Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: HMAS Sydney

Well to be fair, unlike what the movie Pearl Harbor said, no one thought PH was in any danger even if war did break out. 

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ORIGINAL: vettim89

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ORIGINAL: HMAS Sydney

Well to be fair, unlike what the movie Pearl Harbor said, no one thought PH was in any danger even if war did break out. 

I agree that no one thought PH would be attacked by aircraft. That said, Kimmel should have at least expected submarines to be an issue and should have had a full patrol out. Like 9/11, the biggest failure on the command's part was a failure of imagination

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ORIGINAL: HMAS Sydney

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ORIGINAL: vettim89

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ORIGINAL: HMAS Sydney

Well to be fair, unlike what the movie Pearl Harbor said, no one thought PH was in any danger even if war did break out. 

I agree that no one thought PH would be attacked by aircraft. That said, Kimmel should have at least expected submarines to be an issue and should have had a full patrol out. Like 9/11, the biggest failure on the command's part was a failure of imagination

Possibly, but we have to remember that high sight is a wonderful thing. He was being told by military intelligence, etc, that PH was in no danger, etc.

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In the Grand Joint Army-Navy Exercises of 1932, Pearl Harbor was “attacked” in a training simulation by 152 planes a half-hour before dawn (on a Sunday). An attack which caught the “defenders” of Pearl Harbor completely by surprise. In 1938, Admiral Ernst King led a carrier-born air strike from the USS Saratoga against Pearl Harbor in another exercise. Again, the “attackers” were successful in achieving total surprise.

On November 11, 1940, 21 aged British planes destroyed the Italian fleet, including three battleships, at their home port in the harbor of Taranto in Southern Italy by using technically innovative shallow-draft torpedoes and further demonstrating the effectiveness of a surprise from the air.

In spite of all this, with war believed to be imminent, the most powerful and most crucial part of the American defense in the Pacific, the U.S. Pacific Fleet, usually berthed on the west coast of the United States, was moved to the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii. The fleet arrived on April 2, 1940. It was scheduled to return to the United States mainland around May 9, but this plan was drastically changed because of increasing activity in Europe and Japan’s attempt at expansion in Southeast Asia. Conflict involving Southeast Asia was a distinct probability.

Warnings continued to come. On January 27, 1941, Dr. Ricardo Shreiber, the Peruvian envoy in Tokyo, told a secretary at the U.S. embassy that he had learned from intelligence sources of a war plan involving a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. This information was sent to the State Department and Naval Intelligence and to Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii.

On March 31, 1941, a Navy report predicted that if Japan made war on the U.S., they would strike Pearl Harbor without warning at dawn with aircraft from a maximum of six carriers.

On August 10, 1941, a top British agent, code-named “Tricycle,” told the FBI that a planned attack on Pearl Harbor would occur very soon. He also reported that a senior Japanese naval person had gone to Taranto to collect all secret data on the attack there.

Early that fall, Kilsoo Haan, an agent for the Sino-Korean People’s League, told Eric Severeid of CBS News that the underground in Korea and Japan had positive proof that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor before Christmas. This was later reported to U.S. Army and Navy Intelligence.

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ORIGINAL: HMAS Sydney

Were the commanders at PH told this?  If not my point is correct.  

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Warnings continued to come. On January 27, 1941, Dr. Ricardo Shreiber, the Peruvian envoy in Tokyo, told a secretary at the U.S. embassy that he had learned from intelligence sources of a war plan involving a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. This information was sent to the State Department and Naval Intelligence and to Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii.

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ORIGINAL: vettim89

I would think two or three days may have made a difference but not an hour. The Army had a lot of mobile AAA that was not set up. Those devices that were in place had no ready ammo.

I really fault Short more than Kimmel. Short concentrated his aircraft because of the perceived sabotage threat. He had two full infantry divisions available to him to guard the aircraft! Heaven forbid that the soldiers actually would have required to be soldiers (even on the weekend). A lot has been written about how Washington failed to warn PH. I don't know if it would have mattered because Short and to a lesser degree Kimmel were still in peace time mind sets worrying about trivial administrative details rather than getting their units on a war footing.

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ORIGINAL: Japan

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ORIGINAL: vettim89

I would think two or three days may have made a difference but not an hour. The Army had a lot of mobile AAA that was not set up. Those devices that were in place had no ready ammo.

I really fault Short more than Kimmel. Short concentrated his aircraft because of the perceived sabotage threat. He had two full infantry divisions available to him to guard the aircraft! Heaven forbid that the soldiers actually would have required to be soldiers (even on the weekend). A lot has been written about how Washington failed to warn PH. I don't know if it would have mattered because Short and to a lesser degree Kimmel were still in peace time mind sets worrying about trivial administrative details rather than getting their units on a war footing.

How can we know that it was a failure from Washington, to not warn Pearl Harbour ?
Roosenveldt in 41 did not mind getting drawn into the war...

It is in 2006 surgested that United Kingdom had sevreal rapports pointing in direction of a Japanese Attack, and many of the Actions UK took in the Pacific during September, October and November 1941 do more then "surgest" that they were preparing for an all out war with Japan.
See the BBC Documentery: WW2 Behind Closed Doors for more details, it is a great program, and based on newly found and declassefied documents from WW2.



^^

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ORIGINAL: Japan

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ORIGINAL: vettim89

I would think two or three days may have made a difference but not an hour. The Army had a lot of mobile AAA that was not set up. Those devices that were in place had no ready ammo.

I really fault Short more than Kimmel. Short concentrated his aircraft because of the perceived sabotage threat. He had two full infantry divisions available to him to guard the aircraft! Heaven forbid that the soldiers actually would have required to be soldiers (even on the weekend). A lot has been written about how Washington failed to warn PH. I don't know if it would have mattered because Short and to a lesser degree Kimmel were still in peace time mind sets worrying about trivial administrative details rather than getting their units on a war footing.

Why do you think that it was a failure from Washington, to not warn Pearl Harbour ??
It could been of course, but why not a Strategical Decission to not warn them ??
Roosenveldt in 41 did not mind getting drawn into the war...

It is surgested that United Kingdom had sevreal rapports pointing in direction of a Japanese Attack, and many of the Actions UK took in the Pacific and Asia during September, October and November 1941 do more then "surgest" that they were preparing for war.
See the BBC Documentery: WW2 Behind Closed Doors for more details, it is a great program.



^^

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

You know guys, borner was respectful to start his own thread because he didn't want to hijack someone else's thread. Now his thread gets pulled into "They were all warned ahead of time it's a conspiracy!" territory. Give him a break.

I say Bismark was scuttled as it was sinking.

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ORIGINAL: JWE

Stop this conspiracy crap right now. Either respect the thread starter, or don't post. You should be aware of the consequences.

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ORIGINAL: Japan

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ORIGINAL: JWE

Stop this conspiracy crap right now. Either respect the thread starter, or don't post. You should be aware of the consequences.

I'm sorry sir, but I'm not sure what you are referring to.



This Thread is about "if they would been warned, and if they had known",

My replays are within the regulation of the forum, and are suggesting that it had not necessarily changed anything if they did know.



If you want to claim that I am not respecting the forum rules, then please point me to the rule you think I have not obayed.

Btw, are you Evan a moderator, should I interprete your statement as a formal threat/warning from the Forum Administration ??
As far as I know, you do not have the right to speak on their behalf ?

Also, about the "consequences" you are talking about sir, is that a new formal forum policy for not agreeing with you personally, or can you please point me to an "actual" rule, or "spirit of a rule" that you want to claim that I have not been obaying sir.


As far as I can see sir, I have not done anything wrong here.
If I am incorrect sir, then I ask you to please help me (and the other users) to understand what crime I am gilty of.
(Other then having my own opinion.)


.

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

The real question was what could they have done with a one hour alert?

I don't think anyone disputes that there were a few clues here and there that, in hindsight, seem like plenty of warning. But hindsight is very different from foresight. In my opinion, the difference between saying that they should have connected the dots from the clues they had (but didn't) and saying that they did, but chose to let the Japanese attack them, is where it crosses over into conspiracy theory-land.

It's extremely easy, I think, to imagine these kinds of things after the fact and even to find them believable, if you look at things from a modern perspective and with a limited set of data. It's much harder to see things as the people at that time actually saw them and to really get in the mindset they had, that to me is the challenge of really studying history.

Just to add to this, I am no historian, at best an amateur in that trade but I've seen some recent books that tend to get into revisionism of a sort regarding some events of WWII. It seems like these books get a larger audience the further away we get from the actual events, which tells me that we're collectively losing our bearings on what the folks back then actually knew and how they thought.

Regards,

- Erik

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ORIGINAL: borner

I did not want to hijack Joe's Pearl Harbor alerted thread, but I have a question I thought was interesting and looking for opinions.

What if the warning from Washington was received,and the radar contact thought to be the B-17 flight was identified as the KB's first strike wave. I figure that would give Pearl about an hour to get ready for the attack, perhaps less. What actions could realistically be done in that time? How many fighters were avaialble to get airborn? Ect.

The ships could have made it to battle stations. Not sure if they could get underway, and probably better not to, as if a large ship was sunk in the entry to the harbor, it would have been blocked for some time.

opinoins?

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ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

History is a contingency science - if something happens - this determines the path for things that happen afterwards. We do not know how to find out "what would happen if something different had happened". Historians do not generally engage in these "what if" questions - because fundamentally they are impossible to answer.

My father was in the USN Intelligence community during WWII and he knew people that were involved in the processing of intelligence information prior to Pearl Harbor and he felt like we knew more than was generally thought. The "government" was a large organization - so was the "Navy". So to say that some members knew more than is/was generally known is almost certainly true. To get information assimilated and translated into action at the highest command levels, is a different matter. Clearly there were many warnings, clearly some were ignored. But proving there was a massive conspiracy that was so successful that we do not even generally know about it today certainly smacks of credulity. The individual my father knew, did believe that negligence was involved, that persons avoided escalating information, but it not clear that this was done as a part of a conspiracy.

Generally we expect our governments to be rather incapable organizations. Why do we make an exception and give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to this case? Executing and then concealing such a conspiracy for almost 70 years would be a very difficult operation - and might even require that we believe the conspiracy is still operating today, almost 70 years later. I think the judgment of history requires far more substantial evidence of such a conspiracy before we could accept such.

Historians are skeptics, but they also operate in accordance with what is most probable - and they require sources - primary sources - and the more the better. This enables a solid web of facts to be built that cannot be dispelled by the over turning of one fact due to new information. If we have such a web of facts regarding the military alerts prior to the attack, I would say these indicate negligence, but not conspiracy.

Regarding the original question - it is a what if question - and hence technically impossible to answer - but it has been mentioned before that had the Pacific Fleet gotten to sea and been spotten by KB, it is also plausible to conceive that loss of life would've been heavier as it would not have been as easy to pick up survivors. Perhaps less ships would've been lost - but perhaps more sailors would've drowned. Saving the men was probably more important to the USN than plus or minus 1-2 BBs IMHO.

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

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ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

History is a contingency science - if something happens - this determines the path for things that happen afterwards. We do not know how to find out "what would happen if something different had happened". Historians do not generally engage in these "what if" questions - because fundamentally they are impossible to answer.

My father was in the USN Intelligence community during WWII and he knew people that were involved in the processing of intelligence information prior to Pearl Harbor and he felt like we knew more than was generally thought. The "government" was a large organization - so was the "Navy". So to say that some members knew more than is/was generally known is almost certainly true. To get information assimilated and translated into action at the highest command levels, is a different matter. Clearly there were many warnings, clearly some were ignored. But proving there was a massive conspiracy that was so successful that we do not even generally know about it today certainly smacks of credulity. The individual my father knew, did believe that negligence was involved, that persons avoided escalating information, but it not clear that this was done as a part of a conspiracy.

Generally we expect our governments to be rather incapable organizations. Why do we make an exception and give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to this case? Executing and then concealing such a conspiracy for almost 70 years would be a very difficult operation - and might even require that we believe the conspiracy is still operating today, almost 70 years later. I think the judgment of history requires far more substantial evidence of such a conspiracy before we could accept such.

Historians are skeptics, but they also operate in accordance with what is most probable - and they require sources - primary sources - and the more the better. This enables a solid web of facts to be built that cannot be dispelled by the over turning of one fact due to new information. If we have such a web of facts regarding the military alerts prior to the attack, I would say these indicate negligence, but not conspiracy.

Regarding the original question - it is a what if question - and hence technically impossible to answer - but it has been mentioned before that had the Pacific Fleet gotten to sea and been spotten by KB, it is also plausible to conceive that loss of life would've been heavier as it would not have been as easy to pick up survivors. Perhaps less ships would've been lost - but perhaps more sailors would've drowned. Saving the men was probably more important to the USN than plus or minus 1-2 BBs IMHO.