Attack on Pearl Harbor (28 page)

Prior to the actual attack, the Army Air Corps had 143 operational aircraft on Oahu, with an additional 88 under repair, a total of 231 aircraft. After the attack there were 87 operational USAAF aircraft, 79 repairable or under repair, and 65 destroyed, for a net loss of 56 operational aircraft and 9 aircraft under repair, a net change in status of 65 aircraft. Of the 301 US Navy aircraft, before the attack 202 were operational, 52 in storage, 31 in overhaul, and 16 under repair. Of these aircraft, 80 were destroyed and 169 damaged, a net change in status of 249 aircraft. This totaled 314 aircraft hit by 189 aircraft allocated to OCA, or a return of 1.66 aircraft destroyed per aircraft committed, three to six times higher than the historical rate of .25 to .50 aircraft per sortie. The primary factors were the lack of air opposition and the fact that the American aircraft were not dispersed and not in revetments.

The consequences of General Short’s decision to declare a holiday and park his aircraft wingtip to wingtip can be quantified: it cost between 215 and 252 aircraft damaged and destroyed over and above what would normally be expected to fall victim to that level of effort.

As to the employment of the fighters: with target aircraft parked wingtip-to-wingtip, the rate of kill for the strafing fighters would likely be on the order of 1 to 2 kills per sortie, with the A6M Zero’s small ammunition supply the dominant constraint. This would give 43 to 86 destroyed or damaged aircraft due to the efforts of the strafing A6M Zeros in the first wave. Assuming that the 43 fighters would have been able to stop the 14 Army fighter sorties from shooting down any bombers, this means that 43 to 86 ground kills were achieved at a cost of 8 to 11 Japanese aircraft shot down, a loss ratio of between 4 and 8 to 1.

As it was, the Japanese estimate of damage was inflated. They estimated that approximately 500 American planes were “wiped out.”
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Was it worth it? On a macro scale, during 1943 the United States produced 85,433 planes compared to 16,693 by the Japanese, a ratio of 5.1 to 1. If you consider that at least two-thirds of American aircraft were earmarked for the European war, then the production ratio would be 1.7 to 1. Thus, the 4 or 8 to 1 loss ratio could be considered an excellent return for the Japanese.

However, the importance of destroying American aircraft had to be balanced by the potential losses of Japanese pilots and aircrew. At the beginning of the war, the Japanese Navy had about 3,500 pilots, with about 600 assigned to the carrier groups and the majority of the remaining assigned to land-based squadrons. In 1943, the US trained 89,714 pilots compared to 5,400 Japanese pilots, a 16.6 to 1 ratio.
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Japan’s core of trained air crew at the beginning of the war represented Japan’s best chance for victory. Losing 8–11 aircrew that could have been prevented by better discipline by the fighters would not contribute favorably to the 16.6:1 ratio they would need in pilot losses just to break even, particularly considering that destruction of an American aircraft on the ground did not imply loss of its aircrew. The Japanese could not afford to trade their aviators for unmanned American aircraft. Japan’s initial cadre was precious—the decimation of these trained aviators during 1942 and 1943 was one of the primary reasons why Japan lost the war.

Doctrinal Shortfalls

The Japanese eventually recognized the need for top cover.
Lessons
recorded:

Missing also was coordination of the efforts of the bombers and the fighters. The plan did not provide for what is identified today as SEAD, or Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses. SEAD is generally provided when the level of enemy air defenses could potentially interfere with the bombers’ delivery of their payloads, or even to shoot down the attacking bombers. SEAD was a recognized mission for fighters at sea in 1941, although it was not called by that name. It consisted of either strafing air defense positions or bombing them. Fighters were provided with hard points to carry a number of light bombs for this purpose. The AA positions to be suppressed could be ashore, on the decks of the target ship(s), or their escorts.

Employment of this kind of SEAD in support of torpedo attacks was known and practiced by the Japanese. In such a coordinated attack, fighters would strafe the decks of target ships, killing the crews of light AA guns or forcing their crews to take cover and otherwise drawing AA fire away from the torpedo bombers. This form of support was suggested from previous experience against the Chinese since the inception of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937,
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and against the Russians during the Nomonhan incident in 1939.

Fighter Performance

Overall, there were elements of the Japanese fighters’ actions that were questionable. They attacked private planes on recreational trips, shooting down two. They strafed civilian automobiles as far as three miles from the bases
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on the roads outside Wheeler and Pearl Harbor. Pictures of machine-gunned private automobiles appeared in the Honolulu news papers, triggering outrage in the population. At Wahiawa, a small town next to Wheeler and Schofield Barracks, aircraft strafed the residential area. A plane flying up the road from Pearl Harbor gunned down an old Chinese hired man.
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A telephone lineman along a civilian road was chased off his pole by machine gun bullets. Chartered fishing boats were strafed outside the harbor. A non-commissioned officers’ housing area was strafed.
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For some reason the fighters put concentrations of fire into private cars in an outlying parking lot at Ewa Field. All that ammunition could have been better employed against targets more relevant to the objectives of the attack.
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Their aggressiveness was not matched with good judgment. A single aircraft at 0830 strafed Bellows Field, which was not scheduled for attention until the second wave. “That lone strafer did Bellows a favor, for the warning gave… about an hour’s grace to disperse the planes.”
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A similar lack of discipline was noted later in the war.

Observers on the ground testified to the fighters’ aggressiveness. One fighter strafed so low that its propeller struck sparks off the runway, another scraped its belly tank—aggressive strafing runs, or alternately, inexperienced pilots, target fixation, and a too-low pullout.

The lack of forethought in planning, integrated training and rehearsal was evident.
Lessons
assessed that:

Probably their most portentous event was the failure to shoot down 13 B-17s that appeared over the island after a trans-oceanic flight from California. These aircraft were important targets, especially considering that they had the range and speed to be an immediate threat to the Japanese carriers. The bombers were flying without ammunition and with their defensive armament in cosmoline, so there was no opposing fire. Yet, none of the B-17s were shot down. They all made safe landings at various places throughout the islands, one on a golf course. Only one was destroyed, burned in half on a runway when Japanese bullets ignited flares stored in the aircraft. The B-17 was a tough plane, as the Japanese would learn again in the Philippines. The fact that these huge bombers escaped has to be scored as a black mark against the fighters.

Some of the A6M Zero pilots displayed poor skills. An American noted that one Japanese strafer

Overall, the fighters that took advantage of the concentration of closely parked aircraft did their job effectively. Theirs was the best performance of the raid, delivered by the aviators that the Japanese believed to be the least skilled.

One shadow of the future can be illustrated by the actions of one fighter pilot, although it applies to all Japanese aviators. A rescue submarine was stationed off a small island to the west of Oahu to provide a haven for damaged aircraft. An A6M Zero fighter sustained damage while strafing and was leaking fuel. It would not be able to return to the carrier. Rather than heading to the rescue submarine, the pilot chose to intentionally crash himself and his aircraft into the enemy, ending his service as an Imperial Japanese Navy fighter pilot rather than attempting to go for the rescue submarine. There were other cases where damaged aircraft might have taken similar action—two dive-bombers crashed into tenders, and at least one other dove into a hangar.

This was very much in line with Japanese fighting spirit and their ethos of self-sacrifice. However, in the long run, the losses of trained aircrew in these incidents and in the hundreds of more to come would be one of the most significant factors in Japan’s defeat.

The greatest aspect of the fighters’ performance that has been unrecognized over the years is their failure to execute their primary mission. They did not sweep the sky of American fighters and maintain air superiority for the duration of the attack. Where American fighters could get aloft they scored over a four to one kill ratio, and suffered only 14% attrition in an environment where they were outnumbered by about four to one by the higher-performance Japanese fighters.

In China the A6M Zero dominated the skies and destroyed the Chinese Air Force. Over Pearl Harbor, the few American fighters that got aloft more than held their own.

Assessment: Command and Control

Japanese command and control during the attack was nearly nonexistent and totally unsatisfactory.

First there was the fumble with the flares.

Then the commanders lost control of the torpedo attack. Torpedo bombers went crisscrossing hither and yon, runs were aborted, torpedoes wasted on unsuitable targets, planes nearly collided, and ordnance was poorly distributed over the targets.

The second wave dive-bombers command and control was also poor. First, they had their instructions changed at the last minute while they were on the carriers’ decks, something inexcusable for an attack following ten months of planning. Their weapons could not achieve the desired effects on their new targets. The last-minute change was triggered by a reconnaissance report that there were no carriers in the harbor. This contingency ought to have been anticipated, and planned for accordingly. This was the first of a series of command gaffes that contributed to making the dive-bombers’ attack ineffective.

Over the targets the dive-bombers’ leadership made a number of questionable decisions. They tried to sink
Nevada
in the channel with unsuitable weapons and an inadequate level of effort. Attacks were delivered against destroyers in the channel misidentified as cruisers. Attacks were wasted on tenders misidentified as battleships. Attacks were wasted on destroyers outside the harbor, and an auxiliary several miles from Battleship Row.

As for the commanders of the fighters, there was no evidence of positive control at greater than the
shotai
level. Rather, it looked like a bunch of teenage samurais on a bust-‘em-up spree. Pilots went swanning off independently looking for what they could find, wasting ammunition and fuel on many inappropriate targets. After carting ammunition 3,000 miles from Japan to Pearl Harbor, it is easy to imagine admirals grinding their teeth to have it wasted on pot shots at telephone linemen and pleasure aircraft and yachts. Had it not been for the fact that the aircraft on the airfields were lined up like clay pigeons on a firing range, in bunches hard for even the most inept pilot to miss, the results of the fighters’ efforts could have been greatly reduced. The fighters showed little discipline and their commanders little inclination to enforce any.

Much of this absence of control stemmed from Japanese doctrine. The commander of the strike was really not expected to exert control once the battle was joined. The strike commander, Fuchida, was in a level bomber at 10,000 feet trying to deliver his own attack at the same time the torpedo bombers were trying to complete theirs. Fuchida’s attack was one of the last; he dropped after the torpedo bombers had all completed their runs. The strike commander was not in a position to sort out the confused torpedo attack.

Neither was he in a position to observe and count the torpedo hits, a critical bit of information needed if he were to be able to direct the second-wave bombers to the most effective distribution of their attacks, since underwater damage might not be observable from 10,000 feet an hour after the torpedoes hit. Instead, Fuchida passively looked on as the dive-bombers wasted most of their bombs.

The Japanese command and control failed. The commanders had little control and did little to contribute to the success of the attack beyond the ordnance that they personally delivered. Some of their decisions reduced the effectiveness of the attack.

Target Vulnerability