The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [109]
Yet the plan had severe flaws. The shallow harbour on Oahu meant that the American ships would be grounded rather than sunk, as they would have been in open water, and therefore might eventually be refloated. It was clear from the reports of spies on Oahu that Pearl Harbor did not have the tankers and supply ships necessary for a westward attack on Japan, so this was not an act of self-defence. Nor would a surprise attack allow for an eventual American acceptance of Japanese conquests elsewhere; as one of the planners, Rear-Admiral Onishi Takijiro, pointed out, American pride was such that there could never be a compromise settlement if Japan attacked without a declaration of war.8 The precedents of the sinking of the Maine in 1898 and Lusitania in 1915 should have been enough to underline that. Fearing the loss of Japan’s most prestigious field commander just before war broke out, however, the Naval Staff and Tojo Government embraced Yamamoto’s demands.
The opposing naval forces in the Pacific theatre in December 1941 were so closely balanced except in one area – aircraft carriers – that if the Japanese had succeeded totally at Pearl Harbor they might indeed have bought enough time to consolidate the Southern Resources Area and make it vastly more difficult for America to bring her much larger resources to bear. The Japanese had eleven battleships and battle cruisers against the Allies’ eleven; eighteen heavy (that is, 8-inch-gun) cruisers against the Allies’ thirteen; twenty-three light (6-inch-gun) cruisers against twenty-one; 129 destroyers against 100; and sixty-seven submarines against sixty-nine. American naval planners had therefore balanced everything perfectly in the Pacific, with the vital exception that Japan had eleven aircraft carriers against the Americans’ three.9 (There were four other US carriers – Ranger, Hornet, Wasp and Yorktown – in the Atlantic.) If the Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga, and their supporting heavy cruisers, had been in port at Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941, the history of the Second World War might have been very different indeed. Fortunately, Admiral Husband Kimmel, the commander of the US Pacific Fleet, had sent the carriers westwards, with additional fighters on board, to support Midway and Wake Islands in the event of hostilities breaking out. It was one of the only correct decisions he had made in the whole sorry affair, but it was the crucial one.
Kimmel had every reason to suppose that war was indeed about to break out, though few reasons to suppose that Pearl Harbor would be the first target. On 24 November, Washington warned him that the ‘chances of [a] favorable outcome of negotiations with Japan [are] very doubtful’ and that ‘a surprise aggressive movement in any direction including attack on Philippines or Guam is a possibility’. Three days later, he received an even more unequivocal cable, stating, ‘This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. An aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days,’ and ordering him to ‘Execute appropriate defensive deployment.’10 There are still those who consider Admiral Husband Kimmel and the Army commander in Hawaii, Lieutenant-General Walter C. Short, who were both dismissed soon after the attack, to have been made political scapegoats to protect the Administration, but in fact they were both culpably negligent and complacent. That said, the attack on Pearl Harbor was minutely and brilliantly planned. Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo sailed east from the Kurile island of Etorofu on board his flagship Akagi on 26 November 1941 (or 25 November Washington dateline). His First Air Fleet consisted of six aircraft carriers, two cruisers, two battleships and a destroyer screen and eight support vessels.11 It sailed inside a moving weather front, which served to disguise it, and maintained strict radio silence throughout the voyage. Refuelling was achieved despite heavy seas, and sailing north of the