FDR - Jean Edward Smith [334]
By November 29, 1941, each of the Japanese task forces had put to sea. Each was instructed that “in the event an agreement is reached with the United States, the task force will immediately return to Japan.” The First Air Fleet was also instructed to turn back if sighted by the enemy before X-Day minus one.110
Yamamoto’s decision to attack the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor not only was breathtakingly bold but involved a revolutionary, hitherto untried use of naval airpower—an experimental concept untested in the crucible of battle. Taranto had involved twelve planes from a single carrier 170 miles away. The First Air Fleet would assault what was considered the strongest naval base in the world, halfway across the Pacific, with the largest air armada ever assembled at sea. “What a strange position I find myself in,” Yamamoto wrote to his friend Rear Admiral Teikichi Hori on the eve of the fleet’s departure, “—having to pursue with full determination a course of action which is diametrically opposed to my best judgment and firmest conviction. That, too, perhaps is fate.”111
When the attack order was given on December 2, 1941, the First Air Fleet had covered about half the distance to Oahu. Nagumo’s sprawling task force of nearly three dozen ships moved wedgelike in an easterly direction at a steady fourteen knots: six fast aircraft carriers jacketed by a protective screen of destroyers, cruisers, and battleships, with submarine lookouts fore and aft and a supply train of eight 20,000-ton tankers. On December 4, in heavy seas, First Air Fleet pivoted southeast, roughly nine hundred miles north of Hawaii. Two days later, at precisely 11:30 A.M., Nagumo completed his final refueling, released his slow-moving tankers, swung due south toward Oahu, and increased speed to twenty knots. After hoisting the historic “Z” flag Admiral Togo had flown at Tsushima, Nagumo flashed Yamamoto’s Nelson-like message to the fleet: “The rise and fall of the Empire depends upon this battle. Every man will do his duty.”112
At 5:50 the following morning, December 7, 1941, the First Air Fleet was 220 miles north of Oahu. Nagumo wheeled due east into a brisk wind and increased speed to twenty-four knots, essential for a successful launch. The flattops pitched violently, listing between twelve and fifteen degrees, making the first-light takeoffs all the more risky. “I have brought the task force successfully to the point of attack,” Nagumo told his air officer, Commander Minoru Genda. “From now on the burden is on your shoulders.”113
Weather delayed the takeoff twenty minutes. At 6:10 A.M. the launch began: first the fighters, then the horizontal bombers, dive-bombers, and torpedo planes—183 in all. By 6:20 they were in battle formation bound for Oahu. One hour later, Nagumo launched the second attack wave, mostly horizontal bombers and dive-bombers. Within ninety minutes of the first wave’s initial takeoff, a formidable fleet of 350 planes was homing in on its targets at Pearl Harbor, Hickam and Wheeler Fields, and Kaneohe Air Station.
Despite widespread knowledge of the worsening political situation in the Pacific and an explicit war warning from Washington, the Japanese attack caught the American military in Hawaii off guard.* In a sense, the defense of Pearl Harbor fell into the