100 Mistakes That Changed History: Backfires and Blunders That Collapsed Empires, Crashed Economies, and Altered the Course of Our World

76. IGNORING A WARNING

There are many questions about what exactly caused the disaster that occurred at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. By December 8, the questions as to who made what mistake and who failed to do what were being asked. After more than sixty years and dozens of books, the questions are still being asked. The result of this great mistake is simple to define. The U.S. fleet and U.S. Army air corps airfields were not ready for the attack. They were set up in such a way as to be almost as vulnerable as possible. Unless a lot of people wanted to see the U.S. Pacific fleet slaughtered, and they did not, a mistake occurred that ceded control of the Pacific for months.

The commanding officer of the Pacific fleet was Admiral Kimmel, and General Short commanded the army air bases. The air force was not yet a separate branch of the armed services. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, as the map shows (see page 291), the Japanese struck both the fleet in harbor and the air bases. The attack totally surprised everyone in Hawaii. In many cases, only skeleton crews manned the ships and ammunition for antiaircraft guns was locked away. That did not need to have happened. Someone made a very great mistake that affected the entire war in the Pacific. The failures were there, but not the ones most people expect.

To begin with, let’s eliminate any thought that there had not been sufficient warning. Three communications sent days earlier pretty much ruled that out. While Pearl Harbor was not directly threatened, the tone of the communications showed that war was close and inevitable. The only question was where it would start. Read them for yourself:

In 1941, the air force was a part of the U.S. Army.

So four days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, both commanders knew that the Japanese diplomats were preparing for war. The only surprise was that the attack came at Hawaii.

If you had commanded the only U.S. Navy fleet in the Pacific or the main Pacific air base, what action would you have taken? Admiral Kimmel and General Short decided that, even with war imminent, there was no concern for an attack on Pearl Harbor since the various intelligence branches had not specifically mentioned one but did see signs of other attacks (which also happened). So on the basis of this, and perhaps personal and racial egotism, they did nothing to prepare for such an attack. The island was not even on alert, and crews were allowed to leave all the docked ships. Obviously Kimmel did not see his fleet as being at risk.

This mistake becomes even less understandable when you realize that less than a year earlier, obsolete British aircraft attacked and sunk a good part of the Italian fleet while docked in the similarly shallow and protected Taranto harbor. Or that by November 16, the bulk of the Japanese fleet and all its major carriers had simply disappeared. The United States had no idea where the main fleet was of a nation it knew was preparing to attack them. Yet the commanding officers in Hawaii had their bases in a very low level of alert.

This attitude, and the low alert level, led to more minor mistakes that made things worse. When the new radar unit spotted the approaching first wave of attackers, the operator told his commander, and the officer commanding the radar station assumed it was six army bombers that were expected that morning. Ships radioed warnings when the Japanese flew overhead, but these were still being processed in a lightly manned communications center when it was too late. Reports of periscopes also failed to bring the bases to a higher level of alert. Despite the situation, the sightings, and the unknown location of the Japanese carrier fleet, from the commanding officers on down, nothing was done in time to stave off disaster.

Actually nothing is not correct: Both American commanders had taken some recent actions. They were, however, very bad decisions that made the situation worse. Based in Pearl Harbor were eight battleships, three aircraft carriers, and numerous supporting ships. Even docked, if on full alert and warned, this was a powerful antiaircraft defensive force. Unfortunately, the fleet was at a very low level of alert, which meant that on a Sunday morning most of the crew was ashore. When the Japanese attacked, there were not even enough sailors to man all of the guns. Those who were on the ships in the harbor woke to explosions and sirens. Many never made it to the deck or their stations before their battleships were sunk. Even unprepared, the navy and army defenders shot down twenty-nine planes from the two waves of more than 350 attacking.

The army air force was equally badly prepared. The few men on the base were surprised at breakfast. Ammunition lockers were locked, and when the first wave attacked, barely a quarter of its machine guns, and only four of thirty-one antiaircraft batteries, were fired. General Short had been much more concerned about sabotage by spies hiding among Hawaii’s large Japanese population than about the chance his air bases would be bombed. As a result, he ordered all of the aircraft to be lined up in straight rows in the open on the runways. This way they all were far from the fences, and it allowed the MPs to keep a good eye on them. This setup also made them perfect targets for bombing and strafing attacks. The Japanese attackers simply flew along the tightly packed lines of American aircraft and were able to destroy several planes with each pass. Virtually none of the army aircraft made it into the air, not even an hour later when the second attack wave hit.

When the second wave had finished, five battleships and two destroyers were sunk or so badly damaged that they couldn’t be used for the rest of the war. Four more battleships and five cruisers were damaged. The army air corps lost almost 200 of 350 planes with most of the rest damaged. More than 2,400 veteran sailors, marines, and soldiers died. Only the coincidence that all three U.S. carriers were at sea prevented total disaster.

The mistake made by Admiral Kimmel and General Short was not to be prepared. Another was to ignore the intelligence they had been given. If the American Pacific surface fleet had not been effectively neutralized on December 7, 1941, then the Japanese expansion and successes in 1942 might well have been much less. The Philippine Islands might have been successfully reinforced, and so no Bataan Death March. But the mistake was made, and for the next year, the Japanese expanded without real resistance until they occupied much of the Pacific Ocean and were threatening Australia itself. These two commanders, who resigned on December 8, had the most important American bases in the Pacific on low alert. With war expected any moment, it was a mistake that cost thousands of lives and changed the nature of the war in the Pacific. There certainly was an intelligence failure, and it was the intelligence of those who had been in command.