(06-12-2014 01:22 PM)UofM_Tiger Wrote:  the island hopping campaign was the brain child of Nimitz, not MacArthur. MacArthur had the army slogging through the rain forest on New Guinea to provide a base for his return.

Actually, the US Navy first developed the island hopping strategy at the turn of the 20th century due to a series of events caused by Japan that threatened U.S interests in the western Pacific:

Quote:The U.S. Navy began to draft, as early as 1897, war plans against Japan, which were eventually code-named "War Plan Orange. " The war plan of 1911, which was drafted under Rear Admiral Raymond P. Rodgers, included an island-hopping strategy for approaching Japan.

Quote: General Douglas MacArthur greatly supported this strategy in his effort to regain the Philippines. This strategy began to be implemented in late 1943 in Operation Cartwheel. While General Douglas MacArthur claimed to have invented the strategy, it initially came out of the Navy.

https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/fr...-to-tokyo/

My point was that regardless of who "invented or first developed" the tactic of island hopping, MacArthur used it effectively in his Pacific Theater strategy as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific.