Tuttle was taking a long time picking up his shoes and tunic for polishing. Impatiently he said. 'Go and bring me some aspirins, Tuttle; my head's splitting.' Alone again, he lay thinking about Anne and the future.
He knew he could never forget the act to which rage and revenge had driven him. In the years ahead, with the fading of emotion, it would be increasingly difficult to rationalise and justify. Anne would not forgive him, if she knew, even though she would want to understand and it would break her heart if harm ever befell him. She was to be his life's companion and their fates were inseparably joined. It was a responsibility he had not wanted, but it was her gift and he accepted it gladly. But this was one secret he would never share with her.
The door opened again, to familiar slovenly footsteps.
'Come on, Tuttle, where the hell have you been? Where are those bloody aspirins?'
'Had to borrow some from Mr Blakeney-Smith's room, sir. Y'know, he's got... he 'ad everything. There's a shortage of aspirins, sir. Y'know, there's a war on.'
If you enjoyed Summer of No Surrender by Richard Bickers you may be interested in Pearl Harbor by Richard Freeman, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Pearl Harbor: Hinge of War by Richard Freeman
1 Sunday morning, 7 December 1941
Sunday at Pearl Harbor was a day of rest, relaxation and church going. For those men recently returned from exercises at sea there was shore leave. Many were absent from their ships on the fateful day. Others were rising slowly after a good night out in Honolulu. There were letters to write, uniforms to press, lockers to tidy. But, as Marine Private Art Wells recalled, ‘many would die with a shoe still in hand, or with thoughts of how to word the next sentence in a letter, or with mouths open as they began the next sea story’.
At the moment of attack most of the early risers were getting ready for church – some of the earliest victims would be men in church boats being ferried to the dock side. Others had work to do, Sunday or no Sunday. As the first planes roared over Ford Island, baker Dale Augerson had just put a batch of apple pies into an oven on board the West Virginia. The already cooked chocolate cakes were cooling when the PA blasted out ‘Fire and Rescue report to Ford Island.’ On the Nevada the band stood ready to strike up ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. The first few notes rang out as a plane swooped low to strafe the deck. Not one of the marines was touched, but moments later they were left standing under a shredded American flag feebly hanging at half-mast.
Lewis Shaw, a Pharmacist’s Mateon the minelayer Oglala, was in the shower. And, on the battleship Utah Robert Swift was busy doing his Christmas cards for his family back in Tennessee. More mundanely, the surprise attack left men no chance to choose the clothes they would fight in. Some were in pyjamas, some in slippers. Mickey Ganitch on the Pennsylvania went to general quarters in his football gear.
Ninety minutes later 2403 American service men lay dead amongst the wreckage or floating in the harbour. Of the 301 aeroplanes on the island that morning only 52 were now useable. In the harbour the eight mighty battleships lay stricken in the fiery water. From hangers, airstrips, docks and planes flames leapt into the sky. The air was thick with acrid smoke and the sea ablaze with fuel oil from ruptured fuel tanks. Pearl Harbor and Oahu’s airstrips had suffered one of the fastest and most destructive surprise attacks in all history. And they had said it could not happen. Oahu was, officially, ‘The strongest fortress in the world’.
America had sleep-walked into Pearl Harbor.
2. A waking empire
At the end of the First World War the principal central powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey) had lost their empires while the victorious allies were exhausted and war-weary. A world-wide revulsion towards war set in as nations tried to limit each other’s armaments. On her exit from the First World War America had sought to disengage herself from world affairs. President Wilson, after driving forward the Versailles Treaty negotiations, returned home only to find that the Senate rejected the treaty in 1919. In the same year America decided not to join the newly formed League of Nations. Two years later America took a leading part in the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22. With the aid of her espionage, America out-witted Japan when she forced through an agreement that firmly suppressed the latter’s imperial ambitions. The American, British and Japanese navies were to be limited to fleets in the ratio 5:5:3. Japan smarted at this demotion and began to see America as a threat to her territorial ambitions. America’s simultaneous attempt to withdraw from world affairs while annoying Japan proved to be a dangerous cocktail.
Tensions in the Pacific
America’s enemy-in-waiting had no intention of withdrawing into herself. Japan began her post-First World War expansion by invading Manchuria in 1931. International reaction led to her leaving the League of Nations, but in no way diminished her ambitions. In 1937 she invaded China. There were further international protests, including strong condemnation from America. It was not until Japan moved into French Indochina in 1940 that America finally realized that her interests were threatened to the point where action was needed. President Roosevelt promptly halted the export to Japan of any products that could be of military use. By early 1941 it was clear to America that Japan was intent on invading the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. In response to this Roosevelt ordered the strengthening of the American forces in the Philippines. On 25 July 1941 America took the drastic step of freezing all Japanese assets in the United States. In response Japan warned Washington that ‘our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas’. A week later President Roosevelt took the ultimate step short of war by placing an embargo on oil exports to Japan. He hoped that Japan would now pull back from her conquests. But, so great was Japan’s need for oil, that she was determined to get hold of the Dutch East Indies at any cost. Only one thing stood in her way: the American Pacific Fleet.
Yamamoto thinks the unthinkable
The man behind the decision to attack Pearl Harbor was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet. As a young man he had been present at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 when the Japanese navy had thoroughly defeated a Russian fleet. It was the first large-scale battle between steel warships. Japan had acquitted herself very well. After the First World War Yamamoto’s expertise with planes and carriers rapidly developed, so giving him the confidence to wield these machines on a grand scale for the first time in history. Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu in the Hawaii islands, was to be the test-bed for his grand theory of mass attack.
In one sense Yamamoto’s plan defied military logic since he was proposing to attack the enemy at his strongest point. But Yamamoto argued that his country had no choice. Without the American oil, Japan had either to accept defeat in her territorial expansion or take the oil from elsewhere. This would surely lead to war with the United States – a war Japan could never hope to win. Unless, of course, she first destroyed the American Pacific Fleet. It was a gambler’s move, driven by the problems of over-reach that were besetting Japan in late 1940. At a stroke she would gain command of the Pacific and be free to occupy the resource-rich territories of the Pacific rim. As a bonus, thought Yamamoto, the loss of the US Pacific Fleet would so demoralize the Americans that they would acquiesce in Japan’s conquests.
Yamamoto begins to plan
Yamamoto began his first serious planning in February 1941. His proposal was bold by anyone’s standards and the difficulties were immense. Oahu bristled with air bases to protect both the island and the Pacific Fleet. Yamamoto would have no shortage of targets. Equally, should Oahu have warning of his attack, the island would have no shortage of defensive forces.
But it was the shape of the harbour and the nature of the moorings that provided the greatest difficulties for an air attack. The harbour offered no clear run-ins for planes, whatever their angle of attack. And the mooring arrangements for the ships were also a problem since the battl
eships lay in pairs. Yamamoto would have to face the fact that torpedoes could not reach the inner vessel of each pair. But perhaps the crowning objection was the harbour’s depth – a mere 40 feet. Everyone knew that air-launched torpedoes plunged 50 to 100 feet before rising to their run-in depth. In such shallow water they would embed themselves in the mud and stay there.
Targets and priorities
Yamamoto’s plan was straightforward. A mass of planes would run in at dawn in the hope of surprising the local defences. Their first target would be the airfields at Ford Island, Wheeler Field, Hickam Field, and Kaneohe Bay. (There were also smaller air strips that did not appear in his list of targets.) With the American planes destroyed before they could launch, the Japanese planes would turn their attention to the moored ships. The pilots would have clear instructions to pick the high value targets. Torpedoes and bombs were not to be wasted on the lesser vessels, although any ship near to the entrance channel was to be sunk in the hope that this would block the harbour exit. (One consequence of Yamamoto ignoring the small ships was that they brought down far more planes than did the larger ships. But since Japan lost so few planes that day, it was not an important factor in the overall outcome.) Surprisingly, not a single plane was allocated to the destruction of the fuel dumps or the repair workshops – an error that would cost Japan dearly.
There were other foreseeable weaknesses with the Japanese plan. First, sinking ships in shallow water would leave them easy to salvage. Second, attacking ships on a Sunday in harbour meant that a large number of officers and men would be on shore – men were harder to replace than ships since they took years to train. And third, an attack which failed to catch the carriers would leave America with all three of her most dangerous Pacific naval assets intact: carriers, submarines and men. Yamamoto was aware of these weaknesses, but believed that he had no choice other than to attack.
Technical problems
Before the raid could be undertaken, Yamamoto had to find a solution to two technical problems. First, he needed a torpedo that could be dropped into shallow water. And second, remembering those battleships moored on the inside of the pairs, he needed a bomb that could penetrate a battleship deck. Work began on finding technical solutions to these problems. Meanwhile he needed pilots who could operate under the demanding conditions that they would find at Oahu.
Air crew training
The air attacks on Oahu were to be under the coordination of the ace pilot Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who was a veteran of the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s. In September he began to train the pilots for their difficult and dangerous mission. To make the training as realistic as possible Fuchida selected a site at Kagoshima Bay on the southwest extremity of Japan. Now more famed for its dolphins than pilot training, the bay provided the right mix of a narrow entrance leading to a large area of water, with steeply rising hills behind. The nearby port of Kagoshima was a suitable representation of the built-up areas around Pearl Harbor. Here in October 1941 Fuchida demanded that his pilots fly at 160 knots while at a height of only 165 feet, before coming down to 130 feet to drop their torpedoes. Their flying had to be level and steady. As to the dive bomber pilots they had to learn to plunge down to release their bombs at 1500 feet – much lower than the accepted safe minimum height of 2000 feet. At first the pilots balked at these challenges but they were soon producing accurate runs with a good percentage of hits. Very quickly Fuchida had his airmen in shape for Pearl Harbor.
Yamamoto’s First Air Fleet
For the attack Yamamoto gathered together six aircraft carriers, two battleships, two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, plus sundry destroyers, submarines and tankers. There were also five midget submarines to be carried on mother submarines before being released near the entrance to Pearl Harbor. The ships were to carry over 400 planes, of which around 350 would take part in the attack. (The other planes consisted of reserves and patrol planes to protect the carriers.)
The two wave attack
Such was the size of the air fleet which Yamamoto had assembled that it would be impossible to launch all the planes at once, so Fuchida planned a two wave launch. It was a compromise since the second wave would attack without the advantage of surprise.
The First Air Fleet was to go to sea under the command of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, despite the fact that he was opposed to the Pearl Harbor venture. Nagumo split his forces into three carrier commands:
1. Nagumo: carriers Akagi and Kaga.
2. Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi: carriers Soryu and Hiryu.
3. Rear Admiral Chūichi Hara: carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku.
The carriers varied in capacity from the Hiryu, which had 54 planes on board, to the Akagi, with its 72 planes. The planes themselves were B5N2 torpedo bombers, D3A1 dive bombers and A6M2 fighters. The latter were the notorious ‘Zeros’, fast, manoeuvrable and able to out-match anything that the Americans could put into the air.
Opposition
That the Pearl Harbor venture ever got this far was due solely to Yamamoto’s intransigent determination. He was opposed by many colleagues, including by Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka, who was Chief of Naval Operations on the General Staff. Apart from generally opposing the attack, Tomioka also tried to limit Yamamoto’s force to three rather than six carriers. Only when it became clear that Yamamoto would resign if he were not given six carriers did Tomioka grudgingly relent.
The fatal day is chosen
It was around 11 October that a target date was finally set for the attack: Sunday 7 December 1941 (Hawaii time). The day of the week was important. The Pacific Fleet was almost never out on a Sunday and there were no practice alerts on Sunday mornings. A dawn attack would find a sleeping fleet and deserted airfields.
3. An island armed but an island unready
The army and its bases
On paper Yamamoto had taken on a formidable foe. The island of Oahu was essentially one huge fortress. But the large army presence was not there to protect the substantial city of Honolulu: it was to safeguard the Pacific Fleet when it was in harbour and the military bases when it was at sea. Lieutenant General Walter Short, the commanding general, had 43,000 soldiers (including the Air Corps) at his disposal. Short was assisted in his work by Major General Henry Burgin of the coastal artillery and Major General Frederick Martin, who commanded the Hawaiian Air Force. Additionally there were two infantry divisions at Schofield Barracks.
Short was convinced that his forces were fully able to protect his bases and the fleet. His confidence was shared by the Army Chief of Staff in Washington, who told President Roosevelt in April 1941 that Oahu was ‘the strongest fortress in the world’. However, Short had an unfortunate sense of priorities. For him the greatest threat to the island came from acts of sabotage by its large Japanese population. While he admitted the possibility of an invasion, he thought it remote given how easy it would be to repel an invader. But he never for one moment admitted that an attack might come by air. Oahu was nearly 4000 miles from Japan and, in any case, an attacking force would be held off by the Pacific Fleet.
The principal means of the island’s defence was the army’s air bases at Wheeler Field, Hickam Field and Bellows Field. Wheeler Field, more or less in the centre of the island, was the main army air base and held 145 pursuit planes on the day of the attack. The base itself was huge, with a mess hall that could seat 2000 men. Hickam Field was on the east side of the channel that joined Pearl Harbor to the sea. Built on 2000 acres of soil-covered coral reef, it had been in use since 1937. By 1 November 1940 it had become home to the 18th Bombardment Wing (Heavy). On the morning of the attack there were 12 B-17s, 32 B-18s and 13 A-20 Douglas Havocs on the ground. The final army air base was at Bellows Field on the south-east coast, where it hosted observation and pursuit squadrons. It was a small establishment with only 21 planes on the ground on the morning of the attack. (The main military base, Schofield barracks, lay near to Wheeler Field. It played no significant role in the events of that day.)
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br /> The navy at Oahu
The prize that Yamamoto was after was the American Pacific Fleet – or as much of it as he could find. On 7 December there were about 90-100 American ships (no two sources agree on the precise number) in the harbour. Whatever the figure, the ships that were of most interest to the Japanese were the three carriers (Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga), eight battleships, eight cruisers and 30 destroyers. But the carriers would be famously absent on the day of the attack.
In addition to the army air bases, the fleet had three naval air stations of its own. The main naval airfield – Ford Island – sat in the middle of the harbour and was host to Patrol Wing 2, where squadrons 22, 23 and 24. On 7 December there were 81 planes at the base, of which 72 were either in the air or ready to fly at 4 hours notice. This was one of the most active bases that day since it actually had seven planes on patrol and another four ready to take off at 10 minutes notice.
The Navy’s Patrol Wing 1 was based at Kaneohe Bay. This airstrip lay on a peninsular which thrust out into the sea on the east side of the island. It was an ideal landing strip, but perilously exposed to attack from the sea. The base was still under construction in 1941 and housed three air patrol squadrons. At dawn on 7 December the 33 PBY Catalinas of patrol squadrons 11, 12 and 14 were mostly lined up on the ground, while others were gently bobbing up and down in the water.
The third naval air base was the Ewa Marine Air Corps Station, which lay to the west of the harbour entrance. Around 50 planes were based there, including 11 F4F-3 fighters, and 26 SBD-1s and 2s dive bomber/scout planes.
Summer of No Surrender Page 20
