In this time of holiday shopping, parties and everything else, let us not forget all of the lives that were lost today 75 years ago with what happened. I tip my hat and salute all that were involved that day.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/07/504733373/pearl-harbor-75-years-later-u-s-recalls-a-shocking-attack
I flew to Oahu for the 50th because it seemed like something I needed to do. I grew up with quite a few WW2 vets around me; though none were at Pearl that day, I heard a lot about the attack. There were many vets from both sides there for the 50th, many more than today I'm sure. Hard to believe it was 25 years ago.
I also had the opportunity to fly the plane pictured below from Dillingham up on the North Shore down the valley to within sight of Pearl - the same route the Japanese flew in 1941. It was an incredible experience.
In reply to 92dxman:
PBS has few new specials about Pearl Harbor, interviewing quite a few +90 vets.
Really interesting.
alfadriver wrote: In reply to 92dxman: PBS has few new specials about Pearl Harbor, interviewing quite a few +90 vets. Really interesting.
Just watched one where they ran a remote operated vehicle inside the Arizona, it was pretty amazing.
I'm recording the PBS shows, but right now I'm watching "Tora, Tora, Tora!" on TCM.
my now deceased Great Uncle (he died a few months ago) was in Pearl aboard an oiler when the attack happened.
I remember a B&W interview of a Japanese pilot who was involved at Pearl Harbor. There were a half dozen fuel tanks on a hillside, the interviewer asked why they didn't hit the fuel tanks. The pilot replied that America was so fuel rich that they didn't want to waste a bomb on it.
Had the tanks been hit, our recovery would have been much longer and the war in the Pacific may have ended differently.
absolutely, hitting that depot would have trapped the fleet at pearl and changed the outcome of the war.
Certainly silly to not attack them, but I am not too sure about trapping the fleet. Changing the outcome? No way.
A lot of the fleet was damaged or sunk (battleships mostly, which would have little impact in the Pacific war). The two carriers of course were running around, but I find it unlikely there would not be enough fuel oil (on fleet oilers and what they didn't get) to keep them going. It's seem very unlikely they would be able to completely obliterate the fuel supplies.
The next fleet action (Coral Sea) was not for another 6 months anyway. Which seems like enough time to get oilers from the west coast, and to do some repair to the tanks.
The US had absurd industrial potential and lots of oil (mostly in California at that time I believe, so close), which was obviously the biggest factor for the outcome of the way. I see the destruction of the tanks as a minor inconvenience at best.
If it did turn out to be very disruptive, I could see the worst impact would be to allow the Japanese to capture Midway islands. This would certainly make things more difficult, but I don't see any different outcome.
BTW, it's really hard to factor in the Battle of Midway in any "what if" scenarios because of it's ridiculously unexpected results. A fully strength Japanese carrier fleet wandering around the Pacific after Midway would certainly be a challenge for the US, but time, and the Japanese inability to effectively attack the continental US make the outcome inevitable.
I can't believe that it's been 75 years. 
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: If you know someone who was a WWII vet, and they are ok talking about it, listen to what they have to say about the war. The stories they can tell you are pretty unbelievable. Their numbers dwindle by the day.
In my family, I had a great uncle who was an Army Ranger in the Pacific, but he never talked about his service, and stayed tight lipped about it, and took his experiences to the grave. My paternal grandfather was actually in the Italian army, and was a British POW. He died 7 years before I was born, but he served in Ethiopia when they invaded, and was offered to be a "court cobbler" for the installed emperor there, but turned it down after seeing the writing on the wall. At some point on his way out of there, he was captured by the British. He didn't make it home until mid-1946.
Later on around 2003, when I was in college majoring in History, I took a WWII History course. We had an assignment requiring us to seek out a WWII veteran and interview them. We had two family friends who were veterans: one who served in the Marines in the Pacific and fought at Guadalcanal, and a former Navy machinist who served in Britain repairing battle damaged ships. I ended up choosing the Navy machinist, as he was more open to talk about his experiences. In the middle of the interview, he stopped me and asked why I chose him. He said that he didn't matter, and he was no hero. He didn't win any medals for service, and was not recognized for his efforts. I corrected him and told him that he DID matter, and without people like him, Allied ships couldn't operate and protect supply fleets and provide support. He did what he w He broke down in tears, telling me that I was the first person to ever thank him for his service. I will never forget that, ever. And I'm glad I took the time to speak with him, because he passed away a few months later.
Sorry about the word castle, but every year around this time, I remember Ollie (the man I interviewed) and his service, along with all the other everyday men and women who served with him that kept the war effort afloat. I also remember my grandfather, who was on the other side, and how he spent years just wanting to go back to his family. It's easy to forget stuff like this; not everyone who served was a Purple Heart/Medal of Honor War Hero, and they often get lost in the shuffle.
aircooled wrote: Certainly silly to not attack them, but I am not too sure about trapping the fleet. Changing the outcome? No way. A lot of the fleet was damaged or sunk (battleships mostly, which would have little impact in the Pacific war). The two carriers of course were running around, but I find it unlikely there would not be enough fuel oil (on fleet oilers and what they didn't get) to keep them going. It's seem very unlikely they would be able to completely obliterate the fuel supplies. The next fleet action (Coral Sea) was not for another 6 months anyway. Which seems like enough time to get oilers from the west coast, and to do some repair to the tanks. The US had absurd industrial potential and lots of oil (mostly in California at that time I believe, so close), which was obviously the biggest factor for the outcome of the way. I see the destruction of the tanks as a minor inconvenience at best. If it did turn out to be very disruptive, I could see the worst impact would be to allow the Japanese to capture Midway islands. This would certainly make things more difficult, but I don't see any different outcome. BTW, it's really hard to factor in the Battle of Midway in any "what if" scenarios because of it's ridiculously unexpected results. A fully strength Japanese carrier fleet wandering around the Pacific after Midway would certainly be a challenge for the US, but time, and the Japanese inability to effectively attack the continental US make the outcome inevitable.
I have read a number of books that stated that if the Japanese had bombed the fuel supplies the fleet would have had to retreat to the west coast. There was a shortage of tankers available to the US Navy.
Most of them were in the Atlantic supporting the navy there, many of the civilian owned tankers were being used to support the British and some of them were getting sunk by Uboats. They could have kept some fleet units in PH with those tankers they did have, but mostly small units like destroyers and subs which didn't require large amounts of fuel(Subs) or weren't going far(Destroyers).
It would have taken at least 6 months to increase the number of tankers available and a year or more to get enough fleet tankers into service.
Interesting info, thanks.
I really have no idea how many oilers or tankers they had, so that's a possibility. They clearly had enough to keep Hawaii supplied though and with the damage the Japanese did, they would only need to supply a couple a carriers and escorts.
Even so, the Japanese had no plan to invade Hawaii that I am aware, but it would have left Midway very vulnerable and more the result they were looking for. It's surprising they didn't since planing attacks on Pearl Harbor was apparently a pretty common exercise at the Japanese Naval Academy.
Realistically though, the war ended with Japan loosing the moment the first bomb was released from a Val. It was a simple matter of time.
Found a quote regarding the subject:
If the vital fuel storage tanks had been destroyed in either attack, the surviving American warships, including the carriers Lexington and Enterprise would have been deprived of fuel to operate. The course of the Pacific War would have been dramatically altered in Japan's favour. Japanese submarines could have played havoc with tankers attempting to bring fresh fuel supplies from the United States across 2,200 miles (3,960 km) of open Pacific Ocean.
I am a bit suspicious of the submarine comment here though. I mean, how do you think the oil got there in the first place? Escort ships can fuel up on the West coast. (Most destroyers of the time seem to have over a 6000 mile range)
P.S. I am not trying to be argumentative, I just like historical thought experiments.
The Japanese had submarines that could have wrecked havoc on any convoys attempting to cross the pacific to Hawaii. They were not as good as ours, but their torpedoes were better.
What's interesting to ponder is if the Japanese had fielded a invasion fleet three days after Pearl and invaded Hawaii. There wouldn't have been much we could have done about it. The Logistician would point out they couldn't have maintained a supply chain of 4000 miles. There's a lot of truth in that. On the other hand they might have had another year or two to fortify their conquests and that might have raised the price tag of "unconditional surrender" too high...
The Japanese situation regarding the POL reserves at Pearl was a bit of a Catch-22. If they hit them and forced the US Pacific Fleet back to the West Coast, this would have opened the opportunity for the Japanese to take Hawaii and shift their fleet east. Without capturing American fuel oil, however, their fleet would have been severely restricted, as Japanese POL and transport shipping were both in short supply. It would have taken many months to clear the harbor at Pearl and shift enough POL to keep the fleet tactically flexible.
If they had tried to capture Hawaii with the POL reserves intact, there would still have been the issue of securing the territory and clearing the harbor (the salvaged scrap would likely have proven quite welcome to the Japanese). One also must consider that the likelihood of the Americans allowing those fuel supplies to be captured intact is low.
Destroying the POL and leaving Hawaii in American hands may have limited American tactical options, but consider that the Japanese were successfully operating in the mid-Pacific in 1941 without a major fleet base east of the Home Islands; the American Pacific Fleet was capable of doing this as well.
Japan's oil supplies were a constant worry from the 1930s onward. The irony is that the final decision to attack the US came about only after the American oil embargo against Japan took effect following the Southern Thrust into Indochina, which in turn was undertaken with the intent of securing for Japan the oil fields of the Netherlands East Indies.
We wouldn't have accepted anything less than an unconditional surrender. That war was personal, with no quarter given on either side. We would have kept nuking Japan untill surrender or there was no one left.
If Operation Downfall would have taken place,it would have been Hell on Earth, but it would still have happened.
I thought the 3rd wave was supposed to strike the fuel tank farm, but Naguma didn't want to press his luck & thought another attack would result in losses and allow us to track back to carriers. Also he was worried our carriers would be appearing.
The planned 3rd strike would have been on the sub base & oil depot. The decision to not execute that strike slightly changed the war.
mad_machine wrote: The Japanese had submarines that could have wrecked havoc on any convoys attempting to cross the pacific to Hawaii. They were not as good as ours, but their torpedoes were better.
I still find this unlikely. There were constant ships / convoys going to Hawaii and they never attacked them. The Japanese certainly had subs with the range, heck, one of them surfaced of the coast of Santa Barbara (not terribly far from me) and caused a bit of a panic in 1941 (sometimes called The Battle of Los Angeles, and the basis for the movie 1941) "what are you shooting at?", "I don't know, what he's shooting at"
I have been told one of the reason they did not do such things is that the Japanese primarily used their subs as scouts for the surface fleet rather then focus on anti-shipping.
That such bitter foes could become the greatest of Allies seems so unlikely, based on how wars were settled in the past. Thank you Greatest of Generations.
Interesting to think of the channels that global conflict plays out on today. I wonder if we have any State-sized enemies who would attack, disrupt and undermine the Western World by covert actions.
In reply to etifosi:
Well, they hold the distinction of being the only ones nuked.....and they chose us rather than facing a Soviet invasion.
etifosi wrote: That such bitter foes could become the greatest of Allies seems so unlikely, based on how wars were settled in the past. Thank you Greatest of Generations. Interesting to think of the channels that global conflict plays out on today. I wonder if we have any State-sized enemies who would attack, disrupt and undermine the Western World by covert actions.
it's because we chose to rebuild Japan and Germany rather than leaving them in rubble and heavily punished. We ourselves could have saved this country (and a lot of the world) a lot of trouble by rebuilding the areas we had conflicts in. If we had rebuilt Afghanistan after using them in a proxy war with the Soviet Union, do you really think that the Taliban could have taken over and turned that country into such a haven for militants? If you look at the pictures pre-soviet invasion, Afghanistan was VERY western looking and on the up and up.
I read a very interesting book by one of the salvage divers who worked on the Arizona, the Oklahoma, etc for the years immediately after the attack. The idea of walking through a debris of fuel oil, live explosives, sharp metal (always good for the air hoses) and dead bodies without being able to see a thing will positively creep you out...
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