What were the key reasons for American defeat at Philippines during WW2?

Question

What were the key reasons for American defeat at Philippines during WW2?

Answer 1

Lack of naval forces and carriers to get supplies and men there against the superior Japanese forces, and a determination that "Europe first" was the policy, forcing ships and material to be sent there to save Britain and the Soviets.

Answer 2

not enough trained troops

not enough modern weapons (fighters, tanks, artillery)

not ready (meaning they lost most of what they had in the first attacks)

not enough security before the war (the japanese knew excactly where to bomb)

extemely low morale (troops pulling back even when they outnumbered the enemy)

bad leadership

Answer 3

The compensation to MacArthur didn't help and yes we originally said help was on the way when it wasn't.  But neither made any difference.

1.  US and Filipino troops weren't ready, were poorly equipped, especially when compared to the Japanese.

2.  The Japanese were superb at offensive jungle warfare.  Defensively they were poor.  But they were great at moving in the jungle, traveling light, small unit operations, fluid response, not heavily dependent on logistics.  In Malaysia, and the Philippines they continually outflanked us, moved faster than the Allied troop, show audacity that we didn't expect.

Plus, there was no comparison in Naval or Air power.  They  had better forces, better ships and aircraft (we had no fighter that stood up to the Zero at that point, their sailors were well trained to fight at night--that was a key operational doctrine for surface warfare with the Japanese).

3.  Tactically, we were outclassed.  MacArthur had his good moments during the war.  The Philippines wasn't one of them.  Yamashita out-generaled him throughout the campaign and there is a convincing argument that one reason MacArthur insisted that Yamashita be executed for war crimes was out of spite--because Yamashita out-manuevered him during the campaign.

4.  The Philippines were very hard to defend (as the Japanese found out several years later).  Many islands, lots of jungle, many potential landing zones--all of which tie troops down and spread your forces thin and make it easy to bypass or outflank static defensive positions

5.  Despite Pearl Harbor, US forces were surprised and much of our  air force was destroyed on the ground.  Not that this influenced the end result much--it just made it happen quicker.

Answer 4

I dunno the key reasons but they really never had a chance.  Lack of personnel, lack of equipment and supplies, inadequate sea and air support.  Basically not prepared and heavily outnumbered and overpowered.

Answer 5

thr are many reasons for this

Philippine Islands were da key. Here treasure sites were excavated ..... da tot quantity of gold buried in da Philippines during WWII

Answer 6

There are a number of key reasons, and sadly most of them revolve around the fact that Douglas MacArthur was in command before and after the Japanese attack. General MacArthur allowed himself to become too close to, and too manipulative of, the the Commonwealth government to the point that the single most expensive point in the entire budget was the compensation for General MacArthur. This not only drained vast resources from the creation of the Phillipines Constabulary and the Filipino Scouts, it also made MacArthur entirely dependent upon the good will of indigenous politicians. Specifically, MacArthur allowed a law that forbade the movement of rice from one district to another which had the result that when he retreated to Bataan he could not take any of his food (five years worth of rice!) with him and had to burn it in the Manila warehouses. In addition, in a foolish attempt to keep the Japanese from noticing him he forbade his Army Air Corps commander from attacking the Japanese airfields in Formosa immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack when the Japanese fields were closed down because of fog (the next day, when the fog lifted, the Japanese simply had postponed the attack by 24 hours and caught the entire American force of fighters and bombers on the ground at Clark air base!). Finally, in an attempt to calm the concerns of members of the Phillippine Congress, MacArthur decided to defend the entire island of Luzon and disregard his orders from Washington to immediately retreat to Bataan (how do you tell a Congressman that his district is not worth defending?) with the result that a week later when all of his equiptment was lost he finally had to order the full retreat to Bataan (only now with a half of his manpower and about one tenth of his artillery and ammunition). When the Americans and Filipinos finally arrived into Bataan, they found that NONE of the proposed defensive postions had even been started, because MacArthur thought that their construction would signal to the Philipine government that he was going to abandon them and cause a panic. And then, to make matters worse, MacArthur ordered that all large caches of food be transferred to Corregidor (where his command post was) for safe keeping, with the result that the forces on Bataan starved while the command post and the main hospital maintained regular rations.

Later, to MacArthur's defense, the government in Washington DID lie to him when he was told that reinforcements and new supplies were on the way when in fact even a large convoy that had already left San Francisco was instead diverted through the Panama Canal to England.