A Thought Experiment...

[Demosthenes]

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

Hyperwar also goes into a little more detail as to the status of the P-40s.

Status of USAAFE P-40s

For defense of the Philippines, the Far East Air Force had in commission thirty-three B-17's, of which sixteen were at Del Monte and the rest at Clark Field, and approximately ninety pursuit aircraft.

The 3e Pursuit Squadron at Iba and the 17th at Nichols each had eighteen P-40E's; the 20th at Clark was equipped with the same number of P-40B's. The 21st and 34th Squadrons, respectively based on the Nichols and Del Carmen fields, had arrived in the Philippines only in late November and did not receive their planes until 7 December, when the former was assigned approximately eighteen hastily assembled P-40E's and the latter took up its duties with P-35's, each of which had an average flying time close to 500 hours.l Also available were a miscellaneous assortment of noncombat aircraft and twelve P-26's flown from Batangas by pilots of the Philippine Air Force.

The reference to "hastily assembled P-40Es" is a bit of a gross understatement. Groundcrews did not have time to run in the engines or install and boresight all the guns. Many of the aircraft had only 1 or 2 guns installed before the attack. 0.5 caliber ammo was also in very short supply at the airfields. Others had no gunsights. And the pilots in these squadrons had never flown a P-40. The groundcrews for the 21st and 34th squadrons had not arrived as yet so had to be supported by the 17th Squadron. What a way to go to war!

Definitely a case of too little too late.

Chez

Yes, it certainly did say that - but then in another spot they had this below showing no P40B/C (Halfway down the page of the link below.) So who knows what it really was?[8|]

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA ... 3.html#3-2

(I could not copy/paste the chart or else I would have)

[ChezDaJez]

I saw the chart also. I can only assume that it is a typo. It is pretty well documented in many other sources that the 20th had received P-40Bs just prior to the attack.

Chez

[YankeeAirRat]

Check out the book War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945 there are about 3 whole chapters talking about the period following the 1927 Naval Treaty to start of the Sino-Japan war in 1937. Basically about how the war in the Pacific was going to be fought. The plan was to build three major staging bases surrounding the PI. One at Singapore which would of been just like Gibraltar. One at Guam and then one at Davo. Davo would be a forward base so except for some mobile dry-docks, all that would really be there would be a refueling and restocking facility. From there the Allied forces would of fought thier way out of Mindano, rescued what was left of US Army in the Philippines that were supposed to hole up in Bataan. In a series of major battles off the coast of either Luzon or French Indo-China, the combined forces of UK and US battle lines were to have sunk the Japanese fleet. From there depending on the conditions either peace would of been sued for by the Japanese or they would of pushed for a blockade of the Japanese home islands until the Japanese sued for peace. Most of that plan changed to a point after 1937 and saw the inclusion of USAAF 4E bombers. So instead, espically after the war in europe started, the US fleet would of been split between Singapore and Guam and other element would of secured bases in the Dutch East Indies where US bombers would have free reign over the region. There would also of been stepping stones in the Central Pacific to bring Allied bomber fleet with in range and would of provided hubs where smaller ships could refit while the main battle line retreated to either Guam or Singapore. The Philippines were written off and would of been recaptured after the Japanese fleet had been destroyed or maybe even after the war was completely over. Overall the book is very good and you all should look to try and add it to your library's after the holidays.