# Did FDR Will and Allow Pearl Harbor? Srdja Trifkovic's Take on the Conspiracy Theory **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 30, 2008, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197 "2008-12-30T10:31:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/41 "2009-01-05T04:56:31Z")
OK, your silly claim that in order to stop the Soviet Union from expanding, the U.S. had to invite a War in the Pacific in order to demonstrate a bomb that had not yet been invented, (and which no one could have asserted with certainty would actually work prior to July, 1945), is mildly amusing. Totally disconnected from any known facts, but mildly amusing. Then we jump around to your second conspiracy, in which we need a war in Europe to justify sending Jews to take over Israel to guarantee that we have access to the oil fields, ignoring, completely, that British-controlled Egypt was every bit as close as British Palestine and that Saudi Arabia had a long coastline and no effective military. This leads one to wonder why start a world conflict that threatened to destroy all of Europe when it would have been easier to simply invade Saudi Arabia. We will also ignore, (for the moment), your murky allusion to a probable Jewish conspiracy to manipulate the whole thing–a point that is both stupid and offensive. However, the following is simply a denial of actual facts that can be attested. > [@edivincison](#): > > As to why establish a state of Israel at all: the original Jews (those of which Israel has never counted more than 20%) are Semites, hence Arabs, whereas those greedy of Arab petrol were white Jews with so far fetched semitic origins that they could by no ways justify any territorial claim in Palestina. The territory to install Israel could not be gained otherwise than by force! Not all Semites, (a definition based on language, not bloodlines), are Arabs. Claims otherwise are silly. Then, while it can well be argued that European Jews have no particular “right” to the Levant after an absence of approximately 2,000 years, it is utter bullshit that the European Jews are not directly related to the Jews of the Levant. I don’t mind silly conspiracies, but I object to having facts tossed aside. ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/42 "2009-01-05T04:58:48Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Actually the carriers were sent away delivering combat aircraft to forward bases in preparation for a possible Japanese attack. The exact sort of thing a president bent on allowing us to get ambushed would NOT have done. > nd. Using carriers to do the job of a cargo ship, sounds lucky to me. ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/43 "2009-01-05T05:08:56Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Sure. An attack on the Philippines. American war plans, in fact, predicted the Japanese would invade and lay siege to the Philippines and the US surface fleet would fight its way across the Pacific like the cavalry coming to the rescue. The US had fought a long insurgency in the Philippines and felt a strong emotional attachment to the place; MacArthur would have done the same “I will return!” shtick with or without Pearl – in fact, it would have been even more dramatic if the attack on the Philippines had been the main thing in the national mindset. > > The government had been slow to reinforce the Philippines, and there’s some grounds to think that the bases and troops there were left vulnerable – were, in effect, dangled in front of the Japanese as a “tripwire” in exactly the way conspiracy theories assume Pearl Harbor was. > > The fly in the ointment of conspiracy theorists is that the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl did not require us to be caught napping in order to provoke the American public. Assuming that the the powers that be actually knew Pearl was going to be attacked, having the Navy sortie, ready for battle, and duke it out with the > Japanese on December 7th would have resulted in every bit as much outrage – it would still be, after all, an “unprovoked” surprise attack. There would still be severe losses. But we would have given a better account of ourselves and started the war off on better footing. > > Think about it – would Americans be angrier about September 11, 2001, if the firefighters had all been at a convention in Vegas and missed the action? Nope. The firefighters going in and doing-and-dying was probably even more tragically stirring than just seeing helpless civilians getting hit. Same would be true of a Pearl where we’d fought back. > > So the whole “intentionally withheld so we’d be caught flatfooted” argument doesn’t make any sense, objectively. The problem with this is Pearl was not the only likely target, in fact the least of three. The fleet would have spread over the ocean. when the Japaneese found the fleet had sortied they would have called off the attack. Look at the battle of Midway, They knew which quarter the Japaneese were going to be coming from. Look how hard it was to find two complete fleets. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/44 "2009-01-05T05:16:22Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > Using carriers to do the job of a cargo ship, sounds lucky to me. You would need a cargo ship that is capable of carrying aircraft. This vessel would also need some sort of flight capable deck. That kinda limits your choices. ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/45 "2009-01-05T05:32:20Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#): > > You would need a cargo ship that is capable of carrying aircraft. This vessel would also need some sort of flight capable deck. That kinda limits your choices. How do you think planes were delievered to fleet during the war. Cargo ships to Pearl delievered to an air field and flown out to a carrier. Or delievered to an advanced base off loaded onto a boat deleivered to the shore assembled at a shore air base flown to the carrier or permanate base. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/46 "2009-01-05T05:39:30Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > Using carriers to do the job of a cargo ship, sounds lucky to me. Or claiming that a routine method of transfer in the 1940s should have been handled differently indicates a lack of awareness of Navy practice. In fact, the _Saratoga_ had been used as early as 1940 as a troop transport and was then used to ferry planes three times during 1941. The _Wasp_ was used to ferry Army Air Corp planes to Iceland in July, 1941. The _Ranger_ was used to ferry Army fighters to Africa in April, 1942 and again in February, 1943. The _Lexington_ and _Enterprise_ made much better transports than freighters would have. Those ships were able to “fly off” fully functioning aircraft to land at the newly completed airfields, ready for combat. Using (slower) freighters would have delayed the transfer by several weeks: the planes would have had to be disassembled and stowed in the freighters. The freighters would have traversed the Pacific at about half the speed of the carriers. Then, since neither Wake nor Midway had fully functioning deep water port, each plane would have had to be transferred to shore by lighters, (essentially rafts), one by one, then towed to the airfields and reassembled. ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/47 "2009-01-05T05:56:30Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Or claiming that a routine method of transfer in the 1940s should have been handled differently indicates a lack of awareness of Navy practice. > > In fact, the _Saratoga_ had been used as early as 1940 as a troop transport and was then used to ferry planes three times during 1941. The _Wasp_ was used to ferry Army Air Corp planes to Iceland in July, 1941. The _Ranger_ was used to ferry Army fighters to Africa in April, 1942 and again in February, 1943. > > The _Lexington_ and _Enterprise_ made much better transports than freighters would have. Those ships were able to “fly off” fully functioning aircraft to land at the newly completed airfields, ready for combat. Using (slower) freighters would have delayed the transfer by several weeks: the planes would have had to be disassembled and stowed in the freighters. The freighters would have traversed the Pacific at about half the speed of the carriers. Then, since neither Wake nor Midway had fully functioning deep water port, each plane would have had to be transferred to shore by lighters, (essentially rafts), one by one, then towed to the airfields and reassembled. Seen a lot of pictures of planes being loaded and unloaded from cargo ships. ---
**Author:** ![edivincison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@edivincison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edivincison)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/48 "2009-01-05T11:56:25Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > OK, your silly claim… > [@](#): > > Claims otherwise are silly. . > [@](#): > > I don’t mind silly conspiracies, Using three times ‘silly’ in your comment disqualifies you as a moderator and would therefore dispense me from any response; but tolerance being necessary to get along, I’ll try to honor the objections presumably held against your comment in the minds of, alas, only a tiny minority of readers of this thread (which is obviously controlled by a strong majority of defenders of the official History). > [@](#): > > … is mildly amusing. Totally disconnected from any known facts, but mildly amusing. Repeating ‘mildly amusing’ does still not turn it into an argument against the hypothesis that the bombs were meant to deter Staline from trying to beat the Americans in the struggle for the control of Europe. > [@](#): > > Then **we** \* (enhanced by edivincison) \*jump around to your second conspiracy The use of the first person plural in this kind of statement is a well known trick to confiscate the opinion of the readers. ‘Jump around’ stands for ‘we are capable of leaping forward like tigers to tear you into pieces’ and is meant to intimidate. Try something less arrogant. > [@](#): > > …in which we need a war in Europe to justify sending Jews to take over Israel to guarantee that we have access to the oil fields… Not ‘to justify sending Jews to take over Israel’, but quite the contrary: to curb massive immigration of Jews (of the European Diaspora) to prevent the threat of thereby flooding Israel’s military vocation (please reread my first post). This could also be a booby-trap to make me express explicitly (and therefore get me jailed for revisionism in my country) what I have suggested the reader to extrapolate from this immigration threat , i.e. the true odds and ends of the Holocaust. > [@](#): > > …when it would have been easier to simply invade Saudi Arabia. As you mention, Saudi Arabia has a long coast line and no effective military. It could therefore be forced into cooperation. Not so Iraq with its still world nr. 2 oil reserves! > [@](#): > > We will also ignore, (for the moment), your murky allusion to a probable Jewish conspiracy to manipulate the whole thing–a point that is both stupid and offensive. Are you so sure all others will ignore too? Again the old trick to try to squat the readers’ opinion. What most others, including you, are presumably ignoring, is indeed the fact that those who manipulated the whole thing were only pretending (and still pretend) to be of Jewish origin, so as to be able to claim a territorial right in Palestine to the official purpose of establishing the homeland for the others, the true Jews, yet for the true purpose of establishing an advanced military fortress near the Arab oil fields, targeting mainly those of Iraq (if I may precise what I have already explained). The question why this enormous imposture (that plumbed the whole 20th century and up to our days) went without being noticed, would lead us to the investigation of the origin of the Egyptian pharaohs as the founders of the white race. As this would get us far away from the present thread, I suggest either the opening of a new thread or to leave the truth buried in its sarcophagus… ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/49 "2009-01-05T13:44:33Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > Seen a lot of pictures of planes being loaded and unloaded from cargo ships. Yes using cranes. In this case planes were being delivered to Wake island. Wake had no port for a cargo ship to dock, and therefore no cranes. So you could ship disassembled planes put them on lighters, take them ashore, and reassemble them. Or you could ship them on a shop where they could be flown off and landed on Wake’s airfield. The US Navy choose the later method. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/50 "2009-01-05T15:24:56Z")
> [@edivincison](#): > > Using three times ‘silly’ in your comment disqualifies you as a moderator and would therefore dispense me from any response; Sorry. Any appeals, however thinly veiled, to the worldwide Jewish conspiracy immediately flag a post as worthy only of mockery. I have made no claims about your intelligence, sanity, outlook on humanity, or parentage and I will not. However, mocking inchoate, (actually, nearly incoherent), arguments that are too oblique to be useful in a discussion is par for the course around here. Having noted that your arguments were silly, I also went on to note why they were silly. Note my explicit rejection of the Pacific War hypothesis you advanced. I will accept that once the Soviet Union had demonstrated its intentions to control Europe and the U.S. had atomic weapons, the U.S. was very much in favor of demonstrating to the Soviets Union the power of those weapons. I will even accept (for the sake of argument, since the assertion has never been established as true), that once the U.S. actually had the bomb, employing it on Japan might have been a way for Truman to provide that demonstration. However, your assertion was that we needed a war in the Pacific to provide a demonstration site for the bomb. That is lidicrous. It presupposes that, in 1941, when the bomb was still a theoretical possibility that might never have been produced, we were so sure of its development and of our ability to win a war in the Pacific that we encouraged Japan to attack us so that three and a half years later we would be in a position to use use the bomb against Japan. Never mind the possibility that we might not actually win that war or that even in doing so we would expend huge amounts of capital and resources and waste tens of thousands of lives or that, since we were clearly going to have to face Nazi Germany at some point, there was absolutely no guarantee that we would win a two front war. If you can only defend those arguments by appealing to the time-worn practice of conspiracy fans of claiming that everyone who accepts hostorical reality is being duped by the conspiracy, then I doubt that your argument will be persuasive except to others who already share your desire to find conspiracies. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/51 "2009-01-05T16:51:19Z")
Well said. I agree. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/52 "2009-01-05T20:50:13Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > Japan had a history of breaking relationship with a country just before or at the same time as attacking. FDR and the war department knew that Japan was going to break relations with the US On December 7th. > the US had been reading Japan’s codded messages for a long timme, In fact US intellegance had decoded the message to Japan’s embecy faster than their diplomats could. > > Add to this Dolittle in 1936 tried to worn the Navy that they could be attacked at Pearl by demenstrating a mock attack. > > The logical 1st attacks for Japan to make were the Philipeans, Midway, or Pearl. (You forgot Guam). However, Oahu is 3300 miles from Tokyo. Up to that time, such a very long range strike across the ocean was considered undoable. Yamamoto wasn’t sure that they could do it until they hyperanalysed it. Any ship that got damaged by an American counter attack would be very far from a friendly port. The force was sent out to dangle from a very long limb. Lucky for them, we knew they couldn’t do it. 😃 > [@](#): > > The Navy sent Halsey to deliever airplains to china (I believe it Was China) to the carriers were out of Pearl on December 7th. The plains should have gone by cargo or other means, using carriers as cargo transports? Negative, not China: The USS Enterprise was returning from a mission to deliver 12 Marine Corps F4F Wildcats to our small base at Wake Island. The USS Lexington was outbound to do the same for Midway Island. The USS Saratoga was in San Diego. The Yorktown, Hornet, Wasp, and Ranger were in the Atlantic, doing Neutrality patrols. The reason carriers were used is two fold: 1. The aircraft, which were US Naval fighter designs, would be able to be flown off a flight deck, ready to rock and roll. With a merchant ship, even if they are not disassembled into a box, have to be craned off, a time consuming process, and 2) The deep draft pier facilities at Midway and Wake were, for the most part, poor. (Almost non-existant.) > [@](#): > > There was a sinking of a Japanesse sub out side pearl before the attack and it did not raise a general alarm. There were radar contacts that did not raise an alarm. There were other insidents that should have put the cmplete fleet on alert, but did not. Maybe. Hindsight is 20/20. The sub sighting might have been seen (from the eyes of the staff ashore that early Sunday morning) as a case of some mistaken identity on the part of an over eager junior officer in the pre-dawn gloom. Even during actual wartime, there were many mis-sightings of phantom periscopes, torpedo wakes, and aircraft that turned out to be false alarms. That neither proves, nor disproves, a consipracy. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/53 "2009-01-05T20:52:25Z")
Sorry. I see I’m slow off the starting block today. ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/54 "2009-01-06T02:10:50Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > (You forgot Guam). > The force was sent out to dangle from a very long limb. > > That is why part of Yamamoto’s plan was if discovered bug out. > > Lucky for them, we knew they couldn’t do it. 😃 > > If undiscovered iit was deminstrated in 1936 that it could be done. We knew that would be the hard part. > > Negative, not China: You are right I looked it up. But a 32,000 ton ship to deliever 12 planes seems a little strange. > > The USS Enterprise was returning from a mission to deliver 12 Marine Corps F4F Wildcats to our small base at Wake Island. > > The USS Lexington was outbound to do the same for Midway Island. > > The USS Saratoga was in San Diego. > > The Yorktown, Hornet, Wasp, and Ranger were in the Atlantic, doing Neutrality patrols. > > The Even during actual wartime, there were many mis-sightings of phantom periscopes, torpedo wakes, and aircraft that turned out to be false alarms. > > That neither proves, nor disproves, a consipracy. It was not a sighting. The USS Ward attacked and reported it sunk a Japaneese Sub. Either the CO committed an act of war or it was defensive, why was it not a big action. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/55 "2009-01-06T03:40:27Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > It was not a sighting. The USS Ward attacked and reported it sunk a Japaneese Sub. Either the CO committed an act of war or it was defensive, why was it not a big action. It was a big action. However, it was a big action in a period of uncertainty, on a Sunday morning in peacetime, with the opening round of the upccoming war expected several thousand miles to the West at some undefined future date. _Ward_ sent her message at 6:53. It was not decoded until 7:15. Once decoded, it was pondered and then sent by courier to the responsible parties. As there was not yet a wartime attitude in place, the 7:55 attack occurred before the appropriate people could receive the message, realign their thinking, and respond. We’re talking 62 minutes, here, not hours or days. Even given an immediate reaction to the news of a sinking, what do you think it would have been? What is the connection between a single submarine near a harbor mouth–quite probably engaged in a spy mission–and an air attack from across several thousand miles of ocean? Only with 20/20 hindsight do we know the connection. However, how is the _Ward_’s report different than the reports of the _USS Maddox_ and the _USS Turner Joy_ on 4 August 1964? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/56 "2009-01-06T03:47:24Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > Seen a lot of pictures of planes being loaded and unloaded from cargo ships. I’m not sure of the point of this. Of course planes were shipped by freighter. I have never claimed otherwise. What I have pointed out was that it was not some freakishly rare event for a carrier to be used in place of a freighter in certain circumstances. I documented six such examples, four of them occurring prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. This was in response to your comment that having the carriers away from Pearl was lucky, with an apparent subtext that you are unsure that it was luck and not part of a plot to save the carriers from a foreknown attack. You are right; it was lucky. However, that should be noted in a tone of thanks, not skepticism. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/57 "2009-01-06T04:28:45Z")
In December 1941 naval warfare, as Roosevelt understood it, was still between capital (in the case of someone brought up in WWI, battle) ships. The USA was forced to rethink its naval strategy when the Japanese did it first. Mention of any Jewish conspiracy grounded in a successful atomic bomb is nonsensical based on both the belief of an International Jewish Conspiracy and ANY knowledge WHATSOEVER of the status of scientific understanding in late 1941. ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/58 "2009-01-06T05:23:49Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > I’m not sure of the point of this. > > Of course planes were shipped by freighter. I have never claimed otherwise. What I have pointed out was that it was not some freakishly rare event for a carrier to be used in place of a freighter in certain circumstances. I documented six such examples, four of them occurring prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. > This was in response to your comment that having the carriers away from Pearl was lucky, with an apparent subtext that you are unsure that it was luck and not part of a plot to save the carriers from a foreknown attack. > > You are right; it was lucky. However, that should be noted in a tone of thanks, not skepticism. Sorry but I have my doubts. All indicators indicated that the Japaneese would attack some where on December 7th in the morning. The three best choices were Midway, Manila, or last Pearl. No base was given any worning or state of readyness up grade. The CO of the Ward reconized the problem. I do not believe in cowinkidinks. And again I ask a carrier to deliever 12 planes? Remember the US Navy was stuck on battleships not carriers. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/59 "2009-01-06T07:23:40Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > Sorry but I have my doubts. All indicators indicated that the Japaneese would attack some where on December 7th in the morning. The three best choices were Midway, Manila, or last Pearl. No base was given any worning or state of readyness up grade. The CO of the Ward reconized the problem. I do not believe in cowinkidinks. > > And again I ask a carrier to deliever 12 planes? > > Remember the US Navy was stuck on battleships not carriers. You do realize, I hope, that your last question is answered by your last sentence. Since the battleship oriented navy was not that concerned about carriers except as extended reconaissance, they had no compunction about using carriers as delivery vehicles when the situation seemed appropriate. What German plot was being foiled as the _Wasp_ ferried planes to Iceland six months prior to Pearl Harbor? What foe was deprived of a target as Saratoga ferried three sets of planes around the West Coast and Pacific throughout 1941? As to the date of the attack, no one in the U.S. knew that the attack date was December 7. The code we had broken was the diplomatic code, (AN-1 or Purple), not the naval code, (JN-25, which was implemented in 1939, but not broken in its initial release, and which was rekeyed on December 1, 1941 and not broken until the following May), and the Japanese were not sending out attack dates to their embassies. We had learned enough through Purple that by the end of November we knew that they were planning something in the near future. However what it was, exactly, and when it would occur was still outside our knowledge. It is true that the U.S. was aware of the Pearl Harbor attack before the Japanese Ambassador. However, that is because the U.S. arranged to hold up the delivery of the telegraphed message while we deciphered it, then passed it on to the embassy (late) so that by the time the ambassador could have it deciphered for himself, then take it to to the White House, the attack had already begun. That morning was the first time that anyone in the U.S., American or Japanese, knew the launch date. The commander of the _Ward_ recognized that he had an intruder ship in his restricted zone. Good job to him. However, he did not see the situation with any special perception. He had standing orders to sink any submarine found in restricted waters that was not being escorted by a U.S. surface vessel. He followed his standing orders and attacked every unescorted submarine that he saw or discovered by sonar. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-fdr-will-and-allow-pearl-harbor-srdja-trifkovics-take-on-the-conspiracy-theory/479197/60 "2009-01-06T12:40:49Z")
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