Pearl Harbor Betrayed (27 page)

There is no report of weather conditions on the sixth as such that the writer has been able to uncover, but it is not unreasonable to assume that they generally conformed, if not to the stormy, to the cloudy conditions before the fifth and on the seventh. Any PBY patrolling the northern sector would have had to fly beneath the cloud bases, and it is problematic how much haze hampered visibility below those bases. If, instead of the PBY, a B-17 had been assigned to the northern sector on 6 December, its wider radius of visibility might have given it an edge in detecting ships below, but the B-17 would have had to fly, ponderously in its case, beneath the cloud bases. With the little observational weather evidence we have available from the period, though, on the other hand, with our general understanding today that meteorological conditions north of Oahu are usually marginal, particularly in winter, perhaps the most that one can say is that, if Kimmel had in fact ordered distant air reconnaissance over the sector north of Oahu, the flight crews may likely not have sighted the Japanese carriers; and that one may reasonably agree with what Martin and Bellinger concluded in their estimate of 31 August: namely, that in a dawn attack (certainly where the northern sector was concerned) there was “a high probability that [it] could be delivered as a complete surprise in spite of any patrols we might be using.”
102

*   *   *

If, as Kimmel argued, and, as he said, Washington plainly knew, he could not both conduct a distant air search
and
have his patrol planes ready in “maximum practicable number” to undertake their first wartime missions in the Marshalls raid, was there
no other means
he might have seized upon to post sentinels around his perimeter? There was, in fact, such a means, and it dated from the age of sail, when it acquired the name
picket ship
. Technologically inferior to aircraft, of course, in speed and coverage, and likely to be destroyed by the enemy it detected, the picket ship did have a justifiable use in modern times, which can be expressed in the maxim:
in extremis extrema tenenda sunt
.
103
While Kimmel may not have thought he could spare his task force vessels for sentry duty, he and Bloch had other vessels at their disposal that could have been deployed for that duty, including submarines. Those other vessels sat low on the water, thus would have limited radius of vision, but they still had the practical potential of sighting by chance a carrier's tall island on the horizon. Fleet-type submarines could cover 7,000 to 10,000 nautical square miles per day: with brackets on the periscope shears (supports) they could place eyes thirty-five feet above water. Even so, the small number of vessels and the marginal vision they provided meant that only a comparatively few sectors could be covered, such as the north and the south.

Kimmel had been urged to deploy small surface vessels to the northward and southward by Stark as early as 10 February. Warning him that “in view of the inadequacy of the Army defenses, the responsibility … must rest upon the fleet for its own protection while in Pearl Harbor,” Stark went on in the same communication to propose the following expedient:

It is noted that no provision is made in the Local Defense Force plans of the Fourteenth Naval District for the employment of vessels as a part of an aircraft warning net in the waters to the northward and southward of Oahu. It is suggested that in coordinating the plans of the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, and the Commandant, Fourteenth Naval District, this matter be given consideration. It is possible that large sampans equipped with radio might prove useful for this purpose during the war.
104

The Hawaiian “sampan” was a flat-bottomed skiff, built along oriental lines, propelled by a diesel engine, and, because of its sea-keeping capability, widely used on prolonged cruising in the Hawaiian fishery. Crewed by Hawaiian Japanese, the sampan fleet was based at Kewalo Basin, about twelve miles from Pearl Harbor. The vessel's use proposed here as a naval picket boat was not as far-fetched as might be thought by modern readers. One has only to remember the Japanese use of small fishing vessels in a picket boat line positioned 600–700 nautical miles east of their home islands on 18 April 1942, the date of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle's B-25 bombing raid on Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The U.S. Navy task force, including the carrier USS
Hornet,
from which the bombers were to be launched, was sighted by a picket boat while still 650 nautical miles from Japan. The task force twice changed course, but another outlier was encountered after each alteration. The pickets got off their sighting reports. It then became necessary to launch immediately, though the plan had been to launch at 500 miles distance. This meant both that the attack, scheduled to take place at night, had to be made during daylight and that the air crews, forced to fly 150 additional miles, risked not having enough fuel to make landing fields in China.
105

On 21 December 1945, before the JCC, Admiral Turner testified as follows:

We informed—the Chief of Naval Operations informed—the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet in at least three official communications during 1941 that it would be desirable to use ships to the northward and on one occasion to the southward of Hawaii for detecting approaching raiders, in addition to the use of airplanes, and we had endeavored to get small craft to send out and be on look-outs. One of these letters suggests the use of five sampans that had just been condemned [legally appropriated for public use under the right of eminent domain] by a court out there and the use of yachts which we were trying to get to them.
106

Kimmel had still other craft that might have proved useful as pickets, and, together with the sampans, should have been numerous enough to guard sectors to the northward and southward, as recommended by Stark. These were five submarines, four old destroyers, four small minesweepers, three Coast Guard cutters, the gunboat USS
Sacramento
(PG-19), one net vessel, one gate vessel, two self-propelled oil lighters, and twelve tugs.
107
Of the last-named Ingersoll wrote on 13 August to Kimmel that “should the fleet leave, [they] might be used for patrol purposes.”
108
One is reminded of what Samuel Eliot Morison said about the Navy's (Admiral King's) costly delay in deploying a coastal picket patrol composed of small craft to detect German U-boats off the U.S. East Coast in 1942: “More of the Dunkirk spirit, ‘throw in everything you have,' would not have been amiss.”
109
When in the JCC hearings, on 21 December 1945, Kimmel's picket boat assets were discussed by Senator Homer Ferguson (R., Mich.) and Admiral Turner, the following exchange took place:

Senator Ferguson: Why didn't we use those then?

Admiral Turner: I do not know, sir.
110

Kimmel's comment on surface distant reconnaissance, made before the Army Board in 1944, was laconic: “The use of surface craft for distant reconnaissance against an air attack would have required so many ships that their use was considered entirely impracticable for this purpose.”
111
The NCI in the same year concluded, somewhat moralistically:

Neither surface ships nor submarines properly may be employed to perform this duty, even if the necessary number is available.… A defensive deployment of surface ships and submarines over an extensive sea area as a means of continuously guarding against a possible attack from an unknown quarter and at an unknown time, is not sound military procedure either in peace or in war.
112

But in extremis?

It worked for the Japanese.

*   *   *

What Kimmel
did
do after receipt of the 27 November warning dispatch was the following: He maintained in force the tightened readiness measures he had taken after the 16 October warning. He issued new orders for “full security measures” to be taken by ships in operating areas and at sea.
113
In Pearl Harbor proper he and Bloch warned all antisubmarine patrol forces to take additional security measures against submarines.
114
He issued orders to the fleet to “exercise extreme vigilance” against submarines in operating areas and to depth-charge all contacts expected to be hostile in the fleet operating areas.
115
He gave the depth-charge order despite Stark's previous resistance, dating from 23 September, to such an order. Stark had told Kimmel that “if conclusive, and I repeat conclusive, evidence is obtained that Japanese submarines are actually in or near United States territory,” a “strong warning” should be sent to Japan. But Kimmel decided on his own to give the “bomb on contact” order, and so informed Stark, who made no reply.
116
(There would be no
conclusive
evidence until 7 December.) “The Pearl Harbor operating area was some 2,000 miles from the nearest Japanese possession,” Kimmel reasoned. “I knew that if we sent any submarines into a Japanese operating area they wouldn't hesitate a moment to bomb them.”
117
Kimmel's estimate of Japanese intentions after receipt of the 27 November dispatch was that if an attack was made against the Philippines, then

there was a very good chance that a mass submarine attack would occur in the Hawaiian area. I thought an air attack was still a remote possibility, and I did not expect an air attack to be made on Pearl Harbor at this time due to the tenor of the dispatches, the other information available to me, the difficulties of making such an attack, and the latest information I had from the Navy Department and other sources was that the greater portion of the carrier forces were located in home waters.
118

He issued orders for Task Forces 8 (departing 28 November) and 12 (departing 5 December) taking Marine F4F fighters 2,004 nautical miles to Wake and 1,300 miles to Midway, respectively, to conduct en route morning and afternoon air searches out to 300 miles from their positions for any sign of hostile shipping. Thus, Kimmel
did
have distant air reconnaissance in the western and northwestern sectors, and to a greater distance than could have been achieved by patrol planes based on Oahu. Furthermore, he ordered a patrol plane squadron to proceed from Midway to Wake and to search the ocean en route; and while at Wake, to search varying sectors on 2 and 3 December to a distance of 525 miles. He ordered another squadron from Oahu to replace the squadron that went from Midway to Wake. It proceeded by way of Johnston Island, 700 miles to the southwest, making a reconnaissance sweep along both legs. After reaching Midway, that squadron flew distant searches of varying sectors of not less than 500 miles on 3, 4, 5, and 6 December. On the seventh, five of that squadron's PBYs were searching the sector from 120 to 170 degrees from Midway to a distance of 450 miles. Another two PBYs of that squadron flew a sweep on the seventh while rendezvousing with the
Lexington
400 miles from Midway. Four others remained at Midway, each loaded with depth charges, on ten-minute notice.
119
As Kimmel testified before the JCC:

In the week before December 7, these reconnaissance sweeps of the patrol plane squadrons moving from Midway to Wake; from Pearl Harbor to Johnston and from Johnston to Midway; from Wake to Midway and Midway to Pearl Harbor, covered a total distance of nearly 5,000 miles. As they proceeded, each squadron would cover a 400-mile strand of ocean along its path. They brought under the coverage of air search about 2,000,000 square miles of ocean area.
120

At the same time, on and after 27 November, Kimmel maintained surface patrols of varying ocean sectors by two submarines out of Wake and two out of Midway.
121

Nor were the PBYs on Oahu standing idle. In addition to daily employment in expansion training, PBYs flew scout training missions on 1, 2, 3, and 4 December northward and northwestward of Oahu to a distance of about 400 miles. While these flights did not constitute distant reconnaissance as such, it is worth remarking that they exceeded in distance the flights conducted by Admiral Richardson after the Marshall-Herron alert of 1940. On the fifth, the PBYs held ground arming drills with live bombs. On the sixth and seventh the PBYs that flew the scout training missions were down for maintenance and upkeep, “in order not to depreciate the material readiness of the planes,” said Lt. Comdr. (in 1941) Logan Ramsey, who drew up the wing tactical exercises for Patrol Wing 2.
122
Moreover, since 15 November and continuing each day of the week preceding the Japanese attack, including the seventh, three PBYs flew a dawn patrol over the operating area south of Oahu.
123
Lifting off the water at Kaneohe Bay at just after 0600, the Catalinas each flew, with tanks topped off with 1,000 gallons of gasoline, with two depth charges on wing racks, and with all machine guns armed, pie-shaped sectors over the fleet operating area south of Oahu to a distance of 300 miles.
124
It was on the dawn patrol flown on the seventh, as will be shown, that Catalina 14P1 sighted and attacked a Japanese submarine. In addition, on the morning of the seventh, four other Catalinas were near Lahaina Roads off Maui Island to the east conducting exercises with U.S. submarines in inter-type tactics for communication and recognition.

Finally, Kimmel activated certain features of the Joint Coastal Frontier Defense Plan, including an inshore and offshore patrol of the immediate Oahu perimeter by ship; activation of the harbor control post; deployment of sonobuoys to detect enemy submarines; operation of torpedo nets at the entrance to Pearl Harbor and Honolulu; and daily sweeping of channels. Furthermore, beginning 30 November, he kept and updated a daily memorandum entitled “Steps to be taken in case of American-Japanese war within the next 24 hours.” (The last issue of the preparedness memorandum, dated 6 December, was presented to the JCC on 15 January 1946.) And he directed his war plans officer Soc McMorris, to draw up a memorandum of “Recommended steps to be taken in case of American-Japanese War within the next forty-eight hours” (completed on 5 December).
125