view, they had pretty good information.

They also found it relatively easy to isolate these islands from one another. And once the Japanese air was defeated, and by the time 8th goes down into the southern Philippines, that's mostly the case, we pretty much range at will. And that means that it's very hard for the Japanese to move from one island to another. It becomes a perfect barrier. And not only do they have a hard time maneuvering on the island they're on, they can't really get away from where they are. They're going to have to stand and fight. And that's a Navy matter. As I looked at the charts for this area, I had a lot of practical concerns just looking at it as a mariner.

Because if you're not familiar with these waters, what are the quality of your charts? You have no GPS. You're trying to navigate by celestial bodies at night. All these islands probably look the same to you from the deck of a ship. It was challenging, as I just considered the problem, sitting here without anyone shooting at me. So one of the other things I found interesting as I read the history.army.mil website on this specific operation, again, we'll include a link to that in the show notes, was Commander's intent. and that's MacArthur's intent, was clearly to seize key maritime terrain to control and protect sea lines of communications and to allow his naval forces to disrupt the Japanese.

So given the naval integration discussion that's raging today with Marine Corps restructuring, Commandant's planning guidance, the Army bringing back Coast Guard artillery, it does seem like MacArthur is a little bit ahead of his time here. General, would you agree with that? Yeah, so when I look at this campaign and I look at Aethermius' experience, this is multi-domain before multi-domain was cool, right? So when we look at what MacArthur is trying to do here and he's integrating all of the domains that we have today, right? He's got this naval force. He's got this, you know, he's solely focused on seizing terrain, seizing land, applying land power to shape the maritime and the air domain. So this campaign, as he lays it out, it's this strategic conception in Pacific theater contemplates these massive strokes, right, against main objectives, utilizing surprise and the air ground striking power that's supported and assisted by the fleet and by the 13th Air Force.

And it's incredible as he looks at this, because it's not only the Philippines for the Philippines sake, it's get to the Philippines so that you can control the South China Sea, that you can split using naval and air power the home islands of Japan from its support structure south of the constricted maritime terrain of the South China Sea. And so he's you know, we often think, you know, MacArthur is solely focused on this this land campaign that he's got across New Guinea and into the Philippines. And it's really his strategic conception is so much more than that. And it truly brings the power of seizing land to shape all domains that MacArthur brings to this fight. Thank you. So we haven't yet discussed the Japanese decisions to commit themselves fully to the fighting on Leyte against the 6th Army, but the Japanese had really committed themselves to attempting to stop the American invasion at Leyte. There's still quite a few units scattered over the archipelago. General, what's left to face the 8th Army at this point? When you look at the fight from the Japanese perspective, first off, I mean, they're they're invested in the Philippines. It is their main objective in 43 is the defense of the Philippines. They know the fight's coming. They know who they're looking at.

You know, they know what MacArthur's thinking, that MacArthur is focused on getting back across this campaign up the northern coast of New Guinea is obviously focused on the Philippines. They understand the strategic position the Philippines has in the ability for Japan's war making capability. Right. So their naval army leaders are vowed to make the defense of the Philippines their major war effort in the 43-44 time frame. And then you've got one of their best commanders. Right. So you got you got General Yamashita. Right. This guy is he's the he's the conqueror of Malaya and Singapore. He's got 430,000 troops spread through the through the archipelago. And so they know, he knows, if he can stop the U.S. in the Philippines, he's got a fighting chance of getting to what Don talked about, which is a negotiated end of the war on terms that are favorable to the Japanese. And so that's the purpose of what the Japanese are trying to do in the Philippines.

So before we talk forces on the American side, I do want to talk American commanders a little bit. And we've already covered MacArthur some earlier. Do either of you have any additional thoughts on MacArthur? I don't think you've spoken about him yet, Professor. I, of course, come from a Navy and Marine family, so I was socialized from a very early age. I once asked my father, had he been on MacArthur's ship in Korea? This was Mount McKinley, the flagship. And he looked at me indignantly.

He said, no, MacArthur was on his ship. Here's what I think about MacArthur. Brilliant. He was to the manor born, and he's the son of an army general. He travels throughout Asia immediately on graduation from West Point. He reads widely. He gets the big picture. At the same time, he is very oriented on personal relationships with staff and his subordinate commanders.

He does not suffer to see very many other people as his equal. And at times he allows his staff dynamics to go pretty toxic in terms of personalities competing with each other. So it's like any other important human being. He's a big mix of goods and maybe some not so goods. General, I'll give the Army the final word on MacArthur before we move on to Eichelberger. No, I mean, Don's absolutely right. First captain at West Point. He follows out his first assignment in the Philippines. He's actually on his father's staff. He goes out to the Philippines after graduation from West Point and he's working for Arthur MacArthur. And then gets this opportunity to kind of travel widely through Asia.

He sees himself as the most Asian-experienced military officer by the end of his career. And so he's constantly critiquing the West on their misunderstanding of the Asiatic mind. And so he believes in himself. But I think when you look at the campaign in the Philippines, it really is MacArthur at his absolute best. He's got two trusted subordinates, Eichelberger and Kruger, that he empowers with the initiative to run day-to-day operations as he has set the strategic context. And it's interesting. And of course, he's got this tremendous ego. So he's constantly checking Eichelberger and Kruger to ensure that their stars don't eclipse his.

And so Eichelberger, who MacArthur will chastise periodically in public and draw down his accomplishments, the Army comes back a couple of times to try to pull Eichelberger to take command of 9th Army at one point, and MacArthur will not let him go. And so, again, it's this understanding of personalities and this understanding of MacArthur as a person that you really see come out in its best light in 44, 45 in the Philippine campaign. Although it might be worth noting that MacArthur's initial take on the Philippines campaign was very linear. It was to start with Mindanao and work in a concerted effort up the archipelago. And it was, in fact, Halsey's idea to go directly to Leyte, which then changed everything. Because Leyte puts him within reach, 300 air miles of Manila, most of the airfields of the Japanese in Luzon and the like. So he then handles it, I think, pretty darn well. But in fact, that was not his original plan.

General, you brought up Eichelberger, so I'd like to move on to him next. What was his background and reputation? Yeah, so Robert Eichelberger is a class of 1909 from West Point. That's Patton's class as well. And so in 1909 is a class that's going to provide a lot of the senior leadership for the Army in the Second World War. You know, Eichelberger cuts his teeth actually in Siberia in 1918 as part of the American Expeditionary Force there. Gets this really interesting look at coalition warfare because he's working with the French and the British and the white Russians against the red Russians. And it's just a really complex environment that he gets exposed to as a junior officer, you know, just 10 years into his own service.

And then as he comes back from Vladivostok, he gets to spend some time in China, gets to spend some time in the Philippines. And he's actually married by this point. And so Emily and his wife actually goes to Vladivostok, Russia, and spends a good amount of time with him in Asia. And so and by the way, that's one of the great stories that comes out of Eichelberger's life is this incredibly deep love story with his wife. And he has these rich letters that he sends back from from the war in the Pacific that really give you an eye into Eichelberger's thinking. But again, it's it's it's this it's this beautiful love story that you get out of that, which is, you know, for anybody who's who's in love with their spouse. I mean, it's a great it's a great look at the military profession through a relationship. But Eichelberger comes back. He's made the scene as a really gifted trainer. Marshall sends him to take over West Point as the superintendent in 1940. And basically, Marshall tells him, hey, you've got to go up there and revolutionize how they're doing training at West Point or I'm going to cut the length of the West Point experience going into the war because it's not giving us what we need. And so so he does that and he does it. He does it so well that it's hard to unhinge him and get him out of there to go to command the 77th Infantry Division in 42. And then finally, he takes command of First Corps and is in the southwest Pacific where he where he's going to gain his fame.

And so he takes he takes command of 8th Army right after the units activation in June of 1944. And then he's going to lead them through the invasion and liberation of the Philippines and then the occupation of Tokyo following Japan's surrender. So he's got this really interesting relationship with MacArthur that plays out, as I discussed. But, you know, there's some other great stories and great people involved here. There's the 11th Airborne Division with Jumpin' Joe Swing. So Swing's this Jersey City, New Jersey military academy guy. I mean, just a force of nature. He's a graduate of the class of 1915.

That's the class that stars fell on, right? So in 1916, he's right out of West Point. He's just like Patton fighting for a spot in Pershing's Pancho Villa pursuit and the punitive expedition. Then gets into France with the 1st Infantry Division. And then, like all good ambitious guys, he courts the chief of staff of the Army's daughter and marries General March's daughter. And by the way, he also – March is also connected back to the MacArthur family. He was an aide for Arthur MacArthur when young Douglas is out there on his dad's staff in 1899. And then, again, the 11th Airborne's campaign through all this is indicative of the guts that Joe Swing is famous for.

And Swing actually commands that division for five years, from 43 to 48. Imagine that, right? And then he'll end up taking first corps at the end of his term. So there's a whole host of colorful characters running around in the Philippines. And MacArthur's got to keep all those folks under wraps, which is an interesting dynamic. Thanks, sir. Professor, anything to add on Eichelberg or any of the other Army commanders? Otherwise, we're going to hop over to the Navy.

I mentioned real quickly that Eichelberger had served, I think, as Secretary of the General Staff when MacArthur was Chief of Staff of the Army. MacArthur knew him. This is, again, one of those aspects of MacArthur. He didn't forget anybody. His amphibious commander in Korea, Jim Doyle, had worked with, had been in the 16th Naval District in the Philippines prior to World War II. And he happened to be there in Japan when the war started. But MacArthur placed a great deal of trust on him based on a personal relationship that he'd begun with him in the late 1930s. Yeah, I mean, you know the deal, Don.

The famous Marshall Black Book with all the names of the folks coming through Fort Benning in the 20s and 30s that Marshall dips into to lead the Army. I mean, MacArthur's got something very similar, right? He's got this list of folks that he trusts and constantly comes back to. And you're absolutely right. Uncle Berger is one of them. So, Professor, we've left the Navy out of the discussion at this point. We've got Admiral Daniel Barbee commanding 7th Amphibious Force or 7th Amphib. Admiral Thomas Kincaid is commanding the 7th Fleet.

It took a long time before the Navy found commanders who could get along with MacArthur. What were the issues prior to the arrival of Kincaid and Barbee and why did those two stick? I think there are a couple of things involved. Kincaid's predecessors, Leary and Carpenter, thought very much in single service terms. They had a hard time when they were being directed to do something by an army general. They had a very difficult time getting on with it if they thought it didn't fit with their conceptions of how naval operations ought to proceed. Kincaid comes in to relieve Carpenter. He was actually junior to Carpenter originally after a pretty good stint working in the North

Pacific in Alaska, where he was noted for his ability to get along with the senior army officers there and to work in close support for them in the amphibious domain and in other parts of the island chain there in the Aleutians. And so I have to think that when he was sent to work for MacArthur at 7th Fleet, they did so advisedly. It was not random. And he was expected to make do with very little. He was going to have some cruisers and some destroyers and some support ships. And he was not going to get very much.

And he was going to have to keep MacArthur reasonably satisfied. Do you want to talk about Barbie? Yeah, absolutely. I was going to ask you this background, because as I did my research, you seemed uniquely suited to this particular job here of doing all these amphibious operations. So please go ahead. Yeah, well, Barbies, he was a surface warfare officer, we would call him today, a black shoe then. And by the late 1930s, he'd gone through the usual, you know, duty ashore, duty afloat and the like. And he was picked up and was working in the amphibious warfare section in war plans, which was part of then of the Bureau of Navigation.

And he was seen to have some aptitude and some interest. He produced, it said, in 1940, Fleet Training Publication 167, which is the Navy's doctrine for amphibious operations. It's really an adaptation of the Marines' tentative manual for landing ops. and then the army followed up and put their own cover on the same thing a short while later but he was interested in it and then King as the war gets underway has him in charge of amphibious warfare section both with respect to training and with respect to figuring out the types of vessels boats and so forth that they would need and he spends a fair amount of time and he's pretty good it turns out I have to think he was given very direct guidance by Admiral King who was not

known to beat around the bush, that he was going to be sent out to stand up an amphibious force in, it was called the Southwest Amphibious Force initially, and that he wasn't going to get very much. And he was going to have to figure out also how to make do, because from the Navy's point of view, the main event was the Central Pacific Drive. Barbie turned out to be someone who could work with difficult personalities. He was very bright, he was innovative, and he was not afraid to take on big navy when he thought it was important to do so and uh it worked out pretty pretty well so what forces did he have at his disposal to move eighth army well you know he had a series i've got a somewhere i got a sheet here showing

um he had a series of smaller vessels he was allowed some bigger stuff for the landings at You had both 5th and 7th Amphibious Forces. Theodore Wilkinson came in with stuff from the Central Pacific, and that was the big show. Then that recedes, and the Central Pacific Forces, many of them go back for the next major events there, which would be at Iwo, and then in 1945, and then, of course, on to Okinawa. So he's got some LSTs. he has landing craft infantry, he has landing craft tanks, and landing craft mechanized LCMs, and then the small boys. But he's not traveling as great a distance as they are in the Central

Pacific for the most part. And so these are unclimbed bottomed amphibious ships and boats, but he can make do with them. If you read his book, MacArthur's Amphibious Navy, about his experiences there, you'll find that he was oftentimes planning the amphibious operation, this is early on in New Guinea, while they were underway to conduct the amphibious operation. And so I think it was another case of King making a pretty good choice of someone to send out to a difficult job. General, another... Hey, can I make a comment there? Because I think Don's really... I thought that was really illustrative of the challenges, right? And the other side of this we shouldn't lose sight of is

this. This is a combined force as well. And so when you look at the naval and ground component that MacArthur's put together here, you also include British, Australian, and New Zealanders. I'm sorry, New Zealanders and then also the Dutch. And so you've got this really complex combined component of this operation. And you see that in the logistics piece of this. So when you look at the shipping that he's got, it's all those nations have all of these repurposed merchant ships as part of the logistics train that's going to follow up MacArthur and 6th and 8th Armies. Thanks, sir. Another one of the units that came up really frequently was the engineers, special brigades. Can you explain what those units were and why they were so

critical to these campaigns? Yeah. So this again, Don mentioned the innovative spirit of the United States at this point in time. And the engineers, special brigades, they're an offshoot of innovation. We know going in in 42 that we're going to have to do a series of amphibious operations, both in Europe and obviously in the Pacific. And so the army in 42 who starts to build these engineer special brigades. And what they are, they're engineer units, but they're trained and organized to manned landing craft required for amphibious invasions. Each one of the brigades is designed to lift a division.

So if you think about that, it's a big organization. So the brigades have 540 landing craft of multiple types. They've got 104 command and support ships or boats that go along with them. So the United States Army is going to build six of these. Three of them will work for MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific. The interesting thing here is Army-Navy friction, right? The Navy sees this as a complete usurp of their role and function. And so when you look at Nimitz forces, there's not going to be a single U.S. Army engineer special brigade in the Central Pacific for Nimitz. All his amphibious lift is going to be Navy and Coast Guard, where you're going to see three of these be used in the Philippine campaign itself. And they're purpose-built, purpose-designed to do it, and they're exactly the tool you need to run the tempo of amphibious operations that Eighth Army is going to do in 45. So, Professor Chisholm, were the amphibious tactics in use here dramatically different than what the Marine Corps was doing in the Pacific?

I think, you know, for World War II, it's safe to say there are probably at least three distinct amphibious cultures. There was the one in Europe in the Mediterranean, which was originally dominated by the British, having to do with the timing of landings and a whole variety of things. There was the Central Pacific, which is Navy and Marines, although obviously a number of army forces took part in significant ways in the amphibious operations in the Central Pacific on through to Okinawa. And then you have the Southwest Pacific, which is, of course, the focus of our discussion today.

And what that means is that each of the terrains they're talking about are very different. Distances are different. The enemy is different. A whole series of things. And until late in the war, there isn't much cross-pollinization across these three cultures. Marines offered to come over and talk with the army prior to Overlord, and they were turned around and said, no, we're not very interested in hearing what you have to say. One of the things that's worth noting here about these amphibious cultures is that Dan Barbee was running amphibious training for engineer special brigades, you know, in North Carolina before they came over. So I think he was already primed to receive them, particularly since he didn't have, you know, the forces he might like to have had, specialized forces.

He was primed to receive them in a very positive way. And as near as I can tell from looking at the history, they worked very, very well together with the Navy there. And, you know, no complaints at all. General, anything to add on amphibious tactics? Otherwise, I'll shift over to operational functions. Yeah, let's move on because I think Don covered that incredibly well. Yes, sir. So then we'll run through operational functions and discuss briefly how General Eichelberger,

Admiral Barbie, and their staffs prioritize the functions in that campaign, if that's all right. So start with the first function, intel. I don't know which of you two wants to take these as we go through here. Let me chime in on intel and then I'm sure Don will make it, you know, make sense of what I'm going to talk about. Right. And so I go back to this coalition event. And so the Australians are central to our intelligence effort in the Southwest Pacific. And so it is it's the it's the Australian Coast Watcher Network. It is Major General Colin Simpson, who, you know, they they agree. He agrees with his Australian counterpart, you know, Brigadier General Spencer Aiken, to form this combined intelligence organization known as the Central Bureau. And it's it's Australian. It's British. We've got some we got some some some Dutch involved in that.

And it's it's multi domain what it's looking at. Right. So it's doing its code breaking. It's it's got magic and ultra intelligence being funneled into it, as well as the air reconnaissance and the naval reconnaissance, as well as the ground stuff we're getting out of the guerrilla campaign in the Philippines. And of course, the guerrillas are, as Don mentioned earlier, they are probably the greatest source of intelligence for the Philippine campaign itself. An incredible intelligence operation really across the wide breadth of the Pacific. But it really shows its value in this incredible high tempo campaign across the central Philippines. And so, Don, I'll toss that to you. Well, I have no disagreement at all with what you said, Pat. But I would add to it that as the Allied Translator and Interpreting Service that MacArthur ultimately grew in Australia amounted to over 1,200 personnel.

And we were capturing a lot of documents as well as the signals intercepts so that they really understood how to do what today we call intelligence-driven operations. And it's worth noting that that was not necessarily the norm going into World War II. This was something that had to be built institutionally on the fly. It was not well integrated to begin with. And I want to foot stomp on the matter of the guerrillas. MacArthur, even before the Japanese had attacked, was looking to set up leave-behind forces that would be intelligence collectors. And it worked out pretty well, ultimately. And we don't have the time to go into it, but suffice to say, that was their signal contribution to our success in the Philippines.

Professor, I'm going to come back to you then and give you the first by the apple on maneuver. The first effort is to go to Leyte. So what we're going to do is we're basically going to bypass Japanese forces that really have no way to get at us once we're past them. They're stuck on Mindanao primarily and jump right into the Visayas. So you have this sort of broad sweep maneuver occasioned by Admiral Halsey's. The idea to go to, you know, to maneuver around Mindanao and go straight to the center was absolutely the right idea. And MacArthur's chief of staff, Sutherland, seized on it in the general's absence, and they went right there. Now, once they got to Leyte, they realized they'd underestimated the amount of air forces the Japanese could stage down from Formosa through Luzon. And they had to keep the carriers there for a long time, which is another interesting story. And as that air began to wind down, we moved in December to Mindoro.

And the fight over Mindoro was, I'm getting to the point of maneuver here, was largely a matter of Japanese suicide aircraft against American shipping. And they took a terrible beating. And once we were able to defeat Japanese air, that meant we were free-range chickens in the Philippines. We could go wherever we wanted, pretty much whenever we wanted to do so. That allowed this operational tempo that the general referred to earlier of Eighth Army. They could pick and choose when they were going to go, and they did in a very compressed time period without much fear of opposition at sea or by air. General, anything to add on maneuver?

Oh, yeah. First off, again, Don really framed that out really well. I think when you look at operational and tactical maneuver, I mean, this is the complexity that would paralyze us today when we look at what's being done. Again, go back to Jumpin' Joe Swing and the 11th Division. When the 11th Airborne is committed to help in the relief of Manila, he lands his two glider regiments by amphibious assault. At the same time, he's planning the parachute insertion of the 503rd Regiment and all that being done in a compressed timeline at the seam of two armies, the 6th Army in the north and 8th Army coming in from the south. And so you've got this incredible series of sharp jabs that are being thrown by the U.S. Army in this combined joint engagement across the Philippines. And then when you get off the larger islands and you get into the Visayas as you're going bypassing enemy strengths in this series of sharp engagements, right, 52 D-days in a period of time of about three months, right, 144-day period again, where you're going to have 14 major landings and 24 minor ones, all being driven by intelligence that's telling you where the enemy is at strength, where they're vulnerable.

And then the logistics and ability to sustain the air forces and the naval forces to move that army, those army units around. And so you got core level amphibious assaults through small company level raids being done from the sea. The maneuver is incredible. It is complex. It is at depth and it has a tempo that the Japanese cannot react to. and are found wanting at every step of the engagement of the 8th Army in the clearing of the Philippines. So, sir, let's come back to you then to start with fires. Okay, so fires, right?

So this is how the United States fights, right? We fight with fires. We always have. The application of fires in the Philippine campaign is unbelievable and merciless. And so it is the three-pronged assault of naval gunfire, of air-delivered close air support and strategic strikes to isolate the Philippines and to deny reinforcement. And then it is the absolute application of deadly fire and close combat. So it is 155-millimeter howitzers being brought into direct fire mode and the clearance of Manila. It is 155 and 8-inch guns being used to decimate any strong points found.

And then it is in the closure, it is the application of fire. It is flamethrower tanks. It is flamethrowers. It's satchel charges of fire in support and to enable maneuver of ground combat. Absolutely indicative of the American way of war. And it was really joint. I was surprised as I read to find how much U.S. Marine Corps air was involved in the operation. I think the airfield on Zamboanga wound up being occupied by an entire Marine air wing.

Professor Chisholm, anything to add on fires? Well, I think that's a really good point. You know, the Marines had pioneered close air support all the way back in Nicaragua, hunting down Sandino in our first go-around with Nicaragua. And there were four Marine air groups that were involved in the Southern Philippines operation. This is not to take anything away from General Kenney, who was not a strategic air guy as much as he was focused on air ground support. But the Marines thought of their aircraft, as they still do, as a portion of their artillery. They were very, very effective working with the Army.

I have some family ties with that. My mother's youngest brother flew FG-1 fixed-wing Corsairs in Mag-12 beginning in December of 1944 in the Philippines all the way through the end. And from talking with him, it was very clear how well they worked with the Army. They really did. You know, the interesting thing, what MacArthur learns here with the application of marine air power is it is the main reason that the 1st Marine Division under General Smith is going to lead at the Inchon landing. And it is strictly this marine air ground team that MacArthur kind of understands from his experience in the Philippines, although he's not a great marine lover, obviously. But that's why that's why 1st Marines get the get the role they get at Inchon. Thanks, sir.

Professor, I'm going to come back to you then for logistics. Well, I think what you see is, and Pat alluded to this just a few minutes ago, that the Philippines comes at the end of a very long stream of transactions among the several services in the South. Moreover, they know how many pounds per day per man you've got to put across the beach to support an active operation. And they know what kind of – they haven't completely solved the beachmaster problem of controlling the flow of goods across the beach, but they're pretty close. So, you know, if you combine this kind of experience, this general trust and agreement across things, and the fact that the Japanese could not mount a serious interdiction by sea or by air. General, anything from you on logistics? Yeah, so, you know, I mean, the old adage, right, you know, professional study logistics. The logistics challenges in the Southwest Pacific area are starkly different than what Eisenhower faces in Europe, right?

Eisenhower in Europe, it's all about trucks, right? Rommel in North Africa, it's all about trucks. Here, it's all about boats. Everything is contingent upon being moved by water. And so when you look at the transportation networks and the regional logistics, they're all dependent upon water transport. And no one fleet comprised the assets available to to MacArthur. Right. So it's it's this again is this compilation of U.S. Navy assets, Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy, Australian Army watercraft, Netherlands East Indies Navy stuff all being brought together with this large, unwieldy fleet of logistics that's going to go back to the bases in Australia. And then obviously tied to this sea line of communication back to the United States. But it's going to be something like 3,000 vessels that are manned primarily by Australian civilians.

They're small, they're obsolete, they're in crappy condition. And they are the lifeblood of the 6th and the 8th Army through New Guinea and into the Philippines. Because everything that's going to get to you is coming by some kind of small boat. Thanks, sir. And then we'll come right back to you for protection. Yeah. So, again, what I find interesting in this campaign in this regard is the ability of the United States to, first off, isolate the Philippines, conduct this incredible isolation of the battlefield by destroying the ability of the Japanese to project power from the Philippines and then to project any sort of reinforcements in. And so it is this it is these fleets of radar pickets that help us destroy the Japanese Air Force. And it is it is the it is the battle of Leyte Gulf. It's the it's the you know, it's the all of the air air fight over the Philippines early on that strip away this this fighting power of the Japanese.

And it's all done by our use of electronic warfare, our use of those protection assets that really help us understand where the enemy is, where they're coming, and then for us to be able to destroy them. Professor, anything from you on protections? I think Pat has it exactly right. In 1940, there were something like 12 radar sets in the U.S. fleet. They weren't very effective. By 1944, even the smallest yard minesweeper had both surface search radar and air search radar with amazing fidelity. And the young officers and enlisted that were operating them took to it as though they'd been doing it all their lives. And this led to the integration of combat information centers for Air Intercept.

Many things we take for granted today were all being worked out then. they worked very effectively to provide the protection for both naval forces and for the troops ashore. It's phenomenal. Don, I think you're really talking about something that's incredibly important to this. This learning organization that the United States military is at this point in its history is just unbelievable. And our ability to learn very, very quickly, understand where we're short, understand solutions to it, then be able to generate what the solution is, and then implement at quick terms. I mean, these are happening within months. It is unbelievable how quickly we are learning, changing, and learning again,

and changing again to bring effective combat power against the enemy. And it is an absolute, I mean, just unparalleled, I think, in history and how quickly we are learning and changing at this at this point to get better every single day and then to empower at echelon when you look at when you look at the the tempo again of this of this campaign and the junior nature of what of the the echelons of these these operations are occurring at and and and done masterfully it's it's incredible then professor chisholm i'll let you take the first shot at the last of the operational functions and that's information boy were we good at it and boy And boy, did we start out not being good at it.

If we're thinking information, not in terms of information warfare on the propaganda side, but rather on signals intelligence. I got to tell you, books that were written long before the declassification of magic and ultra. In recent years, I've had to come to a completely different understanding of how well we did and why we did so well. And it was mostly, you know, in terms of Navy in particular, in the Pacific, it was on the basis of reading the Japanese mail. It was phenomenal. And Pat would say incredible. I say phenomenal. By late 44, early 45, they had crypto teams on with all the fast carrier task forces that were doing real time intercepts, decrypts and translations in tactical actions.

I mean, it was really something. And what we took for granted during the Cold War, where we had the same kind of thing with cryptologists aboard ships, it was all built then. I do want to say, with respect to Pat's comment about the learning organization, I think there are two things to note. One is early on, we got our nose bloodied pretty bad. And loss sometimes concentrates one's mind. There were many senior officers who did not want to use the newfangled stuff. And we got beat pretty bad in the Solomons in night actions because of it. Japanese were without radar.

We had that advantage, and these guys wouldn't use it. At the same time, you also have a change in the culture of the organizations when you have this huge influx of for-the-duration-only officers enlisted. So the Navy's entire officer pool in 1941, early 1941, is about 20,000 line and staff. By July 1945, when it hits its peak, it's at 312,000 or 316,000 officers, not officers enlisted, just officers. And it was the same for the Army. And most of these guys are interested in doing their thing and getting out. They don't have an investment in advancement within the Navy.

And I think that bred for a certain amount of, maybe you could say, healthy disrespect for tradition and doctrine, and at the same time, a willingness to try things that work. We won't see that again, not in the military right now. That's not in the future. I'm in the midst of reading Trent Hone's Learning War right now, and then I've read Hornfisher's Neptune's Inferno, which gets to a lot of the points you're making about the Solomons. Pretty damning indictment of the senior officers in command there, especially in the early going in the Solomons. General, any other points on information before we close it out here? Well, I think the other piece of the information domain here that is critical is, and say what we might, but MacArthur's mastery in using public affairs is important to his own men and his own formation, but it's also critically important to the war effort back in the United States, in Australia, and in Western Europe.

And so the video of him coming ashore late day, no matter how many times they filmed it, right, that's a powerful message to his own formation, to the people of the Philippines, to the people of the United States. And MacArthur is obviously a master at doing that. But we have to understand the value, not only back in 45, but today, and how we message military effectiveness through imagery and through the story and the narrative back to our own formations and those people who have an interest in what we do. I think that's a fair appraisal, Pat. Jared, if I might make a comment on that. Admiral Doyle speaking at the Naval War College in 1977, no one would ever have heard of the Barrymores. Now, that might be a little dated for some of our audience,

but the Barrymore family, of course, is one of the great acting families of the U.S. Could I make one final comment about – a very positive comment about General MacArthur? You wonder, you know, Morrison's thinking, well, where did MacArthur get this authority to go back and take all these islands down in the southern Philippines? And, you know, I got to thinking about it and I looked at the dates. We go into Manila and Yamashita is, he doesn't declare it an open city, but he's not going to defend it. It's naval forces ashore that decide to defend it. And in the one month campaign in Manila, somewhere over 100,000 Philippine civilians are killed. in the course of the fighting or by execution by Japanese forces on their way out.

And if you look, we finish up there, I think, about March 3rd. The first action into the landings is at, where was it? It's at Palawan, which is for airfields and other things. It was 28 February. I have to think that his felt moral obligation to the Filipino people played a great deal into his hurry up on the moves into the southern philippines because of course the occupiers were doing what occupiers do often they weren't treating the people very well and i think he felt a real obligation to go in there and to get after that because there was no

i can't say there was a military justification for it maybe maybe pat will have a different view but i don't see the military immediate military justification for for doing that when they could have put more forces into Luzon and maybe hurried that along a little faster. What do you think? So, Don, first off, I think the other thing that you're talking about is the scale of these operations. We often forget the operations that MacArthur conducts in the Philippines. This is larger than the invasion of southern France.

This is larger than Anvil. These are something in the order of 15 divisions. This is a significant force. It is, you know, it is fully enabled across distances that, you know, are eye-watering. And then when I think when you look at the campaign itself and do you take Luzon down faster as opposed to getting out to Palawan, again, I think it goes back to the strategic context in which McArthur is operating. He's got to get to the Western islands. He's got to seize and build airfields. He's got to seize naval bases on the Western side of the archipelago so that he can then drive that stiletto knife into the midsection of the Japanese empire. And that's what he's doing. And so he's doing it by isolating Japanese forces where he can to get to the full breadth of the archipelago and to be able to project power further in the West. And so I think that is the driver for the sequencing, especially of the Victor campaign or the Victor operations as part of the campaign. Now, the other piece of this, too, is you have an incredibly large force that is still in being in the Philippines, especially on Luzon, right? At the end of the war, following the announcement of the Japanese surrender, 40,000 Japanese soldiers are going to walk out of the mountains on Luzon alone.

And so a significant amount of soldiers are isolated. If you continue that campaign, it's a lot of killing that's got to be done if you're going to root out those 40,000 that are in the mountains. And if they're not directly really contributing to the Japanese war effort, is that worth doing? I think that that's a good point. MacArthur's intelligence officer, Willoughby, had a persistent habit of underestimating enemy forces. He did it throughout World War II. He did it again in Korea. When 6th Army handed over to 8th Army at Leyte, they said, we think we've pretty much rooted them out.

They're done. 8th Army went on to kill another 24,000 Japanese soldiers in the process of those minor mopping up. So there were a lot of forces, an awful lot of forces. Yeah, and again, these are really resilient forces as well. Not lost on us, the last holdout in the Philippines comes out of the jungle in 1974. We were still fighting pockets of Japanese on Guam, on Saipan, and in the Philippines for 10 years after the war ends. Thank you, gentlemen. That's all the time we have for today.

I would like to thank my guest, Major General Pat Donahoe. Sir, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Hey, so, yeah, I'm pretty active on Twitter, making fun of my PAO Sergeant Major. And my Twitter handle is at Pat Donahoe Army. And I'm wrapping up my tour here in Korea. I'll spend about a year and a half here as the Deputy Commanding General of the 8th Army. And I'm heading to command Fort Benning and the Maneuver Center of Excellence in Georgia, where the Army does all of its training, all of its doctrine development,

in all its thinking about armor, infantry, and cavalry in the brigade combat team. And Professor Chisholm, where can we find you online? Are there any projects you're working on right now? Well, you can find me online on the elite U.S. Naval War College's public website with email contacts and the like. I am not a Twitterer, unfortunately, for the younger generation. As far as current projects, it's one I've been working on for a while. It's a book project called An Accidental Campaign, The Destruction of Japanese Transportation in the Pacific War.

Thank you, sir. I look forward to reading that one. So thank you again to both my guests and to the listeners for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Thank you. We'll be right back.