DJ - You made a good point: Good NCOs are indispensible!! [Just noticed, I have been a major forever. Man this is too much like the Army]

Jeff

I always double check with the First Sergeant before doing anything

Quoted Text

---

I always double check with the First Sergeant before doing anything

---

My O-6 and I get along great because he does exactly what you did DJ. He doesn't always do what I tell him he ought to...but he has not yet been surprised.

On to the PI. Good arguments posted so far. I'm not sure I would have put all my Naval eggs in the relief of the Phillipines basket with the threat (real or not) of an invasion on either the east or west coast. There were a lot of things happening at this time. U-boats right off the east coast of the US sinking merchants. Our allies the Australians open to invasion. And as Jeff pointed out, we didn't have the shipping available to land or resupply enough troops to do any good. Much as I hate to say it, I would have made the same decision to write off the Phillipines.
Cob

COB--Everytime I see photos of Americans marching the Bataan Death March or read of our abandonement of Wake Island, I am struck by the terrible price people paid because their government did not do enough to protect them. I see startling parallels with several actions of today. We have folks literally sitting on the end of a limb (Bosnia, Korea, the Gulf) can we protect them if things happen simultaneously or concurrently? What if you go into the Gulf and get drawn into a protracted guerrilla war? I am of the opinion that an invasion of Iraq is not going to be the cake walk everyone assumes it to be. Yes, we'll beat them in a symmetrical engagement, but the long term political and social upheavel may have us there indefinitely. And folks, just don't like foreign soldiers occupying their country. So relief of the Philippines is not a futile drill in historical recollections, it should be a guide for how not to do things.
DJ

DJ I think Politics are always going to put the military into harms way. That is a fact that all of us who've served at somepoint realizes thought not always understood.The Navy hasd very few options except for subs and their problems are enumerated in other threads. My biggest problem was and is the tactics used by officers. I've read to many action reports and stories of defences on roads while numericaly iferior forces marched around and take them in the rear.I don't know whats taught at the military academies but but it seems the training wa lacking. I also understand my knowledge of tactics is 50 years ahead of that period. but it wasn't to long before the US forces were hunting down guerrilaas in the jungle opposed to US colonialism in the Philipines. I just don't understand the lack of imagination of army commanders on the ground from Big MAc onn down. WE Knew war was coming HAlsey on his way to Wake was told to consider any jap vessels hostile. I'm to young to have known WW2 MAybe someone who served can better answer the lack of immagintion question of US and allied forces. Even if we didn't want war and were unprepared materialisticly, what we did have should have been beter used.

Josh WEingarten
aKA shiryon