On December 3, a warning was sent by OPNAV to Kimmel's
Pearl Harbor command (CinCPAC) warning: "...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 all other important confidential and
secret documents." War was considered to be imminent. A large Japanese
transport fleet was steaming toward Southeast Asia. Other Japanese fleet units
had left Japan and it appeared that the entire Japanese Imperial Navy was
deploying.
By this time American Vice Admiral William "Bull" Halsey was
taking the aircraft carrier Enterprise out to Wake to deliver a squadron
of Marine fighters in place of the withdrawn army aircraft which were being
kept on Oahu. He had departed Pearl Harbor on November 28 in the company of
several battleships, apparently headed out on routine maneuvers (his presence
at Pearl had indeed been noted by officials from the Japanese consulate in
Honolulu). As soon as he reached the open sea, he sent the battleships to their
usual exercise area and headed west with a heavy escort of cruisers and
destroyers. Once clear of the battleships, he issued Battle Order Number One,
which read: "The Enterprise is now operating under war conditions..."
Enterprise maintained radio silence for the rest of her voyage, and flew
fully armed combat air patrols and search patterns out to 200 miles. His own
feelings were that his carrier would be at war by the time he returned to
Pearl.
He was correct.
Ironically, Kimmel preferred to keep
the Pacific Fleet's battleships in harbor due to the unavailability of fleet
carriers to provide air cover. The carrier Enterprise was between Wake
and Oahu, the carrier Lexington was out near Midway and the carrier
Saratoga was on the west coast of the American mainland. Kimmel instead
left the battleships at Pearl Harbor, where they could be protected from enemy
air attack by large contingents of local army aircraft. Unfortunately Lt.
General Short had decided that sabotage was the most likely threat, and he had
ordered that all aircraft ammunition be locked away, and for aircraft to be
arrayed in neat rows for observation. The fact that the senior Navy and Army
commanders for the most important American installations in the Pacific
implemented somewhat conflicting policies apparently did not occur to anyone.
So as the hours ticked by, and the alerts and warnings piled up, the bulk of
the US Pacific Fleet remained in Pearl Harbor and took its usual weekend
off.
By 0330 on December 7, 1941, pilots on board the Japanese
carriers began to wake up from fitful sleep. Throughout the next 90 minutes the
men slowly arose and prepared for their mission. Fuchida found Lt. Commander
Shigeharu Murata, leader of the torpedo bombers which would strike battleship
row. Murata was "vigorously" consuming breakfast and sang out to Fuchida "Good
morning commander, Honolulu sleeps!"
"How do you know?" Fuchida
asked.
"The Honolulu radio plays soft music..." he responded,
"...everything is fine."
By 0615 the first fighters rose from the
decks of the six Japanese carriers
¹ . The first wave of 183 aircraft
were launched in record time; 15 minutes. At 0630 Fuchida flew south over
Akagi, followed by 40 Kate torpedo bombers under command of Lt.
Commander Murata, 51 dive bombers under command of Lt. Commander Kakuichi
Takahashi, 43 fighters under command of Lt. Commander Shigeru Itaya, and
immediately under Fuchida, 49 Kate high level bombers. Months of grueling
training, meticulous preparation and last minute labor was about to culminate
in an operation with the most dire consequences; an attack which essentially
committed the Imperial Navy to a war against the rest of the world. As they
approached the north shore of Oahu, two reconnaissance planes reported from
ahead; the Lahaina anchorage was empty, the American fleet was at Pearl Harbor,
resting quietly with no sign of an alert. Also, there were no American aircraft
carriers present. This last detail caused a pang of frustration with the
Japanese Commander. He had hoped to catch at least one or two carriers in the
harbor. Indeed, one-third of the available Japanese torpedo bombers approached
from the northwest specifically in the hope that they would be able to torpedo
any American carriers moored at their traditional places north of Ford Island.
The
Politics of Surprise
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has
often been referred to as a surprise attack. In reality, the Japanese opening
of war on the United States, Great Britain and Holland, was not even remotely
surprising to those in power. The entire Japanese Fleet was known to be
deploying for war, the Dutch had already activated their war plan for the East
Indies, and the American government knew the exact time of Japan's deadline.
Ironically, the American government had applauded Japan's surprise attack on
the Russian Fleet at Port Arthur in 1904. Despite criticism from other
countries at the time, Great Britain and the United States heaped accolades on
the Japanese for showing "pluck" and "ingenuity" in their opening attacks
against Russia's main Pacific anchorage. Had the American administration in
1904 known that a similar type of preemptive strike would be used against
Hawaii within a few decades, one wonders if they would have been so quick to
congratulate that form of success. |
Now the task was clear. Fuchida gave the signal
to deploy for full surprise attack. Had the Americans shown signs of being
alert, the dive bombers would have been ordered to attack first. With the
American fleet showing no sign of preparation, the torpedo bombers would attack
first. Due to a misunderstanding however, both dive bombers and torpedo bombers
deployed for their respective "attack first" positions. In frustration Fuchida
realized that his carefully coordinated plan was falling apart. But with a
moment's consideration, the total lack of American preparation sank in, and he
realized that it no longer mattered. As he took a last look at the US Fleet, he
sent the now famous radio message to all Japanese commands in the Pacific:
"Tora, Tora, Tora," complete surprise achieved.
The first aircraft to
arrive in the air over Oahu were Itaya's fighters, who fanned out over the
island directly from their deployment point north of Kahuku Point. Their
original purpose was to establish air superiority in case American fighters
were fully deployed. Their secondary task in case of complete surprise was to
strafe aircraft on the ground. First to be attacked by them was the Kaneohe
Naval Air Station on the east side of Oahu, which was attacked seven minutes
before Pearl Harbor. A sole fighter also flew as far south as Bellows field and
quickly strafed there before flying off. At Wheeler Field, the US Army base in
central Oahu, the fighters again were the first to arrive, and began strafing
aircraft several minutes before Takahashi's dive bombers arrived to join the
fray. Around the same time, more dive bombers made their first runs on the Army
air base at Hickam Field and the Navy field on Ford Island.
Within a
few minutes of these first bomb drops, the Nakajima "Kate" torpedo bombers of
Murata's command arrived to administer the worst damage of the day. Coasting
low over Pearl City and the Southeast Loch, they skimmed below rooftop level,
dropping their lethal "fish" into the water from point-blank range. The torpedo
attacks took longer than anticipated, because each pilot had been instructed
not to waste any torpedoes. In pursuit of this goal, many pilots made two and
even three attack runs before actually launching. This gave the effect that
there were far more attacking aircraft than there really were, and it also
enabled the American crewmen on the warships to react and begin shooting back.
Indeed, the speed with which the American ships reacted from a state of
complete repose was a shock to many of the Japanese pilots.
Because the
fleet was on a very low-level alert, there were even a few manned machine guns
at the very start of the attack. The battleship Nevada had some machine
guns in her fighting tops manned as part of the alert, and it was these guns
which distracted or shot down most of the torpedo planes who tried to attack
her. Only one torpedo hit Nevada, as compared to six which hit the
battleship West Virginia, four which hit Oklahoma, one which hit
Arizona and two which hit California. Nevada was fortunate
in another way. She was the only capital ship present which had two boilers
fired instead of the usual one. Once the attack began, her senior officers
ordered two more boilers brought on-line in preparation to sortie. The torpedo
attack on Battleship Row was one of the most dramatic of the day. As the
torpedoes kept slamming home, Oklahoma slowly turned onto her side and
rolled into the bay. Soon only her glistening hull stuck out of the water
outboard of the Maryland. West Virginia also began to list
precariously, but quick counterflooding by a handful of crewmen quickly settled
the "WeeVee" onto the harbor bottom on an even keel.
| The battleships Maryland and
Oklahoma |
 |
As the attack progressed, Fuchida brought his high
level bombers in over battleship row. Their task was to drop heavy
armor-piercing bombs designed to detonate the powder magazines of the
battleships, thereby preventing their repair. As with the torpedo bombers,
Fuchida's bombers had been instructed to make as many passes as necessary in
order to assure hits. It was only a matter of time then, before some of these
bombs found their way onto vital targets. Tennessee, Maryland,
West Virginia, Arizona and Vestal (a repair ship moored
next to the Arizona) were all hit in the first few minutes. Arizona was
worst hit, suffering at least five bomb strikes. One of them exploded near her
forward magazine, triggering a titanic eruption of flame and smoke which shot
into the sky
² . In just a few seconds, half of all
deaths suffered by Americans during the attack was suffered by Arizona's
crew as she split open and sank to the bottom of the harbor. The weight of
Arizona's hull settling into the mud broke the main water line running
into Ford Island, crippling the fire-fighting equipment there.
Tennessee, which was already trapped by the sunken and burning West
Virginia, now had to contend with a flood of burning oil pouring from
Arizona. Flaming debris, wreckage and dead bodies rained onto her
fantail from Arizona's explosion was now highlighted by the ensuing
inferno. The drifting sheets of burning oil were only kept at bay by running
Tennessee's giant screws slowly in reverse and by firing streams of
water from the ship's fire hoses directly off her stern (the streams of water
from the fire hoses are visible in some photographs taken during the
battle).
While the torpedo and high level bombers executed their
missions, dive bombers and fighters continued to hit their own assigned target
areas. For even though the attack seemed confusing to the untrained eye,
numerous American officers correctly observed the meticulous order with which
Japanese aircraft "worked over" their respective target zones. While good
visibility lasted, most of the aircraft made their attack runs in groups of
three to five planes and maintained excellent bombing discipline. Many strafing
aircraft approached at surprisingly low altitude, sometimes passing within a
yard of the ground in pursuit of their targets.
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