There were plenty of Australian generals with more experience than MacArthur. That is not the reason at all why MacArthur was chosen.
All the best Australian officers were busy in North Africa at the time. I believe General Blamey's plan was to withdraw his forces to defend the southern portion of Australia, somewhat different from MacArthur's strategy.
Don't know. What have Soviet-style educational system done for the people, excepting making them the most educated in the world? How about we just shot all B-29 down? You know, you kinda need to fly 2,500 km to reach Moscow from London. In 1945 Japan had no planes, fuel and pilots worth mentioning. Easy target. Meanwhile, the second biggest and the most expirenced air force in the world would have a lot of fun shooting defenceless yankees out of the sky. What happens to Tommy-cooker, when 122 mm AP hits it? Same with everything else.
No, MacArthur basically made that up to make himself look better. The Brisbane Line plan had been suggested, not by Blamey, and then instantly dismissed by the Australian government which planned to defend all of Australia. - - - Updated - - - MacArthur wasn't selected for his ability. He was selected because of his reputation in bullying Washington. The Australian government hoped that by giving him command he would instantly start screaming about needing more troops stationed in Australia.
Non the less Australia would have been incapable of mounting any kind of offensive against the Japanese on their own. Are you suggesting that an Australian general should have been in command of allied forces in the Pacific?
Your an idiot at best and confirmed by the majority on this thread alone. Firstly i would be an american fanboy. secondly, I literally just posted the formula for configuring losses. You quote me a definition and somehow act like you are informed. The only thing you got right is that irreplaceable losses means people that cant be replaced. POW can be liberated and therefore replaced which is why in the equation there is a line for liberated POW's, wounded are only irreplaceable if they die from their wounds or cant return to fight. All of it is accounted for. Stop trying to bull (*)(*)(*)(*) your way around stuff.
That MacArthur wasn't the greatest military commander in the history of all of history. Whether Australia could field a large army or not has exactly zero to do with that.
Perhaps you were reading someone else's post when you responded to mine. I said MacArthur was a brilliant strategist, that's all. If you have something to actually refute that statement I'll be happy to read it.
I guess if you entirely skip over 1943 and his nothing but huge (*)(*)(*)(*) ups, sure, he was great.
Especially the moment he "didn't noticed" 100 000 Chinese troops in Korea, despite they themselves warned they are going to respond.Those sneaky Chicoms! Brilliant strategist, indeed.
You don't seem to have much to talk about other than superficial anecdotes. - - - Updated - - - One can only imagine what a Russian Inchon landing would look like.
But I can assure you it would be better than corps-throwing onto mashinegun positions Normandy-style. Anyway, MacArthur was egocentric little (*)(*)(*)(*), hardly worth "the best" prefix. Though, he wasn't all-bad.
This is right and wrong all at the same time. Panzer is right that Blitzkrieg was not an official name given to this kind of warfare by the Germans. However, at the same time he is wrong that it wasnt a doctrine. Guderian's work Achtung Panzer has, within it, the doctrine of combined arms warfare and it goes into very deep detail of it. Others before Guderian had written about it and at the same time others were experimenting with it but it was Guderian that had perfected it and made it reality.
Russians are the masters of the blunt instrument, not too keen on sophisticated tactics though. Russian military doctrine has traditionally relied on numbers to win battles of attrition, a primary reason for the high casualties inflicted by the Germans during the Second World War.
Statistics show it is the other way around. You know nothing. As expected. Perhaps if you kill/death ratio on Western front wasn't 2:1 and ours wasn't 1,3:1 you would be able to judge. But sorry, you can't cheat the reality. US army was much better in throwing corpses and "I've run out of shels, but Americans havn't run out of tanks" thing.
Oh, please. B-29s are capable of traveling twice the distance you mentioned at 350-400mph, loaded. Japan had plenty of aircraft. Most Japanese aircraft couldn't even reach the B-29's elevation, let alone keep up with them. I'm fairly certain that the Red Army would be experiencing the same shortcomings, given most of their aircraft was crap, and you'd have to rely on heavy anti-aircraft artillery, which was pretty hit-or-miss. Second biggest and most experienced air force? The SAF/SADF? USAAF, RAF, Luftwaffe were far and away more experienced and better outfitted. The USSR certainly had one of the biggest (2nd to the RAF, in Europe, 3rd to the Americans, world wide), but definitely not one of the best. If you had to rate them, the Germans were far superior at air combat than any of the Allied forces. The Brits were probably second and Americans third. At that time, the Soviets had one thing going for them... sheer size of their army. They had, by far, the most deaths in WW2 - about 9-14 million in the military. That tells me something... the Soviets were barely ready for a war and by that, I mean they were untrained.
Australians on the other hand are the masters of small unit tactics. Australian SAS units were the most effective counter insurgency force in Vietnam. A tradition they carried with them from their experiences in the Second World War and the Malayan Communist insurgency. Russian military tradition never emphasized the kind of leadership needed to conduct effective small unit operations.....part of the reason for their poor performance in Afghanistan.
He had an odd way of turning his "(*)(*)(*)(*) ups" into great military victories, creating an even stronger position for the Allied forces.
part of russian military doctrine was certainly due to Stalin's purges of experienced officers ...they made do with what they had using resources they had, manpower...it's no different than having a surplus of tanks, ships or airplanes, use the surplus to your advantage...and to imply they had no tactical method than superior manpower is wrong as well...
There have been many books written about Douglas MacArthur, lots of magazine and newspaper articles written about him during his life time, a very public figure. So people often have a hard time separating his military decisions from caricatures of personality. - - - Updated - - - Soviet commanders were less concerned than their counterparts about casualties effecting the outcome of a battle.
as compared to what?...the Russians faced resistance from an entire nation not just the Pashtun of southern afghanistan the western forces face, the russians did as well as the americans in vietnam, they won all the battles but lost the war...
We have to give the Russians all the credit for victory they deserve though. They fought 70% of German ground forces and kept 50% of the Luftwaffe busy.
