This is one of those little things that has always intrigued me. As we seem to have a couple of folk hereabouts well read on the Pacific War I thought I might get you to put on your thinking caps a bit & consider the following:

Lets imagine for a moment that after Pearl is hit MacArthur actually behaves like the great General history would tell us he is. Lets imagine that he lets Brereton launch the B-17 strike on Formosa.

From what I have read there was a good chance to catch a much of the Japanese attack force on the ground, fuelled up & fully loaded for attack.

Had this attack taken place would it have made any significant difference to the course of the Pacific War? Could America have evened the odds in the air enough that it would have significantly slowed the invasion of the Philippines? (esp. by hitting the invasion fleet). Would Japanese advances into the NEI & toward PNG & the Solomons have been slowed much? Might this have encouraged the US government into sending reinforcements to the Philippines?

OR, would this just be seen as a gallant but doomed attempt to slow an enemy who had a strategic advantage too large to be overcome in the short term?

I don't think 35 B-17's are going to change the outcome...especially if the Japanese are fog-bound.  If that means their airfields are covered in fog, then the B-17's don't hit them....It was not until 1943/44 that Radar bombing could allow for night or inclement weather bombing.  The American aircraft would have just salvoed their weapons on mostly empty fields, only an opinion but the USAAF wasn't a precision instrument in 1941.  It really wasn't one in 1945, either truth to tell.

 

 

It'd never happen with a professional career officer but what the hell, it would have been a cool footnote in history.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky