Who was the the supreme commander of allied forces in the pacific during ww2?

Answer 1

There was no single one, because there were three Theaters of War in "the Pacific" fighting the Japanese. These were the Central Pacific Theater of Operations, the Southwest Pacific Theater, and the China-Burma-India Theater. Each had its own commander, who took his orders from the Combined Chiefs of Staff (which was the American Chiefs of Staff and the British Chiefs of Staff - a "Chief of Staff" being the head of a branch of the service). The commander of the Central Pacific was Admiral Chester Nimitz of the US Navy, and the forces in his area were mostly the US Navy and its Marine Corps (the Marines created six divisions for WWII, all infantry, and all served in the Pacific), and some US Army troops (altogether there were about fifteen US Army divisions in the Pacific, divided between the Central and Southwest Theaters). Early campaigns in the Pacific (Guadalcanal, others in the Solomon Islands, Tarawa) usually involved one division at a time, and usually the division commander doubled as overall ground commander. (Guadalcanal was started by Marines, and finished by the US Army under General Alexander "Sandy" Patch, who went on to command the US 7th Army in France and Germany, making him one of the few officers to see action in both Europe and the Pacific). By the summer of 1944 entire corps of two or three divisions were involved, so there was a corps commander. Marines called their corps "Amphibious Corps" while the Army called theirs "corps", just as they did everywhere in the world. (In this usage a "corps" means two or more divisions, not to be confused with the Marine Corps, which is the naval landing force of the US Navy). Marine General Holland M. ("Howlin' Mad") Smith commanded the V Amphibious Corps at Guam and then the Fleet Marine Force at Iwo Jima.

The Southwest Pacific Theater was carved out for MacArthur, after he escaped (under orders) from the Philippines. The same consideration that led to his being ordered out of the Philippines also led to the creation of a Theater just for him. MacArthur was a former Chief of Staff of the US Army (1931-35) and it would be too much of a Propaganda coup to allow him to become a Japanese POW, and it would not do for him to have less than a theater command and be taking orders from officers he had outranked for decades. MacArthur had under his command the US 6th Army (General Walter Kreuger) and the US 8th Army (General Robert L. Eichelburger), some navy units and sometimes Marines, when he could borrow some. Both those field armies fought in the Philippines. The only other place in the Pacific large enough to deploy an entire field army was Okinawa, where the US 10th Army (which had both Army and Marine divisions) fought. The 10th Army was under Army General Simon B. Buckner (famous at that time as the son of the Confederate general who surrendered Fort Donelson to his old friend Ulysses Grant, which was the incident where Grant got his "Unconditional Surrender" nickname). Buckner became one of the two highest ranking American officers killed during the war (along with General Leslie McNair), and the only one killed by the enemy, killed by enemy artillery at Okinawa.

The China-Burma-India Theater was supposedly under the command of the Chinese "generalissimo", the warlord Chiang Kai Shek, of the Nationalists. The American General Joseph E. "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell was his deputy, but despised Chiang Kai Shek, whom Stillwell called "Peanut", or "Cash My Check". Stillwell continued in command of ground forces, in the complicated command structure of that Theater, but was replaced as Deputy by a very capable US Army General, Albert Wedemeyer, who was one of the US Army's foremost experts on the German Wehrmacht, having even studied at the German General Staff College - so of course, he was sent to China. A very capable British General in the Theater was William Slim, whom no one has ever heard of today.

Answer 2

For political reasons (primarily due to inter-service rivalry and some very strong personalities invoved), there was no single supreme commander of allied forces in the Pacific Theater. Early on (1939-1941), various regional commanders operated relatively independently - generally, the highest ranking officer in the region assumed command of all Allied efforts within easy communication with that command. Later, with the US involvement, regional commands were subsumed into two American-designated sub-Theaters, with American officers acting as supreme commander of those areas.

General Douglas MacArthur was the commander for the South West Pacific Area, which was primarily seen as an "Army" responsibility. This area encompassed Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, the Malaysian Archipelago (modern Indonesia/Malaysia/Borneo), the Philippines, and nominally parts of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, etc.), though the latter generally operated without MacArther's oversight.

Admiral Chester Nimitz was supreme commander of the Pacific Ocean Area, which entailed the entire rest of the Pacific, primarily the Polynesian island chains stretching from New Guinea to Hawaii.

Frankly, the arrangement was sub-optimal, as both command competed for very scarce resources (as the European Theater had priority over the Pacific Theater for practically everything), but it was a necessary political compromise.

Answer 3

There were three "theaters" to the war in the vast Pacific Ocean and East Asia area against Japan: the Central Pacific Theater of Operations, the Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations, and the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. For the entire time this scheme was in use the Central Pacific was commanded by US Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who also commanded the US Pacific Fleet. Nimitz had his headquarters in Hawaii, at Pearl Harbor. The Southwest Pacific was something of an anomaly, and probably would not have been separated from the Central Pacific except for the presence in Australia of American General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur had been ordered to leave the Philippines when it became clear that the Japanese could not be stopped from overrunning the Islands, and that there was no means available to send sufficient forces to MacArthur to prevent this in early 1942. MacArthur had been the commanding general, called the "Chief of Staff", of the US Army for four years, from 1931-35 (twice as long as anyone usually held this position). It would never do for him to become a prisoner of war. So he was ordered to escape to Australia, and was given the Medal of Honor, mostly as a morale building and publicity move as opposed to anything particularly outstanding he did in the Philippines. And there he was, in Australia, clamoring for troops with which to fulfill his promise to the Filipinos: "I shall return". For a figure of such enormous prestige nothing less than a theater would do, so the Southwest Pacific Theater was created for him. MacArthur made his HQ in Australia for some months and eventually moved to a more forward HQ on a captured island. MacArthur commanded all Allied forces in this Theater, including the Sixth and Eighth US Armies, the Fifth US Air Force, various Navy units from time to time, and Australian, New Zealand and Dutch force as well. The China-Burma-India command went to a British officer, for most of the war Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was the uncle of the current Queen of England, and who was murdered by the IRA when they blew up his yacht in 1979. In theory all Theater Commanders were responsible directly to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, which was the heads of the US Army and Navy ("the Joint Chiefs of Staff") AND their British counterparts - thus, the COMBINED Chiefs of Staff. However the Central Pacific was largely the province of the US Navy, along with the Marine Corps (which is part of the Navy) plus a few Army divisions and Air Force units, and only very late in the war were there any British ships operating in this Theater, as part of the Fleet under US command. So the Central Pacific was more under the direct control of the US Navy Department and the US Joint Chiefs and the President.

Answer 4

General Douglas MacArthur.