I could swear there was a website dedicated to the Pearl Harbor attack that had an impressive collection of documentation relating to the attack, hearings about the attack, and among other things debunking CTs that ‘we knew but let it happen’ and other myths and nonsense. I remember it from a good number of years ago, so it’s no longer maintained, my google-fu is failing me, my memory is going, or it’s merged with some other site that I’ve overlooked.
However, directly relating to Robert Stinnett’s Day of Deceit I did find this: A Deceitful Book By Rear Admiral Richard E. Young, USN (Ret) A Review of Robert B. Stinnett’s book “Day of Deceit” which not having read Day of Deceit seems pretty thorough in debunking Stinnett and that
But the debunking just creates more room for doubters. Lt. “Honest John” Leitwiler, a commander of code breakers, wrote on 16 November 1941, “We are reading enough current traffic to keep two translators very busy.” With a nickname like that, no wonder he had to be silenced. And hits at the NSA website are to “http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/…”. It’s the secret_info/_files we want, for heaven’s sake!
According to a documentary I watched last week about the 24 hours after the attacks, President Roosevelt and whoever he could get together on short notice were trying to figure out how to respond to the expected land invasion. The documentary claimed that they were planning on making a stand around Des Moines or Chicago, because we simply did not have enough active troops to prevent a major invasion. Not having enough mainland defenses is bad enough for someone hoping for the best, but would be simply insane for someone actively hoping for an attack. Yet another nail in the coffin for the CT.
There were nine official investigations of Pearl Harbor.
The Knox Investigation Dec. 9-14, 1941.
The Roberts Commission Dec. 18-January-23, 1941
The Hart Investigation Feb. 12-June 15, 1944
The Army Pearl Harbor Board Jul. 20-Oct. 20, 1944
The Navy Court of Inquiry Jul. 24-Oct. 19, 1944.
The Clarke Investigation Aug. 4-Sep 20, 1944
The Clausen Investigation Jan. 24-Sep. 12, 1945
The Hewitt Inquiry May 14-July 11, 1945
The Joint Congressional Committee Nov. 15, 1945-May 23, 1946
The records of all nine are available on this page.
In the past couple of weeks you’ve asked for a reading list that would take years to complete. When do you find the time? You read more than I do, and that’s saying a lot.
Well, it did, but not in the Pacific. In commission but not at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 were USS Texas, Arkansas, New York, Wyoming, Washington, New Mexico, Mississippi, Idaho, Colorado and North Carolina. Some were transferred from the Atlantic after the outbreak of war.
As to the OP, remember also that FDR was a former Asst. Secretary of Navy. He loved the Navy, and I just can’t believe he would’ve purposefully left it unprotected and vulnerable, hoping to lure an attack, not knowing how badly it would be damaged for the subsequent war he’d have to fight.
I won’t claim that there wasn’t some panic. But I don’t think any professional military people thought there was any chance of this happening.
Japan never had a realistic chance to even capture Oahu, much less plan an invasion of the mainland. So landing troops in California and getting them thousands of miles inland? Absolute nonsense.
To be fair, when Bremidon said “documentary” I’m pretty he meant History Channel-style Nazi porn. Oooh, thrust those divisions deeper, harder, fill me to my depths with your shiny leather stormtroopers.
Yeah, I think the site that I was thinking of might have been swallowed up by New Page 1; I came a cross a lot of it there while trying to find the site I was thinking of. It’s also entirely possible that my recollection is faulty.
Indeed, Japan was hard pressed enough coming up with enough shipping to support the troop movements they made historically and tankers for all of the naval movements, particularly supporting the Pearl Harbor strike force. An attempted landing on Oahu or the mainland would have been a blessing for US morale; it would have ended in complete disaster for the Japanese. There wouldn’t have been the need to manufacture heroic tales such as Colin Kelly sinking the battleship Haruna by crashing his damaged B-17 into her.
If the Battleships had been available, would they have been much use anyway? Wasn’t the American fleet so strapped for tankers initially, they had to decide between supporting the carriers or the surviving Battlships (who were real fuel hogs) in the opening months of the Pacific theatre, and quite understandably chose the carriers. I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere.
Yeah, it was known there was a Japanese threat. It does seem the naval & military (including Army Air Corps) guys on the scene were just not paying attention. It wasn’t up to FDR back in DC to remind them to do their jobs…
Still, no conspiracy. Let’s remember there were people back them–and years later–who hated FDR & wanted to blame him.
People who believe this are generally the same ones who believe that his “cerebral hemorrhage” was actually a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I don’t believe that either.
Partially. The real problem is that with most of the Pacific fleet battle line knocked out it would have been suicidal for the US to attempt a main fleet action against the Japanese. So Nimitz organized task forces around carriers. These were intended to be almost a fast striking raider force. The intent was to run from any force it couldn’t outfight. And the old battleships were too slow to sail with them.
What Nimitz didn’t have was enough escorts to create a smaller battle line and the task forces at the same time. So the battleships were assigned to duties that would require fewer destroyers and cruisers to screen them. Mainly convoy duties.
There were theoretically enough oil tankers to support the fleet… but in wartime usage they eventually proved inadequate. But for most of the first year of the war the battleships were sailing, just not to battle. The only exception I can think of is prior to Midway where Nimitz just ran out of gas and ordered the battleships to protect harbors so he wouldn’t have to worry about them that week.
Actually, battleships were often used as unofficial tankers. They were big and had a good-sized fuel carrying capacity. Plus unlike regular tankers, they were heavily armored and able to defend themselves.
Dunno if he’s considered a “serious” historian but Stephen Ambrose devoted a chapter on it in his Americans at War. He basically says what’s already been said here.
IIRC naval doctrine for most navies at the time was built around the concept of the ‘big gun’: two lines of battleships slugging it out Jutland style with carriers being used as fast scouts to find the enemy fleet and, at the most, harass the lighter units with airstrikes.
It wasn’t until after Pearl Harbor that aircraft carriers were really seen as capital units that could be used as the nucleus of major offensive fleets. Even then, it was as much the carriers being the only capital ships available (combined with the object lesson of Pearl Harbor) that brought them to prominence. Towards the later years of the war there were still some engagements (Leyte Gulf for example) where both the UNS and IJN tried to get one last big battleship fight.
If FDR knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor and wanted a justifiable reason to bring the US into the war, he should have, by the thinking of the time, actually have kept the carriers in port as sacrificial lambs and kept his strongest surface units (the battleships) out of harms way. I’m sure losing two carriers plus other units and the associated casualties would have been enough to get the population behind a declaration of war.
The fact that the opposite occured has always seemed to be a good general indicator the attack was a suprise. While I’m sure FDR had a lot of positive traits I doubt the ability to see even a few years into the future and predict the dominace of the aircraft carrier as a naval unit was one of them
Or have the battleships and the carriers out at sea. It’s not like Americans would have said the attack was no big deal if the Japanese had only sunk some cruisers and destroyers.
In 1939 yes. But by December 1941, there was enough war experience to show otherwise. In the major fleet actions in the Mediterranean, , it was the Royal Navy aircraft carriers which were decisive.
By the way, in response to what someone said about Force Z (HMS POW and Repulse) they were supposed to be escorted by a CV, but it was unavailable for some reason.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Initially a new aircraft carrier, HMS Indomitable, was to be included, but was unable to join after running aground in the Caribbean during working up trials. HMS Hermes was considered as a replacement, but this idea was dismissed as Hermes was too slow.[2]
[/QUOTE]
I guess I am on your side Nemo, but I have to admit that the documentary made a pretty convincing case that our top leaders were pretty much in freefall with no idea what to believe. Also, I think that you are maybe coming off a little strong with “Absolute nonsense”. We’re talking about the fog of war here. First Pearl Harbor gets raped, and then MacArthur, even with a warning, gets crushed in the Philippines. They had to be thinking: “What’s Next?” Overestimating the abilities of the enemy during a war is practically a military tradition.
The documentary also mentioned that there was a 20 to 1 difference in battle-ready troops between Japan and the U.S. at the time. I’ve been trying to find something that would confirm or deny this, but so far I just find all sorts of trivia about Pearl Harbor itself.
If true about the personell, then why not be panicked about an invasion? There was no Navy to prevent a landing. If Japan would have followed up immediately with a ground invasion, what would have stopped them? I think they would have gotten pretty far before enough defenses could be ramped up.
That they would be eventually doomed by a huge supply line, and that most of the industrial might of the U.S. would have remained intact is fairly obvious and is probably one reason that they did not bother with an invasion. Still, it might have motivated the U.S. to go with some sort of truce where the U.S. would promise not to mess around in Asia and in return Japan would pull its troops back out. I doubt that this is what the U.S. would have done, but the war calculations of Imperial Japan were a little screwy anyway.
I suppose that most of the Japanese troops would have been tied up in Asian Campaigns, although I don’t know for sure that this is the case. Anyone know how many troops that Japan could have landed had they wanted to go with the invasion route? And how many battle-ready troops did the U.S. have on the mainland?
