Why MacArthur can’t be reinforced now
No Axis propagandist could do more to damage American morale than William Randolph Hearst is doing by his campaign to make the people believe that there is some hidden, venal reason why General MacArthur’s Army had not been reinforced.
Nothing could be more cruel than to raise false hopes and inspire festering suspicion in time of war.
All America wants to help General MacArthur’s men. Thousands of men and women have boys who are fighting in the Philippines. To them the plight of the MacArthur Army is a tragedy beyond description.
Many are unfamiliar with the problems and technicalities of warfare. They have only a vague knowledge of the huge distances, thousands of islands and far-flung military establishments in the Pacific.
What, then, must be the effect on their morale when they are told, in full-page newspaper space, that General MacArthur can be saved; that he is being forgotten and ignored; when they are urged to organize delegations to force Washington to send him ships and men and planes?
President Roosevelt said in his Feb. 23 speech:
I ask you to look at your maps again, particularly at that portion of the Pacific Ocean lying west of Hawaii. Before this war even started, the Philippine Islands were already surrounded on three sides by Japanese power.
Immediately after this war started, the Japanese forces moved down on either side of the Philippines to numerous points south of them – thereby completely encircling the Philippines from north, and south, and east and west.
It is that complete encirclement, with control of the air by Japanese land-based aircraft, which has prevented us from sending substantial reinforcements of men and material to the gallant defenders of the Philippines.
Study the map shown below. It shows the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii westward and the routes that would have to be followed and the distances to be traversed by a convoy moving to the Philippines. It showed the land and naval bases which Japan held before the war or has seized since. There are circles showing the 500-mile radius around the more important Japanese bases – the spheres in which her bombers and fighter planers and submarines could operate against an American convoy. Any small map can show only a few main bases; actually there are thousands of such islands, most of which are permanent aircraft carriers.
Against the enemy’s land-based planes we would have to depend on bombers flying thousands of miles from distant bases and on duch fighter planes as could be carried on shipboard.
Against Jap submarines and other warships working out of convenient nearby bases, we would have to send our whole Pacific Fleet to operate thousands of miles from port.
This war has shown that warships cannot operate against land-based aircraft. It has shown that bombers cannot do battle when unprotected by short-range, fast, fighter planes.
Study the map and you will know that President Roosevelt told you the truth.
Yet, in the face of this inescapable situation, Mr. Hearst asks:
Why has not help been sent to General MacArthur?..
Why has the administration turned its eyes away from Bataan and centered them on Java and Australia?
It is not too late.
The administration should send a powerful overseas force to the Philippines…
Americans everywhere in the 48 states should write or telegraph the President himself to send ships and planes to General MacArthur.
Maj. George Fielding Eliot, the military analyst, recently estimated that the Japs have 200,000 men in Luzon.
To send a force half that size to relieve General MacArthur, he pointed out, would require at least 160 ordinary merchant ships convoyed by the entire Pacific Fleet.
For more than 16 days, by the shortest route, it would pass amidst Japanese air and naval bases, attacked by swarms of land-based fighters and bombers, with only the protection of planes from aircraft carriers. If the carriers were sunk – and they undoubtedly could and would be – the vast convoy would be helpless – to be hammered to death piecemeal.
It would be the greatest holocaust in naval history.
It might lose us our entire Pacific Fleet.
It probably would cost us the war beyond any possibility of recovery.
Yet, in the face of this situation, Mr. Hearst wrote:
Our politicians do not seem to want to help MacArthur win his gallant fight.
Are they afraid that a victorious American general would be too formidable a political figure for the peewee politicians at home to compete with?
That is an awful implication.
Of course President Roosevelt – and every other loyal American – wants to reinforce General MacArthur’s men. Study this map and see why it is impossible today.
President Roosevelt, in his speech on Feb. 23, said that the Philippines are now surrounded on all sides.
The above map shows tragic proof of his swords. The shaded area shows that portion of the Pacific Ocean now controlled by the Japanese. There are thousands of islands in this area – hundreds of which are fit to serve as bases for airplanes or submarines. An American convoy to reinforce General MacArthur would have to pass through the midst of these bases, no matter what route it used.
*The direct route from Hawaii to the Philippines is 5,700 miles long – at least 16 days’ sailing time. After the fleet of perhaps 200 merchant and war vessels left Hawaii, it would be without a single base for airplanes or ships.
Circles on the map show a 500-mile radius from various important Jap bases – areas within which both fighter and bomber planes could attack the convoy. In addition to these main bases, there are hundreds of little islands from which the Japs could send planes. Day and night, for at least 16 days, the fleet would be subjected to merciless air and sea attack, launched from land bases, while our planes could only operate from ships and our sub marines and other warships would be based on ports thousands of miles away.
Black areas on the map show territory held by Japs, and the Jap flags show their chief bases. But the Pacific is so large that a map this size can indicate only the chief bases; there bare hundreds of others.
The route via Samoa would require three weeks’ sailing time – three weeks of incessant airplane attack from land bases against fliers based on airplane carriers, who wouldn’t have a minute to rest, day or night.
The route via Darwin and thence directly northeast would take even longer.
During much of this distance, the channels are so restricted, due to reefs and islands, that the convoy would have to follow narrow passages where mines would supplement warships and airplanes, making it the most dangerous trip ever attempted by any nation in any war.