It's a bit more complicated...
I agree in total with the rest of your post. However in MacArthurs case, it was a subordinate who put the planes in the air, and circling the base waiting for orders.
The planes were indeed circling, and waiting for orders, which MacArthur never gave. He seems to have frozen with the outbreak of war. When he was told, he reached for his Bible, which is an understandable reaction for religious people, but didn't do much after that, just pacing around his apartment at No. 1 Calle Victoria.
However, things got worse...the radar stations at Iba and other places picked up the incoming Japanese attack force, and the warning messages were sent by teletype and phone. However, the teletype operator at Clark Field went to lunch, and whoever took the phone message there did not pass it on.
So the American planes, short of gas, landed, everyone went to lunch while the mechanics re-armed the planes, and while that was going on, the Japanese arrived and bombed the living hell out of the American air force, wiping it out almost in its entirety. Worse, the AA guns' ammunition was out of date, and the shells fired were duds or could not hit the Japanese planes at their altitude.
So there were a bunch of factors involved, and disaster ensued.
The disaster, by the way, got worse when MacArthur withdrew into Bataan. His Q work was terrible. They left sacks and sacks of rice in Manila, most of it in a stadium. The reefers and deep-freezes at Fort Stotsenburg were jammed with food, but they were left behind. Trucks drove into the peninsula...empty. But hordes of civilians fled the Japanese into Bataan, adding to MacArthur's supply troubles.
Had MacArthur had the plodding but meticulous Gen. Walter Krueger under him in the defense of the Philippines, Bataan would likely have been properly stocked with food for the siege. Instead, MacArthur had to put his troops on half rations immediately. By the time the Japanese attacked the Americans in the final offensive in April 1942, the defending Fil-American forces were starving, sick, and unable to fight. Some of the men were so weak they could not rise from their foxholes.
Supplies as a whole were short: the Americans had to defend Bataan using anti-tank grenades made from Coca-Cola bottles with gasoline poured into them.
The Philippine campaign is truly an epic defense. One realizes how vastly different the US Army that fought in Bataan was from the one that won the war when you read the accounts of American POWs upon liberation in Japan.
First, the Americans parachuted news magazines, movie projectors, and newsreels into the camps, so the POWs could find out how the war was really going. The POWs were baffled by the technology discussed, and the names. Who were Patton, Mitscher, Eisenhower, and Spaatz? What were electronics, escort carriers, and jet aircraft?
When the POWs finally hooked up with the invading American forces, the POWs were baffled. Into Japan (or the Philippines) came these huge guys in green uniforms, wearing big round helmets, driving around in enormous tanks, halftracks, and amphibious vehicles, clutching short carbines and huge tubes they called "bazookas." The invaders arrived on landing craft that were disgorged from immense battleships that bristled with flak guns and radar antennas, surrounding rows and rows of huge (and small) new carriers. Overhead flew American planes (you couldn't miss those distinctive Pratt & Whitney engine sounds) that were unrecognizable: gull-winged F4U Corsairs, fat but maneuverable F6F Hellcats, sleek P-51 Mustangs, and immense silver B-29 Superfortresses.
The nurses liberated in the Philippines first thought the invading Americans were Germans, until a tanker leaned out of his Sherman's hatch and yelled, "Hello, folks!" Then the nurses turned to, helping the doctors with the casualties. The nurses knew their trade, but were baffled when the doctors told them to fetch some "Penicillin."
The POWs had fought their battles in khaki uniforms, wearing soup-bowl helmets, carrying long Springfield rifles, and what few tanks they had were small rivet-hulled M3 Stuarts, armed with 37mm guns. Their ships were battered gunboats from the China Station, and their aircraft were a few P-35s and P-40s held together with masking tape, inferior to the ubiquitous Japanese Zeros. No bombers at all. They were genuinely amazed. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright called the battleship
Missouri the "most startling weapon of war" he had ever seen.
Long story short I have some folks here that swear that the "Hilo Tribune Herald" predicted the attack on Pearl Harbor thus enter the CTs with "It was LIHOP!!!!" This is the only pic I could find of said paper
