does mac in the movie mac fight for america in ww2

Does mac in the movie mac fight for america in ww2 how to#
Does mac in the movie mac fight for america in ww2 series#

Next, he launched a series of carefully sequenced air raids on the Japanese base to the northwest, at Wewak, that gutted the Japanese Fourth Air Army. He began by secretly building an airstrip in the grassy valley at Tsili Tsili, 60 miles west of the main Japanese positions at Lae and Salamaua. He would command one of those two drives, in a classic campaign of airborne and amphibious maneuver in New Guinea’s Huon Peninsula. Assaulting Rabaul frontally was out of the question, so MacArthur drew up a plan to flank that bastion to the east and west-that is, from the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. The objective was Rabaul, the vast Japanese air-naval base on the island of New Britain, east of New Guinea. The Southwest Pacific required a commander able to think big, and Operation Cartwheel, launched on June 30, 1943, was Mac at his big-thinking best. Putting New Guinea under the navy would have been as sense less as placing carrier operations in the hands of the army. Operating in the Central Pacific, a vast emptiness dotted with a handful of tiny islands, was different from the Southwest Pacific, where giant islands abound and heavy ground-pounding was necessary. The Pacific Ocean is no mere “military theater.” It is one-third of the globe’s surface. military operations-and violates the ancient precept of “unity of command.” But keep an open mind. It reeks of interservice rivalry-the bane of U.S. It is easy to criticize that split-ticket decision, and a lot of analysts have. The Southwest Pacific Area, which included New Guinea, was an army domain, with MacArthur in command the Pacific Ocean Area was the navy’s responsibility, with Admiral Chester Nimitz in the chair. Indeed, it was the sheer size of islands like New Guinea that led the Joint Chiefs of Staff to organize the Pacific Ocean into two gigantic commands.

The fighting there was not so much “island warfare” as a continental-scale land campaign, replete with the most difficult weather and terrain imaginable. New Guinea is almost four times the size of Great Britain. A classic example of a “forgotten campaign,” that action deserves better.Ĭonsider the scale. If you doubt that, check out the fighting on New Guinea in 1943.

Does mac in the movie mac fight for america in ww2 how to#

A haughty aristocrat in a nation that prefers home spun heroes, an aloof figure with a Messiah complex who couldn’t speak respectfully even to the President of the United States, and a commander whose arrogance led him to underestimate his enemies, often with disastrous effect: MacArthur was a problematic figure at best, and a threat to civilian control of the military at worst.Īnd yet, for all his maddening flaws, the man knew how to operate. I’ VE NEVER FOUND it easy to warm up to General Douglas MacArthur, and I know I’m not alone.