100 Mistakes that Changed History

by Bill Fawcett

  Highly reliable information has been received that categoric and urgent instructions were sent yesterday to Japanese diplomatic and consular posts at Hong Kong, Singapore, Batavia, Manila, Washington and London to destroy most of their codes and ciphers at once and to burn . . . confidential and secret documents.

  So four days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, both commanders knew that the Japanese diplomats were preparing for war. The only surprise was that the attack came at Hawaii.

  If you had commanded the only U.S. Navy fleet in the Pacific or the main Pacific air base, what action would you have taken? Admiral Kimmel and General Short decided that, even with war imminent, there was no concern for an attack on Pearl Harbor since the various intelligence branches had not specifically mentioned one but did see signs of other attacks (which also happened). So on the basis of this, and perhaps personal and racial egotism, they did nothing to prepare for such an attack. The island was not even on alert, and crews were allowed to leave all the docked ships. Obviously Kimmel did not see his fleet as being at risk.

  This mistake becomes even less understandable when you realize that less than a year earlier, obsolete British aircraft attacked and sunk a good part of the Italian fleet while docked in the similarly shallow and protected Taranto harbor. Or that by November 16, the bulk of the Japanese fleet and all its major carriers had simply disappeared. The United States had no idea where the main fleet was of a nation it knew was preparing to attack them. Yet the commanding officers in Hawaii had their bases in a very low level of alert.

  This attitude, and the low alert level, led to more minor mistakes that made things worse. When the new radar unit spotted the approaching first wave of attackers, the operator told his commander, and the officer commanding the radar station assumed it was six army bombers that were expected that morning. Ships radioed warnings when the Japanese flew overhead, but these were still being processed in a lightly manned communications center when it was too late. Reports of periscopes also failed to bring the bases to a higher level of alert. Despite the situation, the sightings, and the unknown location of the Japanese carrier fleet, from the commanding officers on down, nothing was done in time to stave off disaster.

  Actually nothing is not correct: Both American commanders had taken some recent actions. They were, however, very bad decisions that made the situation worse. Based in Pearl Harbor were eight battleships, three aircraft carriers, and numerous supporting ships. Even docked, if on full alert and warned, this was a powerful antiaircraft defensive force. Unfortunately, the fleet was at a very low level of alert, which meant that on a Sunday morning most of the crew was ashore. When the Japanese attacked, there were not even enough sailors to man all of the guns. Those who were on the ships in the harbor woke to explosions and sirens. Many never made it to the deck or their stations before their battleships were sunk. Even unprepared, the navy and army defenders shot down twenty-nine planes from the two waves of more than 350 attacking.

  The army air force was equally badly prepared. The few men on the base were surprised at breakfast. Ammunition lockers were locked, and when the first wave attacked, barely a quarter of its machine guns, and only four of thirty-one antiaircraft batteries, were fired. General Short had been much more concerned about sabotage by spies hiding among Hawaii’s large Japanese population than about the chance his air bases would be bombed. As a result, he ordered all of the aircraft to be lined up in straight rows in the open on the runways. This way they all were far from the fences, and it allowed the MPs to keep a good eye on them. This setup also made them perfect targets for bombing and strafing attacks. The Japanese attackers simply flew along the tightly packed lines of American aircraft and were able to destroy several planes with each pass. Virtually none of the army aircraft made it into the air, not even an hour later when the second attack wave hit.

  The attacks on Pearl Harbor

  When the second wave had finished, five battleships and two destroyers were sunk or so badly damaged that they couldn’t be used for the rest of the war. Four more battleships and five cruisers were damaged. The army air corps lost almost 200 of 350 planes with most of the rest damaged. More than 2,400 veteran sailors, marines, and soldiers died. Only the coincidence that all three U.S. carriers were at sea prevented total disaster.

  The mistake made by Admiral Kimmel and General Short was not to be prepared. Another was to ignore the intelligence they had been given. If the American Pacific surface fleet had not been effectively neutralized on December 7, 1941, then the Japanese expansion and successes in 1942 might well have been much less. The Philippine Islands might have been successfully reinforced, and so no Bataan Death March. But the mistake was made, and for the next year, the Japanese expanded without real resistance until they occupied much of the Pacific Ocean and were threatening Australia itself. These two commanders, who resigned on December 8, had the most important American bases in the Pacific on low alert. With war expected any moment, it was a mistake that cost thousands of lives and changed the nature of the war in the Pacific. There certainly was an intelligence failure, and it was the intelligence of those who had been in command.

  77

  SELF-DEFEATING VICTORY

  Pearl Harbor Redux

  1941

  The Imperial Japanese Navy’s December 7, 1941, surprise attack was not only an intelligence and tactical disaster for the United States; it was also the worst strategic action taken by Japan in all of World War II. To understand this you have to look at why Japan went to war against the United States. There was never a thought in Tokyo that Japan could actually defeat and conquer the much richer and more populous North America. From the beginning, the intention was to force the United States into a peace agreement on Japan’s terms. Those terms were, generally speaking, designed to leave Japan in control of Southeast Asia and a sphere of islands in the Pacific.

  But remember that before the Pearl Harbor attack there was no state of war between America and Japan. Nor were there any American plans in motion to start a war. The United States was protesting diplomatically the Japanese treatment of China and had cut off oil and scrap metal shipments, but that was very far from declaring war. President Roosevelt was on record as wanting the country involved in the war, but he wanted involvement in the war in Europe, not in the Pacific. Even after the attack on Pearl Harbor the president pushed for and ensured that the U.S. war effort was concentrated on Europe.

  It has often been maintained that Japan was sure its attacks on British and French territories in Indochina would bring the United States into the war, but that was hardly a guaranteed response. The strong isolationist feeling the majority of Americans held kept the country out of war while France itself fell, the Battle of Britain was fought, and the Nazi invasions of Norway and other neutral countries came about. It was far from definite that invading Vietnam and Burma was going to force America to defend the colonies of nations that America had not gone to war to defend when the homelands were attacked. So the very basis of claiming there was a need for an attack on the United States was and is questionable.

  What the surprise attack in Hawaii did create was a diplomatic disaster that should have been easily foreseen. After all, a beneficial negotiation was the goal, with Japan dictating from strength, but to have that, the other party has to be willing to negotiate. And this was only to get the United States to accept Japan’s extended conquests on the other side of the world. So here is the mistake. In an attempt to force the Americans to make a beneficial treaty with Japan, they started a war in a way that was guaranteed to enrage virtually every American. Its actions in attacking Pearl Harbor pretty much guaranteed that no moderate compromise with the United States would ever be possible.

  If you want to reach an agreement with someone you are arguing with, then sucker punching him or her is probably not the best technique. Worse, the attack had a second effect, having aroused the need for revenge in a nation with ten times the industrial capacity; the Japanes
e were forced to push hard for some sort of dramatic victory. Having angered an industrial giant, they had to win fast. This then forced the Japanese into aggressive and eventually militarily disastrous battles such as those on the Coral Sea and at Midway. But no matter how many battles the Imperial Japanese Navy won, from the beginning, forcing such a negotiated victory was no longer possible. The American public simply would not have accepted one. Nor would that always “decisive victory” have been decisive. The U.S. Navy was able to make up all its losses from Pearl Harbor and go on to become a force that put hundreds of warships off Okinawa just a few years later. Unless the American morale broke, and there was little chance of that after what President Roosevelt described in his radio announcement of the attack as “a day that will live on in infamy,” not one or even several naval victories could force the peace Japan started the war to obtain.

  War is often said to be an extension of diplomacy. Yet by attacking Pearl Harbor before war was declared, the Japanese instead excluded diplomacy as a means of resolution. It was a mistake they paid dearly for making.

  78

  SHORT-RANGE THINKING

  Double Betrayal

  1941

  On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and started a war with the United States. The wisdom of that decision was itself dubious, but the mistake made by Adolf Hitler a few days later easily equaled it in dire consequences. It had been a good year for Hitler and the Third Reich. The German army had conquered most of Europe and the only setbacks had seemed minor. The British had managed to repel the air offensive and so avoid an invasion of their island. In Africa, Erwin Rommel had been stopped short of Cairo in what was really a minor sideshow. The war with Russia had gone brilliantly with almost 2 million Russian soldiers killed or captured and vital parts of that country occupied. For years, Hitler had cultivated the Japanese leadership in expectation that Japan would attack Siberia, providing a second front against Russia. The German foreign minister, since Operation Barbarossa, had suggested to Japan that mineral-rich Siberia was theirs for the taking. Hitler personally had seen the damage having to fight on two fronts did in World War I to Germany. He was anxious for Russia to suffer the same fate.

  When Adolf Hitler heard about Pearl Harbor, he was recorded as being visibly happy. Based on what he did next, there must have been an expectation that Japan, who had already declared themselves an ally of Germany and Italy, would join in attacking Russia. What he did not know was that months earlier the Japanese had decided to concentrate on the United States and had no interest in attacking Russia. Worse for Germany was the fact that Russia had been informed of this by a spy in Tokyo. This security breach served both Japan and Russia well. It allowed Stalin to begin pulling the elite Siberian battalions west immediately after the Germans invaded. With most of the Russian divisions gone, Japan did not need to station significant forces on the Russian border either. By October 1941, the Russians and Japanese had actually signed a nonaggression pact. The loser was Germany. But four days after Pearl Harbor, on December 11, Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States in support of Japan. That he did so based on a false assumption is clear from his remarks at the time. He expected Japan to attack Russia. Also, after seeing the effect American units had when they finally joined in the Great War, he certainly wasn’t anxious to see them in Europe again. It was his expectation that Japan would distract America, leaving Germany free to complete what seemed to be the inevitable conquest of Russia and to force a peace on Britain. Of course that was not how it worked.

  But there was another factor beyond unrealistic expectations that made this declaration one of the worst mistakes the German Führer ever made. The American public simply did not want to get involved in a second war. Isolationist candidates had won many elections. For more than two years the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, had been lobbying for the country to be more involved in the war in Europe. His often-stated opinion was that if the Nazis were able to use the wealth and manufacturing power of an occupied Europe, they would pose a deadly threat next to the Americas. But on December 10, 1941, the Americans were not angry with Germany. On December 8, Congress had declared war only on Japan. The military, and the people, wanted revenge for that day of infamy. But by declaring war on December 11, Hitler made Germany appear part of the conspiracy. It gave Roosevelt an opening to do what he wanted, where he wanted. Only after Hitler declared war was the American declaration expanded to include Germany. Almost immediately, the power generated by the surprise attack was channeled into Roosevelt’s Europe First policy. America began to mobilize and plans were made to send the bulk of the new army to England, not the Pacific. The shipments of trucks and weapons to all of the European Allies were dramatically increased as the United States went on a wartime footing.

  It is likely that eventually the United States would have joined the war in Europe. But without Hitler’s declaring war first this might have happened months later. The Asia First movement was strong even after Hitler’s declaration. It is notable that, in his December 9 fireside chat, Roosevelt did not call for a declaration of war on Germany. He blamed them for having goaded Japan into attacking but stopped short of widening the war. Had he done so, he might well have lost the amazing unity caused by Pearl Harbor and become more susceptible to the growing attacks he was under for his failed domestic policies. So without Hitler doing it for him, Roosevelt would likely have had to wait months before declaring war on Germany, perhaps longer. Those months of delay could have been decisive. In a scenario that does not include the massive number of trucks, tanks, aircraft, weapons, and ammunition that the United States sent to Russia and England during those months, the German army might well have been victorious in Russia in 1942. Without the American armed forces in Europe and a resilient Russia, the defeat of Germany, if possible at all, would have taken years longer.

  Rarely has a wartime leader been so completely wrong. In declaring war on the United States on December 11, Hitler accomplished exactly the opposite of what he expected. It gained Germany no assistance against Russia and enabled Roosevelt to shift the emphasis of the American war effort to Europe. Hitler’s declaration of war may have actually served Japan well, but only because it allowed Roosevelt to send fewer forces to the Pacific and more forces to Europe. An emphasis on Japan would have meant that the war in the Pacific would have ended earlier. Instead, by declaring war on the United States at a crucial time when American anger was just crystallizing, that Nazi act of solidarity helped both to hasten and to make inevitable the defeat of Germany.

  79

  NOT LEARNING FROM HISTORY

  Full Speed Alone

  1941

  It is impossible to discuss what mistakes Japan made in World War II without including some mention of how they ignored 2,500 years of naval tactics and paid a high price for doing so. The convoy system for protecting merchant ships goes back to when warships were first invented. When the Persian emperor Xerxes’ triremes lost the sea battle of Salamis, he was forced to withdraw most of his invading army from Greece. This was not because they were under any threat, but because his army needed to be supplied by merchant ships crossing the Adriatic Sea. With the loss of most of his triremes, Xerxes no longer had enough ships to convoy those merchants and protect them from Greek raiders. That, combined with a fear of losing his escape route across the Bosphorus, is why the Battle of Salamis won both the land and naval war for the Greek city-states.

  In time of war during the age of sail, the practice of convoying groups of merchant ships with warships was the established policy for all of Europe. The English sea dogs always lay in wait for the Spanish plate (as in silver plate) fleet, which consisted of armed merchant vessels protected by Spanish warships. The English navy itself formed convoys during almost every war. A British convoy crossing the Atlantic during the Napoleonic Wars might contain as many as 100 merchants and be protected by as many as five frigates and often a ship of the line.

  The British
were slow to institute convoys in World War I, waiting until 1917. When they finally did, there was a nearly 50 percent drop in merchant ship losses. During that period, most of the coal used in France had to be transported to them across the English Channel. Initially, German submarines wreaked havoc with the slow cargo haulers. But once a strict convoy system was implemented, the total losses to submarines for the next year was a negligible four ships out of hundreds of sailings.

  In World War II, the Royal Navy instituted a convoy, beginning on September 6, 1939. That convoy consisted of thirty-six ships sailing in four rows of nine each with an escorting warship front, right, and left. The first major assistance given to Britain, at Roosevelt’s insistence under the Lend-Lease Act, was not cannons or tanks, but fifty destroyers and fifty-four destroyer escorts. These were all used for the convoy duty of protecting Britain’s Atlantic shipping from U-boats. All British ships crossing the Atlantic during World War II were required to sail in convoy. After Pearl Harbor, a combination of the U.S. Navy instituting convoys in May 1942 and technical advances broke the U-boat offensive a few months later. By February 1943, with aircraft and even small aircraft carriers acting as escorts, the German navy lost forty-three U-boats and sunk only thirty-four merchant ships. Wellescorted convoys could overcome even the highly sophisticated tactics of Doenitz’s U-boats. Lone ships never had a chance. When Russia joined the war, convoys of weapons and ammunition were instituted to sail from Britain, past occupied Norway, to Murmansk.

  Which leads to the question of why did Japan, the other major island nation engaged in World War II, fail to ever institute a convoy system? A large part of the reason may have been the attitude of those in command. Warships were meant to fight battles, not protect merchants. This strategy worked at first after the Philippines and Wake Island fell. Distances were too far for American submarines to spend much time in the major Japanese shipping lanes and subs were too few. But as the war progressed, the Japanese merchant fleet was subjected to ever greater losses with no reaction by the Imperial Japanese Navy other than to tell them to sail faster and zigzag. In December 1941, the Japanese lost only twelve merchant ships out of hundreds. In January, as the American bases in the western Pacific were lost, the number dropped to only seven ships lost. By that February, only two were sunk all month. Similar numbers prevailed until the end of 1943. This success without convoys meant dozens of destroyers could act as escorts to carriers, transport troops, or bombard enemy islands, and so the Japanese felt that their strategy worked.