Attack on Pearl Harbor (19 page)

Fuchida “hoped that some ships would try to escape, thus giving the Japanese the opportunity to cork up the channel.”
⁴
This could only be done by the dive-bombers of the second wave, as the channel was not wide enough to launch a torpedo against an underway ship. The dive-bombers were supposed to go after targets matching the capabilities of their bombs—carriers first, then cruisers. One wonders if a question was asked as to what to do if a battleship was in the channel.

Thus, the aircrews were to distribute their fire, concentrate their fire, strike nearly simultaneously while adhering to a prioritization scheme, watching out for crossing aircraft, pull back from inappropriate targets, sink at least one battleship, sink all the battleships, shift fire away from ships already sunk except for carriers, which were to be pulverized; on top of all this, target prioritizations might be overridden if a ship was in the channel. A higher-fidelity rehearsal might have been able to ferret out and resolve some of these contradictions, or clarify how the aviators were to deal with them. Overall, the aviators had to contend with a Gordian Knot of conflicting demands.

Surprise! A Contingency Plan is Created

Remarkably, when the Japanese fleet units departed Japan the plan was entirely predicated on surprise.
⁵
Quite by accident, another vision struck the planners.

In Seaki Bay on 17 November 1941, Yamamoto, his chief of staff Ugaki, and other staff officers met on
Akagi
with about 100 key members of the First Air Fleet. Yamamoto, uncharacteristically without a drafted speech, spoke of the quality of their opponent and the snare of overconfidence. “Although we hope to achieve surprise, everyone should be prepared for terrific American resistance in this operation.”
⁶

With a jolt of recognition, Fuchida and Genda realized that their plan did not consider the possibility of terrific American resistance.

Genda and Fuchida met with Murata, the leader of the torpedo bombers, to discuss what to do if surprise was not achieved. Prange relates the discussion as follows:

This account delivers two body blows to those convinced of the brilliance of the Pearl Harbor planning.

Almost a year after the attack was first contemplated, and weeks after training was commenced, the attack planning covered only the most favorable scenario, based on the assumption that surprise would be achieved.
⁸
This was remarkable when one considers that the operational plan specified that the attack would proceed even if
Kido Butai
was detected by American reconnaissance up to 24 hours prior to the scheduled attack time. So, Yamamoto would accept attacking against an alerted opponent, but the attack planners did not consider this possibility until it was too late to prepare for the contingency.

Yamamoto has to be considered culpable. He signed an attack order that directed
Kido Butai
to fight their way in to their target without verifying that his planners were ready to execute such an attack.

Not until Yamamoto’s chance remark on the eve of departure did the planners consider the possibility that the attack might not be a surprise. This is a harbinger of what was to come throughout the war—Japanese planning was often deficient in considering alternative situations, a characteristic that was to particularly handicap them during the Guadalcanal campaign.

It is remarkable how little these men changed the plan to accommodate the possibility of heavier enemy resistance. In the original plan, assuming surprise, the torpedo planes were to assault Pearl Harbor in four lines of attackers “nearly simultaneously,” while the rest of the force orbited until their attack was complete. If surprise was lost, they could have considered simultaneity of attacks, or, as a minimum, reallocating the targets of the dive-bombers and fighters to provide SEAD and DEAD along the approach route of the torpedo bombers, recognizing that a few less aircraft destroyed in OCA was worth ensuring that the torpedo attack went home. Fighters might have been reassigned to strafe the defenses along the torpedo bombers’ attack routes—they had intelligence showing the AA emplacements around Pearl Harbor.

Instead, the only measure they employed was to have the dive-bombers surge ahead to deliver their attacks against the same targets as before, but a few minutes before the torpedo bombers were to attack.

If surprise was achieved, Fuchida was to fire one flare, and the attack would go as planned. If surprise was not achieved, Fuchida was to fire two flares.

This scheme required recognition of the situation and a positive order by the strike leader. Rather than have a default plan, and a signal to change to the backup plan, the Japanese chose to give an order directing the strike to assume one plan or the other. If there was a problem with communications, or the signal was not seen or recognized, the force would go into the attack without the entire team acting on the same plan.

Second, it involved a visual signal rather than a radio transmission, and the visual signal was not backed up by a radio signal. This could reflect the fact that all the attacking aircraft did not yet have radio equipment installed, or that the radio equipment was not trusted, or that the relative newness of the equipment indicated that the Japanese were not sufficiently familiar with it to feel comfortable relying on it in a critical situation. The signal to attack (“
To To To
”) was sent over keyed CW to initiate the attack, but for some reason radio was not used to communicate which attack plan was in force, probably because fighters did not have CW radio sets.

But why was the order not given also over voice radio, or at least backed up on that circuit? If surprise was lost, it made no sense to maintain radio silence, if that was their concern. It could be that, in the short meeting where the alternate plan was devised, it was just not considered. It was an oversight. Japanese radios were notoriously unreliable, and had been in the fleet such a short time that their use may not have been instilled in the planners’ mindset. However, radio communications ought not to have been totally ignored. Even a 50% chance of connectivity was better than nothing.

Prange attributed Murata’s objection to removing his torpedo bombers from the lead to
amour-propre
—self-love or self-respect—a rather curious motive to ascribe to a combat commandeer under the circumstances. Presumably he was trying to infer that Murata’s objections were based on the honor of being the first to attack, rather than any sound tactical reasons. Prange characteristically attributed decisions to the personalities of those involved, a propensity that has injected serious distortions into the historical record. He felt comfortable attributing decisions to personal quirks, an area in which he evidently felt comfortable, instead of to tactical, doctrinal, or material considerations, areas where he was largely unschooled. He did not have the knowledge of aviation tactics to understand that Murata’s objection was well founded tactically and did not spring from egotistical concerns. He implies criticism of Murata, when in fact the blame for a remarkably bad decision lies squarely in the laps of Genda and Fuchida.

The last remarkable thing about this meeting is its small size. Only the head planner, strike leader, and torpedo bomber leader were included. Why were there not also representatives from the dive-bombers and the fighters? What good ideas were lost by the failure to consult a broader slice of the available leadership?

Last Minute Intelligence

A day before the attack the Japanese received an intelligence update. The battleships were in harbor, but none of the carriers.

The Japanese discussed this report, particularly with regards to Matsumura’s torpedo attack against the carrier moorings. With advance word that the carriers were gone, the Japanese could have taken action to allocate these torpedo bombers to alternate targets. Instead, the planners decided to leave the attack plan unmodified, hoping that the carriers might return.

This decision is illuminating. First, it confirms that the group of 16 torpedo bombers was indeed intended for carriers as their first priority, and confirms the importance the planners attached to the objective of killing carriers. Second, it shows remarkable intransigence in planning not to take advantage of timely intelligence to change a plan obviously overtaken by events. This is not an unusual human reaction—there is a psychological propensity to cling to the original plan in which so much effort and training has been invested. The Japanese were not the only ones to suffer from this defect. For example, prior to Operation Market Garden, Allied intelligence noted that several German divisions had moved close to the area of the offensive, including at least one armored division. These decision makers also chose to ignore the intelligence, and made no changes to their plans.

Whether due to human psychology or Japanese psychology, the plan, inappropriately, remained unchanged.

A captured photograph showing columns of water from torpedo explostions. The tallest plume is about 25 seconds old, one is six seconds and the other is one second, an indication of the intervals between torpedo bombers at the outset of the attack.
Source: Naval Archives, Washington, DC

In the dark of night
Kido Butai
, a flock of knife-edged hulls cutting through troubled seas, turned their bows south and worked up to 24 knots. They would make their final run to the launch point sheltered by darkness and unseen by enemy patrols.

This night was the culmination of a massive movement. Over 90% of the Japanese fleet was underway, positioning for attacks spread over a 6,000 nm front. The movement of ships directed against Pearl Harbor had begun as early as 11 November, when nine long-range submarines departed the Empire from Saeki Bay en route a refueling stop at Kwajalein, then on to Hawaiian waters. Now, 23 Japanese fleet submarines, five of which carried midget submarines clamped to their decks, patrolled the waters around Oahu, performed reconnaissance, and awaited the air strike, expecting an opportunity to sink the remnants of the American Pacific Fleet as it bolted out of Pearl Harbor to escape the aviators’ bombs.

To the submariners, not the aviators, was given the honor of making the initial moves in the actual attack.

Midget Submarines

Japan’s midget submarines, commanded by young officers none more senior than lieutenant, were released from their transport submarines in the hours of darkness before the aviators’ attack. They attempted first to find and then to penetrate past the submarine net guarding the entrance to the harbor.

One or more were detected outside the harbor by patrolling destroyers and aircraft. One submarine, surprisingly, did make it past the entrance, only to be detected inside the harbor during the attack. It fired its torpedoes at a tender and a destroyer. Both missed and exploded against the shore. The destroyer
Monaghan
rammed and sank the submarine.

Three of the submarines definitely did not penetrate the harbor. One was sunk by the destroyer
Ward
a few hours before the arrival of the bombers. The surprise of the main Japanese attack was saved by a small miracle of US Navy bureaucratic indecisiveness. Blending into the background “noise” of the many false alarms and submarine alerts of the previous weeks, the new warning was not assessed as anything particularly unusual or threatening. Instead of issuing an alert, an order was sent for the stand-by destroyer to sortie.

Considering that a submarine had been detected trying to enter the harbor, and considering the history of the British battleship
Royal Oak
(which was sunk in October 1939 by a German submarine that penetrated into Scapa Flow), the harbor should have been placed on alert to a submarine threat. All ships should have been required to set material condition Zed, their maximum state of watertight integrity (today called material condition Zebra). Had Zed been set before the bombers arrived,
California
would have remained afloat and
Oklahoma
might not have capsized.

Two submarines ran out of battery power and did not deliver any attacks. Both were eventually discovered by the Americans with their torpedoes aboard. One was found beached off Bellows Field, the second 15 years later in a small cove. (The fate of the fifth midget submarine will be discussed in
Chapter 11
.)

The attack by the midget submarines could be seen as an allegory for the entire concept, execution, and spirituality of the attack. A flawed strategic concept was executed with incredibly bravery by men who certainly knew that the odds of their success was slim; warning that should have giving the defenders sufficient time to man their defenses and prepare their ships for attack instead became another instantiation of Yamamoto’s life-long string of incredible good fortune. The fleet and its defenders continued to sleep.

Reconnaissance

Yoshikawa Takeo, the Japanese intelligence officer working out of Japan’s Pearl Harbor legation, kept a stream of information on its way to
Kido Butai
. The striking force received intelligence communiqués on 3, 4, and 7 December (Tokyo time) updating the situation through 6 December. He reported that no balloons or torpedo defense nets were protecting the battleships. In a message received on 4 December, six battleships, eleven cruisers, and one aircraft carrier were in harbor. Updates reported the departure of
Lexington
. The day before the strike, the Naval General Staff transmitted to Nagumo that the harbor contained nine battleships, three light cruisers and seventeen destroyers, with four light cruisers and three destroyers in drydock.
¹
There were no carriers in port, but that disappointment was balanced by the information that the US military on Oahu was not in any unusual state of alert.

As
Kido Butai
steamed south at high speed en route to the launch point, the fleet submarine
I-72
nosed into Lahaina Roads off Maui. She transmitted, “The enemy is not in Lahaina anchorage.”
²

In the pre-dawn darkness, the cruisers
Chikuma
and
Tone
launched reconnaissance floatplanes. One headed to Lahaina Roads and one to Pearl Harbor, scheduled to arrive after first light.

The first wave was launched. Of the 189 total aircraft planned, there were 6 aborts: one B5N Kate carrying an AP bomb, three D3A Vals, and two A6M Zeros. One hundred and eighty-three aircraft executed the attack.

Chikuma
’s scout radioed that nine battleships, one heavy cruiser and six light cruisers were in the harbor, and excellent weather conditions existed for the attack. No carriers were observed. This information was received before the second wave was launched. It is not known if the message was copied by the first-wave aircraft; Fuchida, the strike commander, does not mention it in his accounts of the attack.

Due to remarkably speedy aircraft handling, the second wave was ready 15 minutes ahead of schedule. With the first wave still north of Oahu, the second wave launched. One A6M Zero and three D3A Vals aborted. One hundred and sixty-seven aircraft formed for the attack, of which 78 were D3A Vals allocated to go against warships.

As they droned on their nervous course to Pearl Harbor, the aircrews watched a spectacular sunrise, prophetically similar in appearance to Japan’s national symbol, radiating beams from a rising sun, an apparent mark of favor of the gods that raised the spirits of many of the approaching aviators. With careful tuning they could pick up an Oahu radio station playing Hawaiian music, welcoming visitors to the islands. The radio station provided a local weather forecast: visibility clear, a steady tropical breeze out of the northeast, and a heavy cloud layer floating in at 3,500 feet.

Transit

Fuchida claimed that the torpedo bombers were to attack “at almost the same instant.” As Gordon Prange related:

This statement is very deceptive. It implies that the movement down the western side of Oahu was planned, and that the point where the torpedo bombers would separate into two groups was planned to occur west of Pearl Harbor.

The planned route was actually down the center of the island, not “the western side of Oahu.” The separation of the torpedo bombers into two groups was also logically planned to occur north of Pearl Harbor, so as the two groups swung around to attack from the east and the west each would have to travel approximately the same distance to reach their attack IP, allowing for a “nearly simultaneous” attack.

However, upon landfall, Fuchida noted heavy clouds over the Ko’olau Mountains. He decided to skirt the cloud bank, turning the formation to fly in clear air down the western coast. Fuchida’s statement about reaching a point “due west of Pearl Harbor” reflected what actually occurred and not what was planned.

Fuchida’s chosen track effectively eliminated any possibility that the two torpedo bomber groups would attack simultaneously. The Battleship Row attackers would now have to fly south of the harbor, turn east over the ocean, turn inland, and skirt Hickam Field before reaching their IP for the turn to their attack course, while those attacking the carrier moorings would have a straight run in to their targets. Battleship Row would have perhaps five minutes advance warning before
Akagi’s
and
Kaga’s
torpedo bombers were in position to attack.

This problem had not been anticipated by the planners. There was no provision to coordinate the two attacks in the event that a different approach course was required. Evidently Fuchida did not see this as a problem, as he took no action as Strike Commander to address it; alternately, he saw the problem, but did not have the means to exert any control.

Fuchida’s Fumble with the Flares

Fuchida was responsible for determining which attack plan would be used and communicating his decision to the attack force, firing one flare for “surprise achieved” or two for “surprise not achieved.” At 0740, off the northwest coast of Oahu, Fuchida made his decision. An account based on interviews with Fuchida related:

Takahashi, the leader of the dive-bomber formation—Fuchida characterized him as “that fool Takahashi, he was a bit soft in the head”
⁵
—firewalled his throttles and put his nose down, picking up speed. Assuming that it was now his role to immediately attack and distract the enemy defenses, the dive-bombers forged ahead without climbing to their normal bombing altitude. Murata, confronted by this unexpected development, had his torpedo bombers accelerate, trying to get in his attack before the defenses were fully aroused, but his heavily-laden torpedo bombers inexorably were left further and further behind.

Approach

Out of position and at cross purposes, the first-wave formation broke up as the subordinate formations scattered to their assigned targets. There was no attempt to attack the various bases with any simultaneity, and no concern that an attack by one group might prematurely announce the attack to other locations. The attacker’s first shots were fired by a
Soryu
B5N Kate gunner. Lieutenant Nagai Tsuyoshi, anxious to quicken the attack pace, forged ahead of the
Hiryu
torpedo bombers and cut across the island, passing so close by Wheeler Field that his gunner cut loose on some parked P-40 fighters.

The Japanese fighters searched the skies for defending fighters. They saw none. Then they looked for anything flying, anything to kill. A US Navy patrol plane spotted the incoming marauders and transmitted a warned, which went unheeded—unable to do more, the aircraft found the clouds and slipped away. But there were other aircraft aloft, mostly civilian pleasure aircraft and private pilot instructors with their students. Some of the more alert fighter pilots recognized these aircraft as a waste of ammunition, but others, anxious for an air-to-air kill befitting a true samurai, broke formation and went for the kills. Several civilian aircraft were shot out of the sky, a few winged away to safety.

The first bombs hit Wheeler at 0751, six minutes before the first torpedo was dropped into Pearl Harbor. The bulk of the defenders’ fighters, modern P-40s and P-36s leavened with obsolete P-26s, were lined up next to the hangars. The base commander had requested permission to keeps the fighters in their revetments, but he was told that would alarm civilians.

Twenty-five D3A Vals hit the base hard. Bombs accurately hit among the lines of densely-packed parked aircraft, smashing many, and igniting tremendous fires fed by aviation gasoline from leaking fuel tanks. Bombs exploded within hangars, which burned gushing dense clouds of smoke. The fire house went up in flames, along with administrative buildings and the Post Exchange. The smoke angled off in the steady breeze, obscuring parts of the flight light and much of the ground facilities, but after the dive bombers’ 550-kg bombs were expended there still were aircraft undamaged, at least 22 that were unobscured by smoke at the upwind end of the fight line. Then, nine A6M Zeros, accompanied by many of the D3A Vals, began to methodically strafe the undamaged aircraft. Wheeler was out of the fight.

Kaneohe was attacked at 0748 (or possibly 0753—in a world without digital clocks absolute precision is not possible). Attempts to warn Bellows and Hickam fields by telephone were disbelieved.
⁶
Eleven A6M Zeros delivered an eight-minute attack against the base and her 33 PBY-5 patrol planes. The initial slashing attack caused considerable damage and confusion, but the damage was not complete—a movie taken from a second-wave B5N Kate shows many of the PBY-5s by the hangars apparently undamaged. A second wave of level bombers completed the job—in the end, all the American aircraft were either damaged or destroyed.

At Hickam, home of the AAF’s B-17, B-18, and A-20 bombers, nine dive bombers attacked the hangars and administrative buildings while eight others hit the hangars. Nine A6M Zeros strafed the parked planes. Personnel casualties were particularly heavy, with 35 killed when a bomb exploded among the men breakfasting in the mess hall.

As the dive and torpedo bombers approached Pearl Harbor, the fighters that accompanied them peeled off to attack Ewa Marine Corps Air Station, ten miles short of the harbor. Additional fighters, looking for targets for their remaining ammunition before heading for their rallying point, took Ewa as a target of opportunity. By 0815 over two-thirds of Ewa’s aircraft were destroyed or damaged.