by Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions
Now every ship opened fire at one target or another. Because we were between the main body of the formation and the attackers, hundreds of shells streaked over our heads and hit the water ahead of the planes. The sky was filled with antiaircraft bursts… The Japanese formation broke up and start[ed] dropping torpedoes all over the place. Some fell at such a high speed that they somersaulted, while others ran true but wide. Two passed close astern of us. Two planes that we had hit fell into the water after they had flown directly over us. Our 40- and 20-mm shells made contact with engine nacelles and fuselages. Our automatic weapons gunners were terrific: Kelly, James, Keenum, and Grimm had nursed those guns, firing short bursts every day, and had sometimes slept by them, just waiting for a chance like this. The steady stream of tracers pouring out of those gun barrels was a beautiful sight…. twenty of the twenty-one bombers were in the water, most of them on fire and all of them destroyed. Not a single torpedo had reached its target. The wreckage of downed aircraft covered the water in every direction.”25
This event was 11 months into the Pacific war, after the air threat had been recognized and many warships’ anti-aircraft armament had been augmented from pre-war standards. For instance, the armament on the destroyer Fletcher, on the ways on 7 December 1941, consisting originally of one four-barrel 1.1-inch mount and six single 20mm mounts. By the end of the war she had five two-barrel 40mm mounts and seven single 20mm guns.26
What the battle fleet would have had in 1941 off Hawaii was much greater than what the smaller number of ships had off Guadalcanal on 12 November 1942. They both would have had the same fundamental AA fire control directors that proved so successful throughout the war. There is no reason to believe that the attacking Japanese aircraft would have been any more successful off Oahu than they were off Guadalcanal.
The likely Japanese losses can be calculated as they were in Chapter 9, assuming:
• the heavy AA was engaged for 15 minutes at an average rate of fire of 8 rounds per minute;
• the machine guns engaged for 8 minutes at their practical cyclical rate;
• the fleet consisted of eight battleships, four cruisers, and 20 destroyers with AA-capable main batteries.
Using the 1942 RPB numbers, 158 out of the 186 attackers in the first wave would be shot down, for 85% losses. This does not include losses inflicted by US fighter CAP from Oahu, or that the attackers could have been intercepted on the way to the fleet and on their return by AAC fighters.
In other words, an attack on the fleet underway off Pearl Harbor would have had results more like those seen in the Japanese torpedo plane attack off Guadalcanal than what was seen inside Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
This calculation was based on RPB figures taken from combat experience. The defensive fires would be formidable, the Japanese losses would have been crippling, and the fleet would not have suffered damage anything near the scale that was sustained in the actual attack in the harbor.
The Fleet Is Attacked at Lahaina Roads
Another possibility was that the fleet would be anchored at Lahaina Roads, off Maui, 80 miles southwest of Oahu. The Japanese intelligence officer was sending daily position reports on the location of the fleet. With that in mind, this scenario breaks into two situations.
The first is where the incoming strike was diverted to Lahaina Anchorage after being launched. This case is nearly like that of the “fleet at sea” scenario. An anchor watch would be maintained on each of the ships, with personnel on the bridge and on the foc’sl to watch for the anchor dragging. The steam plant would be hot, with boilers on the line and steam to the nozzle blocks of the main engines. To get underway, it would be a simple procedure to slip the anchor chain, take the main engines off the jacking gear, and open the throttles. Top speed would not be available, but the ship would be able to maneuver.
Some of the ships would not be fast off the mark and might still be at anchor when the attack developed. A higher percentage of hits by the torpedo planes could be expected; however, in the usual fleet anchorage deployment, the torpedo planes would also have to fly close by cruisers and destroyers anchored on the periphery of the anchorage. It could be expected that many more of the torpedo planes would be hit before they could launch their torpedoes. The battle could take on the aspect of the torpedo bombers’ attack off Guadalcanal. Six to ten torpedo hits might be a reasonable estimate.
The second case is where the Japanese knew that the force was at Lahaina Anchorage a day before the strike. The plan was for the attack to be executed, with a significant difference. The 50 Kate torpedo bombers that were allocated as high-altitude level bombers would now be armed with torpedoes. These crews had not practiced with torpedoes—many had never even dropped one in training. So, gauging the number of hits this group would achieve is problematic. These crews might be considered at the same training level as the crews assigned to launch torpedoes at the beginning of their training. In the first torpedo-launching exercises, the results were described as “very poor,” with hits on the order of 15%.
The targets ships might be underway and maneuvering. The torpedo bombers would be faced with considerable defensive fire. The anchorage waters are shallow (in some places, single digit fathoms), so some torpedoes would strike the bottom. Applying a generous hit percentage of 15% would result in an additional 7 or 8 hits, for a total of 14 torpedo hits. If these hits were distributed over the battleships there would be two hits per battleship (if evenly allocated), or perhaps two or three battleships sunk (if the torpedo hits were concentrated on only a few ships).
This scenario results in about the same number of hits on the battleships as was achieved against the fleet in Pearl Harbor, but not the same losses, since the ships would have Zed set and be active in their damage control. The loss calculations were based on the Japanese estimate that it would take four torpedo hits to sink a battleship, not the US estimate of six to seven when underway in material condition Zed. An additional consideration is that there are good places to beach a sinking battleship within a few hundred yards of the anchorage. So, an attack against the fleet at Lahaina Roads would likely cause less damage then one against the fleet in harbor.
Finally, it must be noted that Lahaina Roads was a “peacetime only” anchorage. The fleet had not used Lahaina Roads for a year due to the submarine threat, so consideration of this scenario is academic.
The oft-stated supposition that the fleet was better off hit in Pearl Harbor than underway does not bear up under analysis. Historians have been caught in the fallacy that the Japanese bombing performance and the American AA performance would have remained as it was in the actual attack. They changed the location, but did not consider what else would change. Damage to the fleet would likely have been much less, while the Japanese air group could have been decimated.
3) “The Japanese should have launched a second strike, targeting the shipyard facilities and the fuel oil tanks.”
The Re-attack Controversy
Many commentators have asserted that the Japanese missed a great opportunity by not launching follow-up attacks targeting the Navy Yard machine shops and repair facilities, the Submarine Base, and the fuel tank farm. Such criticism is part of the official US Navy account of the battle, where the Japanese are castigated as they “neglected to damage the shoreside facilities at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, which played an important role in the Allied victory in World War II.”27 This view is echoed by most historical commentators, for example, Goldstein and Dillon (coauthors of At Dawn We Slept) and Wenger have asserted that
One stroke of luck for the Americans on 7 December was the fact that the Pearl Harbor attack plan contained no provision for destroying the Navy Yard. Had the Japanese done so, they would have put the US Pacific Fleet out of action far more effectively than by wrecking individual ships. The fleet would have had no choice but to return to the Pacific Coast. This withdrawal could have significantly altered the course of the war.28
This assessment appears to
have begun with none other than Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, who once remarked that destruction of the fuel storage tanks “would have prolonged the war for another two years.”29 The venerable Morison picked up the theme in the semi-official History of United States Naval Operations in World War II and made the idea well-known. He asserted:
There is some question, however, whether the aviators were directed to the right targets, even from the Japanese point of view. They knocked out the Battle Force and decimated the striking air power present; but they neglected permanent installations at Pearl Harbor, including the repair shops which were able to do an amazingly quick job on the less severely damaged ships. And they did not even attempt to hit the power plant or the large fuel oil “tank farm,” filled to capacity, whose loss (in the opinion of Admiral Hart) would have set back our advance across the Pacific much longer than did the damage to the fleet.30
Morison later expressed his opinion on the issue:
Tactically speaking, the Japanese committed the blunder in the Pearl Harbor attack of concentrating their attacks only on warships instead of directing them on land installations and fuel tanks. Not only was it strategically a folly, but politically, too, it was an unredeemable blunder.31
Prange, the great historian of the Pearl Harbor attack, added:
By failing to exploit the shock, bewilderment, and confusion on Oahu, by failing to take full advantage of its savage attack against Kimmel’s ships, by failing to pulverize the Pearl Harbor base, by failing to destroy Oahu’s vast fuel stores, and by failing to seek out and sink America’s carriers, Japan committed its first and probably its greatest strategical error of the entire Pacific conflict.32
Goldstein, Dillon and Wenger frame the point in these terms:
One stroke of luck for the Americans on 7 December was the fact that the Pearl Harbor attack plan contained no provision for destroying the Navy Yard. Had the Japanese done so, they would have put the US Pacific Fleet out of action far more effectively than by wrecking individual ships. The fleet would have had no choice but to return to the Pacific Coast. This withdrawal could have significantly altered the course of the war.33
Van der Vat claimed that the fuel tanks and “vital shoreside facilities” were to be the “prime target of wave number three” and that their destruction “would have rendered the base useless and forced the US Navy back to the West Coast, over two thousand miles to the east,”34 a claim repeated by Clarke35 and others. Captain Joseph Taussig, Jr. claimed that “One lucky hit would have sorely curtailed the fuel supplies in the Pacific and created a logistics nightmare….” Admiral Bloch, the Naval District Commander with local defense responsibility, testifying before a post-attack inquiry, said that if Japan had struck the shore installations “we would have been damaged infinitely more than we were.”36 Peattie makes the claim that “… there is little doubt that these targets could have been destroyed by Nagumo’s force.”37 Another claimed that destroying the shipyard would have delayed serious operations in the Pacific by at least a year.38
These assessments have been absorbed into the popular consciousness: a television program on “The Myths of Pearl Harbor” asserted that “had the Japanese launched a third wave attack against the fuel tanks and naval shipyard, the United States would have been forced to pull their crippled fleet back to San Francisco… leaving Pearl Harbor defenseless.”39
The tale of the argument on the carrier bridge where stodgy Nagumo turned his back on his aviator’s demands for a third strike has been related in many places, based on Fuchida’s version of the event:
On his return at midday, Fuchida had told Nagumo that there were still many significant targets worthy of attack. There was a complete infrastructure of dockyard installations, fuel storage tanks, power station and ship repair and maintenance facilities which supported the US Pacific Fleet and without which its rebuilding would have been impossible. There were also plenty of vessels not touched in the first assaults.40
According to Toland, the encounter happened this way:
Fuchida returned about an hour later and was greeted by an exultant Genda; then he went to the bridge and reported to Nagumo and Kusaka that at least two battleships had been sunk and four seriously damaged. He begged the admirals to launch another attack at once and this time concentrate on the oil tanks…. Kaga’s captain, at the urging of Commander Sata, also recommended a strike against installations and fuel tanks…. “We should retire as planned,” Kusaka advised Nagumo, who nodded. A staff officer suggested that they try and locate and sink the American carriers. Opinion on the bridge was divided. “There will be no more attacks of any kind,” said Kusaka. We will withdraw.”
Toland added, in a footnote,
Some accounts state that Fuchida and Genda repeatedly pleaded with Nagumo to return. In an interview in 1966, Admiral Kusaka recalled that they merely suggested a second attack and that his words “We will withdraw” ended the discussion; thereafter no one expressed a forceful opinion.41
Clearly, Kusaka, the First Air Fleet Chief of Staff, had a different perception of what happened on the Akagi’s bridge that critical afternoon.
Fuchida published an article in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings, which was reprinted in 1969 in an anthology, The Japanese Navy in World War II. This article was written as a first-person account.
My plane was just about the last one to get back to Akagi where refueled and rearmed planes were being lined up on the busy flight deck in preparation for yet another attack. I was called to the bridge as soon as the plane stopped, and could tell on arriving there that Admiral Nagumo’s staff had been engaged in heated discussions about the advisability of launching the next attack. They were waiting for my account of the battle. [After reporting the extent of the damage] I expressed my views saying, “All things considered we have achieved a great amount of destruction, but it would be unwise to assume that we have destroyed everything. There are still many targets remaining which should be hit. Therefore I recommend that another attack be launched.”… I had done all I could to urge another attack, but the decision rested entirely with Admiral Nagumo, and he chose to retire without launching the next attack.42
In this account Fuchida mentions “heated discussions,” but only claims that he recommended an additional attack against the “many targets remaining,” implying targets from the original target set, ships and aircraft. No mention is made of attacking the shipyard or oil storage tanks. An approximation of this scene was included in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! Fuchida served as one of the principle Japanese advisors to the producers of that film.
There are two other accounts of Fuchida’s post-attack report, both by Fuchida as related to Prange, one in At Dawn We Slept published in 1981, and another in God’s Samurai, Prange’s biography of Fuchida, published in 1990. Both contain specific, line-by-line conversations, including quotations attributed to Nagumo, Kusaka, Genda, and other staff members.
On departing Pearl Harbor Fuchida claimed that he “mentally earmarked for destruction” the fuel tanks and the “vast repair and maintenance facilities” for the attention of a follow-on strike. Upon his return to Akagi, after collecting confirming information from other pilots, he went to the bridge to report to Nagumo. He claimed that “a fierce argument” ensued on the subject of a follow-on strike. In Dawn the exchange is related as follows (based on Fuchida’s testimony which Prange dramatizes in the third person):
Then Kusaka took up the questioning. “What do you think the next targets should be?” Fuchida drew a quick breath. The wording seemed to indicate an aggressive intent. He came back swiftly, “The next targets should be the dockyards, the fuel tanks, and an occasional ship.” He saw no need to attack the battleships again.43
In God’s Samurai, Fuchida (again through Prange) gives the exchange a different flavor:
“If we attack again, what should the targets be?” asked Kusaka.
Fuchida had no difficulty in answe
ring, having thought of little else all the way back to the Akagi. “ The damaged battleships and the other vessels in the harbor, the dock yards, and the fuel tanks,” he informed them…. Nagumo made no immediate decision, dismissing Fuchida with a word of praise. As soon as he departed, Genda took up the battle…. However, Nagumo refused to attack Pearl Harbor again or to hunt for the elusive [American] flattops…. Akagi hoisted a signal flag indicating retirement to the northwest. Upset, Fuchida scrambled to the bridge.
“What’s happened?” he asked Genda.
His classmate shrugged. “It can’t be helped.”
That wasn’t good enough for Fuchida. He turned to Nagumo, saluted, and asked bluntly, “Why aren’t we attacking again?”
Kusaka forestalled whatever reply Nagumo might have made. “The objective of the Pearl Harbor operation is achieved,” he said. “Now we must prepare for future operations.”
Silently, Fuchida saluted and stalked off the bridge. “I was a bitter and angry man,” he recalled, “for I was convinced that Nagumo should have attacked again.”44
There are inconsistencies in these accounts that could be picked over at length. That is unnecessary, since the conversation, in whatever version, the “heated discussion,” Genda’s “begging,” stalking off the bridge after a second confrontation, re-striking the battleships or not re-striking the battleships—all, without a doubt, did not occur as related.
Kusaka stated in an interview that he had dismissed the subject of a follow-on attack from the outset. There was a one-question exchange on the subject initiated by a staff officer, not Fuchida or Genda; he did not consider the exchange to be sufficiently important to mention it in his account of the attack.45
Nagumo and Kusaka had possibly discussed the question before Fuchida landed. In Dull’s account, intercepted radio traffic inferred to the Japanese that an estimated fifty land-based bombers were still operational, and they were still concerned over the unlocated American carriers. Nagumo and Kusaka decided that Kido Butai should quickly clear the area. Dull’s account did not mention a confrontation with Fuchida.
