Comments by "" (@JohnRodriguesPhotographer) on "The Drydock - Episode 172" video.

When discussing Macarthur and the objective of taking Philippines it needs to discussed in contrast to King's plan to take Formosa. Strategically these were the options being debated at the time. Formosa would have had, in my estimation, 5 times or greater the casualties of just the land battle of Okinawa. Naval losses would have seen the first losses to the Essex-class and more. Japan could have shuffled their air power to China in addition to southern Japan. The geography of Formosa lends itself to a defense in depth. The Philippines was costly, but less so than Formosa would have been.
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@SlavicCelery well well aware of his flaws, from a military standpoint he was pretty brilliant. However one of his flaws was thinking how brilliant he was. One of the brilliant military minds of the last 30 years was Norman Schwarzkopf. I always felt he took the best of MacArthur and Patton and putting them in one package.
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@SlavicCelery if you haven't you should read his book. I am sure there is a little drum beating on his own behalf in the book. But you get down to it he earned the right to. There were a lot of people where I worked at didn't understand what was going on in desert shield through desert Storm. We had a big map up in the computer room that I would explain things on. When Iraq dug in to form a static defense I was so excited! From that moment on I knew we owned their ass. Digging your tanks into a prepared fighting position is okay if you have air superiority. When you don't have air superiority and you give up your mobility, you basically screw yourself. And a two-dimensional battlefield digging in like that is okay. I always thought Iran and Iraq refought world War 1 with more modern equipment. If you look at the way they were trying to defend Kuwait from a tactics perspective the poor slobs in the trenches never had a chance.
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