Brett shortly afterward learned that Leary had changed his mind about the newer B-17s, and three of the four took off to get MacArthur. One of them had to turn back when it developed engine trouble over the Australian desert; the other two made it to Mindanao just before midnight on Monday (March 16). (These details from Lt. Frank Bostrom, Army Air Corps, who was the senior pilot, and who flew MacA’s airplane.)
An engine supercharger on one of Bostrom1s engines went out en route. He could have made it back without having it repaired, but it would have lowered his weight-carrying ability and caused other problems I don’t really understand. He managed to get it repaired, however, which meant that he and the other B-17 could carry all of the MacArthur party (but none of their luggage).
But then another of Bostrom’s engines acted up during takeoff, and he was really afraid he couldn’t get the airplane off the ground. In the end, though, he managed it. After that, it was a five-hour flight to Darwin-about the same distance as from New Orleans to Boston-and there was violent turbulence en route. Nothing had been done to convert the airplanes from their bombing role. Mrs. MacArthur and the boy had the only "upholstery," a mattress laid on the cabin floor. MacArthur rode in the radio operator’ s seat.
Along with his immediate family, the general brought his staff out with him, none of whom, frankly, I care for- although MacArthur feels they are to a man superb officers. To me they’re more like the dukes who used to surround a king.
As soon as they were able to establish radio contact with Darwin, they were informed that Darwin was under Japanese air attack and that they should divert to Batchelor Field, which is about fifty miles away. I was already there with the two Air Australia DC-3s, when they landed about nine in the morning (Tues., Mar 17 ). A good deal of what follows may well be unimportant-certainly, some of it is petty-but you wanted my opinion of MacArthur, his thinking, and the people around him.
He seemed very disturbed to find on hand to greet him only Brigadier Royce (who had been on the Air Australia plane with me), representing General Brett. For good cause, certainly, he looked exhausted.
I told his aide, a man named Huff, that I was your personal representative, and that I wished to pay my respects to MacArthur and ask him for his evaluation of the situation so that I could pass it on to you. Huff made it plain that MacArthur was entitled to a far more senior Navy officer than a lowly captain. He also felt that I had seriously violated military protocol by not presenting myself to Admiral Rockwell before daring to approach the throne of King Douglas. Rockwell was the former senior Navy officer in the Philippines, and he came in on the second B-17.
Admiral Rockwell was displeased with me, too, and you may hear about that. There was a scene that in other circumstances would have been humorous, during which he kept demanding to know who was my immediate superior, to which I kept answering "Secretary Knox," to which he kept replying, ad infinitum, "You’ re not listening to me. I mean your immediate superior. During all this, he simply refused to look at my letter of authority from you until I answered the simple question of who was my immediate superior.
This little farce came to an end when Mrs. MacArthur recognized me. Not as a Naval officer, but as my wife‘s husband. Apparently, they had met in Manila, and Mrs. MacA. regards Patricia as a friend. Or at least a social peer. She told her husband of my connection with Pacific and Far East, and I was permitted to approach the throne.
I had met MacArthur only briefly once or twice before, and I am sure he did not remember those occasions; but he greeted me warmly and told me he was anxious to learn (these are his words as closely as I can remember them) "details of the buildup in Australia; troop and naval dispositions; and the tentative timetable for the recapture of Luzon. "
I explained to him that there was no buildup; that there were only about 34,000 troops of any description in Australia ; that the only unit of any size was the understrength 1stBrigade of the 6thAustralian Division; and that the strategic problem as I understood it was to attempt to keep the Japanese from taking Australia which might not be possible and that, consequently, nothing whatever had yet been done about attempting to take Luzon back from the Japanese.
His eyes glazed over. He turned to another of his aides, a brigadier general named Sutherland, and said, "Surely he is mistaken." Then he marched off to a small shack where breakfast (baked beans and canned peaches) was served.
Brigadier Royce, who is a nice fellow, followed him into the shack. And later he emerged from it looking dazed. Mrs. MacArthur did not wish to fly anymore, perhaps ever again, and General MacArthur had therefore ordered Royce to immediately form a motorcade to transport the party to the nearest railhead. Royce had informed MacArthur that the nearest railhead was in Alice Springs, about as far away across the desert (1,000 miles or so) as Chicago is from New Orleans, and that, among other things, there were no vehicles available to form a motorcade.
MacArthur’s response was, "You have your orders; put them into execution. "
This apparently impossible situation was resolved by Major Charles H. More-house , an Army doctor who had come out of the Philippines with them. He told Royce that such a trip would probably kill the MacArthur boy, Arthur, who is five or six, and who was ill. Morehouse was feeding him intravenously. Morehouse also said that he could not guarantee whether MacArthur himself would live through a 1,000-mile automobile trip across the desert.
Royce somewhat forcefully suggested to Dr. Morehouse that he make this point emphatically to MacArthur. So Morehouse went into the shack. After several minutes MacArthur came out and announced, "We are prepared to board the aircraft. " It was the royal "we, " Frank.
We got on the airplanes. As the engines were being started, the air-raid sirens went off; several of the Japanese bombers attacking Darwin had broken off their attack and were headed for Batchelor Field. Whether or not they knew the MacArthur party was there, I don’t know.
All the same, we got off safely, and made the trip to Alice Springs without incident. Alice Springs looks like a town in a cowboy movie, and it’s the northern terminus of the Central Australian Railway . . . and it lies a good deal beyond the range of the Japanese Mitsubishi bombers.
Alice Springs, MacArthur announced, was as far as he intended to fly. He could not be moved from this position even after he was told that the next train would not come for six days. And then Ambassador Hurley flew in to tell MacArthur that MacA. had been named Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, Southwest Pacific , by Prime Minister Curtin and President Roosevelt. He also tried to get MacA. to take a plane to Melbourne, but he had no more luck than anybody else.
So a special train was ordered up. We still had the Air Australia DC-3s. So Hurley and most of MacA.‘s staff-except Huff, Sutherland, and Dr. Morehouse, the intimate guardians of the throne-flew off to Melbourne. I was sorely tempted to fly with them, and I might have gone-until General Sutherland imperiously ordered me to do it.
I guess I "m learning the Machiavellian rules of the game : I did not think the Personal Representative of the Secretary of the Navy should place himself under the orders of an Army officer.
‘Patrick Jay Hurley, formerly Secretary of War and then Ambassador to New Zealand.
The train arrived the next morning. It too looked like something from a cowboy movie: a tiny locomotive, two third-class coaches, and a caboose. The tracks there-between Alice Springs and Adelaide, a thousand-odd miles-are three feet between the rails. Should the Japanese invade Australia, this single-track, narrow-gauge railroad, with rolling stock to match, will simply not be adequate to supply, much less to transport, anything close to an infantry division. Which doesn’t matter, I guess: we don’t have an infantry division to transport; and if we did, one division would obviously not be adequate to repel a Japanese invasion.