Because of clouds that obscured their target, Fuchida’s group missed their release point, and had to circle around for another try. As they did so, Fuchida could see between the fleecy clouds tall columns of black smoke and waterspouts rising from the harbor below—then, startlingly, one enormous explosion of “dark red smoke” erupted in Battleship Row. It was Arizona in fiery death. He called the pilot’s attention to the scene. “Yes, Commander,” the pilot answered, “the powder magazine must have exploded. Terrible indeed!” Smoke from the fractured ship covered Nevada, directly astern, which was the group’s target, and Fuchida saw that Tennessee, ahead of Arizona at quay F-6, was already burning, so he ordered the Kates, still in single line ahead, to release their bombs over Maryland, inboard of the capsizing Oklahoma, at F-5. As they did so, Fuchida lay flat on the deck and watched through a peephole as the armor-piercing bombs fell toward their target. Most of what he saw was misses—“wave rings in the water”—but two small flashes led him to shout: “Two hits!”25 Maryland did suffer two hits: one bomb exploded prematurely on an awning rope, another struck frame 14, penetrated, and detonated, holing the shell, decks, and bulkheads forward of frame 24. Like Tennessee astern, she escaped more threatening damage that would have come from torpedoes by virtue of her inboard berthing position.26 Fuchida ordered all other bombers in his group that had made their bomb drops to return to their carriers, while he and his crew remained over Pearl to direct operations, take photographs, and estimate damage.
During the attack many of our pilots noted the brave efforts of the American flyers able to take off who, though greatly outnumbered, flew straight in to engage our planes. Their effort was negligible, but their courage commanded the admiration and respect of our pilots.27
* * *
By 0825, their fury spent, the remaining aircraft of the first wave were on northerly headings back to the carriers. (Given the confusion that existed later in American commands over the location of those carriers, it is curious that no service personnel from Pearl north to Kahuku seemed to have noticed and reported that the retiring air armada overhead was flying north. Nor was the Lockard-Elliott plot at Opana consulted by the Army’s Information Center. The first wave was remarkably intact, having lost only five torpedo planes (all from Kaga), three fighters, and one dive-bomber. Fuchida remained over Pearl awaiting the arrival of the second wave. Launched 200 nautical miles north of Oahu, by 0840 that flight was east of Kahuku Point and descending on a course just off the island’s east shore. It consisted of eighty-one Val dive-bombers to make additional attacks on the fleet; fifty-four Kate level bombers to make secondary attacks on Kaneohe Naval Air Station and Hickam Field; and thirty-six Zero fighters to make strafing attacks on airfields and targets of opportunity.28 No torpedo Kates were in this wave, their vulnerability now too heightened by the absence of surprise.
As Fuchida watched from overhead, the new arrivals at Pearl had difficulty sighting ship targets through the dense pall of black smoke that rose from the crippled battleships and from oil fires on the water. Particularly high columns of smoke drifted over the harbor from Tennessee, afire from two bomb hits and flaming debris from Arizona, seventy-five feet astern, herself a ghastly funeral pyre; from West Virginia, which absorbed no fewer than nine torpedoes; and from California, which burned fiercely from two torpedo hits and a bomb explosion amidship. But Fuchida would not be aware of those details. He concentrated on trying to ascertain which of the battleships had sunk.
Eventually, the second wave pilots found more than enough work to do. Level-bombing Kates and Val dive-bombers got a bomb into the starboard side of the fleet flagship, Pennsylvania, which was immobilized in Drydock One alongside Ten-Ten Dock in the navy yard; and more heavily damaged two other occupants of the drydock, destroyers Cassin (DD-372) and Downes (DD-375). Three hundred yards distant, eight bombs fell on Floating Drydock Two, which held the destroyer Shaw (DD-373) and a tug, heavily damaging the former and sinking the latter. One of the three hits scored on Shaw ignited the forward ammunition magazine, which shot skyward in a blinding ball of fire that Fuchida had to have seen.
Nor did the bombers ignore the cruisers. Already one light cruiser, Helena (CL-50), had been heavily damaged by a first wave torpedo, the blast from which sank a minelayer, Oglala (CM-4), moored alongside her at Ten-Ten Dock. At 0910, the bombers went after another light cruiser, Raleigh (CL-7), moored on the northwest side of Ford Island. Raleigh was already hurting, having taken one of the first three torpedo hits during the first wave attack. Now, a diving Val dropped a dud that penetrated three decks and the ship’s side aft below the waterline. The jettisoning overside of all portable heavy weapons and equipment topside by the crew helped keep the ship afloat. The light cruiser Honolulu (CL-48) attempted to get under way from her berth east of Ten-Ten, but just barely had steam up at 0925 when a near miss from Vals blew open a twenty-by-six-foot hole underwater at frame 40 on the port side. With flooding and other damage, she aborted her sortie.
* * *
If Fuchida had been able to observe the activities of the midget submarines at Pearl, he would have been sorely disappointed. These seventy-four-by-six-foot submersibles of the Sixth Fleet’s “Special Naval Attack Unit,” each armed with two torpedoes and operated by a two-man crew, were assigned to penetrate the harbor and conduct attacks on Battleship Row in concert with the air fleet. According to the most recent research, of the five Type A Ko-hyoteki-class midget submarines cast off from mother boats for this purpose, only one managed to make it inside the harbor. Possibly it was I-16 tou, which we know from the record was the first released from the heavy clamps that held it to its mother, I-16. The time was 0042 on the seventh, the position was seven nautical miles bearing 212 degrees from the channel entrance buoy. A recent analysis concludes that a single midget cleared both the antitorpedo net, which also served as an antisubmarine net to defend against standard-sized submarines—the U.S. Navy having no knowledge of the existence of Japanese midgets—and an electric light barrier at the channel entrance during the period 0230–0240, and proceeded into the inner harbor. Unaccountably, the antitorpedo net, opened at 0458 to permit passage of the two minesweepers, was left open until 0840, but no midgets took advantage of the laxness; from the beginning the midgets understood that they would have to pass beneath the net.
The same analysis suggests, on the basis of a photograph of the water’s surface off Battleship Row during the attack, that the lone intruder launched her two torpedoes at West Virginia and Oklahoma.29 That intruder was later engaged by two seaplane tenders, Curtiss (AV-4) and Tangier (AV-8), as well as by Monaghan, the ready-duty destroyer under way to assist Ward. Sighting the midget’s tower “bobbing and weaving,” the two tenders opened fire. Monaghan, alerted by a flag hoist on Curtiss, also fired but decided to ram the vessel as the best means of disposing of it. Her crew observed a torpedo from the midget that passed alongside and grounded harmlessly against Ford Island. (If that observation was correct, the intruder could not have launched two torpedoes at Battleship Row.)
Following a successful collision, Monaghan dropped two depth charges—at peril to herself in shoal water where the reflected blast effect could hole her. She survived the shock waves, but, unable to slow her advance, got fouled briefly in the anchor cables of a derrick barge off Beckoning Point. Once free, she reported the submarine sunk, as indeed it was.30 The damage to her bows from both collisions was minimal, and she proceeded out to sea. The scrappy Curtiss took a brace of more serious hits when, at 0905, AA fire from her own guns and from those of nearby ships struck a Val bomber that was pulling out of a dive, and the aircraft slammed into her starboard side, starting a furious fire on the boat deck. Then, at 0912, a group of Vals dropped four bombs against the stricken ship. One of them detonated in the tender’s hangar, spreading death and destruction across a radius of thirty feet. Twenty-one men died, fifty-eight were wounded. By 0936 Curtiss had her fires out, but damage to the engine room had forced her to signal CINC
PAC at 0930 that she could not stand out to sea.31
Twelve ships did sortie during the second wave battle before the Japa-nese aircraft began to break off at 0945, after suffering high losses of fourteen Val dive-bombers and six Zero fighters to the ferocity of U.S. fire. These were nine destroyers, USS Helm (DD-388), Dale (DD-353), Monaghan, Blue (DD-387), Henley (DD-391), Alwyn (DD-355), Phelps (DD-360), Bagley (DD-386), Patterson (DD-392); two destroyer minesweepers, Trever (DD-339) and Wasmuth (DD-338); and one light minelayer (converted flush-deck destroyer), Breese (DM-18). A light cruiser, St. Louis (CL-49), one of the newest ships (1939) in the harbor, would follow, heading out the channel at 1005. Outside the channel, Helm was slightly damaged by two near bomb misses off the port bow at 0915. Other ships, too, capable of getting under way, cleared the channel by 1216; these were the light cruisers USS Detroit (CL-8) and Phoenix (CL-46); destroyers Cummings (DD-365) and Worden (DD-352); and light minelayers (converted DDs) Ramsay (DM-16) and Montgomery (DM-17).32
In the channel approaches, Blue, Wasmuth, Henley, Ramsay, and Breese made sonar contacts with what they identified as submarines and dropped depth charges over the contacts. Blue’s attack at 0950 brought up “a large slick and air bubbles.” Wasmuth’s attack at 1036 brought up “large quantities of oil, but no wreckage.” Breese attacked at 1135 and an “oil slick with debris appeared.”33 The other attacks had no visible results, but these three may account for the two midgets thought to have been lost off the entrance. A recent analysis concluded that the midget I-20 tou malfunctioned and sank on her own.34 From other, clearly evident sources we know that midget I-24 tou, beset by gyroscope and battery-gas problems, twice rammed into a reef, then, following the current, carried its two unfortunate crewmen, unconscious from the foul battery fumes, around Diamond Head to the east shore of Oahu, where she beached them in heavy surf about six hundred yards off the end of the runway at Bellows Field. Both the midget and one crewman survived.35
The crewmen of these fragile undersea craft must have known from the beginning that their mission was suicidal. Though their orders were to rendezvous after the attack at a point seven nautical miles west of Lanai Island, where they would be taken aboard their mother boats, there was doubtless little real expectation on anyone’s part, including their own, that they would ever show up. When asked by U.S. Navy interrogators after the war why these crewmen might have volunteered for such a death-defying endeavor, Captain Watanabe Yasuji, Yamamoto’s staff gunnery officer, replied, “It was a morale factor. Young naval officers very much admire the bravery of Italian officers in torpedo boats and small submarines.… They also want to show bravery in submarines.”36
It should not go unmentioned that owing to aggressive patrolling by U.S. Navy destroyers and PBYs, and probably also to the incompetence of their commanders, not a single one of the twenty large I-class submarines deployed around Oahu sank or damaged a Pacific Fleet warship.
* * *
While Fuchida would not have been able to follow the fate of the midgets from his perch overhead (except that he may have observed the plumes of depth charge explosions in the entrance channel approaches), and while he may not have taken much notice of the sorties made by light cruisers and destroyers, we know that he was totally and excitedly aware of the attempt made by a surviving but heavily damaged 29,000-ton occupant of Battleship Row, USS Nevada (BB-36), to transit the channel and stand out to sea. During the first ten to twelve minutes of the first wave attack, Nevada, the northernmost battlewagon in line, was struck by a torpedo twenty feet below the waterline. The resulting explosion tore a hole in the port bow, around frame 41, that measured some forty-eight feet long and thirty-three feet high. Further but less serious damage resulted from two or three bombs dropped on her armored deck. As the ship began to list slightly to port, crewmen counterflooded and endeavored to restore watertight integrity to the lower compartments forward, while AA batteries topside put up withering fire against their attackers. When Arizona’s magazine blew up at 0810, showering Nevada with debris and burning oil, the senior officer present—the skipper being absent—ordered the vessel to get under way. By chance she had two hot boilers. That and the fact that she was moored singly enabled her to pull slowly away from quay F-8 at 0840.
As Nevada then limped down the East Channel toward the entrance, she caught the attention of Fuchida, overhead. He recognized at once the opportunity to sink a ship that size in the narrow entrance channel and thus bottle up the harbor for weeks or months. Accordingly, he ordered the Val dive-bombers to that task. As Fuchida remembered his thoughts twenty-two years later: “Ah, good! Now just sink that ship right there!”37 At 0907 those Vals with bombs still on their racks screamed down upon Nevada in an effort, apparently, to cripple her progressively, so that when she was ready to sink she would do so where the cork best fit the bottle.
The old 1916-vintage ship took a merciless pounding as three or four bombs—it was impossible to say accurately—struck home against the foredeck and superstructure. Despite heavy casualties on the AA guns, the crew never wavered. Only the navy yard signal tower, which tumbled to what was afoot, called off Nevada’s lunge for the sea and directed her to go aground on Hospital Point, which she did to the disappointment of Fuchida, at around 0910.38 When that action was observed from the air, the Vals lifted their siege. For about an hour and a half tugboats hosed down Nevada’s fires, after which they floated and moved her mangled hulk to the beach at Waipio Point on the channel shore opposite. There her officers made a thorough count of casualties: 3 officers and 47 men killed, 5 officers and 104 men wounded. Among the many decorations for gallantry awarded later to enlisted men of this ship were two Congressional Medals of Honor.
* * *
After the second wave of aircraft broke off their attack beginning at 0945, Fuchida directed his pilot to circle over the harbor one last time so that he could make a final tally. “I counted four battleships definitely sunk and three severely damaged. Still another battleship appeared to be slightly damaged and extensive damage had also been inflicted upon other types of ships.”39 It was a fairly accurate estimate. Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and California had been sunk, Nevada heavily damaged, and Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Maryland damaged to lesser degree. Heavy damage had been inflicted on the light cruisers Raleigh and Helena, lesser damage on Honolulu. The only heavy cruisers in the harbor that day, San Francisco and New Orleans, escaped harm. Fuchida’s interest probably did not descend to the level of destroyers, minecraft, or auxiliaries sunk or damaged. Or to that of target ships. USS Utah (AG-16) was a target ship. It was supposed to be bombed. Constructed as a 19,800-ton battleship in 1909 and converted later to a target vessel, she was hardly worth wasting torpedoes on, but probably because of her size, and the fact that Chikuma’s scout plane had reported the presence of ten battleships, two Kate torpedo bombers placed their missiles in her port side during one of the first two such attacks of the morning.40 Within a matter of minutes, Utah capsized, and later sank.
As Fuchida’s plane made its final pass over the smoke-ridden dismantlement below, he observed that, except for a few Army fighters that had gotten airborne,
it was readily apparent that no planes on the fields [Ford Island and Hickam] were operational. In the three hours that my plane was in the area we did not encounter a single enemy plane. It seemed that at least half of the island’s air strength must have been destroyed. Several hangars remained untouched, however, and it was possible that some of them held planes which were still operational.41
This time Fuchida’s estimate was off the mark. Army Air losses in terms of aircraft destroyed were 28 percent of total air strength.42 Lost at Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows Fields were 4 B-17s and 14 other bombers; 32 P-40 pursuit planes; and 27 other aircraft. Thirty-four bombers, 88 pursuit planes, and 6 reconnaissance aircraft were damaged (though 80 percent eventually would be salvaged).43 Human casualties were heavy, particularly at Hickam Field. The totals were 163 killed, 43 missing, and 336
wounded. Damage to ground installations was extensive, again particularly at Hickam. Nineteen pilots managed to fuel, arm, and get airborne in P-40 and P-36 pursuit planes at Wheeler, Bellows, and Haleiwa, an auxiliary field north of Wheeler. They accounted for six Japanese aircraft shot down, while losing five of their own.
The most notable Air Corps achievement that day was experienced by the twelve B-17s arriving in two separate flights from California, on the very tail of the Japanese first wave. (Fourteen had started out from Hamilton Field, but two had turned back shortly after wheels up.) With no armament and marginal fuel in their wing tanks, two bombers of the first flight, under the command of Major Richard H. Carmichael, successfully put down on the 1,200-foot runway at Haleiwa; three others passed through the thicket of Japanese air attack and American ground AA fire to safe landings at Hickam; and one landed on a golf course. The second flight, led by Major Truman H. Landon, was harried by Zero fighters as it made its own approach and landings, two bombers at Haleiwa, one at Wheeler, one at Bellows, and seven at Hickam. Remarkably, the sturdily built Flying Fortresses suffered minimal casualties: one was destroyed, three were heavily damaged; only two crewmen were seriously injured.44
Proportionately, naval aviation assets on Oahu were more severely impacted than were those of the Army. The total number of aircraft of all types at Ford Island, Kanoehe Naval Air Station, and Ewa Marine Air Station was 301. Of 69 patrol planes, most of them PBY-3 and PBY-5 Catalinas, 24 were destroyed and 34 damaged. The Patrol Wing 1 base at Kaneohe Bay, the first site on Oahu to be struck that morning, at 0750, was particularly devastated by bombing and strafing attacks during both Japa-nese waves; 18 men were killed. Of 24 fighters, 9 were destroyed, 15 damaged. Of 60 SBD scout bombers, 31 were destroyed, 15 damaged. Of 92 battleship and cruiser reconnaissance aircraft, 10 were destroyed, 71 damaged. And of 54 noncombatant utility and transport aircraft, 6 were destroyed, 32 damaged.45
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