The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  Ten days before the first bomb fell against Pearl Harbor, the direct threat of such action had been posted to the military commanders who carried the responsibility of defending the Hawaiian Islands against such an attack. In Hawaii proper, the Army and Navy opened their secret files and set into motion the alert conditions preplanned for such a contingency as was implied in the warning from Washington. In accordance with its own local estimate of possible enemy action, the Army instituted its Number One Alert. This was the condition that called for defensive preparations especially against sabotage, and against uprisings by Japanese agents believed to be on the Islands in a number great enough to cause serious damage to Army installations. (Not a single authenticated instance of any such act of sabotage has ever been established.) The Number One Alert, unfortunately, precluded defense activity against any attack from outside the Territory of Hawaii, such as might be carried out by enemy warships and aircraft.

  By definition of its alert status, the Navy was to be ready to open fire with some secondary antiaircraft batteries and gun positions to repel a surprise attack. On the paper that spelled out the alert status, this promised a commendable state of vigilance; in reality it was nothing of the sort. Only a minor fraction of the firepower potential from the fleet resting quietly in harbor would be kept ready to open fire upon any hostile aircraft which might suddenly appear overhead.

  By the first days of December, another crack in the defensive wall of Hawaii had been closed. Unfortunately, however, while a potentially valuable new defense system was installed, its actual usefulness was limited. This was not the fault of the mechanisms involved, but rather of the attitude of the men who commanded the defense systems when the Japanese finally did commit themselves to the strike.

  The Army placed in operation six new radar detection stations. These had been installed specifically to provide warning in the event of an early morning carrier attack. It was this type of assault which the military commanders at Pearl Harbor and outlying installations considered to be the most likely move of the Japanese. Somewhere, somehow, the chain of command must certainly have become inextricably entangled. The Army’s Number One Alert, which had been placed in effect, completely ignored (emphasizing protection against sabotage as it did) the possibility of a carrier-launched air strike. Further evidence of the clash of opinions could be found in the operation of the radar stations; they remained active, with personnel on duty, only from four to seven o’clock in the morning, a total of three hours per day.

  There was in the Hawaiian Islands by December an AAF strength of 754 officers and 6,706 enlisted men, the majority of them concentrated on Oahu. The AAF stood ready to meet all situations with a total force of 231 military aircraft, of which the men considered no more than 115 planes to be generously listed as up-to-date models.

  These combat-quality machines included 12 B-17D Flying Fortress bombers; these were the last models of the four-engine bombers to be built without power turrets and without any tail-gun protection of any kind. Twelve A-20A Boston twin-engine attack bombers represented modern bombing strength, and there were also a total of 99 P-40 fighters, of different types. Supplementing these “first-line” aircraft was the secondary force. This consisted of 33 lumbering, helpless B-18A medium bombers, 39 P-36A Mohawk fighters (well outclassed by the Zero), and 14 ancient P-26 fighters which with great kindness might be listed as merely decrepit.

  The AAF’s 18th Bombardment Wing was headquartered at Hickam Field and the 14th Pursuit Wing at Wheeler Field. Units of the two forces were further deployed at Bellows Field and at Haleiwa. In addition to these major bases, foresight was evident in a string of emergency and auxiliary fields scattered on the islands of Kauai, Lanai, Hawaii, Maui, and Molokai.

  To conform to the requirements of the Army’s alert status, the AAF parked 57 bombers at Hickam Field, which was to prove unfortunate, since this air base adjoined Pearl Harbor proper. Since the order of the day for the ten days preceding the Japanese strike had called for defense against possible acts of sabotage, the AAF unknowingly played directly into the hands of the Japanese. Mechanics packed the bombers as tightly together as it was possible to move them. There they stood, wing-tip to wingtip, ripe and juicy for the bombs and streams of bullets from the Japanese, who, of course, found all their targets neatly set up for them in the most ideal position for destruction.

  At Hickam Field mechanics virtually stuffed and jammed planes into hangars (which were hit with bull’s-eye accuracy by Japanese pilots, or clustered them together in inviting targets. At Bellows Field, 17 miles away on the eastern side of the island of Oahu, another 20 aircraft had been pushed together into another plump target.

  At Wheeler Field, 12 miles inland from Hickam, the AAF continued its invitation-to-disaster arrangement of its military aircraft. No less than 151 planes were aligned with beautiful precision along the field, wings almost brushing, in the juiciest plum of all for the enemy. Included in this splendid sight were no less than 75 new P-40 fighters. (What 75 airborne P-40s could have done to the Japanese force may be left to the imagination; airborne and in a position to intercept, they could—as Commander Okumiya has noted—easily have changed the entire course of the war.)

  The disparity between the oncoming attack, already being launched by the Japanese, and possible enemy action contemplated by the Army was nowhere more evident than at Wheeler Field. So all-important did the threat of sabotage loom in the minds of the commanding officers of the area, as they considered the possibilities of enemy action, that the fighters had been emptied of all their fuel and ammunition, to make them less flammable, and then their guns were dismantled.

  Even had the warning of attack been sounded an hour in advance of the first bomb, these precious fighters would have remained useless hulks chained to the ground.

  The aircraft of the Navy likewise stood naked to assault from the skies. At Ewa, the Marines repeated the ostrich stand of the AAF, and 49 modem fighters and bombers, and some auxiliary planes, were lined up in that vulnerable wingtip-to-wingtip position. Most of the PBY Catalina patrol bombers at the Navy Seaplane Base at Kaneohe Bay either were lined up together or parked tightly within hangars. At the Naval Air Station on Ford Island, headquarters for Navy Patrol Wing 2, an additional 70 aircraft huddled together-in an open invitation to destruction.

  It was almost as if the concept of aircraft dispersal had never existed. Never in their wildest optimism did the Japanese ever hope to find everything so neatly stacked in their favor.

  And the main objective of the Japanese air attack, the warships of the Pacific battle fleet of the United States Navy, awaited their savage mauling. Fully two-thirds of the 102 Navy combat vessels in the entire Pacific lay waiting at anchor, in drydock, or tied to their piers. Ripe for splitting by Japanese bombs and torpedoes were the eight battleships, nine cruisers, 28 destroyers, five submarines, and auxiliary vessels.

  Fate gave the United States one unexpected—and incalculable—favor. None of the six fleet aircraft carriers was then in port or would be exposed to the Japanese when the attack came on the morning of December 7. This great stroke of fortune prevented the very backbone of strength of the Navy from being damaged so badly that the enemy successes subsequent to the Pearl Harbor strike would have been far more extensive.

  The Japanese Move Out

  The enemy began his move of major fleet units against Pearl Harbor nearly a full month before the task force Svas in position to commit Japan to its fateful clash with the United States. On the morning of November 10, the first units of the Nagumo Force sortied from Kure naval base on Honshu Island. During the next eight days the remainder of the fleet slipped anchor and eased away from their harbors.

  The Japanese executed every move with the most meticulous care and precaution against any leak in security. All ships maintained strict radio silence. To prevent American naval intelligence from discovering the initial departure out of Kure, the vessels remaining at the naval base kept up a steady stream o
f radio communications which were to compensate for the sudden lack of messages from ships of the Nagumo Force, which had put to sea. Unquestionably the maneuver was carried out with splendid success; neither the American nor the British monitors tracking Japanese radio traffic assumed that there had been any sudden or major changes in the known disposition of the Japanese naval forces.

  Not even the most stringent security measures are foolproof, and the Japanese did commit one fatal error. Or it should have been a fatal error; that it was not so was due to the continued American belief—ingrained in almost all high-ranking officers—that the Japanese could not possibly outwit the United States.

  The Pacific Fleet intelligence officer, scrupulously studying the Japanese fleet’s radio traffic, was alerted by the sudden absence from this traffic of the call letters for two aircraft carriers assigned at the time to Kure. At once this officer flashed a priority message to Pearl Harbor. Admiral Kimmel considered that since this was the only reported change in the radio communications of the Japanese, the matter was unimportant. His conclusions proved disastrous.

  Thus the first vital clue to the movement of the Japanese battle fleet, scanty though it might have been at first glance, went unheeded.

  From Kure the Japanese fleet units moved to their assembly point at Tankan Bay (Hitokappu Wan) on Etoro-fu, the largest of the Kurile Islands.

  Six days later, the Japanese were ready to begin their final move in the phase that would hurl all the Pacific and Asia into war. On November 26 the Nagumo Force slipped away from its isolated rendezvous point in the Kuriles and began what the Japanese pompously, but with deep conviction, termed their “divine mission.” Doubtless the Americans on the receiving end of the Japanese attack would have been somewhat surprised to consider the enemy assault even remotely of a divine nature, but to the Japanese officers and seamen, they were embarked upon a modem-age crusade in the name of the Empire.

  Whatever their convictions, of the efficiency of the Japanese striking force there could be no question. Commanded by brilliant (if somewhat cautious) Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the men aboard the fleet of only 23 vessels were trained to razor sharpness. Size notwithstanding, at the moment they eased their way onto the high seas they were undoubtedly the finest and most powerful naval air striking force the world had ever known.

  The crews to man the planes of the First Air Fleet had been picked with meticulous care from the ranks of the entire naval air arm. Every pilot had a minimum of 800 hours flight time and many of them were veterans with thousands of hours at the controls of their planes. Of the pilots who were to lead different elements into battle, the fury of combat and the coughing roar of guns were not at all strange to them; they had cut their combat teeth in China. Among the fighter pilots there were men who had already fought Chinese, Russians, and Americans, and who were ranked as aces.

  The Zero fighter was the best in the Pacific. The torpedo bombers of the Nagumo Force were the fastest in the world and the dive bombers and their crews had perfected their techniques for years on the Asiatic mainland.

  By December 2 the Nagumo Force was well at sea, but the going proved rough for the Japanese. So violent were the swells marching across the sea that on several occasions men were washed overboard. Secrecy and timing were imperative—the ships did not bother to slow down for them. The danger of collision in the ship formations was considered by the Japanese to be “alarming”; the wind ripped signal flags to shreds, and thick fog banks hampered formation discipline in a fleet which did not dare to violate its strict radio silence.

  On this same morning, December 2, Tokyo flashed its final orders to Admiral Nagumo. His radio operator rushed to him the coded message from the headquarters of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto:

  “Niitaka Yama Nobore ”

  Those were the words—Climb Mount Niitaka—to open World War II on a global basis. The die was cast. The Nagumo Force, with the carriers Akagi and Kaga of the 1st Carrier Division, Soryu and Hiryu of the 2nd Carrier Division, Zuikaku and Shokaku of the 5th Carrier Division; the battleships Hiei and Kirishima; the two heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma; one light cruiser, nine destroyers, and three supporting vessels, turned to the south and increased speed.

  Under the Seas

  The Nagumo Force was not the only Japanese striking group in the Pacific bearing down on Pearl Harbor. An advance expeditionary force of 20 submarines had sortied to the east to probe the seas ahead of the main surface fleet

  Sixteen of these submarines were of the long-range I type, each 320 feet in length and displacing 1,955 tons surfaced. Eleven I-type submarines carried small floatplanes with folding wings which were accommodated in watertight compartments aft of the conning towers. These small aircraft extended tremendously the scouting capabilities of the submarines.

  The other five I-type submarines carried armament of a drastically altered nature. These were midget submarines which were towed by heavy clamps behind the mother sub. Into each of the suicidal weapons were crammed two men and two torpedoes.

  The Advance Expeditionary Force departed from Kure and Yokosuka during the three days of November 18-20. Their first stop was Kwajalein, where they took on fuel and supplies, and received final confirmation of their orders. Then they moved out to take up their scouting positions, ranging from some nine miles to 100 miles from Pearl Harbor. By December 5 all the submarines involved were on their patrol stations.

  On the night of December 6-7, the mother submarines cast off their five midgets, and the Japanese began to probe into the defenses of the American naval bastion.

  The attack was under way.

  The Final Hours

  It is 42 minutes past three o’clock the morning of December 7. . . .

  Aboard the converted minesweeper USS Condor, on patrol two miles outside the naval base of Pearl Harbor, Ensign R. C. McCloy, USN, stares hard across the water —and becomes the first American to make contact with the enemy in the war which has not yet flared openly. Across the darkened surface, spray glistens on steel—the conning tower of a Japanese midget submarine. McCloy acts instantly and sounds the alarm; moments later blinker lights flash in the darkness as the Condor passes the word to the destroyer Ward.

  Immediately the destroyer bursts into life as general quarters clamors through the warship and the destroyer increases power, commencing her “guns hot” sweep for the enemy undersea raider. But for the next several hours the Japanese aboard the midget submarine draw tight around them the cloak of darkness and water, and the search proves frustratingly empty. Then a third American ship is brought into action. Unknown to its crew, however, the repair ship Ant ares has already been involved, for the Japanese have been scurrying along in the wake of the ship, hoping to be able to slip into Pearl Harbor when the anti-submarine nets open to permit safe entry of the American vessel. The search remains an elusive cat-and-mouse hunt; while the submarine trails Ant ares, the American crew searches fruitlessly for the Japanese raider.

  It is six o’clock the morning of December 7. . . .

  Aboard His Imperial Majesty’s heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma the Japanese crews wave and shout lustily to the two pilots on each warship who sit in the cockpits of their float-equipped Zero fighters. Their orders are to proceed directly to the American naval base at Oahu and to make a reconnaissance flight over Ford Island. If the American ships are still at anchor—or if they have moved out—word is to be sent immediately to the fleet.

  The deck officers aboard Tone and Chikuma brace themselves, raise their arms, then bring them down sharply. There are four sudden CRAAACKS! and four Zero fighters slash into the air.

  Floatplane Zero fighters of the type catapulted from the Japanese cruisers Tone and Chikuma, and which surveyed Pearl Harbor from the air prior to the main Japanese attack.

  Even as the floatplanes bank and wheel for Pearl Harbor, the Japanese carriers, far behind the cruisers which have forged ahead, swarm with activity. The Nagumo Force is now some 200 miles from Pearl Harbor. The
hour of destiny is at hand; it is time to launch the first attacking wave.

  At 0600 hours it is still dark. A fresh northeast wind and moderate running seas make the carrier decks pitch badly; this is a trifling problem—no carrier pilots have ever been so well trained, are so fit for the mission at hand. A heavy overcast at 6,000 feet hides the sky, but nothing can dampen the spirits of the Japanese aboard their warships.

  One by one the planes thunder down the decks to slide into the air. Thunder growls louder and louder until a storm of roaring sound tumbles and swirls away from each ship; the cry of power rises and falls as the warplanes rush ahead, lift from the decks, and swing through the choppy air to assemble in their formations. Soon all the aircraft assigned to the initial attack to smash the

  Americans are in the air and circling in formation—40 torpedo bombers, 50 level bombers, 50 dive bombers, and their escort of 50 Zero fighters—190 crack warplanes in all, waiting for the signal from the floatplanes scouting far ahead that all is well, that the American fleet remains ripe for destruction.

  Far below the wheeling formations, thousands of Japanese sailors line the carrier decks. Emotion wells high in their breasts; it is the hour of destiny! The Orientals are about to strike, to assert the supremacy of the Empire, and the wind carries the shrill Banzais! screamed into the teeth of the dawn.

  It is 15 minutes before seven o’clock the morning of December 7 .. ..

  Aboard the destroyer Ward a gunnery officer squints through the new light of day and stares hard across the water. Several minutes before, a lumbering Catalina flying boat had dropped smoke bombs to mark the location of the Japanese midget submarine for which the ships Ward, Condor, and Antares have been searching since ten minutes to four.