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Robert D. Kaplan’s early 2023 book, The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power, is the latest of his nearly two dozen books over the past 35 years. Like its predecessors, The Tragic Mind features Kaplan’s impressive powers of observation and analysis at the junction of politics, history, and world geography. Unlike his prior prodigious, geographically focused works including Balkan Ghosts (1994), Monsoon (2010), and In Europe’s Shadow (2016), this is a short work. It contains his personal musings unbound by specific geography and focused on both his experiences reporting from war zones since the early 1980s and his reflections about them in the context of great philosopher-thinkers from ancient Greece to modern America.

In The Tragic Mind, Kaplan describes the leader’s historic dilemma about the use of force. That choice is never truly one between good and evil but rather between one good and another or between lesser evils. That choice also is destined to cause suffering. Kaplan observes that leaders—political and military—must keep this in mind and be humble in their decisions and realistic in execution. They must think tragically to avoid tragedy.

Spanning 14 pithy chapters, The Tragic Mind is written with a foreboding tone. Kaplan has reported on Yugoslavia’s fragmentation and collapse into civil war after Josip Broz Tito’s death; Romania’s chaotic plight after the fall of its dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu; and the tumult, turmoil, and suffering that convulsed Iraq, Libya, and Syria when external interventions, military and cyber, wracked long-standing tyrannical regimes. In this book, Kaplan works to make sense of the extraordinary human suffering during these dramatic events by consulting the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare for insights into the frailty of the human condition. He also references the philosophical wisdom from European thinkers like Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and G.W.F. Hegel to chronicle the patterns of human behavior, both noble and flawed, throughout the ages.

Kaplan’s literary journey blends with his personal war-zone tribulations to produce a work with chapter titles like “The Battle of Good Against Good,” “Order and Necessity Must Be Obeyed, Even When They Are Unjust,” “Because War Is Ever-Present, the Burden of Power Is Overwhelming,” and “Imperial Wars Are Decided by Fate.” There are more. All are signposts to Kaplan’s major insights and cautions. He reminds the reader that since the ancient Greeks and Persians, the eternal political struggle for humankind is that of “tyranny against anarchy.” Neither is an absolute good or an absolute evil. But for  Kaplan, 40 years of personal history with human suffering convinced him that the ancient Persian philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali had it mostly right when he argued that 1 year of anarchy is worse than a hundred years of tyranny. And so is Shakespeare, in whose works Kaplan observes, “[O]rder is the first step toward civilization. Only after order is established can the work begin to make order less coercive.” The tragic mind understands this and values order over chaos even while it understands that that order can descend into tyranny. The tragic mind does not wallow in passivity. It acts when necessary and with the humility that comes from the historic understanding that the dangers of hubris, pride, and human ambition are always present and will lead to tragedy if the “terrible power of the irrational” is allowed to drive a choice to use force in pursuit of “grand ambition.”

Kaplan laments Washington’s recent military forays in its pursuit of the “grand ambition” of making the world in America’s image as a liberal democracy. He views America’s last great statesman to be George H.W. Bush—“the last American President to embrace the use of military power while thinking carefully and tragically about it.” Kaplan defines Bush’s humility, prudence, and tempered determination to have exemplified the tragic mind and successfully guided the United States to win the first Gulf War, manage the fall of the Soviet Union, and sustain U.S. relations with China after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He finds Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump wanting in comparison.

Most of The Tragic Mind looks back at examples of unsatisfactory U.S. military interventions to end tyranny. The book’s epilogue looks forward. Kaplan warns modern American politicians, pundits, and intellectuals that a “tragic sensibility” is required today to manage intensifying Great Power rivalry in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region. A tragic mindset is not afraid to take military action but proceeds deliberately. It analyzes rationally and acts with temperance, prudence, and an understanding that action generates counteraction, and leaders who fail to appreciate the worst possible outcomes will only exacerbate human suffering with little to show for it.

In the context of America’s ongoing Great Power competition with Russia and China, the choices made in Washington are consequential. The tragic mind must consider whether pursuit of an absolute defeat of Russia in Ukraine could result in national collapse like that of a century ago when post-czarist Russia descended into anarchy and millions died. The tragic mind must also contemplate whether the prospect of Ukrainian success could lead Moscow to use nuclear weapons—taking the world to a new, dangerous threshold of destruction and encouraging other countries to acquire them. Likewise, would an overt American military engagement of China over its struggle to incorporate Taiwan be worth the impact on the global economy, or could such a clash unleash a series of destructive military, cyber, and space-based exchanges that would permanently shift today’s world of strategic competition into one of persistent war?

Kaplan’s insights urge American politicians and their military advisors to display humility and be mindful of history when evaluating the proper means to challenge China and Russia in this era of Great Power competition. The tragic mind requires “an awareness of the narrow choices we face and however vast the landscape, the knowledge that not everything is possible, regardless of the conditions.” Military planners are used to developing alternative courses of action based on best- and worst-case possibilities and narrowing the options to those that best mitigate risks. The Tragic Mind suggests that America’s most senior civilian and military leaders need to adopt and enhance this military planning technique, seasoning it with an understanding that actions taken to sustain order, however imperfect, are inherently less destined for tragedy than those targeted at ending tyranny without certainty that a better form of order will swiftly follow. JFQ

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The war in Ukraine has been going on for 3 years now, and much has been written about Vladimir Putin’s strategic failures and the valor of the Ukrainian defenders. The conflict has transformed from a poorly executed coup de main into a grinding war of attrition. It is time to take stock of this conflict. Learning from contemporary conflict is harder than it seems, but it is a small investment with big payoffs from crucial insights into the changing character of war.

These three books—War in Ukraine, The War for Ukraine, and A Call to Action—collectively offer wide-ranging perspectives from this violent contest of wills. Learning from this and any war is complicated by limitations in access to battle data, from determining what did or did not work and why, which is often blurred in the fog of war. This set of books provides history’s first cut of the confrontation, and each uses a different analytical lens across all three levels of war. 

At the strategic level, War in Ukraine offers a set of penetrating insights from an all-star cast of commentors. This well-edited anthology provides the reader with a study of the first 2 years of the war. While it is replete with incisive analysis, it contains no Ukrainian or Russia voices.

JFQ readers will find the chapter by Thomas Mahnken and Joshua Baker reveals numerous strategic insights that could be applied beyond Ukraine. Mahnken is a well-recognized defense strategist and leads a Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Baker is a recent graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Their chapter offers an analysis based on several decisionmaking pathologies. These fallacies include the irrationality of war, the irrational adversary, the hyper-rational adversary, overestimation, silver bullets, and the faith of decisive victory. All of these can be seen in this contest by the antagonists or by commentators. It is a great case study for teaching strategy. As Mahnken and Baker note, “an awareness of the pitfalls that soldiers, statesmen, and scholars frequently fall prey to is a useful starting point to formulating and implementing sound strategy” (198). For that reason, this chapter should be mandatory reading in all U.S. professional military educational programs; it offers a diagnostic framework that might be applied in every case study in any policy and strategy department.

The chapter written by Alexander Bick is also noteworthy. It offers an insider’s perspective on National Security Council efforts to anticipate the implications of the alarming crisis in Ukraine. This illuminating chapter shows how the Joseph Biden administration learned from its planning shortfalls that led to the ignominious withdrawal from Kabul in the summer of 2021. This time the staff proposed—and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan approved—the charter of a “tiger team” that worked full time in late 2021 to assess the likelihood of a Russian invasion and possible U.S. policy responses. Bick details the tabletop exercises that this cross-functional team employed to explore its assumptions and the policy playbook it prepared for the President. The author is honest about the failings of imagination in the team. However, he concludes the team helped. Bick writes, “It enabled us to foresee challenges and requirements that had not yet arisen. And it provided a vehicle to explore and develop ideas that otherwise would have languished as agency leadership prioritized near-term demands” (149). The question that should be asked now is how these processes are institutionalized so that U.S. strategic competency is not subject to a sine wave of costly learning during turnovers in administrations. (See Frank Hoffman, “Risk: A Weak Element in U.S. Strategy Formulation,” JFQ 116, 1^st Quarter 2025).

Critics of the Biden administration’s risk aversion will find much to agree with in the critique of Washington’s strategy in a sharp chapter crafted by Kori Schake, a veteran policy practitioner and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She notes a persistent pattern in Washington’s slow responsiveness to Kyiv’s continual requests for advanced arms. While the Ukrainians were in an existential battle, the administration initially denied them requested weapons until other allies stepped in or when public and allied opposition reached a crescendo. Only then would “the Biden Administration bowing to public criticism and inter- national pressure and slowly relenting [provide] the systems months and even years later than when they would have been most effective” (164). History may ultimately find this era’s risk and escalation assessments to have been contradictory to U.S. interests.

The second book examined in this review, The War for Ukraine, was penned by retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan. He is no stranger to these pages (see his article “The Intellectual Edge: A Competitive Advantage for Future War and the Strategic Continuum,” JFQ 96, 1st Quarter 2020). Since his retirement, General Ryan has written three books, including both fiction and nonfiction accounts. (His War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict was reviewed in JFQ 108, 1^st Quarter 2023.) This third product is the result of several trips to Ukraine and offers two overlapping themes that have shaped the Russo-Ukrainian war: strategy and adaptation. The book is evenly divided by these interactive factors. In his net assessment of the contending strategies, the author uniquely defines Kyiv’s strategy as one of “corrosion,” which presumably fits in the middle of Hans Delbrück’s famous binary set of annihilation and exhaustion. In Ryan’s telling, this form of strategy includes the expanded competitive space of social and informational interaction between societies and the vulnerability of civil society due to cybersecurity weaknesses or the increased reach of long-range strike systems. This concept has utility in this conflict and may be a useful distinction worthy of further case studies and incorporation into military doctrine.

Ryan’s strategy discussions are excellent, particularly his discussion and comparison of Russia and Ukraine’s respective “theories of victory” in his superb dissection of the two countries’ strategies. Strategic scholars including Colin Gray and Williamson Murray put more stock into a larger conception of a theory of success rather than the narrower concept of a theory of victory that may focus on achieving military victory at the expense of attaining the better peace that proper political guidance would frame (see Frank Hoffman, “The Missing Element in Crafting National Strategy: A Theory of Success,” JFQ 97, 2^nd Quarter 2020). General Ryan appreciates the distinction; he declares “postwar prosperity, reintegration, reconstruction, and justice will all be necessary elements of a more enduring ‘victory’ for Ukraine” (65).

Ryan touches on one other enduring constant in war: the human dimension. Though he identifies several critical technologies displayed in the conflict, including Starlink, rocket systems, artillery fires, targeting mesh networks, artificial intelligence, and drones, he underscores the centrality of war as a human endeavor. “While machines and information are vital elements in human competition and war,” Ryan observes, “it is humans who decide how these are used, where, when, and in what organizational constructs that ultimately decide victory and defeat” (11).

The third book, A Call to Action, is an anthology based on a research study conducted by the U.S. Army War College. The project was overseen by John A. Nagl and Colonel Katie Crombe and contains 18 chapters, most penned by students at the Army’s top-level school. The design of the team’s effort is based around battle functions, which generate a comprehensive assessment of the conflict at the operational level. While the project is sponsored by an institution focused principally on land warfare, the book includes chapters on naval operations in the Black Sea and the air war in Ukraine. Every chapter concludes with relevant lessons for application by the Army, with clear and actionable recommendations. The book finds that Ukraine offers lessons similar in importance to those the U.S. Army culled from Israel’s struggles in the Yom Kippur War five decades ago, which were translated into a successful U.S. Army transformation.

The chapter devoted to fires is chockfull of insights on Ukrainian adaptability. The author, Lieutenant Colonel John “Jay” B. Bradley III, also provides a critique of Russian fires systems, including Russia’s “nearly fanatical” reliance on artillery (92). He attributes the Russian Army shortfalls to its poor automated command and control systems and its overly centralized command structures. Conversely, “Ukraine’s ability to make decisions at the lowest level has yielded increased success” (99). Kyiv’s leaders adopted mission command and introduced command and control systems that allowed the Ukrainians to efficiently apply precision munitions and fires against high-value targets. This chapter details the entrepreneurial agility of the Ukrainians.

The author makes explicit the need for the Army to be ready for constant movement and increased force protection. He also recommends adopting systems supported by artificial intelligence (AI) for both dynamic targeting and air space management. Bradley writes, “The targeting process must incorporate AI, autonomous solutions, redundant communication capabilities, and permissive control measures” so that organic fires can match the pace of large-scale and dynamic operations (107). One critical note, however—there is little appreciation for the role of drones as sensors or as a form of fires. Readers will find this topic covered in detail in Ryan’s The War for Ukraine.

Another key chapter, written by U.S. Army Colonel Jamon K. Junius, deals with Mission Command, a leadership philosophy that is central to joint doctrine in the United States. Ukrainian fighting forces are operating far from their major headquarters, which are led by senior officers who may retain too much of the centralized Soviet doctrine they were initially trained with. However, in Ukraine’s prewar training, Ukrainian generals understood the benefits of promoting the trust and initiative that are synonymous with Mission Command. General Valery Zaluzhny, then the head of the Ukrainian defense establishment, sought to promote “a decentralized, empowered, more agile way of warfare than the Russian model” (119). Mission Command has proved itself again in Ukraine, despite the lack of the mutual trust and cohesion normally generated by doctrine, repeated exercises, and extended association.

In toto, War in Ukraine, The War for Ukraine, and A Call to Action represent the best of a growing flood of analyses of the ongoing tragedy in eastern Europe. Brands’s book is especially invaluable on U.S. national security considerations and has exceptional value to top-level schools and civilian security studies curricula. General Ryan’s book is particularly suited for a larger audience, including command and staff colleges, due to its extensive links to foundational literature for students of the profession of arms. A Call to Action will interest anyone who wants to absorb insights from the battlefield and the ever-changing character of warfare.

Further studies about the war in Ukraine will eventually emerge, once the drones and bullets stop flying and historians can interrogate the facts and the fictions. For now, this set is the best collection of insights at each level of war and across all battlefield functions. Understanding the present in context is a requisite step to learning and for preparing for the future. JFQ

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Winning Without Fighting is an excellent new book crafted by four veteran scholar-practitioners that presents a strategic framework for winning the competition between the United States and its allies on the one side and an emerging authoritarian axis that includes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea on the other. It explores irregular warfare (IW) in the broadest sense, but it makes little reference to insurgency, terrorism, or unconventional combat. Rather, the authors focus on IW as a broad set of competitive activities where “violence and coercion have their place but are unnecessary for an action to be part of an IW campaign.” In this book, irregular warfare is much like George Kennan’s political warfare: “the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.” The ends of these competitive efforts are “achieving relative power, influence, and legitimacy in the international system.” The means include information, military, economic, and diplomatic assets. The authors add resilience, both national and alliance-wide, to this set.

Rigorous and systematic in analysis, Winning Without Fighting begins at a key source of policy, the complex issue of strategic cultures. With thorough references to the scholarly literature, the authors conclude that U.S. strategic culture is not well suited to strategic competition in peacetime. Americans tend to see a clear division between war and peace and prefer to use overwhelming force in clear-cut situations. The Departments of Defense and Treasury dominate our coercive approach to deterrence. While the United States is poorly postured for gray zone warfare, “authoritarian regimes . . . prioritize centralized and coordinated IW campaigns as integral to strategic competition.” The authors write, “Unlike the [United States], Chinese strategic culture conceives of a fluid relationship between war and peace; indeed, all statecraft is essential to achieving power in their never-ending struggle.” Russia is less risk averse than China and is currently engaged in trying to restore greater Russia by attacking Ukraine and subverting Moldova and Georgia. The authoritarian nature of Russia and China helps them in some aspects of IW but drives them to excess and frequently alienates foreign clients and neighbors.

To build a bridge to the future, Winning Without Fighting examines the U.S. record of political warfare during the Cold War, an era roughly analogous to the present. During the Cold War, the United States waged political warfare by backing noncommunist parties, funding dissidents, and supporting various anticommunists. It “formed alliances whose purpose was to contain the spread of communism.”

To facilitate a strategy of containment, the United States formed key institutions like the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Information Agency, and Radio Free Europe. Even the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine can be seen as instruments of political warfare. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration—working with allies and friends, like Pope John Paul II—orchestrated a coordinated campaign of rearmament and political warfare to help bring down the Soviet Union. Despite a strategic culture that did not lend itself to this type of conflict, the United States had significant successes in Cold War political warfare. At the same time, the authors argue that it is important to not mythologize the capabilities and limitations of the force in that 50-year era.

The next four chapters of Winning Without Fighting assess the various tools of statecraft: military, economic, information, and resilience. While necessary, these chapters are dense and focused on nonkinetic competition. Each of the chapters ends with strategic recommendations that make perfect sense. Some recommendations, however, like “avoid [economic] protectionism,” are out of fashion among U.S. politicians of both major parties.

The most interesting aspect of the analysis is considering resilience as a tool of statecraft. Nations and systems of governments have long recognized the importance of resilience, but few have set out to cultivate it. In this era, it is essential. Hostile powers will use their assets, particularly in disinformation, to break down trust in governments and prevent nations from adapting effectively to challenges. It is essential to combat disinformation and to plan for natural disasters and pandemics. The authors point out the importance of alliance-wide approaches in furthering resilience. They then turn their attention to the often ignored topic of measuring success in strategy in terms of power, influence, and legitimacy.

The concluding chapter is a worthy summation and set of recommendations. To summarize, the authors believe that:

Conventional military capabilities alone—or even primarily—are as insufficient for the coming era as they proved to be for the last one. American strategic and military culture must expand the aperture and embrace the thinking of Sun Tzu and Kautilya. Their emphasis on winning without fighting, prioritizing non-military tools of statecraft . . . and embracing myriad uses of information and disinformation provide a useful framework (224).

The authors conclude that this will require reinvestment in the assets like regional expertise and language skillshat “bolstered American competitive
statecraft during the Cold War.” More specifically, they recommend a focus on security cooperation, use of trade and economic statecraft, and  increasing collective resilience.

This is a welcome approach. We need better statecraft and integration of all instruments of national power. We need better policy assessment and a greater focus on resilience and restoring trust between the American people and its government. On the other hand, the recommendations here will not replace the importance of more defense spending. In fact, they may add marginally to overall government spending at a time of gargantuan budget deficits. An approach that is less Defense Department–centric will also put more planning and programmatic weight on the State Department.

None of these objections should detract from this excellent and original book. As we move into yet another novel security environment, it is essential that we get beyond buying another next-generation system, enlarging the iron mountain, and finding different terminology to describe the need to deter, fight, and win the first battle of the next war. We need to focus on how to succeed in competitive statecraft, which just may be the best way to avoid World War III. The authors of Winning Without Fighting are to be commended for their contribution to the discussion of IW and strategic competition. JFQ

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Wounded Marine gets injection of blood plasma from Navy Hospital Corpsman during battle for Okinawa, May 1945 (U.S. Marine Corps)

At 0530, the gunfire support started, and over the next 3 hours 100,000 projectiles hammered inland. There would be 25 rounds for each 100-yard square under bombardment. At 0745, air attacks hit with bombs, napalm, and machine gun fire. At 0830, the initial waves of landing craft crunched ashore, and within an hour 16,000 men were fanning out.

It was L-day (landing day), April 1, 1945, and the United States had massed 1,300 ships to cover the initial landing of four divisions and seize Okinawa as another stepping stone toward Japan. Forces had converged from many bases, and supply convoys were already in motion to sustain momentum.¹ Operation Iceberg was underway.

The invasion of Okinawa was an example of joint forcible entry in an anti-access/area denial environment. Ground, maritime, and air forces played their roles, with supply lines stretching back to the United States and Australia. Support also went front to back, as medical care involved evacuation as well as support flowing forward. It was long before joint operations had anything like their current meaning, but the successes and challenges can still enlighten us about best practices in medical support and command.²

Army nurses, left to right, Lieutenant Margaret J. Whitton, Lieutenant Ruth Anderson, Lieutenant Marjorie Dulain, and Lieutenant Eleanor Kennedy, wash out of steel helmets, on Okinawa, May 7, 1945 (National Archives and Records Administration/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

Planning

Planning for Operation Iceberg had started in the autumn of 1944. Fifth Fleet would handle maritime operations, but there was no land component headquarters of sufficient size to handle the ground forces that would be needed to secure a large island against fierce resistance. Thus, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the activation of Tenth Army headquarters to provide dedicated planners for the land operation. Initially, Tenth Army planned Operation Causeway—the invasion of Taiwan—but when the target changed to Okinawa, its experience allowed for quick adjustment. The land fighting would include III Amphibious Corps (the 1st, 2nd, and 6th Marine divisions) and XXIV Corps (the 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th Infantry divisions).

Tenth Army surgeon was Colonel Frederick Westervelt, U.S. Medical Corps, who had recently served on Admiral Chester Nimitz’s staff and thus had experience in both Army and Navy medicine.³ Westervelt and his small staff were based in Hawaii but had to coordinate with the two corps headquarters; XXIV Corps was in action in the Philippines, while the III Amphibious Corps was forward-deployed and had units engaged in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign and also commanded ground operations at Iwo Jima. Fifth Fleet staff were based at Ulithi (an atoll in the Pacific Ocean), over 4,000 miles away from Hawaii, and were concurrently in operations or planning them. For Tenth Army to focus on the battle, an Island Command (ISCOM) was created to handle the buildup of logistical units on Okinawa for its role in the intended invasion of Japan. ISCOM was also headquartered in Hawaii, allowing close coordination. But with none of the other headquarters nearby and all engaged in operations, there was limited bandwidth for planning Iceberg.

That seems to have affected the planning. There were joint aspects, but there were also substantial elements that each Service handled for itself. Some responsibilities were handed to one Service to provide for both. This caused aspects of medical care to differ substantially. Starting at the plan, there was limited medical intelligence about Okinawa, which was something of a backwater within the Japanese Empire. Apparently, the existence of poisonous snakes was the only data point, and the planners could do little more than recommend checking vaccinations and being prepared for malaria and tropical diseases with insecticide and other countermeasures.⁴ (Both of these assumptions proved to be faulty but with no negative consequences—the lack of snakes and malaria was hardly a problem.)

At a lower level, the surgeon for 1st Marine Division looked at both Army and Navy experience in island fighting in making his plans.⁵ Intelligence on enemy forces was hard to pin down, and since enemy resistance would drive the friendly casualty estimates and thus the medical plans, it was hard to be sure whether the plans for hospitalization and evacuation were adequate. Unfortunately, the estimates of enemy strength kept rising as L-day grew closer. It turned out that the final prediction was roughly correct, and the rising numbers were largely Okinawan natives who were being conscripted into the Japanese forces. They contributed more numbers than combat power. An unknown was the substantial artillery strength of the Japanese 32nd Army, which affected casualty patterns.

Flight Nurse Jo Nabors secures Okinawa casualty into stretcher on transport plane, which has been converted into hospital plane after bringing in mail and supplies, April 7, 1945 (National Archives and Records Administration/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

Colonel Westervelt seems to have been limited in his ability to coordinate some medical aspects. Army and Marine divisions had their own organic medical support, and the Tenth Army did not try to dictate medical support within the two corps. Both the Army and Navy provided hospitals to support Operation Iceberg, and it is unclear how much control the Tenth Army had over those. Army doctrine of the period would have given Westervelt control over all hospitals, which he could then attach to corps but still retain control over.

In the joint situation, he assigned Navy hospitals to support the Marines and Army hospitals to support the Army. Perhaps he believed neither Service would be more flexible and “joint.” Other medical responsibilities were assigned to the Army or Navy. For instance, the Army was supposed to handle all medical supplies, including the subtask of supplying fresh whole blood and the time-sensitive cold supply chain that it entailed (since blood must be kept cold and has a shelf life).⁶ On the other hand, the Navy had responsibility to provide medical support to the civil affairs/military government personnel on the island. Evacuation off Okinawa was coordinated by Tenth Army’s 96th Medical Battalion but was executed by Army or Navy sea or air assets, with the 645th Medical Company handling all patients at airfields.⁷

There were also elements that were substantially different between the two corps. During World War II, the Army created portable surgical hospitals (PSHs), with 4 physicians and about 30 personnel total. These performed a role like today’s Forward Resuscitative Surgical Detachment (Army) or Forward Resuscitation Surgical Team (Navy), but at the time the Navy formally had nothing similar. However, both 1st and 6th Marine divisions had procured some leftover equipment (trailers and amphibious tractors), fitted these with operating room equipment, and improvised staff for forward surgery.⁸

The Army did not have enough PSHs even to support the divisions of XXIV Corps (some regiments had PSHs attached, and others had to make do with less mobile surgical support), so III Amphibious Corps units had none attached and thus entirely lacked forward surgical capability.⁹ Similar, the Army organized auxiliary surgical groups, with a variety of specialty surgical teams to augment hospitals. The few teams that were available were attached to the Army hospitals.¹⁰ Moreover, the Army found a few psychiatrists and attached one per Army hospital, and some Army divisions conducted short courses for their medical personnel (and in one case, for line unit commanders) on psychiatric reactions to combat. At least one Navy psychiatrist arrived during the battle.¹¹ The Navy, in contrast, found enough corpsmen to provide two per platoon in the Marine infantry battalions, and the 1st Marine Division trained some troops as litter bearers.¹²

Outside Tenth Army, both the Army and Navy undertook some similar medical preparations. The obvious base to sup- port Operation Iceberg was the Mariana Islands, and both Services expanded their hospitals there to a combined 16,000 beds. Also, both cleared patients from the existing hospitals in the Marianas back to hospitals in Hawaii and the continental United States so that maximum beds would be available on L-day.

The final medical plan anticipated 30,000 casualties, with 6,600 dead. (Disease cases were expected to be 41,000 in the first 60 days, but far more of them would return to duty as long as there were enough hospital beds for them to recover.¹³) In case the landing was opposed on the beaches, the landing forces would have their unit medical support, with casualties evacuated as soon as possible by landing craft back to a landing ship, tank (hospital) (LST[H]), an ordinary landing ship, tank that had been augmented with medical personnel (some Army, some Navy) and equipment to provide blood transfusion and emergency surgery capabilities. (The Navy provided four to each landing corps.) As the landing forces pushed inland, medical support would increase in capacity and capabilities. If all went well, by the end of L-day there would be slices of every medical function ashore. Medical companies would provide low-acuity care, surgical teams would be ashore along with medical supply elements, and a medical illustration detachment would document patient care.

Meanwhile, offshore the LST(H) not only could treat urgent patients but was also seaworthy enough to ferry all patients out to the hospital ships steaming farther away from Okinawa. Both the Army and Navy sent hospital ships to provide adequate capacity. Both also had hospital transports, which were ordinary transport ships with modest augmentations of medical personnel to transport lower-acuity patients. Scarcer hospital ships could then provide more complex care to higher-acuity patients. This was part of a shift from using hospital ships mainly as highly capable medical evacuation platforms to using them as mobile medical treatment platforms. A shortage of Navy surgeons meant another joint requirement: some Army surgical teams were provided to expand capability and capacity on Navy hospital ships.¹⁴

Air evacuation was also used, but it was for less acute patients (hospital ships and even hospital transports had far more capabilities than cargo aircraft with one nurse and one medical technician on board) and of course required having a working airfield. The planners were cautious and did not expect to have an airfield operational before L+11. Correlating that with casualty estimates, some 7,000 casualties might be wholly reliant on waterborne evacuation. Thus, the hospital transports were required, and patients who could usually return to duty in only a few days would likely be evacuated much farther, and their return to units would be substantially delayed. Hospital ships would be needed to both treat and evacuate patients, but hospitals would be landed early and were expected to be operational after about a week. Westervelt had wanted 8,000 hospital beds (total of Army and Navy) to get patients stable for evacuation (not only stabilized, as modern high-acuity en route care can handle, but also fully stable) and to heal many so they could return to duty.15 Replacement troops were scarce in the Pacific theater, and having combat-ex- perienced troops returning to duty close to the fight would sustain combat power. However, only 4,500 beds were available, including some new special augmented hospitals from the Navy.¹⁶ The final plan had Navy hospitals supporting III Amphibious Corps while Army hospitals were behind XXIV Corps. This approach also aligned with the operational plan: the Marines landed on the left and were to turn north, while the Army landed on the right and turned south. Each force would have its own support rather than intermingled or joint support.

Operations

The landing was unopposed. Scuttlebutt had been that landing units might take 80 percent casualties (projections were for only 300, rising to 600 per day), but there was so little opposition on L-day that troops were spooked and scouted cautiously.¹⁷ Gaining confidence the next few days, troops quickly moved across the island to the east coast. Then the Marines headed north and the Army moved south. While there was resistance in the north, the main Japanese forces were in the south, and Tenth Army reorganized. After clearing the north, the Marines took the western flank and the Army the eastern. Again, Service hospitals supported their own troops. It took until June 22, 92 days of action, to secure the island.

Captain James R. Barron, with Company F, 382nd Infantry Regiment, 96th Infantry Division, receives plasma by frontline aid men after being wounded by Japanese sniper on Okinawa, April 4, 1945 (National Archives and Records Administration/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

Total battle casualties were close to predictions, but there were problems. The Japanese had substantially more artillery on Okinawa than U.S. forces had faced in the Pacific. This gave the Japanese the ability to at least harass U.S. forces at greater depth. The duration of the campaign, likely exacerbated by the Japanese artillery, also led to substantial numbers of psychological casualties, which were not documented if they responded to treatment at an aid station and did not go to a hospital.¹⁸ The reasonably accurate prediction camouflaged problems, however: instead of a smooth slope of casualties, there were days of fierce fighting (battalions might take more than 350 casualties in a day) that briefly overwhelmed the medical system, at least locally. Taking a single hill might cost almost 4,000 casualties.¹⁹

The fleet also took unexpected casualties resulting in Okinawa becoming the Navy’s bloodiest battle of World War II.²⁰ The Imperial Japanese Navy had no ability to drive the Fifth Fleet away from Okinawa, but the prolonged ground campaign meant the fleet had to stay around Okinawa for months. That exposed the ships—and their Sailors—to relentless air attack, both conventional and kamikaze. Thousands of air sorties caused heavy losses in the Fifth Fleet, with about 250 ships and more smaller craft hit. Most of the ships hit were small, and even a few casualties could overwhelm the limited medical support aboard. Without helicopters to move casualties to care, the damaged ship had to come alongside another ship, and thus there could be several hours’ delay before patients could get more than rudimentary care. The length of the campaign and repeated attacks also caused psychological casualties afloat, something for which the Navy had not prepared.

Medical support on land was generally good. Elements of every medical function were ashore on L-day, and the lack of early opposition meant that hospitals could easily be landed and be ready by L+5, before there was much fighting. (The period without much fighting also allowed air spraying against insects, which reduced disease incidence.²¹) Air evacuation was also available sooner than anticipated, with both Army Air Forces and Navy aircraft ferrying casualties back to the Marianas by L+6. It is not clear whether the Services would not cooper- ate, or whether, since both would be flying cargo forward, it made sense for both to evacuate as well.

Hospital ships were effective, although the USS Comfort was hit by a kamikaze that plunged into an operating room be- fore exploding, killing patients and Army surgical personnel who were augmenting their Navy colleagues. The hospital transport USS Pinkney was hit the same day, after it had unloaded the combat troops that it brought forward. Total casualties on the two ships were 65 dead and 60 wounded. After that, hospital ships turned off their lights at night, relying on concealment rather than the protections of the Geneva Convention. Ultimately, about half the patients were evacuated by air and half by water. Just as the Army and Navy worked together to evacuate patients from Okinawa, movement around the island was sometimes joint: heavy rains made ground evacuation dangerously slow for several days, and LST(H) and other amphibious craft were used to move patients to hospitals and clear those hospitals to others in the rear.²²

Meanwhile, ground forces pushed aggressively, and there was not enough hospital support available on Okinawa when heavy fighting started. The wounded took priority over psychiatric casualties for hospital beds, which meant combat fatigue patients were evacuated off the island.²³ That was known to cause worse outcomes to the patients (“fixing” their symptoms before therapy could ameliorate them) and meant that troops who would have been likely to return to combat if they received prompt care could not do so. Thus, lack of hospital capacity cost combat power. Some lightly wounded were also evacuated without any hospitalization. Had more convalescent facilities been available, those 5,175 patients might have been returned to combat.²⁴ Later, more hospitals and other medical units were repurposed to care for psychiatric casualties, which provided adequate capacity if little more capability. Even with few psychiatrists available, forward treatment proved extremely effective, with approximately 73 percent of patients returning to frontline duty, and a further 7 percent returning to rear-area duty.²⁵

There was some joint support, with Army ambulance units attached to III Amphibious Corps and some Marine patients treated at Army hospitals. Two Army hospitals were temporarily subordinated to III Amphibious Corps.²⁶ Some improvements to care were implemented. Fresh whole blood was widely available— first, flown to the Marianas and then shipped forward, and later, flown straight to Okinawa. With iceboxes available, blood was pushed forward to regimental and even battalion level, an echelon or two closer to the front than previously.²⁷ Quantities were also greater than earlier in World War II, forecasting 1 pint per casualty as opposed to 1 pint for every 3 casualties in 1943, and about 41,000 units of blood were used, slightly more than 1 unit per surgical patient.²⁸ (A unit of blood is roughly equivalent to a pint.)

Oxygen apparata were apparently provided to regiments and on ambulances, but no reports of use have been found, and training may not have been synchronized with issue.29 The Army’s auxiliary surgical teams were effective in augmenting hospitals designed for low-acuity care, so they could handle battle casualties. The Army reported a rate for “died of wounds”—patients who arrived alive at a hospital and subsequently expired—of 3.4 percent, which was below the World War II average of 4.5 percent. (Surgeons still thought more could be done if more hospitals with more surgical capacity were available, and they were probably right; perhaps more surgical teams should have been improvised from units in the rear.³⁰) The hospitals also proved their value not just in treating patients to get them stable for evacuation but also in returning troops to duty, and both the Army and Navy improvised convalescent centers.³¹ The Army suffered 34,500 casualties on Okinawa, of whom about 15,000 returned to duty before the battle was over. More Soldiers were returned to duty than were evacuated from Okinawa. Considering this was counting only inpatients, the medical system was truly supporting the fight.

There was a potential problem with command of the medical effort. The Tenth Army was supposed to secure Okinawa, while ISCOM would establish and run the logistical base that would support the invasion of Japan. ISCOM units would be coming ashore while the fighting was continuing (although none of ISCOM’s 10,800 hospital beds would be functional during the fighting), creating potential tension between the headquarters. The Tenth Army surgeon’s office was understaffed to handle operations, while the ISCOM surgeon, Brigadier General Earl Maxwell, and his staff came ashore on L+10. Colonel Westervelt recognized he was not going to pull personnel from Maxwell and sensibly merged his staff into Maxwell’s.³² Maxwell oversaw medical support for the fighting and building the ISCOM medical infrastructure. These two functions might well be dual-hatted today, but in 1945 they had to adjust on the fly.

Implications

Planning was difficult in a low-band- width environment. Current operations rely on rapid and reliable communica- tions to compensate for distances and to coordinate among Services and forces. One mitigation for operating in a denied, disrupted, intermittent, and limited bandwidth environment could be the sort of deconfliction and setting up parallel operations that the Tenth Army did rather than operating fully joint operations. It took 6 months to plan the invasion of Okinawa, with many of the (highly experienced) headquarters involved in the planning also executing other operations. Keeping a plan simple could speed the operational tempo.

Private W.D. Fuhlrodt is removed from tank that carried him from front lines because Japanese artillery and small arms fire made it impossible for ambulances to carry wounded to safety, Okinawa, 1945 (Alpha Stock/Alamy)

Medical support in Operation Iceberg was good despite not meeting modern concepts of jointness. Despite effective medical support, it was a bloody battle: 43 percent of the combat strength were casualties, with roughly equal numbers of battle and nonbattle casualties.³³ Medical support in future operations with even 10 percent of the casualties suffered at Okinawa would challenge medical sup- port at every step—forward surgery and hospitalization, evacuation to the United States, and care in military hospitals in Marble 79 the United States.³⁴ Better command and coordination to use theater assets can mitigate some of the problems, and theater medical commands should help in the future. Current doctrine is certainly more joint than that of 1945, and our capabilities are far greater, but our capacity is far less. Let us hope deterrence works and the enemy does not get a vote. JFQ

¹ On the battle, see Roy E. Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1948), https://web.archive.org/web/20241212210948/https://www.history.army.mil/html/books/005/5-11-1/index.html.

² Joseph Caravalho, Jr., and Enrique Ortiz, Jr., “The Future Joint Medical Force Through the Lens of Operational Art: A Case for Clinical Interchangeability,” Joint Force Quarterly 101 2nd Quarter 2021), 55–8, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-101/jfq-101_55-58_Caravalho-Ortiz.pdf.

³ Main sources on medical support are Mary Ellen Condon-Rall and Albert Cowdrey, Medical Service in the War Against Japan (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), chap. 12, https://web.archive.org/web/20241207064919/https://www.history.army.mil/html/books/010/10-24/CMH_Pub_10-24-1.pdf; “Medical Service in the Asiatic-Pacific,” chap. XIV, unpublished draft, U.S. Army Medical Service Historical Unit, ca. 1965, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center; U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, The History of the Medical Department of the U.S. Navy in World War II—A Narrative and Pictorial Volume, vol. I (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953), https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheMedicalDeptInWWIIV1/mode/2up.

⁴ United States Navy Medical Department at War, 1941–1945, vol. 2, Organization and Administration (draft) (Washington, DC: Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Navy Department, 1946), 29–30, https://digirepo.nlm.nih.gov/ext/dw/14321920RX4/PDF/14321920RX4.pdf.

⁵ United States Navy Medical Department at War, 1941–1945, 3.

⁶ Office of the Surgeon, Headquarters U.S. Army Forces Middle Pacific (HUSAFMIDPAC), Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, 1946), 110. This Army subtask did not work well, although medical supplies were interchanged among the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.

⁷ Office of the Surgeon, HUSAFMIDPAC, Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific, 16; Condon-Rall and Cowdrey, Medical Service in the War Against Japan, 408.

⁸ U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, The History of the Medical Department of the U.S. Navy in World War II, 106, 110.

⁹ Office of the Surgeon, HUSAFMIDPAC, Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific, 14.

¹⁰ See John W. Devine, Jr., and Hollon W. Farr, “The Neurosurgical Management of Wounded in the Okinawa Campaign,” Military Surgeon 103, no. 3 (September 1948): 202–7.

¹¹ On psychiatric aspects, see Oscar B. Markey, “Tenth U.S. Army,” chap. XVIII in Neuropsychiatry in World War II, vol. II, Overseas Theaters, ed. William Mullins and Albert Glass (Washington, DC: Office of the Surgeon General, 1973), 639–80, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA295201.pdf; United States Navy Medical Department at War, 1941–1945, 26.

¹² U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, History of the Medical Department of the U.S. Navy in World War II, 106–7. The First Marine Division alone would have 478 casualties among Hospital Corps personnel, with 49 killed, 226 wounded, 17 injured, and 186 sick.

¹³ Office of the Surgeon General, “Medical Aspects of the Ryukyus Campaign: Noneffective Rates,” in Health (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Army Service Forces, War Department, September 30, 1945), 2–10, 18, https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/pdf/nlm:nlmuid-22310600RX32-leaf.

¹⁴ David A. Lane, “Hospital Ship Doctrine in the U.S. Navy: The Halsey Effect on Scoop-and-Sail Tactics,” Military Medicine 162, no. 6 (June 1997): 388–95.

¹⁵ Office of the Surgeon, HUSAFMIDPAC, Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific, 24.

¹⁶ U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, The History of the Medical Department of the U.S. Navy in World War II, 37.

¹⁷ Office of the Surgeon, HUSAFMIDPAC, Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific, 35–36.

¹⁸ Office of the Surgeon General, “Medical Aspects of the Ryukyus Campaign,” 6.

¹⁹ Condon-Rall and Cowdrey, Medical Service in the War Against Japan, 394–95.

²⁰ U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, The History of the Medical Department of the U.S. Navy in World War II, 107–9.

²¹ Tenth Army Surgeon, Essential Medical Technical Data for the Okinawa Campaign, August 29 1945, on file at the Army Medical Department Center of History and Heritage, San Antonio, TX; National Archives, Record Group 319, entry A1-145, box 4.

²² Tenth Army Action Report: Report of Operations in the Ryukyus Campaign (Washington, DC: Tenth Army, September 80 Recall / Medical Support at Okinawa 3, 1945), chap. 11, “Staff Section Reports,” 11-XV-13, https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4013coll8/id/600/rec/1.

²³ Office of the Surgeon, HUSAFMIDPAC, Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific, 93.

²⁴ Office of the Surgeon, HUSAFMIDPAC, Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific, 126.

²⁵ Historical Sub-Section G-2 HUSAFMIDPAC, History of United States Army Forces Middle Pacific and Predecessor Commands During World War II, vol. XII., ca. 1946, 2708.

²⁶ United States Navy Medical Department at War, 1941–1945, 14; Tenth Army Action Report, II-XV-12.

²⁷ United States Navy Medical Department at War, 1941–1945, 27.

²⁸ Historical Sub-Section G-2 HUSAFMIDPAC, History of United States Army Forces Middle Pacific and Predecessor Commands During World War II, vol. XII, ca. 1946, 2704; Edward D. Churchill, Surgeon to Soldiers: Diary and Records of the Surgical Consultant, Allied Force Headquarters, World War II (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1972); Office of the Surgeon General, “Medical Aspects of the Ryukyus Campaign,” 10.

²⁹ Historical Sub-Section G-2 HUSAFMIDPAC, History of United States Army Forces Middle Pacific and Predecessor Commands During World War II, vol. XII, ca. 1946, 2709.

³⁰ John Flick, Forrester Raine, and Robert Robertson, “Pacific Ocean Areas,” in Surgery in World War II, vol. II, Activities of Surgical Consultants, ed. B. Noland Carter (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 645–50, 675–82, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA286769.pdf.

³¹ Office of the Surgeon, HUSAFMIDPAC, Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific, 78; Appleman et al., Okinawa, 414; U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, History of the Medical Department of the U.S. Navy in World War II, 110.

³² Office of the Surgeon, HUSAFMIDPAC, Administrative History of Medical Activities in the Middle Pacific, 71–72.

³³ This source apparently includes combat exhaustion and other psychiatric casualties with noncombat losses.

³⁴ Matthew Fandre, “Medical Changes Needed for Large-Scale Combat Operations: Observations From Mission Command Training Program Warfighter Exercises,” Military Review, May-June 2020, 36–45, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/MJ-20/Fandre-Medical-Changes.pdf; F. Cameron Jackson,“Don’t Get Wounded: Military Health System Consolidation and the Risk to Readiness,” Military Review, September-October 2019, 141–51, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/SO-19/Jackson-Military-Health.pdf.

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Soldier crouches as enemy fire passes overhead just off one of the beaches on east coast of Leyte Island, Philippines, October 20, 1944 (National Archives and Records Administration/Carl Wienke/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

Today’s joint force is grappling with changes in the character of war as a complex interplay of human innovation, proliferating technology, and international politics drives an expansion of warfighting domains.¹ However, despite the current wave of change in war’s character, there remain constants: war’s nature and the principles that guide successful operations. This article explores some of those constants through a study of Operation King II, the American land- sea-air operation to seize the island of Leyte and commence the liberation of the Philippines in October 1944. This case study examines the battle in terms of movement and maneuver—forces moving to or fighting for positions of advantage and exploiting tactical success to achieve operational and strategic objectives.²

Operation King II was one of the largest combined arms operations of the war. It offers valuable insights into multidomain operations and movement and maneuver in a maritime theater. The operation provides historical examples of leaders confronting complex problems: integrating joint operations, establishing command and control structures, and accelerating operations-intelligence fusion to outmaneuver a determined peer adversary. General Douglas MacArthur’s plan succeeded in overcoming the enemy’s efforts and the fog of war thanks to its employment of concerted movement, maneuver, and fires across multiple domains, as well as servicemembers’ incredible courage at decisive moments. Key findings from examining Operation King II include the challenges of joint planning and synchronizing combat actions by multiple commands and the necessity of executing joint, multidomain operations to prevail in modern conflict.

Global Scale and Grand Strategies 

World War II was a modern industrial war on a global scale, affecting nearly every populated region. Given the unprecedented scale of the conflict, the deliberate management and global integration of military resources proved crucial for the major powers. The United States officially entered the multiple-front global war immediately after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. By this point in the war, Germany had invaded, annexed, or forced territorial agreements across most of continental Europe and allied itself with Italy and Japan. Japan was rapidly expanding its empire and defensive perimeter across China, Indochina, and Southeast Asia, with no signs of slowing down. The power and pace of these adversaries on opposite sides of the world created strategic challenges of prioritization, timing, and resource allocation—essentially, global integration challenges—for the United States and the Allies.

U.S. Grand Strategy in World War II. On the official U.S. entry into the war, American and British leaders held the Arcadia Conference to discuss strategy anew. Both parties reaffirmed the “Germany First” approach that they had already agreed on before Pearl Harbor.³ However, by February 1942, the new U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Ernest King, pressed Navy Secretary Frank Knox for a “defensive offensive” strategy in the Pacific. King believed the United States needed to hold what it had, counterattack when the opportunity presented itself, and create the opportunity for a counterattack if such did not develop on its own.⁴ Combat operations steadily increased in the Pacific from mid-1942 onward, yet the Germany First policy continued until Germany’s surrender in May 1945. Fortunately for Allied forces in the Pacific, by the summer of 1943, the U.S. industrial base was in full wartime operation. The European theater was receiving steady sustainment, and Pacific command- ers began to receive what they required to go on the offensive.⁵

Japan’s Pacific Strategy. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan quickly continued its expansion efforts. Its war strategy centered on the “rapid seizure of whole resource-rich regions and their populations to the south, followed by establishing a defensive perimeter running along the Burma–Malaya–Dutch East Indies–New Guinea line.”⁶ From December 1941 through early 1942, Japan captured or occupied all or part of the Dutch East Indies, Guam, Hong Kong, Malaya, New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, and Wake Island. Having achieved its objectives to expand the empire and establish a defensive pe- rimeter, Japan shifted its strategy to active defense while seeking a decisive battle to destroy U.S. naval capability.

U.S. Pacific Strategy and Operations, 1942–4. In the spring of 1942, General MacArthur took command of the Southwest Pacific Area and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz took command of the Central and South Pacific Ocean areas. The vastness of the Pacific theater, the opportunities for multiple avenues of advance, inter-Service politics, and senior leaders’ personalities all played a role in bifurcating the U.S. war effort in the Pacific.⁷ The overarching missions for MacArthur and Nimitz were to defend the homeland and U.S. lines of communication with Australia, contain the Japanese advance, and prepare to seize the initiative through sea, amphibious, and air operations.

Nimitz and MacArthur employed “island-hopping” strategies and “leap- frogging” toward Japan along the Central Pacific and New Guinea avenues of approach. Admiral Nimitz would destroy Japanese forces, retake key strategic islands to establish forward air bases, and eliminate Japanese strongholds by island-hopping. General MacArthur repeatedly bypassed entrenched Japanese forces and landed in lesser defended areas beyond their positions to isolate thousands of Japanese troops at a time, cut them off from their supply lines, and establish additional forward air bases as he moved west. Throughout their parallel campaigns, the two leaders employed preparatory naval and aerial bombardments, amphibious beach landings to insert ground forces, and land-based and carrier-based air support.

Members of F Troop, 7th Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, are pinned down after getting 50 feet inland from White Beach, Leyte Island, Philippines, while heading for San Jose, October 21, 1944 (National Archives and Records Administration/Field/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

From the summer of 1942 to the summer of 1944, U.S. forces under both commanders halted Japanese expansion and turned the tide of the war in the Pacific. They steadily built experience in maneuvering as a joint force and honed their tactics for combined arms assaults:

• May 1942 saw the world’s first car- rier-versus-carrier battle, the Battle of the Coral Sea. Neither side’s surface ships ever saw the other. The Americans and the Japanese each lost a carrier and had a carrier damaged by the other’s carrier-based aircraft. 
• Next, the Japanese attempted to destroy the U.S. carrier force and seize Midway Island in June 1942. Thanks to outstanding codebreaking and intelligence work, the U.S. Navy anticipated the battle and maneuvered its carriers into a position of advantage. At Midway, Japan lost four heavy carriers, hundreds of aircraft, and many of its top naval aviators. The United States had ended the extension of the Japanese perimeter and bought time for the Allies to build warfighting capacity. 
• From July 1942 to January 1943, MacArthur’s forces in the Southwest Pacific Area denied multiple Japanese attempts to take Port Moresby in southeastern New Guinea. MacArthur then seized the initiative and began a leapfrogging campaign of amphibious and airborne operations moving up the large island’s northern coast, putting the island in Allied control by June 1944. MacArthur was within striking distance of the Philippines. 
• When the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August 1942, the island’s airfield was a primary objective. The Marines seized the airfield by the second day, giving U.S. airpower a position of advantage. Months of fierce fighting followed. The Japanese took much heavier losses because of the ability of the United States and Allies to combine effects in multiple domains, attacking Japanese ground forces directly while interdicting their supply lines by air and sea.⁸ By February 1943, the Allies held Guadalcanal and the initiative in the Central Pacific.
• In June 1944, Allied forces under Nimitz executed a successful 500-ship, 1,000-mile amphibious assault from the Marshall Islands to the Mariana Islands, claiming bases from which the U.S. Army Air Force could bomb the Japanese home islands. 
• That same month, in the carrier-versus-carrier Battle of the Philippine Sea, the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet sank three Japanese carriers and downed an estimated 300 Japanese aircraft. Imperial Japanese Navy carrier aviation never recovered. 

By the summer of 1944, the Japanese military was degraded but not defeated. Likewise, its defensive perimeter had been rolled back but not shattered. Meanwhile, the two major Allied avenues of advance were about to converge.

Decision: To the Philippines

To MacArthur, the retaking of the Philippines was central to the Pacific campaign. However, the operation almost did not come about because of competing strategic visions for the Pacific theater among American senior leaders. Admiral King, Admiral Nimitz, General George C. Marshall, General MacArthur, and others broadly agreed on the strategic logic laid down by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at Cairo in December 1943. That logic was to continue establishing forward bases from which naval power and airpower could force Japan’s unconditional surrender. However, Admiral King and an influential portion of the Joint Staff favored an operational approach of bypassing the Philippines and seizing the island of Formosa (present-day Taiwan), 200 miles closer to the Japanese home islands. 

Soldiers of 24th Infantry Division march past Filipinas on beach at Leyte Island, Philippines, October 20, 1944 (National Archives and Records Administration/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

As the Allied advances in the Pacific accelerated in the spring and summer of 1944, the Formosa-Philippines debate came to a head. More U.S. senior leaders became convinced that the Philippines was the better strategic choice. The Philippines represented strategic key terrain for the Japanese.⁹ The Philippine archipelago protected all the remaining Japanese sea lines of communication and lay at the heart of Japan’s inner defensive structure.¹⁰ On a theater-wide scale, the Philippines was a position of advantage for whomever could hold the islands. 

In addition to his famous March 1942 personal promise to return to the Philippines, MacArthur had a strong strategic case for returning based on the honor and prestige of retaking American territory, the airbases and logistics nodes to be gained, and his forces’ ability to complete the operation earlier with the resources on hand.¹¹ In comparison, the Formosa operation required additional divisions from Europe that would not be available until mid-1945 and, by many accounts, would have required air and logistics support from the vicinity of the Philippines. The debate culminated at the Honolulu Conference in July 1944, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to execute the Philippines operation first.

Japanese Preparations. To Japan, the continued execution of the war required power projection and active defense from the Philippines. Fully aware of U.S. momentum, Japan still hoped for a decisive battle that might shatter American war plans.¹² At the least, the Japanese navy sought to uphold its honor by seeking battle again.¹³ It perceived the Philippines as the most likely location for such a battle. 

Japan had been building up forces on the Philippines since mid-1943, ultimately putting more than six army divisions on the islands. Of this force, only one division was assigned to defend Leyte Island.¹⁴ At the same time, the main island of Luzon hosted numerous Japanese air bases with increasing numbers of fighters, bombers, and torpedo-bombers. Furthermore, throughout the spring and summer of 1944, Japan consolidated naval forces in the South China Sea, near its principal fuel reserves, and in the Philippines. In hindsight, these movements all underscored the strategic value of the Philippines. Nevertheless, at the time, U.S. assessments varied in their predictions of Japanese resistance—mainly, whether the Japanese navy would come out in force or husband its power for the defense of the home islands. 

As we know today, the Imperial Japanese Navy was determined to come out in force. Japan’s senior military leaders planned to converge land, naval, and air forces on the Philippines under Operation Sho (meaning “victory”). The plan was a defense in depth while seeking a “great decisive battle” that would destroy enough U.S. naval and ground capacity to delay further advances.¹⁵ After a final round of debate over the plan’s prospects for success and the significant fuel it would require from Japan’s dwindling supply, the Japanese high command approved Operation Sho in October 1944. Meanwhile, U.S. forces had been making their preparations.

U.S. Preparations. The decision to liberate the Philippines effectively converged MacArthur’s and Nimitz’s lines of operations. A robust but complicated command structure was established to surge resources into the area under four separate commands—those of MacArthur, Nimitz, and two United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) generals, Henry H. “Hap” Arnold and Joseph Stilwell. Together, these forces nearly doubled the naval forces directly supporting MacArthur and tripled his air forces. However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not establish unity of command for the operation, and the forces that MacArthur depended on for victory were not all under his direct control.¹⁶ In addition to these U.S. forces, MacArthur coordinated efforts with the extensive guerrilla network in the Philippines, which operated at least 50 radios providing a constant flow of intelligence prior to the invasion. 

By the summer of 1944, MacArthur and his staff had refined plans for the Philippines several times. The plan employed the techniques and tactics refined up to this point in the war. It called for preliminary operations on the large southern island of Mindanao, then securing Leyte and the surrounding central islands to provide forward air and logistics bases (the initial main effort), and ultimately, liberating Luzon. 

The plan for Leyte, named King II, called for surprise seizures of key terrain, followed quickly by heavy preparatory bombardment and overwhelming combat power in the form of a massive amphibious landing aided by guerrilla support. However, Leyte lay over 500 miles from the nearest Allied fighter air bases among 50 active Japanese airfields, presenting challenges to operational reach and multidomain support.¹⁷

In the second week of September 1944, MacArthur’s General Headquarters–Southwest Pacific Area plans for the Philippines accelerated dramatically based on reconnaissance-in-force by U.S. Navy aviation around the southern island of Mindanao. At that time, aircraft from Admiral William Halsey’s 3rd Fleet (under Nimitz) were conducting reconnaissance flights and offensive strikes against Japanese bases and found Japanese airpower and air defenses much weaker than expected. They attributed this weakness to previous naval operations and extensive bombing by General George Kenney’s 5th Air Force (under MacArthur).¹⁸ Halsey recommended to Nimitz and MacArthur that U.S. forces bypass Mindanao and accelerate their plans, moving directly on Leyte. On September 15, MacArthur sent the following message to the Joint Chiefs: “In view of Halsey’s latest report . . . am prepared to initiate at once the execution of King II with a target date of October 20.”¹⁹ The same day, the Joint Chiefs authorized MacArthur “to execute Leyte operation target date October 20” and coordinate with Nimitz as required.²⁰ Aggressive movement to contact by Halsey had revealed vulnerabilities in the enemy’s defenses; detailed prior planning and robust forward-postured forces made it possible for the joint force to exploit those vulnerabilities.

The Leyte Operation

General Headquarters–Southwest Pacific Area quickly translated the King II plan into a detailed operating instruction issued on September 21, 1944. The operation would move the invasion force and the supporting naval fleets into positions where they could conduct preparatory strikes, execute the amphibious landings, and repel any Japanese naval threat to the landings. Under General MacArthur, Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid’s 7th Fleet was the invasion force. They would ingress toward Leyte Gulf from the southeast carrying Lieutenant General Walter Krueger’s 6th Army—the landing force. The 7th Fleet also included subordinate task forces and groups supporting the landings with protection and fires. Some of these subordinate units guarded the Surigao Strait at the southern end of Leyte Gulf, and others guarded the northern approach to Leyte Gulf along the east coast of Samar. 

To the north of the 7th Fleet, the 3rd Fleet under Halsey moved into position in the Philippine Sea, ready to support the invasion and guard against attacks by the Japanese carrier fleet. MacArthur’s operating instructions required the 3rd Fleet to destroy hostile air and shipping in and around the Philippines and to provide close air support to the landing forces.²¹ However, as mentioned, Halsey’s 3rd Fleet was outside MacArthur’s command, even as the two American lines of advance converged. Halsey retained his direct reporting line to Nimitz. Halsey’s forces were to control the area to the north of the invasion force, which was thought to be a likely axis for Japanese attacks. Nimitz’s orders to Halsey included supporting the invasion but added a critical clause: “In case opportunity for destruction of a major portion of the enemy fleet is offered or can be created, such destruction becomes the primary task.”²² This additional clause gave Halsey latitude to maneuver as he saw fit, which ended up leaving elements of the 7th Fleet in a vulnerable position off Samar.

Japan’s Imperial General Headquarters anticipated that a U.S. invasion of the Philippines was likely. The Sho plan amounted to a powerful counterattack using the bulk of the remaining Imperial Japanese Navy to inflict heavy losses on the invasion force rather than a plan to repel the invasion. The plan leveraged the strength of its still-formidable surface fleet.²³ The plan also reflected Japanese forces’ limited operational reach by this point in the war resulting from mounting losses in naval vessels and carrier-based aviation and their dwindling fuel supply.²⁴ 

A large naval power under Vice Admiral Jisaburõ Ozawa, the Northern Force, was positioned north of the Philippine Sea with Japan’s remaining aircraft carriers. Previous losses in aircraft and pilots severely hampered the carriers’ combat capability. The carriers needed to remain close to the Japanese home islands through the end of 1944 to receive replacement units, which were not yet ready. Aware of these limitations, the Japanese employed Ozawa’s force as a tempting ruse to draw Halsey’s 3rd Fleet away from the Philippines. If successful, this stratagem would enable a formidable two-pronged surface naval attack on U.S. forces in and around Leyte Gulf. 

The Japanese Southern Force, in two elements under Vice Admiral Shõji Nishimura and Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima, was a supporting force with two battleships and several cruisers and destroyers. Meanwhile, the Center Force under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita embarked from Borneo as “a gathering of heavies such as Japan had never before assembled,” featuring the two largest battleships in the world (the Yamato and the Musashi), three more battleships, two squadrons of heavy cruisers, and two squadrons of destroyers.²⁵ The Southern and Central forces were to converge on Leyte Gulf and envelop the U.S. naval forces deployed there for the landings.

By this time, MacArthur and many of his senior leaders had extensive experience with amphibious landings in the Pacific. In the preceding 2 years, there had been more than 30 amphibious landings between the Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific areas of operation.²⁶ As a result, even with a massive invasion force—boasting 700 ships transporting 174,000 troops—the operation displayed highly effective movement and maneuver. It began on October 17, with U.S. Army Rangers in advance elements seizing three small Japanese-held islands commanding the eastern entrance to Leyte Gulf.27 U.S. battleships then moved into the gulf, and Halsey’s carriers remained within striking range, while screening forces of smaller escort carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts fanned out east of the gulf. A mas- sive aerial and naval bombardment began on October 19, decimating the Japanese defensive positions. The preparatory bombardment continued through the morning of October 20, when the landings began on schedule. Despite more than 40,000 Japanese troops on Leyte, the landing force secured the beachhead with minimal resistance. By midday, Krueger’s 6th Army had seized the key objective of Tacloban Airfield north of the landing beaches, where MacArthur planned to base two USAAF fighter groups and a specialized night fighter squadron within days.²⁸ Just after one o’clock in the afternoon, MacArthur waded ashore from a landing craft and announced over the airwaves, “I have returned!” 

A friendly indigenous partner force of guerrillas played a significant sup- porting role in enabling joint maneuvers by the 6th Army. MacArthur’s forces had supplied the guerrillas for over a year using submarines and occasional airdrops. This indigenous partner force waged an irregular warfare campaign that induced friction for Japanese forces, boosted Filipino morale, and provided valuable intelligence to MacArthur’s forces.29 This last contribution proved significant at Leyte—the intelligence supplied to MacArthur’s forces by the 3,000-strong guerrilla force on Leyte enabled fast, effective maneuver by the 6th Army to seize key terrain.

Water tank trap, one of many futile attempts made by retreating Japanese on Leyte Island to slow American invasion, is crossed by members of 1st Cavalry Division, October 1944 (U.S. Army Signal Corps)

While the ground forces had experienced initial success through the first day, naval forces had yet to experience significant actions. This was about to change as the Japanese naval counter-attack proceeded inbound. Ozawa’s Northern Force, Kurita’s Center Force, and the Southern Force under Nishimura and Shima executed their initial movements according to their ambitious plan. However, they met intense resistance from the 3rd and 7th fleets. This resistance severely disrupted Japanese operational timing and isolated the three Japanese fleets from each other.

U.S. submarines drew first blood against the Center Force, sinking two cruisers and crippling a third early on October 23. The next day, as the Center Force advanced through the Sibuyan Sea, aircraft from the U.S. 7th Fleet located it and sank the massive battleship Musashi with multiple waves of airstrikes. Kurita had expected air cover from Japanese airbases on Luzon but did not receive it. Meanwhile, in the southern Leyte Gulf, taking in reconnaissance reports and anticipating the advance of the Southern Force, Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf maneuvered his battleships, heavy cruisers, and destroyers across the north end of Surigao Strait, where they destroyed most of the Southern Force’s first element with torpedoes and big-gun broadsides.

However, on October 24, Ozawa succeeded in capturing Halsey’s attention. Halsey’s carrier-based aviators spotted Ozawa’s force off Luzon’s northern Cape Engaño—northwest of the 3rd Fleet and within engagement range. The aggressive Halsey, acting within his orders from Nimitz but without coordinating and communicating with MacArthur, pursued Ozawa’s Northern Force with all 65 ships of his 3rd Fleet, hoping to destroy Japan’s remaining carriers. Although Halsey had radioed his fleet earlier that day about a notional plan to split off surface ships to defend the San Bernardino Strait, by the evening he assessed Ozawa’s Northern Force as the greatest threat and committed his entire force to defeat it.

With the 3rd Fleet pursuing Ozawa northward, Kurita’s Center Force—still boasting 23 surface combatants, including the Yamato—exploited the gap that opened in U.S. naval defenses. Kurita came through the San Bernardino Strait and rounded the northern end of Samar on the morning of October 25. Kurita advanced unimpeded against Task Unit 77.4.3 (Taffy 3), a screening unit of six escort carriers with one flying squadron apiece, three destroyers, and four smaller destroyer escorts. This was the northern end of the 7th Fleet, intended by Kinkaid to defend the northern approach to Leyte Gulf—counting on substantial fire support from Halsey’s 3rd Fleet, if needed. Instead, thanks to Ozawa’s successful feint drawing Halsey north, Taffy 3 was isolated and severely outgunned vis-à-vis the main Japanese force.

Soldiers pass supplies ashore from LCVP at Leyte Island, Philippines, October 20, 1944 (National Archives and Records Administration/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

Displaying incredible courage, discipline, and tactical prowess, Taffy 3 held the line against overwhelming odds. With vital air support from Taffy 1 and 2 and the rest of Kinkaid’s fleet, Taffy 3 managed to repel Kurita’s Center Force along the east coast of Samar that morning, sinking three heavy cruisers and dealing significant damage to many more while sacrificing two escort carriers and three surface combatants of its own.³⁰ Evidence indicates that an exhausted Kurita believed he was fighting a much larger U.S. force, including numerous large carriers.³¹ It is likely he drew this conclusion from the ferocity of the Taffy units’ defense, the continuous aerial attacks he was facing, and the losses already inflicted on his force during their 3-day ingress. Here, tactical actions had significant operational and even strategic impacts.

Broadly, the multiple naval engagements constituting the Battle of Leyte Gulf dealt a death blow to the Imperial Japanese Navy. The U.S. joint force had successfully used movement and maneuver to “set the terms of battle by time and location” and “exploit existing situations.”³² The operation to seize Leyte via amphibious landing forced the final decisive naval battle of the war. The Japanese losses were devastating: “four aircraft carriers, three battleships, ten cruisers, and twelve destroyers”; approximately 500 aircraft—including those employed in the new Japanese tactic of kamikaze attacks; and more than 12,000 men.³³ Thus, a U.S. operation with the supported force in the land domain yielded a strategic victory for supporting forces in the sea and air domains.

The fight for Leyte Island continued for nearly 2 months, and a second phase of the air battle ensued in the following days. However, American control of Leyte Gulf, the lodgment, Tacloban Airfield, and other key terrain was secure from October 25 onward.

Key Findings

Several key findings emerge from studying the Leyte operation, centered around the concept of joint movement and maneuver in a multidomain fight.

First, as many have noted, the U.S. operation benefited from successful movement and maneuver; however, the command and control structure of U.S. forces in King II created vulnerabilities that might have been avoided with greater unity of command or better integrated planning. MacArthur had advocated for having all assets, including Halsey’s 3rd Fleet, under his command for the operation. This command relationship might have prevented the breakthrough by Kurita’s Center Force, obviating the need for Taffy 3’s sacrifice. However, the Joint Chiefs had maintained two separate commands in the Pacific for political, parochial, and personality-based reasons.³⁴ Regardless, Halsey’s 3rd Fleet remained outside MacArthur’s command yet had significant responsibilities in the Leyte operation. Today’s joint force commanders will again face the challenges of designing command and control structures, managing competing priorities and personalities, and coordinating necessary support from forces outside their authority. This will be the case given the complexities of modern conflict and the necessary multidomain support provided by U.S. military commands for cyber, space, special operations, transportation, and ally and partner forces. So if unity of command is not a given—as was the case in King II—what then?

The key elements are integrated planning and clear communication. When the Joint Chiefs authorized the Leyte operation, they directed MacArthur and Nimitz to “arrange necessary coordination.” Halsey supported the invasion, executing extensive preparatory airstrikes and sinking the Musashi as it steamed toward Leyte. However, Halsey also had free rein within his orders to pursue Ozawa’s carriers when the opportunity presented itself. Moreover, even though Halsey’s fleet succeeded in sinking Japan’s last four aircraft carriers that day, history largely views his all-in pursuit of Ozawa as an error. MacArthur and other U.S. commanders at the time did as well. Perhaps this could have been avoided, and Halsey might have sent a formidable detachment to intercept Kurita’s Center Force, had the commanders and their staffs had the chance to do more integrated planning and wargaming. Extensive integrated planning is necessary to set clear expectations for supported and supporting commanders and to develop command relationships that enable successful communication and adaptation in combat. In the absence of such preparation, simple direct communication between supporting and supported commanders might have kept Taffy 3 from choosing between heroics and American defeat.

Second, the case study reminds us that timely, high-quality intelligence is vital to effective movement and maneuver. Recall that Halsey’s air patrols in September 1944 discovered Japanese airpower to be much weaker than expected in the southern Philippines. These reconnaissance-in-force missions enabled U.S. forces to bypass Mindanao and move directly on Leyte, accelerating the timeline of the Pacific war by 2 months. Additionally, intelligence from guerrilla forces enabled friendly ground forces to maneuver effectively following the October 20 amphibious landings. The inverse also proved true: movement and maneuver were far more difficult without good, timely intelligence. For instance, Admiral Kurita’s lack of airborne reconnaissance was one of the factors that led him to overestimate the force he faced, contributing to his decision to break off his attack on the morning of October 25 instead of pressing his advantage.

Third, successful movement and maneuver required concerted actions in all three major domains of the time: land, sea, and air. In a maritime theater, the U.S. Navy had to move all the land forces and most of the air forces to the fight. Once within range of the enemy, aerial and naval maneuvers and fires enabled successful land operations at Leyte on an accelerated timeline. On the Japanese side, Admiral Kurita had a large surface naval force, including the largest battleships. However, he lost a capital ship without adequate air support while his fleet was still moving to contact. Later, continued weakness in the air subjected Kurita to endless aerial harassment from a relatively small fighter/bomber force flying from the Taffy units’ escort carriers off Samar. Moreover, bold action in one domain can set the conditions for decisive events in another, as was the case at Leyte. The most significant strategic outcome of the amphibious landing at Leyte was the decisive naval battle forced by the landings, in which the U.S. Navy defeated the remaining combat power of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Finally, the rush of forces into the Leyte fight—complicated command relationships notwithstanding—foreshadowed future joint and coalition operations up to the present day. As we find ourselves in another era of strategic competition and Great Power adversaries, the joint force will require combatant commands and subunified commands to quickly assess, decide, and act to move assets into the fight at the speed of relevance. The joint force will need all sorts of units to move and maneuver in all domains to surge capability and execute “pulse operations,” creating windows of opportunity for further exploitation.³⁵ Future joint force commanders must cultivate the skillsets and the strategic mindset for joint movement and maneuver to effectively synchronize “the application of joint force strength to generate or exploit our advantages over an adversary.”³⁶ If that sounds like a daunting challenge, it should—but the joint force can take heart from studying multidomain operations in the Pacific theater in World War II. We have done this sort of thing before. JFQ

Notes

¹ Mark A. Milley, “Strategic Inflection Point: The Most Historically Significant and Fundamental Change in the Character of War Is Happening Now—While the Future Is Clouded in Mist and Uncertainty,” Joint Force Quarterly 110 (3rd Quarter 2023), 8–9, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-110/jfq-110_6-15_Milley.pdf. 

² Joint Publication (JP) 3-0, Joint Campaigns and Operations (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, June 2022), III-37. 

³ Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 67. 

⁴ Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 68. 

⁵ Edwin P. Hoyt, To the Marianas: War in the Central Pacific 1944 (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1980), ix–x. 

⁶ James B. Wood, Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007), 11, 13. 

⁷ Philip S. Meilinger, “Unity of Command in the Pacific During World War II,” in Philip S. Meilinger, Thoughts on War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020), 159–66. This chapter was first published as “Unity of Command in the Pacific During World War II,” Joint Force Quarterly 56 (1st Quarter 2010), 152–6, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-56/jfq-56_152-156_Meilinger.pdf. 

⁸ Jobie S. Turner, “Guadalcanal August 1942–February 1943: Alpha and Omega of Airpower,” Strategy Bridge, February 9, 2017, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/2/9/guadalcanal-august-1942-february-1943-alpha-and-omega-of-airpower. 

⁹ Douglas MacArthur, Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1, The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1994), 196. 

¹⁰ Douglas MacArthur, Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 2, Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, part I (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1994), 306–8, https://www.history.army.mil/html/books/013/13-1/index.html. 

¹¹ Douglas MacArthur, message to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 15, 1944, MacArthur Memorial Archives and Library, Norfolk, VA. 

¹² Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, vol. II, part I, 306–8. 

¹³ Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944–1945 (New York: Norton, 2020), 191. 

¹⁴ Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, vol. II, part I, 310–40. 

¹⁵ Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, vol. II, part I, 310–40. 

¹⁶ Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 12, Leyte, June 1944–January 1945 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1958), 55–60. 

¹⁷ The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific, vol. I, 165–75. 

¹⁸ Toll, Twilight of the Gods, 122. 

¹⁹ MacArthur’s message to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

²⁰ The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Message to General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz Authorizing the Leyte Operation, September 15, 1944, MacArthur Memorial Archives and Library, Norfolk, VA. 

²¹ General Headquarters–Southwest Pacific Area (GHQ-SWPA), Operations Instructions No. 70, September 21, 1944, MacArthur Memorial Archives and Library, Norfolk, VA, 1. 

²² James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (New York: Bantam Books, 2004). 

²³ Hornfischer. 

²⁴ Toll, Twilight of the Gods, 188–9. 

²⁵ Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, 118. 

²⁶ Toll, Twilight of the Gods, 188–9. 

²⁷ Toll, Twilight of the Gods, 204–5, 207–28. 

²⁸ GHQ-SWPA, Operations Instructions No. 70, 4. 

²⁹ In fact, the guerrillas played this vital role throughout the liberation of the Philippines, serving as invaluable spies, scouts, and guides for U.S. forces, accelerating the pace of U.S. operations, and likely saving thousands of American and Filipino lives. See Christopher Capozzola, Bound by War (New York: Basic Books, 2020), 179; Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random House, 1989), 310; and Peter T. Sinclair II, Men of Destiny: The American and Filipino Guerrillas During the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines (Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, 2012), 56, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA558187.pdf. 

³⁰ Hornfischer masterfully tells the full story of Taffy 3 in The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. 

³¹ Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, 318–9, 420; Toll, Twilight of the Gods, 287, 297; Milan Vego, The Battle for Leyte, 1944: Allied and Japanese Plans, Preparations, and Execution (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 270. 

³² JP 3-0, III-39. 

³³ Toll, Twilight of the Gods, 292–3. 

³⁴ Meilinger, “Unity of Command in the Pacific,” 160, 162–3, 165–6. 

³⁵ Milley, “Strategic Inflection Point,” 12. 

³⁶ Milley.