Through With This For The Day, My Friends

[The Magistrate]

I'm getting a bit out of hand.

I'll be dividing my time between modeling a Pearl Harbor P-26, cat memes, and memories till morning....

[Irish_Dem]

1. The P-26 is such a cute little plane.

That is going to be a fun model to make.

[rsdsharp]

3. The Peashooter!

That certainly struck fear in its potential opponents.

[Irish_Dem]

4. I know, it even has a cute name.

The Japanese at Pearl Harbor didn't waste bullets or bombs on the Peashooters based at Wheeler, so they remained totally intact when everything else was in tatters.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Hopefully a few sweet dreams as well. Rest well and arise refreshed. . . . nt

[abqtommy]

5. I hear ya. So far today my distractions have been talking to my Sis for a half hour and

now I'm watching the 1964 animation of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. Whatever
works is good!

[malthaussen]

6. I just disbanded that squadron. :)

Our interests converge slightly: I've recently started the computer wargame "Gary Grigsby's War in the Pacific, Admiral's Edition" (more properly a lifestyle than a game), and the P-26s had to go from Pearl so that I could assign them to a training squadron in CONUS so I could assign that squadron's planes to one that is gearing up to go to Australia.

The P-26s in the 6th PS PAAC still remain in the Philippines, though, with Capt Villamor leading his pilots in mostly futile combat against the Japanese air armada.

-- Mal

[Irish_Dem]

7. Won't your P-26s get slaughtered if you leave them in the Philippines?

I am assuming in your computer game you can move the squadrons around?

[malthaussen]

8. Some units can be pulled out, some cannot.

In the game, all units are assigned to various administrative areas. Some are permanently restricted to those areas, some may be moved freely among any areas, and some may be "bought out" with a resource called Political Points and assigned to a different area and then withdrawn. In the case of the Far Eastern Air Force, all native Filipino units are permanently restricted. Most US units, including the bombers and fighters and even the Fourth Marines, can be "bought out" and evacuated. It's easier to do with planes than troops: the former can just fly to another base, but the latter need to be loaded onto a ship, and thus it is just about impossible to get anything out (the Japanese will almost certainly sink your transport, unless you use subs).

Or, you could use some flying boats on another base to evacuate eligible troops at the rate of about a squad a time. I actually did that with the two Canadian infantry battalions in the Hong Kong garrison, pulling out about a platoon's worth of men before the city fell. This was so I could ship the units to Brisbane and rebuild them with Canadian replacements (all replacements are pooled by nationality. One can't use Canadian replacements in Australian units, eg).

Or, short answer: no.

-- Mal

[Irish_Dem]

9. Evacuate what you can for sure.

Last edited Mon Dec 27, 2021, 04:25 PM - Edit history (1)

I wondered why MacArthur left the Philippines, but did not evacuate all US troops and US civilians. I guess you are right, Japan had the waters around the Philippines and any transports would have been sunk.

Eventually a US sub was sent to pick up some Americans who had been hiding in the hills for 2 years. I guess the sub skipper was not too happy about this job and resented being sent to be a bus for civilians.

The troops are going to be needed for the huge battles in Iwo Jima and Okinawa coming up after the Philippines fell. And if there is a land invasion of Japan, we will need millions of US troops.

[malthaussen]

10. Submarines supplied the guerillas in the Philppines throughout the war.

I have an interesting relect of the 2nd World War in the Philippines: the book Guerilla Wife by Louise Reid Spencer, which tells the tale of US/Filipino guerillas who held out on the island of Panay for two years after the Japanese conquest, until evacuated by the USS Angler in March of '44. It's true that non-combat missions were not high on a submarine skipper's list, but "resentment" doesn't enter into it: you get an order, you do the job.

The guerillas lived an interesting and intense life, and this book is particularly notable because it has nothing to do with the exciting parts of that life, but with the aspects of "home life" experienced by the women and children running from boondock to boondock while their husbands and fathers did dangerous, secret things. Of course, children were born (but the author waited until she got to Australia to give birth to hers), meals must be served, sicknesses healed, etc... all while keeping a wary lookout for Japanese soldiers searching for the white people still at liberty in the jungle.

-- Mal

[Irish_Dem]

11. Yes the subs did supply the guerrillas

who were led by an American engineer (Wendell Fertig) who had been working in the Philippines. Until he took over the guerrillas were disjointed and lacked unity.

(I just watched an 8 hour documentary on WWII and they talked about this fellow. The documentary covered the entire Pacific theater of war from start to finish. I really liked that they interviewed soldiers and civilians who had been first hand witnesses to events. The documentary was a real eye opener on many levels for me.)

The documentary interviewed two sailors who were actually on the sub which picked up the US civilians and they were quoted as saying the skipper was quite resentful and stated he did not join the Navy to be a damn bus driver. But of course, yes you do the job as ordered.

The documentary also interviewed some of the children who were in the Philippine hills for two years during the war. Their parents were missionaries. Yes same story, they were on the run most of the time. The guerrillas kept them posted on Japanese troop movement so they could move from cave to cave to escape detection. The guerrillas used conch shells whistles to notify the civilians in the hills.

Yes illness was a big issue, and some of the children did not survive with no medical treatment.

I thought it was interesting, in the interview with the sailors who had been onboard with the American civilians, they said one of the children had a birthday so the sub cook made a birthday cake with ice cream. The children refused to eat the ice cream as they had never seen or eaten it before.

At the end of the documentary I had a profound understanding of why we had no choice but to use atomic weapons. Given everything we had seen during the war and especially Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it was estimated we would have lost 2 million men invading Japan.

BTW I lived on Okinawa as a child, my dad was career military. We lived right next to the beach and would climb down the cliffs to the beach and go through the pill boxes which still stood, and comb the beach looking for WWII souvenirs. We found various things, C-rations, etc. One of the boys found a hand grenade, so the base commander and parents made the beaches off limits after that.