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The purposes of a harbor and a fleet base were to provide upkeep, repair, refueling, and replenishing of ships as well as rest and recreation for crews after strenuous operations at sea. Just as ships could not be kept in continuous operation, so crews could not be kept at peak efficiency in peacetime without regularly scheduled days in port. And since harbors were normally viewed as havens from peril on the sea, it probably was thought by most American citizens who knew anything about Pearl Harbor from Collier’s or other such sources that the Pacific Fleet when at Pearl was safe as bears snuggled in their den. But this harbor presented some peculiar and alarming exposures to danger. While its lochs provided ten square miles of anchorage, the 140-odd warships and other vessels that ordinarily occupied that space were moored in such congestion that, for an attacking air fleet, it would be somewhat like shooting fish in a barrel.36 The single, narrow entrance channel, through which all ships must pass, exposed individual ships in slow line ahead to torpedo attack by submarines. Too, a ship or other obstruction sunk in the channel would block all other ships from entry or sortie. Again, because of the single channel, should a warning come of approaching enemy warships, two to three hours would be required for the fleet to sortie. Magnetic and other mines might be laid in the sea approaches to the channel. And, finally, among the major dangers in Kimmel’s estimation, the topography of the land surrounding the harbor, e.g., the generally accessible Aiea Heights, made it readily possible for enemy agents from the large Japanese population of the island to keep watch on the berthing and movement of ships. But as long as the President insisted on maintaining the fleet in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor had to be its home. The only suitable alternative, deep-water Lahaina Roads, off Maui, was ruled out by Richardson and Kimmel because of its “extreme vulnerability” to submarine attack.37
Since the Army alone, even when reinforced by the matériel promised it by Secretary Stimson, and even, for that matter, when shored up by the Local Defense Forces of the Fourteenth Naval District, could not offer a convincing defense of the fleet and harbor against air attack, it fell to Admiral Kimmel’s fleet, with its AA guns and carrier aircraft, to make up the difference, if it could. Kimmel did not think it could, fully, and he regretted that he had to try, because constant attention to defense watches in port drew energy and time from the fleet’s primary responsibility under war plan WPL-46, which was to train officers and men for far-flung offensive actions in the Central and South Pacific. A maximum security effort in port would have made training impossible altogether; it would paralyze the fleet in place; in fact, it would call into question the reasons for having a fleet at all. With adequate personnel and matériel it would be possible to maintain a state of alert for some period of time, but Kimmel did not have (and never would have) sufficient numbers of either. And, even with them, he would have had to consider the deleterious psychological effects on personnel of long periods of peacetime watch standing. His only option was to balance security needs, training requirements, and crew rest. In port that delicate balance lay between rest, in order to bring fresh crews into battle, and reasonable provisions for security against surprise attack. That equilibrium had to be carefully maintained, lest the fleet be worn out on the one hand or caught unawares on the other.
It would have been helpful if Kimmel could have delegated the Navy’s defense mission entirely to Bloch, but Bloch’s resources were grossly inadequate, and the fleet itself had to become directly engaged, with the result that, unlike Short, Kimmel had to prepare simultaneously for both offensive and defensive operations. To his credit, without complaint to Washington, he threw all his energies into both tasks. And from Washington he received appropriate encouragement. Very early on, CNO Stark wrote him, praising the wisdom of the President’s appointment, which “has the overwhelming approval of the Service,” and adding: “I am thankful that I have your calm judgment, your imagination, your courage, your guts and your good head at the seagoing end. Also your can do—rather than can’t.”38
On 19 February, Kimmel issued Pacific Fleet Confidential Letter No. 2 CL-41 titled “Security of Fleet at Base and in Operating Areas.” With only one set of minor revisions published on 14 October, this defense plan for security and condition of readiness was operating doctrine through 7 December; and, indeed, after Kimmel was relieved as CINCPAC in that same month by Admiral Nimitz, the latter continued in force the 2CL-41 directive.39 Prescribed in 2CL-41 were three conditions of readiness for ships moored in Pearl Harbor:
Condition I—General Quarters [action stations] in all ships. Condition of aircraft as prescribed by Naval Base Defense Officer [Bloch].
Condition II—One-half of antiaircraft battery of all ships in each sector manned and ready. Condition of aircraft as prescribed by Naval Base Defense Officer.
Condition III—Antiaircraft battery (guns which bear in assigned sector) of at least one ship in each sector manned and ready. Minimum of four guns required for each sector. Condition of aircraft as prescribed by Naval Base Defense Officer.
It was the responsibility of the Naval Base Defense Officer (Bloch) to advise the Senior Officer Embarked, normally the Commander Battleships, Battle Force, which condition the fleet should maintain. But the Senior Officer Embarked would give the order. Kimmel ordered that in port there must be at all times on board each ship at least 50 percent of the enlisted men and 25 percent of the officers. Furthermore, all ships must have a sufficient number of officers and men trained for the job in each watch to man all AA batteries. Ships were to be moored by sectors in such a way as to provide each a clear arc of fire. There also must be at all times a sufficient number of men on board to get the ship under way, to go to sea, and to fight the ship. After 29 April, each battleship at anchor had two machine guns continuously manned, with two cases of .50-caliber ammunition, and crews standing by two 5-inch AA guns with fifteen rounds of ammunition for each. This was a higher standard of security than prescribed in condition III. No guns in either cruisers or destroyers were manned, but, by Kimmel’s order, ammunition was in the ready boxes at the guns and the gun crews normally lived near the guns at all times. It was more difficult to mount continuous peacetime watches in cruisers and destroyers because of their smaller crews, whereas with the larger number of men in battleships watches could be maintained continuously without hardship.
On Sunday morning, 7 December, it may be noted, among the battleships Arizona (BB-39) had 37 officers on board and all of her enlisted men with the exception of about 40; West Virginia (BB-48) had 80 percent of
her officers and 95 percent of her crew; Tennessee (BB-43) had her duty watch and 38 other officers, together with all but 111 of her complement of 1,700 enlisted men; California (BB-44) had 49 officers and all but 6 of her enlisted complement. Maryland (BB-46) had all officers but one of her AA battery and all her enlisted men except a few on patrol, leave, and special liberty; Nevada (BB-36) had 6 of her 9 AA officers and 95 percent of her enlisted personnel; and Pennsylvania (BB-38), in dry dock, had 40 officers and all enlisted men except 32 petty officers on liberty. There are no figures for Oklahoma, whose logs and other documents were lost in the sinking. Other classes of ships showed the same high rates of personnel on board. The light cruisers Honolulu (CL-48) and Helena (CL-50), for example, had 50 percent of officers and 98 percent of crew on the former and 78 percent of officers and 98 percent of crew on the latter. Although 50 percent of crews on all ships were permitted to go ashore, few did so. And there was no noticeable evidence of alcohol abuse among either officers or crews on shore during Saturday night through Sunday morning.
On all types of vessels daily and nightly AA exercises were carried out when in port, utilizing every type of armament, 5-inch, 3-inch, 1.1-inch quadruple mounts, and .50-caliber machine guns. Unluckily for the fleet, these were wretchedly inadequate weapons for defending against low-flying aircraft moving at speeds in excess of 250 miles per hour. The .50-caliber machine guns lacked heft; the 3-inch gun was not rapid fire
; and the 1.1-inch was subject to overheating and jamming after a few rounds. The Department of the Navy was slow in adopting and deploying two rapid-fire antiaircraft weapons that provided other Western navies the capacity to destroy fast modern aircraft. The first was a 20-mm gun manufactured by the Swiss Oerlikon-Bührle Company. Firing an explosive shell with a cyclic rate of fire of 600 rounds per minute, it proved particularly useful for repelling low-flying aircraft. The British Admiralty, which purchased 1,500 before the outbreak of war, and manufactured many more under license, produced a documentary film on the Oerlikon, which it showed in the United States in 1942 as part of an effort to persuade the U.S. Navy to adopt the gun, which it eventually did, but too late for Pearl Harbor. The second weapon, a Swedish-designed 40-mm antiaircraft gun, was even more effective. Called the Bofors, from AB Bofors, the company that developed it in 1929, the gun gave warships the ability to put up heavy saturating fire at a rate of 140 rounds per minute. Its projectiles were high explosive. Maximum practical range was 12,500 feet. Most European countries adopted the gun before the war. The U.S. Navy dawdled and finally came around to it late in 1941, again too late for Pearl Harbor. What it might have accomplished there on 7 December was demonstrated in its first use on board the carrier Enterprise (CV-6) and the battleship South Dakota (BB-55) during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, on 26 October 1942, when the quadruple-mounted Bofors cleared the skies. With a more provident ordnance program at Main Navy its first successful use might have taken place eleven months sooner.
drawn by Robert M. Berish for The Rising Sun in the Pacific, courtesy National Historical Center
At the naval air station on Ford Island, which was surrounded by fleet moorings, there was a trained seamen guard of two hundred men and a Marine Corps detachment of approximately one hundred men and two officers. These gunners were equipped with rifles, pistols, and aircraft machine guns, both .30 and .50 caliber, but no heavier weapons. An Army company held tactical exercises on the island using four 37-mm guns, for which there were permanent emplacements.40 Ammunition for the Army’s mobile AA guns and batteries was stored underground in the Aliamanu Crater between Fort Shafter and Pearl Harbor, where Short also had an emergency command post. The practice provided security, but the time required for AA batteries to access their ammo was to prove costly on 7 December.
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A besetting problem with which Kimmel had constantly to deal was maintaining adequate numbers of trained personnel. Officers and enlisted men were being drained away from the fleet to man new ship construction, to provide expertise in ordnance manufacturing, or to staff aircraft training centers. “During the past year,” he wrote to Nimitz, who as chief of the Bureau of Navigation had responsibility for officer assignments, “the detachment of so many competent officers has reduced the number of experienced officers remaining in ships of the Fleet to such a point that I consider it dangerous [Kimmel’s emphasis] to make further considerable reductions in our best officer personnel at this time.… This Fleet must be kept ready to fight, and that is impossible unless we stabilize the personnel to a much greater degree than has been done in the past.” He was particularly vexed at the loss of many ordnance postgraduates who occupied key positions in the fleet, “and I can see no source from which qualified reliefs will be furnished.”41 Too, under the fleet’s Aviation Expansion Program trained aviation personnel on Oahu were being sent to the mainland to train others. Each month Kimmel was required to send to the West Coast twelve trained patrol plane (PBY) crews. All across the enlisted level he was losing good men. Sailors were not reenlisting because of the high wages being paid in war industries on the mainland, and even in the repair facilities at Pearl. What enlisted personnel remained were mostly untrained new recruits. At times the number of men on board individual ships who had not heard a gun fired reached 70 percent. As late as December, Kimmel’s staff estimated that the fleet needed 19,000 additional men to man ships and fill to capacity its training centers.
A blow worse than lost personnel came in April and May of 1941 when one aircraft carrier (USS Yorktown [CV-5]), three battleships (USS Idaho [BB-42], Mississippi [BB-41], and New Mexico [BB-40]), constituting Battleship Division Three, the strongest division of the fleet, and the only division with upgraded AA armament, four light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers were detached “in utmost secrecy” from the Pacific Fleet and transferred to the Atlantic, where they would be employed in meeting the German U-boat threat to Allied shipping. When Stark conveyed the news—the transfer having been decided by the President—he cautioned Kimmel: “I am telling you, not arguing with you.”42
In a flash Kimmel lost approximately one-fourth of his fleet’s strength. The Japanese Navy now held a two-to-one advantage over his forces. He was certain that details of the transfer would become well known in Japan, through agents in Honolulu and the Panama Canal Zone, with a further reduction in whatever deterrent Washington thought the fleet represented. Stark concurred, writing to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, “The truth is probably now apparent to Japan that the United States Pacific Fleet is no longer strong enough for sustaining an effective offensive against the centers of Japanese military power.” And he warned Knox that “any further weakening of the Pacific Fleet at this time is almost certain to precipitate action by Japan against the British Fleet and the Netherlands East Indies.”43 None of the transferred warships would be returned to Pearl prior to 7 December, but many would be returned thereafter. When one examines the transfers of ships from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and vice versa, it is apparent how one-way that traffic was. Between 1 February and 7 December 1941 twenty-five warships were sent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and one, the Tambor-class (1940) submarine USS Triton, was transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Taken to the Atlantic at the same time were practically all of the fleet’s trained Marine landing force at San Diego, together with their transports, leaving on the Pacific side only the Marines on the outlying islands Wake and Midway and the garrison at Pearl Harbor. While visiting Main Navy in June, Kimmel learned of plans to transfer an additional detachment consisting of one carrier, three battleships, four cruisers, and two squadrons of destroyers. In the face of his strenuous objections, the plans were dropped.
Another shortage with which Kimmel had to contend was fuel. All the reserve oil stocks were held in two tank farms, east and west of the naval station. The shortage lay not only in the amount of storage but also in the inadequate means available for moving fuel from storage into combatant ships. Early in 1941, Kimmel had reorganized the vessels of the fleet into three task forces, a fast carrier force, an amphibious force, and a battleship force. He found that it required from twenty-four to thirty hours to refuel a task force in harbor. Fuel deliveries at sea were even slower, owing to a shortage of tankers. Eleven were available, but only four had the speed and capacity for fueling combatant ships at sea. Destroyers required refueling every third day, heavier ships every fifth day. But fuel delivery never kept pace with consumption. For the entire fleet on distant operations not eleven but about seventy-five tankers would be required. The fleet’s radius of action thus was severely limited by this shortage. And until more tankers, for which Kimmel constantly pleaded, arrived, even nearby exercises in operating areas would have to be curtailed. “It was this fact, and this alone,” Kimmel said, “which made it necessary to have two task forces simultaneously in Pearl Harbor at certain periods.”44
Aircraft of all types were in short supply for a fleet preparing for war. Mention has been made earlier of the small numbers of PBY patrol planes on Oahu. Kimmel’s aviation staff cited other needs and problems: Carrier torpedo planes were obsolescent and spare aircraft of that category were too few. There was a serious shortage of aircraft machine-gun ammunition. No armor-piercing bombs or depth bombs for use against submarines were yet available. The level of experience of both pilots and aviation ratings was low, and there were not enough of either. Aircraft overhaul at Pearl was limited to PBYs, and
transfer back and forth to the West Coast for overhaul of other types would be impractical, if not impossible, in an emergency.45 An insistent Kimmel sometimes irritated Main Navy with his complaints about these deficiencies, and a somewhat nettled Rear Admiral John H. Towers, chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, wrote in a memorandum to Stark:
The impression of the Commander-in-Chief that the Bureau of Aeronautics is relegating fleet aircraft needs to a position of lower priority than the general expansion program is in error. This bureau has exerted and continues to exert every possible effort to provide the fleet with new replacement airplanes for the older models at a rate only limited by the productive output.… It is believed appropriate to invite the attention of the Commander-in-Chief to the fact that the Navy Department, in the face of long and determined opposition [from the Army Air Corps] has been successful in establishing the highest priority … for the fleet [Towers’s emphasis]. This priority (A-1-b) is higher than that accorded any Army aircraft.46
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