Posted on 12/06/2015 2:08:37 PM PST by WhiskeyX
1. Washington knew it was coming, and avoided effectively warning the local commanders.
2. Former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt held to conventional naval wisdom that the battleships could survive an air attack at Pearl, but arranged for the lightly armored carriers to be moved to locations of safety.
3. The Japanese cut and ran rather than finishing the job with a third wave.
4. At least 6 American planes were downed by friendly fire, including one pilot who had shot down a Japanese plane.
5. Commanders at Hawaii were made scapegoats for doing the same things that earned MacArthur hero status.
Nor can I.
Nor can I.
Yes most of the staff were released, but apparently not the Marine Detail.
Wasn’t Manila also hit? Dec 8, on the other side of the international date line.
The USS Lurline copied Japanese text that indicated an attack was imminent.
We knew an attack was imminent on 9/11, but didn't know exactly where. The same can be said for December 7th, 1941.
"If Pease ever submitted a report on the Lurline's locating Japanese warships north of Hawaii by RDF, it has disappeared. So has the Lurline's original radio log. On December 10, the liner returned to San Francisco and Lieutenant Commander Preston Allen boarded the ship and confiscated the radio log. Allen, a member of the Twelfth Naval District intelligence unit, took the log containing the details of Grogan's interceptions to his District office. It has never been seen since. Grogan's account, quoted in this book [Day of Deceit] is based on a reconstruction of the missing log that he prepared for Matson Lines after Allen took possession of the log." http://www.pearlharboronline.com/index.htm
The Roosevelt Administration and the Churchill Government were fully aware that Japan had already launched expeditionary forces to attack British Singapore and British Hong Kong in the opening Japanese attacks of what the Japanese describe as the Pacific War. American air patrols monitoring the Japanese air bases on Formosa were attempting to determine whether or not any additional expeditionary forces were underway to the Philippines. They were also attempting to get confirmation or denial that the Japanese carrier strike task forces were still anchored in the Japanese Inland Sea. The Japanese radio traffic deception and the failures in ABD (American, British, Dutch) reconnaissance efforts resulted in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor remaining undiscovered.
Unfortunately, the Army and Navy commanders in the Department of Hawaii failed to interpret and respond appropriately to the standing war warning messages issued the preceding weeks. As a consequence, the Hawaiian forces were ill prepared to receive the Japanese naval air attacks.
It is also seldom appreciated the extent to which the Japanese attack, damaging as it was in human life and in combat aircraft, failed to inflict sufficient damage to the naval warships and facilities in Pearl Harbor necessary to seriously cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The so-called Old Battleships of WWI Dreadnought vintage though modernized were too slow and too poorly armed with anti-aircraft gunnery to serve as escorts to the fast fleet aircraft carrier task forces used throughout WWII. Those Old Battleships who were not at Pearl Harbor were limited in use to serving as cargo and troopship convoy escorts for the most part in the first two years of the war. Their use in offensive operations in those early months was limited to such amphibious task force bombardment support as the invasions of Attu and Kiska islands in Alaska and Operation Torch in the North African operations. Their principal value was in the later part of the war in their role as amphibious task force bombardment support with improved anti-aircraft batteries.
The Colorado class was post WWI (West Virginia, Maryland) While the California was post WWI, it was of the WWI era Tennessee class. Pennsylvania was of the pre-WWI Pennsylvania class. Nevada was pre-WWI Nevada class.
Pre-Washington Treaty might be more precise for all of the BBs at Pearl.
The first Post-treaty BB was the North Carolina, and she wasn't ready for action until mid-1942.
Having to hunt for scattered moving ships would have chewed up fuel and reduced accuracy significantly. Given the loss of life from theArizona alone, I think scattering would have been better.
Yes, and I believe two British battleships were also sunk with the loss of many men including Admiral Tom Phillips.
The two ships were the Prince of Wales and Repulse.
“Someone in Pearl suspected enough to want to send the whole fleet out to sea, and someone in Washington knew enough to order the Battleships kept in. This was from my Grandfather, who was stationed there at the time (on a destroyer, which was out at sea).”
The fleet carrier task forces were absent, because they were engaged in pre-war operations. These operations included ferrying combat aircraft to Wake Island. One of the task forces was engaged in training carrier air units nearby the Hawaiian Islands, and sent the naval carrier aircraft to Pearl Harbor where they unexpectedly ran into the Japanese air attacks.
The battleship divisions happened to be in port because the war warnings during the previous weeks kept them out of port and made it necessary to perform some replenishment, training, inspections for war duty, and other tasks they were unable to accomplish while at sea. The choice of date, day of the week, and all BATDIV at the same time was questionable. The choice was apparently made in the wrongful assumption that Pearl Harbor was not a feasible target of attack by the Japanese fleet. A part of this assumption was the belief the Japanese navy had not yet developed their own underway refueling capability to compensate for the fleet escorts having insufficient range to reach the Hawaiian Islands. The Japanese navy formerly did not have such an underway refueling capability, but they developed the capability specifically to prepare for the attack upon Pearl Harbor.
***The two ships were the Prince of Wales and Repulse.***
Weren’t these two ships in the flotilla that bottled up the GRAF SPEE in South America?
According to my grandfather, the destroyers were told to scatter to no place in particular. GIven that battleships are equipped to spend months at sea at a time, it seems quite a coincidence that they all had to be called in at once. I think the inspections, replenishment, etc., would be accomplished much more efficiently if done one or two ships at a time. If all were called in at once, just in time for the Japanese to hit them, it seems to be more than “questionable.” It seems Obamaworthy.
I think the attack on the Philippines came 8 hours later, and MacArthur still had left his airplanes as sitting ducks. He was treated as a war hero but the two commanders at Pearl Harbor were made scapegoats. Oliver North’s “War Stories” last night had a segment about them and the efforts of the grandson of one of the two to get his grandfather exonerated.
“If all were called in at once, just in time for the Japanese to hit them, it seems to be more than “questionable.†“
If you look at the history of the pre-war Japanese intelligence activities in Hawaii, you’ll find the Japanese were relying upon the habit of the Pacific Fleet to bring much of the fleet into port on Sundays. Some of the Pearl Harbor investigations noted the problem faced by the commanders to practice economy in a period of very limited U.S. Government military budgets while at the same time responding to the weeks old war warnings. Bringing the fleet into port was a part of the cost cutting measures. The major warships consumed massive quantities of expensive bunker fuel while at sea. The U.S. Government had not yet adopted the wartime profligacy of vastly increased wartime budget appropriations.
Exactly correct.
The Prince of Wales was in the hunt for the Bismark. It was damaged in the same action in which the Hood exploded.
Repulse looked for the Bismark, but, had to withdraw due to low fuel.
Exeter. Ajax and Achilles were fighting Graf Spee.
Going back to the Bismark, it’s escort, the Prinz Eugen, survived the war, was captured by the Brits, given to the Americans (thus becoming the USS Prinz Eugen) and was taken to Bikini Atoll.
It was in TWO nuke tests at Bikini, survived and taken to Kwajalein where it turned turtle and is still sticking up out of the lagoon.
I hope to sail our sailboat there one day and take photos of it.
Additionally, realizing that the battleship commanders and fleet commander were black-shoe Navy .. line-of-battle believers .. they would have kept the fleet tightly together, figuring that they were going to have a reprise of Jutland.
Finally, these old battleships were not very light on their feet, plodding old behemoths that would have had less of a chance than Prince of Wales or Repulse had off Singapore. With the number of planes that had been sent out by the Japanese, the slow speed of the battleships, and the existing line-of-battle beliefs of the commanders at Pearl Harbor, it would have been a slaughter.
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