6. Blueprint for Defeat

Chapter Six

BLUEPRINT FOR DEFEAT

THE FLEET suffered a crushing disaster on December 7, 1941, but the Japanese attack produced one unexpectedly advantageous result. With eight battleships knocked out, the fleet was forced to rely on carriers and fast cruisers. The change which the battleship admirals had rejected nine years before after Adm. Yarnell’s simulated carrier attack on Oahu was thrust upon them by circumstances. At the time, however, few high officers viewed the matter in this light. In fact, a kind of paralysis seized the high command, and with the exception of a carrier raid by Adm. Halsey’s task force in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands on January 31, 1942, the Pacific fleet saw almost no action for many months to come.

The attack on Pearl Harbor had demonstrated many flagrant errors in the traditional concepts held by the Army and Navy. Pearl Harbor in itself was valuable only as an advance fleet and air base from which American forces could sally forth to seek out an enemy and, as a collateral effect, protect the security of the mainland. Lying 2,091 miles west of San Francisco and 3,397 miles from Yokosuka naval base at Yokohama, it was strategically placed to serve as a spring-board against Japan. Aside from the thesis of President Roosevelt and the State Department that the fleet at Pearl Harbor served as a “deterrent” to the Japanese, the fleet was at Hawaii for no other reason than to be able to take the offensive immediately war was declared and to advance against the Japanese fleet and Japanese outposts in the Pacific.

It was necessary, of course, to prevent the Hawaiian Islands from falling into the hands of the enemy and especially to safeguard the fleet while it was in harbor. The division of responsibilities in achieving these purposes as outlined under the joint Army-Navy coastal frontier defense plan, which was approved April 11, 1941, was as follows:

A. Joint Task—To hold Oahu as a main outlying naval base, and to protect shipping in the coastal zone.

B. Army Task—To hold Oahu against attacks by sea, land, and air forces, against hostile sympathizers, and to support the naval forces.

C. Navy Task—To control the coastal zone and to control and protect shipping therein, and to support the Army forces.¹

The protection of the base and of the fleet was primarily the duty of the Army, and for this purpose Oahu was garrisoned on December 7 by 40,469 men and 2,490 officers.² The Army operated the coast defense guns, all anti-aircraft batteries except those on naval ships, most of the pursuit aircraft on the island, an inshore air patrol extending 20 miles to sea, and the aircraft warning service. To the Navy was assigned distance reconnaissance extending from 200 to 600 miles to sea.³

The very fact that the fleet was in harbor increased the responsibilities of the Army, because the fleet when tied up was not in a position to support the Army forces, either by reconnaissance or by being at sea on an operational basis in the waters adjacent to the islands. When in harbor, the fleet was temporarily immobilized and at its most vulnerable.

The Army and Navy had, as they thought, made adequate provision for the protection of the base and fleet, but latent in the thoughts of the high command was the belief that Pearl Harbor was itself invulnerable. This outlook was reflected in an aide mémoire on the defense of Hawaii which Gen. Marshall delivered to President Roosevelt May 3, 1941. This memorandum stated flatly, “The island of Oahu, due to its fortification, its garrison, and physical characteristics, is believed to be the strongest fortress in the world.”⁴ The memorandum went on to say that any enemy force would be under constant attack from the time it approached within 750 miles of Oahu. This estimate presupposed that Hawaii had the necessary planes for long-range reconnaissance and was using them for that purpose, whereas neither fact was true.

When Adm. Kimmel took command of the Pacific fleet on February 1, 1941, he was “astounded at the then existing weakness” of the Pearl Harbor defenses.⁵ He consulted on these problems with Adm. Richardson, whom he relieved as commander, and as a result a letter under Richardson’s signature was forwarded on January 25, 1941, to Secretary of the Navy Knox, who brought it to the attention of Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War. The most flagrant deficiencies pointed out in this letter were:

(a) The critical inadequacy of A.A. guns available for the defense of Pearl Harbor, necessitating constant manning of ship’s A.A. guns while in port.

(b) The small number and obsolescent condition of land-based aircraft, necessitating constant readiness of striking groups of fleet planes and use of fleet planes for local patrols.

(c) Lack of suitable local defense vessels for the Fourteenth Naval district, etc.

(d) Lack of aircraft detection devices ashore.⁶

Although Washington promised to remedy these shortcomings, very little was done in the months leading up to the Japanese attack.

Gen. Short also repeatedly complained to Washington of deficiencies in the resources allotted him. From February 7 to December 7, 1941, he made requests to Washington for $22,953,697 to be used on projects to improve the Hawaiian defenses. He proposed to use this money for the installation of bunkers, military roads and trails, a battery for Kaneohe Bay, the construction of ten airports, the improvement of Wheeler Field, camouflaging airfields, bombproofing the air depot at Hickam Field, and for materials necessary to these projects.

Of this requested sum, he was allowed by the War Department only $350,000 for roads and trails. This grant represented only 1½ per cent of what he had asked.⁷

Other difficulties were put in the way of the Army in organizing an effective defense. This was especially demonstrated in Short’s struggle to obtain appropriate sites for the location of radar stations. On March 6, 1941, Short wrote Chief of Staff Marshall begging for prompt action in supplying modern aircraft detection units. He said that the detection range of equipment then available was only 5 miles.⁸ He reiterated the critical shortage of long-range detector devices in a second letter to Marshall on March 15. The chief of staff on March 28 promised delivery of radar units in April or May.⁹

Three permanent radar sets were delivered on June 3 and six mobile radar stations on August l.¹⁰ Five of the mobile stations were in operation December 7, but towers on which the permanent units were to be placed were still lying on the docks at Oakland, California, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, so that these three fixed sets were not operating December 7.¹¹ Mayor LaGuardia and Mrs. Roosevelt, running the Office of Civilian Defense, had been staging practice blackouts in New York and other cities and crying up the danger of transoceanic air raids on major American cities. One effect of this was that modern radar units were installed in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle before they were provided for the bastion of Hawaii.*¹²

Additional obstruction was encountered from Secretary Harold L. Ickes’ Interior Department. The Park Service, which was a branch of this department, was more concerned with preserving the beauty of the landscape than with enabling Hawaii to defend itself. When Gen. Short proposed to place a radar station on Mount Haleakala, the National Park Service withheld approval of the request. Short protested against Interior Department delays in his letter of March 6 to Marshall, saying, “I believe that this matter is sufficiently important to be brought to the attention of the Secretary of War to see if permission cannot be obtained from the Secretary of the Interior to construct the Haleakala installation without the necessity of submitting detailed plans for consideration by the National Park Service.”¹³

On March 15 Marshall wrote Short,

It will be necessary to comply with certain fixed regulations in those cases where facilities are to be established on lands pertaining to the Department of the Interior. The National Park Service officials are willing to give us the temporary use of their lands when other lands are not suitable for the purpose, but they will not waive the requirements as to the submission of preliminary building plans showing the architecture and general appearance. They are also very definitely opposed to permitting structures of any type to be erected at such places as will be open to view and materially alter the natural appearance of the reservation.¹⁴

Ickes’ department also got in the way of the Navy when it was endeavoring to construct a radio monitoring station at Winter Harbor, Maine, in order to intercept secret Japanese code messages. The Winter Harbor station was on National Park land and, as with the radar facilities in Hawaii, the Park Service would not permit trees to be cut down or the landscape to be otherwise altered. As a consequence, the Winter Harbor station was handicapped by high trees around its antenna.¹⁵

Five radar stations, however, were operating on Oahu the morning of December 7. Although the stations had been operating every day from 4:00 to 7:00 A.M., with continued operation of three sets for training for a large portion of the day, they were ordered to close down on December 7 at 7 o’clock. Through one of those coincidences which bulked so large in the all-around lapse of defenses on December 7, a Signal Corps second lieutenant, Grove C. White, had obtained permission from the control officer the preceding day to close down the stations at that hour.¹⁶

Another failure of equal concern was the absence of distance reconnaissance from Hawaii on the morning of the attack. This was a Navy task. The Army on December 7 had only six B-17’s in flyable condition,¹⁷ while one hundred eighty were required under its plans for search and attack upon the enemy. The Navy had forty-nine patrol planes in flyable condition.¹⁸ All of these planes had arrived during the preceding four weeks. They were experiencing the shakedown difficulties of new planes. New engine sections which had cracked up required replacement. A program for the installation of leakproof tanks and armor was under way. There were no spare parts and no relief crews.

Adm. Kimmel testified before the Congressional Investigating Committee:

To insure an island base against a surprise attack from fast carrier-based planes, it is necessary to patrol the evening before to a distance of 800 miles on a 360° arc. This requires eighty-four planes on one flight of 16 hours. Of course, the same planes and the same crews cannot make that 16-hour flight every day. For searches of this character over a protracted period, a pool of 250 planes would be required. . . .

It is clear that I did not have a sufficient number of planes to conduct each day a 360 degree distant search from the island of Oahu. . . . A search of all sectors of approach to an island base is the only type of search that deserves the name. . . . The Secretary of the Navy in his indorsement of the record of the Naval Court of Inquiry has stated: “There were sufficient fleet patrol planes and crews, in fact, available at Oahu during the week preceding the attack to have flown, for at least several weeks, a daily reconnaissance covering 128 degrees to a distance of about 700 miles.”

This statement assumes that I could have used all the patrol force for this type of search alone without keeping any planes in reserve for emergency searches or to cover movements of ships in and out of the harbor and in the operating area. . . . If I instituted a distant search of any 128° sector around Oahu on and after November 27, within the foreseeable future I would have deprived the Pacific fleet of any efficient patrol plane force for its prescribed war missions.¹⁹

Kimmel emphasized that he had twice been directed to be prepared to carry out raids on the Marshall Islands under the Navy’s war plan, which would become effective the moment that hostilities began, and that his patrol planes were required for extended use from advance bases under this plan. He had to decide what was the best use of the patrol planes in view of the war tasks confronting him. Had he directed their use for intensive distant reconnaissances from Oahu, he faced the peril of having them grounded when the war plan was executed. His decision was to conserve the planes in order that he might go on the offensive in compliance with his standing orders under the war plan.²⁰

The Naval Court of Inquiry which investigated the Pearl Harbor disaster in 1944 submitted this estimate of the decision reached by Kimmel:

The task assigned the commander-in-chief, Pacific fleet, was to prepare his fleet for war. War was known to be imminent—how imminent he did not know. The fleet planes were constantly being used in patrolling the operating areas in which the fleet’s preparations for war were being carried on. Diversion of these planes for reconnaissance or other purposes was not justified under existing circumstances and in the light of available information.

If so diverted, the state of readiness of the fleet for war would be reduced because of the enforced suspension of fleet operations. The value of the fleet patrol planes to the fleet would be reduced seriously after a few days because of the inability of planes and crews to stand up under the demands of daily long-range reconnaissance.

The omission of this reconnaissance was not due to oversight or neglect. It was the result of a military decision, reached after much deliberation and consultation with experienced officers and after weighing the information at hand and all factors involved.²¹

These were the reasons why Kimmel was not conducting distant reconnaissance on December 6-7. First, he did not have the planes to do so. Second, the planes available to him were earmarked for tasks with the fleet under a predetermined war plan. On December 7 only a few planes were up on the dawn patrol, all of them to the south and west of Oahu, in the fleet operating area.

If Kimmel had possessed the requisite number of planes, both for reconnaissance from Oahu and for patrol duty with the fleet, his task would have been simple. The danger to be expected from air attack had clearly been foreseen in at least two prophetic estimates. The first was the product of Gen. Hugh A. Drum, former commander of Army forces in Hawaii. In 1935 he submitted a memorandum to the War Department in which he warned that Pearl Harbor, with its oil and ammunition storage and air installations on the island of Oahu, was “extremely vulnerable to air attack.” He further warned that “the first enemy hostile action will be attempted as a surprise.”

“One Oriental power,” Gen. Drum wrote, “is strong enough in surface vessels and aircraft to execute successful air attacks against these objectives unless intercepted in sufficient time and with sufficient strength to defeat the attacks.”

Gen. Drum asserted that first information of approaching carriers must be obtained when they were at least 300 miles at sea to permit bombers to attack them before they could launch their planes. He recommended the establishment of air fields on the islands surrounding Oahu in order to reduce the flight time of intercepting bombers.²²

A reply from Maj. Gen. E. T. Conley, then adjutant general of the Army, drafted in April, 1936, estimated that enemy carriers could approach within 600 to 900 miles of Oahu by dusk of the day preceding the attack, and then, after making a fast night run, launch their planes from between 275 and 330 miles of the target. Gen. Conley said that long-range search planes, not available at that time in sufficient numbers, accordingly would have to patrol an arc with a perimeter of 4,000 miles and would be faced with the difficult task of tracking the carriers at night.²³ Radar for the detection of approaching aircraft had not yet been developed.

The plan of attack which Gen. Drum outlined in 1936 was followed almost exactly by the Japs on December 7.

The second prevision of the Jap attack was produced by Maj. Gen. Frederick L. Martin and Vice-Adm. Patrick N. L. Bellinger, commanders of the Army and Navy air forces on Oahu at the time of Pearl Harbor. In an estimate drafted April 9, 1941, they said:

In the past Orange [Japan] has never preceded hostile action by a declaration of war.

A successful, sudden raid against our ships and naval installations on Oahu might prevent effective defensive action by our forces in the Western Pacific for a long period.

It appears possible that Orange submarines and/or an Orange fast raiding force might arrive in Hawaiian waters with no prior warning from our intelligence service. . . . Orange might send into this area one or more submarines, and/or one or more fast raiding forces composed of carriers supported by fast cruisers. . . . It appears that the most likely and dangerous form of attack on Oahu might be an air attack. It is believed that at present such an attack would most likely be launched from one or more carriers, which would probably approach inside of 300 miles. . . . In a dawn air attack there is a high probability that it would be delivered as a complete surprise in spite of any patrols we might be using and that it might find us in a condition of readiness under which pursuit would be slow to start.²⁴

This estimate also contained the significant line, “Any single submarine attack might indicate the presence of a considerable undiscovered surface force, probably composed of fast ships accompanied by a carrier.” A submarine was, in fact, detected and sunk outside of Pearl Harbor by the destroyer “Ward” a full hour before the attack, but the report of this action failed to produce a justified general alarm.

On April 14 Martin and Bellinger transmitted to Gen. Marshall their estimate of the danger from surprise air attack, which the Army Pearl Harbor Board termed “prophetic in its accuracy and uncanny in its analysis of the enemy’s intention.” This document stated:

The Hawaiian air force is primarily concerned with the destruction of hostile carriers in this vicinity before they approach within range of Oahu where they can launch their bombardment aircraft for a raid or attack on Oahu.

Our most likely enemy, Orange, can probably employ a maximum of six carriers against Oahu. . . .

. . . The early morning attack is, therefore, the best plan of action open to the enemy.

The most favorable plan of action open to the enemy, and the action upon which we should base our plans of operation is the early morning attack in which the enemy must make good the following time schedule:

(1) Cross circle 881 nautical miles from Oahu at dawn of the day before attack. . . .

(3) Launch his planes 233 nautical miles from Oahu at dawn the day of the attack. . . .

. . . The sole purpose of the existence of the military establishment on Oahu, ground, and air, is for the defense of Oahu as an outlying naval base.

Then, in a sharp comment on Gen. Marshall’s memorandum to the President on the assumed strength of Oahu, the Martin-Bellinger report remarked,

It has been said, and it is a popular belief, that Hawaii is the strongest outlying naval base in the world and could, therefore, withstand indefinitely attacks and attempted invasions. Plans based on such convictions are inherently weak and tend to create a false sense of security, with the consequent unpreparedness for offensive action.²⁵

If Martin and Bellinger had had the Japanese operations orders before them, they could not have predicted the attack more accurately. Their report proposed to forestall the enemy by employment of long-range bombardment aviation to intercept a surface fleet. This, as William Bradford Huie has pointed out in The Case against the Admirals, was the very act which the Baker board appointed to survey the Army Air Corps in 1934 “had proclaimed could never be performed; the very doctrine under which the general headquarters air force had struggled to develop the B-17; the very principle which the Navy command had railed against for 20 years and which they refused to accept even then in 1941.”²⁶

Martin and Bellinger explained,

The key to this plan is found in the provision for, first, a complete and thorough search of the Hawaiian area daily during daylight; secondly, an aerial attack force available on call to hit a known objective located as a result of the search; and thirdly, if the objective is a carrier, to hit it the day before it can steam up to a position offshore of Oahu where it could launch its planes for an attack.

The report proposed a force of 180 B-17 Flying Fortresses for both search and attack. It was said that this plane was suitable for both functions and that, with 180 B-17’s all possible approaches could be swept every day up to a radius of 800 miles. The admiral and general also asked for thirty-six long-range torpedo planes to supplement this force. The report said:

Our leading tacticians and strategists here concur in the opinion that this plan will solve the defense of the Hawaiian Islands, and in our knowledge it is the best and only means that can be devised to locate enemy carriers and make attacks thereon before said carriers can come within launching distance of Oahu. We must ferret out the enemy and destroy him before he can take action to destroy us. We must be prepared for D-day at any time.

It is believed that a force of 180 four-motored aircraft with 36 long-range torpedo airplanes is a small force when compared with the importance of this outpost. This force can be provided at less cost to the government than the cost of one modern batdeship.²⁷

What happened to this plan in Washington? The Army Air Force indorsed it; the Navy refused even to consider it. Since 1935 the Navy had fought the Flying Fortress with every weapon it possessed. It had imposed a limitation that the Army should have no bombers capable of going more than 300 miles to sea. It had thrown the weight of the Navy lobby against every appropriation for land-based bombardment planes. The plan reached Washington at a time when the Navy was seeking huge appropriations for its new battleship program. Accordingly, the Navy sought to prevent the plan from being circulated among even the higher echelons of the War and Navy departments, let alone the responsible committeemen in Congress.

Gen. Martin was sacked after the Pearl Harbor disaster at the same time as Gen. Short and Adm. Kimmel, but when the Roberts Commission uncovered the Martin-Bellinger plan, they realized they had the wrong man for their purposes. Martin was hastily restored to duty and no further word of censure was breathed against him.

Thus, the responsibility for failure to provide the means of reconnaissance and counter-attack which would without question have saved Hawaii again comes home to Washington. Although aircraft production was lagging in 1941, there was a sufficient number of patrol planes to have assured the safety of Hawaii—if the planes had gone to Hawaii, instead of to Britain and other countries under the Roosevelt administration’s policy. While the Hawaiian air commanders were clamoring for planes to safeguard the base, 1,900 patrol planes were being lend-leased to foreign countries between February 1 and December 1, 1941. Of these, 1,750, or almost ten times the number which would have rendered Oahu safe, went to Great Britain.²⁸

Lend-lease was also the reason why Oahu was short of anti-aircraft weapons. Gen. Short had available 82 three-inch anti-aircraft guns on December 7, while 98 were required by defense plans. He had 20 37-mm. anti-aircraft guns, with 135 required. He had 109 .50 caliber machine guns, with 345 required, He pointed out that the .50 caliber was the most effective weapon against planes coming in low over the water. Other weapons could not be depressed sufficiently to fire effectively on low flying planes. A year after the attack, Short said, Hawaii was equipped with more than seven times the number of these weapons he possessed.²⁹

Replying to requests by Short for anti-aircraft weapons, Gen. Marshall on March 15, 1941, said that 16 three-inch anti-aircraft guns were not slated for arrival in Hawaii until December, and that 115 37-mm. anti-aircraft guns would not arrive until February, 1942.³⁰

Despite this shortage of weapons, the Army had 60 mobile guns and 26 fixed guns, in addition to its 37-mm. and .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns.³¹ The fact is, however, that only four of the Army’s 32 anti-aircraft batteries ever opened fire on the Japs, according to the Army Board, and the first of these to get into action—the detachment at Sand Island—did not fire its first shots until 20 minutes after the raid had begun. The next battery to get into action was Battery “G” at Fort Weaver, which began to fire 35 minutes after the raid started. It was followed by Battery “A” at Fort Kamehameha 39 minutes after the beginning of the raid and Battery “F” at Fort Kamehameha one hour after the raid had begun. The only battery which claimed any enemy planes was that at Sand Island, which shot down two, while with the exception of these four batteries no other was in position ready to fire until well after the departure of the last of the Japanese raiders.³²

The principal reason for this general ineffectiveness was that ammunition had not been issued because the ordnance department objected to having it out convenient to the guns for fear that it might get dirty. Thus none of the 16 mobile guns was supplied with ammunition on December 7. It required about six hours to get the ammunition broken out and distributed. The mobile guns had to obtain their ammunition from Aliamanu Crater, 2 to 3 miles from Army headquarters at Fort Shafter. Although the fixed batteries had their ammunition in boxes adjacent to the guns, few of them got into action because they were not manned. The Army Pearl Harbor Board found that most members of the two Army divisions on Oahu were in their quarters when the attack began, and that it took them a number of hours to move out after the raid to their positions.³³

The lack of ammunition was illuminated by the statement of Maj. Gen. Henry T. Burgin, commander of the Coast Artillery, that

it was almost a matter of impossibility to get your ammunition out, because in the minds of every one who has preservation of ammunition at heart it goes out, gets damaged, comes back in, and has to be renovated. The same was especially true here. It was extremely difficult to get your ammunition out of the magazines. We tried the ordnance people without results. Gen. Max Murray* and myself went personally to Gen. Short. Gen. Murray pled for his ammunition for the field artillery. I asked for ammunition for the anti-aircraft. We were put off, the idea behind it being that we would have our ammunition in plenty of time, that we would have warning before any attack ever struck.³⁴

In this hope Gen. Burgin was destined to be disappointed, but the ultimate responsibility for the failure to give warning in sufficient time rested with Washington, rather than with his immediate superiors. As it was, the failure to supply the guns with ammunition cannot be excused. The only utility of the guns in being in Hawaii at all was to be able to meet an attack where and when it developed. It is evident that the commanders thought if there were to be any attack, it would come in the form of an attempted landing in force, and in this event they would have sufficient time to move the guns and troops into position and to break out the ammunition. Like the Navy, the last thing the Army was looking for was an air attack.

The anti-aircraft guns of the fleet were in a better state of readiness to meet a surprise attack than were those of the Army, but there was still room for improvement. Although Battle Report, the Navy’s semi-official account of the Pearl Harbor attack, stated that “American guns were firing before the first of the invading planes had cleared the scene of attack,”³⁵ this was true only of a limited number of guns. For example, the officer of the deck on the light cruiser “Helena,” after sounding the general alarm, cried in the same voice, “Break out service ammunition.”³⁶ The minimum of ready guns aboard fleet units was placed at two .50-caliber guns, and, in most instances, two 5-inch dual purpose guns.³⁷ Secretary Knox, in a secret report after the attack, said that it was about four minutes before the first antiaircraft fire from the Navy began.³⁸

The battleship “Nevada,” which was probably more successful than any other ship in getting its guns into action quickly, had four ready machine guns, two forward and two aft, which were able to open fire at once. They were joined shortly by the ship’s 5-inch anti-aircraft and broadside batteries, and, in combination, these weapons claimed five enemy planes.³⁹

While putting up a comparatively more heavy curtain of fire than most of the other warships in Pearl Harbor, the “Nevada” could not avoid taking one torpedo and six bomb hits. This damage was sustained although the “Nevada” was the only warship in harbor to move away from the docks. A naval reservist, Lieut. Comdr. Francis J. Thomas, who was the senior officer aboard, is to be credited with this attempt to save the “Nevada” by getting her to open water where she could maneuver, but in the end the heavily damaged ship grounded near floating drydock no. 2. She was moved from that position by tugs and run aground in the shallow across from Hospital Point.

As to volume of fire, the battleship “Pennsylvania” was credited with firing more than 50,000 rounds of .50-caliber ammunition during the attack, but, with this expenditure, could claim no more than two Japanese planes and four probables.⁴⁰

In the confusion attending the attack, American anti-aircraft crews fired upon their own planes. Adm. Kimmel told of six planes from the “Enterprise” being fired on as they came into Ford Island, and Rear Adm. Robert A. Theobald said that eighteen scout bombers from the same carrier were fired upon late in the evening of December 7.⁴¹ American planes seeking the Japanese striking force after the attack also mistakenly bombed the cruiser “Portland” which was west of Pearl Harbor, believing it to be a Jap carrier, but fortunately damage was slight.⁴²

The Navy Board of Inquiry said of the general state of preparedness aboard ship, “On all ships inside Pearl Harbor a considerable portion of the anti-aircraft guns was kept manned day and night and with ammunition immediately at hand,” but it qualified this finding with the statement, “The anti-aircraft batteries installed on ships in Pearl Harbor were incapable of a volume of fire at all comparable to that of the batteries of the same ships today.”*⁴³

The primary reason for this was that the admirals had not yet awakened to the danger of air attack, but in part the lack of weapons was the result of administration policy which diverted material from our own forces and sent it to other nations, particularly Great Britain and Russia, under lend-lease. While the Pearl Harbor commanders were appealing for anti-aircraft, 1,900 anti-aircraft weapons were sent to other nations between February and December, 1941, 1,500 of them to the British.⁴⁴

The underlying failure of the defenses on December 7 must be attributed to the fact that the Army and Navy—both the high command in Washington and the forces in the field—had still to catch up with the lessons of modern war as demonstrated in Europe after September 1, 1939. As usual, they were prepared to fight the war before last. The early success of the Japanese grew out of the fact that they, far more than our own services, had been willing to abandon obsolete concepts and fight a 1941 war in 1941.

As was observed by the Associated Press reporter, Clark Lee, “The Pearl Harbor attack was a psychological blow to many of our admirals. They had put their faith in those ‘elephants,’ the battleships. Stripped of their battleships they were as lost as a man suddenly deprived of his trousers in the middle of Fifth Avenue. Their instinct was to cover up, to assume the defensive rather than to seek out the enemy for a finish fight.”⁴⁵

At the time of the Pearl Harbor assault, despite a number of estimates that the principal danger to the fleet would come from surprise air attack, the Army was worried about sabotage and the Navy about training and danger from enemy submarines. Officers of both services undoubtedly felt that the fleet, behind a submarine net and with its own guns supplementing those of the base defenses, was safe.

The admirals still held that the primary function of airplanes was to serve as the eyes of the fleet and to subserve battleships, scouting for them and protecting them while their 16-inch guns destroyed the enemy. Even with the lessons of war in the Mediterranean before them, the admirals were still accustomed to say that planes could inflict no great damage to battleships and were useful only in the degree that they could serve as spotters and increase the accuracy of battleship fire.

No one in the American services had been warned of the danger of aerial torpedo attack, although the British in their assault on the Italian fleet at Taranto on November 11, 1940, had demonstrated the deadly results which could be obtained with this weapon. British torpedo planes, taking the Italian fleet by surprise, had sunk or seriously damaged two battleships, two cruisers, a destroyer, and several supply ships.

On January 24, 1941, Secretary Knox had listed an air torpedo plane attack as one of the possible forms of hostile action against Pearl Harbor.⁴⁶ Subsequently Adm. Stark, chief of naval operations, forwarded to the Pacific fleet and Adm. Bloch, commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District, detailed technical advice which practically eliminated from consideration an air torpedo attack as a serious danger to ships moored in Pearl Harbor.

The shallowness of the water in the harbor, which was 30 feet or less, except in the channels, where it was generally 45 feet, was thought to exclude an attack of this kind. On February 15, 1941, Stark wrote Kimmel with reference to the advisability of installing anti-torpedo baffles for protection of the ships in harbor. Stark said:

It is considered that the relatively shallow depths of water limit the need for anti-torpedo nets in Pearl Harbor. . . . A minimum depth of water of 75 feet may be assumed necessary to successfully drop torpedoes from planes. One hundred and fifty feet of water is desired. The maximum height of planes at present experimentally dropping torpedoes is 250 feet. Launching speeds are between 120 and 150 knots. The desirable height for dropping is 60 feet or less. About 200 yards of torpedo run is necessary before the exploding device is armed, but this may be altered.

In this letter Stark emphasized that the depths of water in which torpedoes were launched in the attack at Taranto were between 14 and 15 fathoms; that is, 84 to 90 feet of water.⁴⁷

Stark expressed these opinions despite the fact that on November 22, 1940, just after the Taranto attack, he had written Adm. Richardson, “Since the Taranto incident, my concern for the safety of the fleet at Pearl Harbor, already great, has become even greater.”⁴⁸

On June 13, 1941, Stark sent another letter to Kimmel and Adm. Bloch reaffirming his belief that Pearl Harbor was safe from torpedo attack.⁴⁹ The Naval Court of Inquiry concluded that the torpedoes launched by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor constituted, in effect, a secret weapon unknown to the best professional opinion in Great Britain and the United States at the time.⁵⁰ Adm. King, war-time commander-in-chief of the fleet, said in his indorsement of the findings of the court, “It is evident in retrospect that the capabilities of Japanese aircraft torpedoes were seriously underestimated.”⁵¹

Secretary of the Navy Forrestal noted, however, that in April, 1941, an intelligence report had been circulated in the Navy Department describing demonstrations in England in which torpedoes equipped with special wings had been launched in 42 feet of water, about the same depth as in Pearl Harbor.⁵² No word of these findings ever was sent to Adm. Kimmel, nor was Adm. Stark impressed by them as he should have been.

Despite these facts, Forrestal, in overruling the findings of the Navy board and putting the blame on Kimmel, said that “a due appreciation of the possible effects of an air attack should have induced Adm. Kimmel to take all practical precautions to reduce the effectiveness of such an attack.” Among the measures which Forrestal said were “reasonably” open to Kimmel was to install anti-torpedo nets to protect the larger vessels in port.⁵³ In other words, Forrestal wanted Kimmel to display a prescience which was not possessed either by the chief of naval operations or the Navy Department in general, and wanted him, moreover, to procure and install anti-torpedo nets or baffles which the fleet in Hawaii did not have the facilities to manufacture.

On February 15, 1941, Stark informed Kimmel that existing torpedo nets were so cumbersome that their installation at Pearl Harbor would interfere with the movement of ships and ability of the fleet to get away on short notice. He said, “There is apparently a great need for the development of a light efficient torpedo net which could be laid temporarily and quickly within protective harbors, and which can be readily removed.”⁵⁴ Kimmel was later to state that if such a net was ever developed by the Navy Department, he never heard of it or received it. That neglect in taking proper precautions against torpedoes was attributable to the Navy Department, rather than to Kimmel, was admitted by Adm. King when he said in his indorsement of the Navy board’s report, “The decision not to install torpedo baffles appears to have been made by the Navy Department.”⁵⁵

There was a great deal of wisdom after December 7 on the part of responsible officials in Washington, but very little before the attack. Secretary Knox, for example, in his report to President Roosevelt upon his return from an inspection trip to Pearl Harbor following the attack, said that the principal fear of the Army had been sabotage and that of the Navy submarine attack, and that neither was expecting or sufficiently prepared to defend against air attack. The only specific measure of protection against air attack taken by the Navy was to disperse the ships in harbor so as to provide a field of fire covering every approach from the air.⁵⁶

Despite the many mistakes of omission and commission at Oahu on December 7, the main deficiency of the Pearl Harbor defense was the absence of a proper state of readiness to meet attack. These conditions of readiness in Hawaii on December 7 were known to Washington and had its tacit approval. They were not countermanded, nor were more forcible orders sent. The commanders in Hawaii had been denied access to intelligence available in Washington which, as the Army Board points out, conclusively established a condition of “known impending war.” If the degree of readiness prevailing at Oahu did not satisfy the government and high command, they had recourse to a simple remedy. All they needed to do was to issue orders directing the Hawaiian commanders to institute an all-out alert. No such orders ever were sent.

Four years after Pearl Harbor this ultimate responsibility on the part of Washington was finally admitted by Gen. L. T. Gerow, chief of Army war plans in 1941. He conceded that Gen. Short was justified in assuming his defense alert number 1 had the full approval of the Army high command. This admission followed the reading to the congressional committee of excerpts from the Staff Officers’ Field Manual, stating that the general staff is responsible for making sure its instructions to field commanders are understood and for enforcing execution of such instructions.⁵⁷

*Cf. minority report of Joint Congressional Committee (p. 55): “The installation of the radar in Hawaii was inexcusably delayed. It was a method of defense peculiarly essential in Hawaii. It was known that there were insufficient planes and insufficient guns to protect the base, and this made the availability of radar all the more necessary. It seems we could have priority for radar protection in New York and other mainland points, where no attack was probable, but none in Hawaii, where radar information was essential. The result was that fixed radio installations were not accomplished at all prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, and such fixed installations would have furnished the most distant services. The mobile sets available had, by reason of the delay, been operating only on a short experimental basis. Ther was a scarcity of trained operators. The operators were trying to learn and operate at the same time. The selected hours of operation, which proved of vast importance, were not wisely fixed. Service stopped at 7:00 A.M., the very time when the danger was acute.”

*Maj. Gen. Maxwell Murray commanded the 25th Infantry Division.

*There were 780 naval anti-aircraft guns, all ship-based (Maj., p. 67).