Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Development of US Navy Tactics (1939-1945) - ...to Global Domination" video.

@christopherrowe7460 the "cautious" strategy of taking measured steps, establishing intermediate bases along the way would take longer than six months. The Philippines were deep within the Japanese sphere of influence. Japan had occupied the Marianas, Carolines and Marshalls since 1914.
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@gregorywright4918 the lack of bases and drydocks was the vulnerability of the "thruster" plan exposed in 34. There was no way to repair damage suffered steaming past the mandates to reinforce the Philippines, and the force would need to steam past the mandates again to get to the facilities at Pearl. The King George dock in Singapore was not completed until the late 30s, and it was captured by the Japanese. Neither of the docks at Cockatoo Island could accommodate the largest battleships and carriers. It wasn't until the Cook dock was completed in 45 that Sydney could repair anything afloat. The buildup of the Philippine military should have started as soon as the islands became a commonwealth, with it's own civilian government, in 35. The Philippine military was woefully under-equipped. Apparently, they had M1917 Enfields. We made over 2M of those rifles, so there had to be large numbers of them available in US inventory. The army was extremely short of artillery. The US had provided a few WWI 75mm guns, but hundreds more of those guns were in inventory. The Philippine air force had 48 P-35s. The Air Corps was replacing 36s with 40s and B--18s with 17s and 25s, so 36s and 18s could have been provided. The Air Corps decided it didn't like dive bombers, so the A-17s were retired in 38, when only a couple years old. The A-17s could have been provided. The other shortfall was training. Instead of keeping the Philippine Scouts concentrated in US Army units, the Scouts could have been reformed into training cadres and used to train the Philippine troops. If bringing the Philippine forces up to scratch had begun in earnest as soon as the "thruster" plan was found to not be viable, then the only US personnel left in the islands would have been at Subic, a number small enough to be evacuated with the USN surface elements. At the end of the day, if relief didn't come in six months, Filipino soldiers could ditch their uniforms, blend in to the civilian population, and wage a guerilla war for years. Blending in to the civilian population was not an option for an American, so those men were doomed.
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@calvingreene90 that is about what I have read. The RN had the budget to build an entire division of four battleships of one class. The USN did not have that sort of money, two per year was all they could afford, so they standardized the performance, speed and turning circle, so different classes could maneuver together, while still making incremental improvements in protection and armament. What puzzles me is why the Coloradoes were proceeded with after the war, when Navy decision making after they had been ordered in 1916 had made them obsolete. In early 1919, work on Maryland had proceeded slowly, as it was given low priority and the other three had not been laid down yet. They could have broken up Maryland on the slipway, cancelled the other three before they were laid down, and put the money into the bigger, faster, South Dakotas, until the treaty happened. If the USN had taken a page from the Admiralty when the US entered the war in April 1917, they would have cancelled Maryland and Tennessee before they were laid down, and broken up California on the slipway. I found a pic of California taken in late March of 17, and all that was built was the flat, bottom part of the hull, so there would not have been much waste in breaking it up.
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If the "thrusters" were discredited by the 1934 exercise, that implies that the garrison in the Philippines was left for dead before the war started by being deemed impossible to relieve/reinforce/rescue?
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