Customer Reviews

MacArthur's Victory: The War in New Guinea, 1943-1944

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Gailey comes close but just does not capture the struggle in New Guinea completely. Give the author credit for the coverage of the battles around Lae, Salamaua, Wau, and Finschhafen. Outside of official histories, the battles of that pivotal stage of action in the South West Pacific have gone largely unrecorded. Gailey introduces the reader to the Japanese chain of command, providing rare explanations of Japanese command decisions.

However aside from that coverage, I found the book lacking depth. We are given a little more than the "box score" of the major battles, but much less than the play by play description. For example the Marine operations on Cape Gloucester, while presented, do not provide any insight into the flow of that battle. Instead "Chesty" Puller's "Pig Sticking" is briefly discussed.

We are introduced to generals and other leaders, without any discussion of their background or personality. I found this troublesome as the author adopted the tried and refuted mantra - MacArthur could not get along with anyone - regarding inter-service and coalition high command interactions. Why didn't MacArthur get along with Blamey? For that matter what personality traits led MacArthur to distrust General Brett but bond with General Kenney? The same can be asked for Admirals Carpenter and Kinkaid.

The book abruptly ends with the occupation of Noemfoor and Sansapor-Mar, with no coverage of the action at Morotai, which in the strategic sense closed off Japanese access to New Guinea. Conclusions drawn were well thought out, but not breaking any new ground. Stephen Taaffe comes closer in his coverage of the same campaign - MacAurthur's Jungle War.

Lastly, for any publishers reading this, please, if you present a volume of military history, include as many maps as possible. And more to the point, if the writer mentions a location or place name prominently in the dialog, do us the favor of pinpointing such on the map!

Gailey provides a solid narrative on the 1943-44 campaign in New Guinea. He credits MacArthur for his operational abilities while not overlooking or excusing away his faults: occasional overly-optimistic planning, poor use of intelligence, rocky relations with the US Navy, distrust of our Australian allies, and certain decisions relating to the removal of subordinates. The book does not overlook the contributions of the Australians and points out some of the logistical and political limits that affected the Aussies. The contributions of the US Navy and US Army Air Forces are considered, as well as the medical conditions that the Allied forces faced. Decisions by Japanese commanders are discussed and considered, something not all "popular" histories do well.
The book is primarily drawn from secondary sources, though most of those are official and unit histories, but the source notes do credit some interviews with participants and archival materials.
On the downside, the book suffers from: inconsistent mapping, as some operations get a map while others do not; a lack of an order of battle; and some of the sloppiest copy-editing I've seen from a major publisher--inconsistent capitalization (half the time it is "thirteenth Air Force", the other half "Thirteenth Air Force"), inconsistent proper names (the 1st Infantry Regiment is identified in three location with two pages as the "1st Regiment" [inaccurate], "1st Infantry" [better] and "1st RCT" [best-but nowhere is the significance of RCT as "regimental combat team" explained]), and constant misspelling of Japanese names. And would it kill an editor to insist on an explanation of the seemingly-odd numbering system of Australian units e.g. why one unit is the 2/24th and the other the 56th/57th? On balance, these are irritants, and do not substantially detract from the book's quality.
Overall, strongly recommended for any collection with an interest in the Second World War.

This book continues where author Gailey's "MacArthur Strikes Back - Decision at Buna New Guinea 1942-1943" leaves off and covers the remainder of the New Guinea campaign during 1943 through most of 1944. There is little new in Gailey's works, but the coverage is relatively good and thorough at the regimental level and above. I recommend it be read in conjunction with Holzimmer's "General Walter Krueger" for a view from Krueger's standpoint and Morison's "Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier" for a treatise from the Navy's side.

The book serves best an an introduction to the campaign since it is written from a rather high level. Surprisingly, the Japanese command problems are present in as much detail as the American, and the Japanese lack of good intelligence versus the American sources through Ultra are in sharp contrast to each other. Sometimes one wonders how well Krueger and MacArthur would have done without Ultra or how well the Japanese would have done with almost any intelligence at all.

General Kenney is given well-deserved kudos by the author, and in many respects his advice on strategy determined the campaign. MacArthur consistently took the most aggressive strategy possible, particularly in the early days when he possessed little naval or air support. His problem was that he was building to a liberation of the Philippines, something considered in naval circles to be unnecessary. History has not yet decided this issue as the central Pacific campaign was undoubtedly decisive, but not liberating the Philippines might have had many undesirable political consequences for the US.

Interestingly, the first half of the New Guinea campaign was fought by Australians and the last half by Americans. The command problems this presented are mentioned, but the author fails to mention the American attitudes toward Allied mixed commands was formed by seeing the disaster of the ABDA command in the Southwest Pacific.

Unfortunately for the 750,000 men who were there, the entire New Guinea campaign after the securing of Port Morseby was almost superfluous. Certainly it has been largely ignored by historians concentrating on the Army's campaigns in Europe and the Marines in the Central Pacific. The Army's role on Saipan has been largely discounted due to the Smith vs Smith controversy, and only Okinawa has received much coverage, possibly due to the death there of Ernie Pyle and the Navy's losses from the Kamikaze attacks. One almost senses the author's agreement with this in that he fails to go down to the unit level except for a very few ancedotes. The fighting man is pretty well ignored in this book, even when he is attacking an island without numerical superiority and with little naval assistance. He was forced to suffer and die while higher-ups were pulling or conserving manpower for future operations to maintain a schedule.

In spite of the mistakes and flaws in the campaign, MacArthur achieved the greatest victory in World War II (from the Allied side) with the fewest casualties on New Guinea -- an achievement rarely mentioned by historians and writers focusing on Patton, Truscott, Clark, etc. And this was accomplished with almost the lowest priority of any theater (the CBI was lower) for manpower, supplies and support. MacArthur's men improvised, and the construction battalions accomplished almost unbelievable feats under very adverse conditions.

The book is in need of better proof-reading (Saidor is on the north side of the Huon Peninsula, not on the south), and the maps are virtually worthless. I found myself continually referring back to the few maps to see where a village or terrain feature was located only to find it not on the maps. I understand that the author normally has to pay someone to produce the maps, but it would be nice if someone would cough up the money once in a while. Almost in every review I write on military campaigns I criticize the lack or usefulness of the maps. Unfortunately, this book is no exception.

In short, this is a moderately good book lacking depth. Another 600 pages would have been nice, and then perhaps one could call the coverage definitive. Frankly, this doesn't do it at any level, so although I recommend the book, I'm still looking for one with adequate coverage on this campaign.

My father spent 1944 in New Guinea. He talked very little about the war and his time in the Pacific while he lived (he died in 2000). When I recently found some of his papers from that era my curiosity was piqued. I selected MacArthur's Victory in hopes of learning something about what the Army's experiences, and my father's with the 542nd Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment, during the War in New Guinea might have been like.

While I learned a great deal from Gailey's account of the New Guinea Campaign, I found the book lacking in some basics. The author, or his editor, assumed the reader would have a greater knowledge of almost everything related to both the military and to the geography of the area. The maps were almost worthless as many locations cited in the text were not on them. The addition of all those cited along with some notes and possibly arrows depicting operations would have made the maps much more valuable. The list of abbreviations was helpful as far as it went. Unfortunately, it was far from complete. While I have read many books on WWII, I am not a military historian. It would have helped me if there had been a photograph or at least a description associated with some of the abbreviations. (For instance, I had no frame of reference to visualize the difference between a LCP (Landing Craft Personnel) and a LCI (Landing Craft Infantry)). A simple timeline would have helped a great deal as well. The author's practice of writing each chapter about a different operation from start to finish without adequately placing it in context with other operations was frustrating. It was very hard to remember if he was in 1942 or 1944. Had I not been constantly looking for references that would give me clues to my father's possible location, I might have lost interest and put the book aside.

The information from Japanese Military resources added a depth to the writing that I found very informative. Yet I had trouble keeping track of which side was being described in many passages.

Before I finished, I had spent more time searching the internet and atlases than I did reading the book. (And the Australian military unit numbering system is still a mystery to me.)

When I finally reached the last page MacArthur's Victory had not yielded much that would enlighten me regarding my father's experiences during WWII. While Gainey gives a good overview of battles and the units involved, I'm left without an understanding of what it was like to have been there. Some firsthand accounts would have made the book much more interesting and useful to my quest.

In spite of its shortcomings, MacArthur's Victory is a book I'm glad I added to my library.

MacArthur's Victory: The War in New Guinea, 1943-1944