Naomasa298

I had never heard of this man until today, but my brief reading about him suggests that he should take most, if not all, of the credit for the early success of Allied resistance to the Japanese in the Pacific theatre during 1942 and the defence of Australia. MacArthur's biographer William Manchester states that he was responsible for invigorating MacArthur himself.

As he was the senior air officer under MacArthur, I really should have heard his name before - is he a well known officer and is my knowledge just deficient? I'll admit I don't know much about the Pacific theatre outside the naval campaigns and the battle of Singapore.

Can someone please tell me more about Kenney?

HammockHank

Kenney was probably one of the ablest commanders of the war. An innovator he is credited with coming up with the idea of arming B-25's mitchells with extra .50 cal MG for use against transports and for AA suppression. He is also credited with a 100 lb white phosphorus bomb called the "kenney Cocktail" used as bunker busters much like the later napalm bombs. He is also erroneously credited with the development of skip bombing which was used in the anti-shipping role in the SWP.

What I like about Kenney is that he immediately put MacArthur's CoStaff General Sutherland in his place when he arrived in the SWP theater to take over for the ineffectual general Brett. In his first day of duty Sutherland tried to tell Kenney how to run the Far East Air Force and Kenney got a piece of paper, drew a large circle on the paper and then a small dot in the middle of the circle. Kenney then told Sutherland that what kenney knew about flying was the large circle and what Sutherland knew about flying was the dot. Hehe....

IMO, kenney was very impressive as a commander of the Far East Air Force. he was commander of the 5th AF that concentrated on offensive action; the Royal Australina Air Force in charge of defending Australia; 13th Air Force in the support role; US 3rd and 7th carrier based fleets; 7th Fleet B-29's of the 20th AF and later in the war RAAF in offensive operations.

kenney was known to exxagerate a bit in making claims of destroyed and damaged japanese targets but that's more to do with trusting too much the claims made by pilots. other than this minor deficiency Kenney should be up there with the LeMay's, pete Quesada's, Doolittles, Eaker of American aviation during WWII.

Spartacuss

Kenney was remarkable. The way he used his B-25's and other medium bombers was brilliant. Aside from the extra fixed mounted .50's, he thought the locally modified Mitchells with the forward firing 75mm howitzer rocked, though this weapon was hell on the airframe. He was one of the few army air officers that saw the value of combined service air operations, and had little time for the petty turf war attitudes that seemed to be deeply engrained in the majority of his peers.

Nice to see someone besides me recognizes Quesada, too.

Lucius

I read his memoir.

MacArthur was very much an officer of the "old school." Kenney wasted no time talking about what air power could really do - he just did it.