Philippine battle scenarios and Japanese attrition attacks

Before the First World War, some plans envisaged a quick American arrival and immediate operations that would catch the Japanese fleet at Luzon, perhaps during an evacuation. A more pessimistic scenario had the Japanese main body intercept an American expedition to the southern Philippines after cruisers and torpedo craft had scattered it. The Naval War College's 1911 plan instead established an assumption that Japanese dreadnoughts would avoid their American counterparts unless attrition attacks had already weakened the latter substantially. That presumption also appeared in a 1928 exercise scenario. The closing warning that the enemy always has a vote challenges the expectation that American superiority would compel Japan to follow the anticipated sequence.