This is the first movie I can recall where they mentioned Japan’s failure to destroy our oil reserves on Hawaii as being a major issue. Had they done so it would have given them an additional year to further expand and consolidate their control in the Pacific and directly threaten our West Coast and the Panama Canal before we could redeploy resources from the East Coast. The domino effect would have jeopardized our support for England and delayed a second front with the potential to force Stalin to make another deal with Hitler. So this failure was huge.
That’s really interesting as it never gets mentioned. I had read the Japanese designed specific bombs for the oil tanks. Always wondered what type of collateral damage would have occurred when if those yanks went up.
They were supposed to take out the US Navy repair yard and sub pen but didn’t. Huge mistake.
I think that at the end of the day, the intent of the Japanese was to keep the scope of the attack limited to a “hard” target (a military installation). (That would be installations if one counts the attack on the B-17s on the airfield in the Philippines.)
The fuel tanks at Pearl Harbor had been buried uphill from the harbor.
There was some recent excavation near Pearl Harbor where they dug into the fuel lines and were surprised.