Attack on Pearl Harbor (50 page)

An additional possibility suggested by the proponents is that the torpedo actually went deep and exploded under
Arizona
. Two testimonies are cited to support this theory. First, Admiral Kimmel spoke of what he saw from the front lawn of his quarters. “I saw
Arizona
lift out of the water, then sink back down, way down… I knew the ship had been hit hard because even then I could see it begin to list.”

He could have witnessed a torpedo hit, although it is difficult to understand how he saw the ship “lift out of the water” when
Vestal
was blocking his line of sight. Or, he could have mistaken
Oklahoma
for
Arizona
, two ships with very similar silhouettes. The movie footage of
Arizona
that recorded the magazine explosion does not show a list on the ship, contradicting Admiral Kimmel’s observation.

The water main on Ford Island lost pressure almost immediately after the beginning of the attack. The island’s 12-inch fresh water supply pipe passed under
Arizona
. It has always been assumed that
Arizona’s
magazine explosion destroyed the water pipes. The proponents speculate that a midget submarine torpedo slipped under
Arizona
and destroyed the pipe.

This is not corroborated by physical evidence. An explosion under the keel is considerably worse than one against a ship’s side—the hull would hog from the explosions’ gas bubble, then sag down as the bubble collapsed. This would leave cracks in the hull.
Arizona
shows no evidence that a torpedo detonated under her keel.

There was a 6-inch temporary fresh water supply pipe at the south end of the island. This pipe was destroyed by one of the first 250kg GP bombs that hit the island. Water gushing out of that damaged pipe would have depressurized the system. A witness reported that water main pressure was low
before
the
Arizona
exploded (the torpedo hit supposedly within seconds of the magazine explosion). The reported depressurization of the fresh water system was likely the result of the ruptured 6-inch pipe coupled with high demand for water for firefighting.

A Recovered Dud Midget Submarine Torpedo

The best possible evidence to conclusively prove that a midget submarine fired a torpedo at a battleship would be to recover a dud Type 97 torpedo from the mud next to Battleship Row. Researcher Tom Taylor believes he has found references to such a torpedo. He relates:

Taylor asserts that the torpedo with “a charge of 1,000 pounds of explosive” refers to a dud midget submarine torpedo.

Reference to a recovered torpedo with a “1,000 pound warhead” does not necessarily indicate a midget submarine torpedo. The Type 97 torpedo used on the midgets had a warhead explosive weight under 800 pounds. The warhead weights do not match. The figure quoted in the report could have been an underestimate of the total weight of a recovered aerial torpedo, or a typographical error, or a reference to the total weight of an aerial torpedo rather than just the warhead, or some other problem in the documentation.
²⁸
Taylor believes otherwise, asserting that the entry must be correct since Nimitz signed the report.
²⁹
To accept that he must also believe that Nimitz wrongly associated that torpedo with the aerial attack, so, according to Taylor, Nimitz was both right and wrong. Taylor chooses which facts to accept and which to reject based on which best forward his theory.

Several aerial torpedoes were recovered, one from the Naval Shipyard’s woodpile after it was jettisoned, most likely that of Petty Officer First Class Kitahara Syuzo. There are eyewitness accounts of another torpedo that slid up a muddy beach and spun its prop to exhaustion, “buzzing its life out in a parking lot.”
³⁰
So, the Americans had samples of Japanese aerial torpedoes. They also had samples of the Type 97 torpedo as two were recovered on the midget submarine that beached off Bellows Field.

Since a warhead weighing 1,000 pounds does not match the two torpedo types employed at Pearl Harbor or, for that matter,
none of the torpedoes that ever existed in the Japanese inventory
, the entry is simply an error. Erroneous information cannot be used to either prove or disprove a hypothesis. It is like finding a document where a man says he found a 20 cent coin. Taylor would have us accept that since 20 cents is closer to a quarter than a dime, the man therefore found a quarter. But it could have been a typographical error, either substituting a “2” for a “1,” meaning the man found a dime, or a “0” for a “5,” meaning the man found a quarter. Erroneous information cannot be used to support an argument either way.

Others feel that further documentation would be helpful, hopefully in the form of an ordnance intelligence exploitation report documenting a Type 97 torpedo recovered from Battleship Row. Such a document has yet to be found. If such a report is found, it hopefully will specify the locations from which the torpedo was recovered.

It is impossible to either prove or disprove the possibility that the missing Japanese midget submarine fired its torpedoes inside Pearl Harbor. There is always the possibility that the weapons were expended without anyone noticing—unlikely, considering the thousands of witnesses surrounding the harbor that day—but impossible to disprove without indisputable evidence of how the torpedoes were used. So as to not bias the calculation, a probability of 100% will be assigned to this event.

The Midget Navigates to West Loch

After expending its torpedoes the midget submarine must navigate to the West Loch and scuttle. Proponents point to several sightings of periscopes in the areas between Battleship Row and the entrance to the West Loch between 0837 and 0900, heading outbound.

Alternate explanations are again possible. The “periscope sightings” occurred 40 minutes to an hour after
Arizona
exploded and
Oklahoma
capsized. Both of these catastrophes threw massive amounts of debris into the water, all of which would be floating with the current out of the harbor, down the channel and past the entrance to West Loch. Photographs show evidence of this debris.

The periscope sightings were about a mile downstream from Battleship Row. There was a brisk current. The locations and times of the sightings are such that they could be from debris floating in the current.

Debris has often been misidentified as submarine periscopes. In the Atlantic, German submarines used to throw swabs into the water ahead of convoys. The mop head would become saturated and sink, leaving the wooden handle floating straight up and down and looking remarkably like a periscope. Many swabs suffered crippling damage from depth charge attacks by Allied escorts.

Ships store their swabs in racks on the weather decks to allow them to dry in the sun without introducing a bad odor into the ship. Many were dumped in the water when
Oklahoma
capsized.

There is the very human propensity to see things that are not quite so. “Submarine Jitters” has already been mentioned. For example, during the Falklands War in 1982 the British were concerned about the Argentine submarine threat. They maintained close attention to their ASW searches. A number of contacts were prosecuted but all eventually proved to be false alarms. However, when British intelligence reported that an Argentine submarine had left her berth in a port hundreds of miles away, the number of submarine contacts went up by a factor of ten. The British began to run short of ASW torpedoes as they attacked whales, schools of fish, and thermoclines. The contact rate returned to normal when the Argentine submarine was found to have moved to a different berth.

A similar thing happened to the Japanese battleline, which was at sea the day of the Pearl Harbor raid. On 10 December reconnaissance flights and patrol boats reported five enemy submarines in the vicinity of the Japanese Main Body. They decided to return to port. Combined Fleet Chief of Staff Ugaki recorded in his diary, “How dangerous our invisible enemy is!”
³¹
There were no American submarines within 1,500nm.

After
Ward’s
engagement with a midget submarine outside the harbor, and
Monaghan’s
engagement inside the harbor, it would be natural for people to mistake swabs for periscopes.

This explanation aside, there is no concrete evidence to prove that a midget submarine did not make it into the West Loch. Looking at it as an independent event, and assuming that all the previous events had occurred, there is nothing to say that a midget submarine could not have escaped and navigated to the West Loch, and scuttled. So, while an informed analyst might find this difficult to accept, this probability will be set at 100%.

Midget Discovered, Midget Disassembled, Midget Dumped

The last of the series of events in the theory is that the midget submarine was salvaged, taken outside the harbor, and dumped. The theory’s proponents believe that this happened in the course of the salvage operations associated with the West Loch Disaster.

There is again a lack of any evidence, records, or witness accounts to support this hypothesis.

The theory requires people to press the “I believe” button several times. First, they must believe that the submarine was found in 1944 and that this discovery was kept a secret, as no publicity or notice was circulated announcing the find. It would have been natural for the discovery to have been reported to higher authorities and to the intelligence community, as the midget submarine might have been evidence of attempts to penetrate the harbor after 7 December, and the intelligence community (as well as those in charge of harbor defense) would want to know about it. No such reports have been discovered. No reports to higher authority, no reports of salvage activity, and no requests for instructions on how to proceed have been found.

The salvage activity was well documented by photographers, as evidenced by the many photographs of the cleanup activity in the archives. No photographs of a midget submarine have been found. Any photographer assigned to document the salvage operation would have jumped at the chance to photograph a salvaged Japanese midget submarine.

It is hard to believe that, if they existed, all these reports and photographs and documents have been lost, and that no one who worked on the West Loch Disaster has subsequently come forward with the revelation of a previously unreported Japanese midget submarine.

The possibility that the midget submarine was discovered in the West Loch (and kept secret) is remote. A probability for this event is assigned at a generous 50%.

Assuming that it was found in the West Loch, the midget submarine then had to be salvaged and disassembled. Again, there are no records of instruction passed to the salvage teams, no log entries, or any other documentation. A probability for this event is also generous at 50%.

There is physical evidence that the midget submarine was salvaged, disassembled, and rigged with wires that might have been for lifting or towing tackle. Those wires were apparently cut and remain connected to the submarine’s remains outside Pearl Harbor. No Navy records of this activity have been found.

There are several possibilities. First, that the midget submarine was found in the West Loch and salvaged. The records exist but have not been located, or they have been discarded or destroyed.

Second, the salvage was accomplished by people other than Navy salvage teams, perhaps civilians who did not have any bureaucratic need for records.

A third possibility is that the midget submarine did not penetrate into Pearl Harbor, but was discovered outside the harbor, salvaged, and dumped. If this happened after the war, there would be no need to exploit the midget for intelligence. The midget had had no torpedoes or remaining scuttling charge, so there would be no issues regarding unexploded ordnance and no need to call in explosives experts. If salvaged by a civilian firm, the operation might not leave Navy records. If this happened during the Korean War, the Navy might not want to raise memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor while it was undertaking wartime operations out of Japanese ports.

This event chain would have a much higher probability of occurrence than the one proposed in the Nova television program.

Final Assessment

The probability that the
Killer Sub in Pearl Harbor
theory is correct in all its components is determined by multiplying the probabilities of all the independent components. The result of this calculation is that there is a less than 2% chance that it is correct—and this with probability numbers that are very generous.

A problem with this type of analysis is that it is almost impossible to prove that something did not occur. Known events can be substantiated by witness reports, documents, logs, and photographs—but how does one disprove that an unobserved submarine fired unobserved torpedoes that did not explode? If the two “100%” assessments were changed to 10%, a number with which reasonable observers might feel comfortable, the chances drop to under one in 6,000.