Attack on Pearl Harbor (29 page)
Read Attack on Pearl Harbor Online
Authors: Alan D. Zimm
The Japanese had the advantage of delivering the first attack in the Pacific War. They were inflicting damage on a fleet still largely in a peacetime configuration. During peacetime, habitability and maintenance and “spit and polish” take precedence over combat considerations. Ships had layers of flammable oil-based paint on their bulkheads, sometimes an inch thick. Attractive linoleum was on the decks, which burned and released toxic gasses. Flammable materials were everywhere, paint, oils, fuel for the ships’ boats. The living spaces had everything from wooden furniture to pianos. Stuffing tubes for wire and pipe runs had their sealant material dried and cracked, so boundaries thought to be watertight were not. Gaskets around relatively inaccessible closures, such as those in ventilation ducts, leaked copiously, contributing to problems with progressive flooding.
Many of the ships in the fleet had yet to recover from a decade of depression-era underfunded maintenance and repair. For ships constantly hogging and sagging and working in the seas, the stresses caused metal embrittlement, loose rivets, watertight doors with dried and cracked gaskets that would not seal and were warped beyond a tight fit, decks that leaked and machinery foundations brittle and vulnerable to shock damage.
Vestal
was hit by an AP bomb that passed through her stern and exploded beneath the ship. The flooding forced her commanding officer to put her aground.
The lesson to be learned from
Vestal’s
experience is that watertight integrity cannot be counted on in the case of older vessels. This ship was about thirty-three years old at the time, and it was found that flooding was progressive through the bulkhead and deck boundaries which supposedly were watertight.
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At Pearl Harbor, the entire battle line consisted of “older vessels”—the oldest was 27 years old and the youngest 20, in an age when the Washington Naval Treaty specified that a battleship’s life was 20 years with replacement construction beginning after the ship’s 17th year.
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Little money was allocated to maintain the older battleships in anticipation of their retirement, and some ships had seriously deteriorated. Even the youngest of the Treaty battleships, better maintained, had their problems. Ensign Victor Delano in
West Virginia’s
Central Station related how he saw water that “spouted through the cracks around the edges [of a watertight door] and shooting like a hose through an air-test opening.” This was a telling statement on the ship’s material condition, considering that Central Station was the ship’s damage control center, responsible for maintaining the ship’s watertight integrity.
After the attack, US ships would be stripped of linoleum, bulkheads chipped to bare metal to remove flammable paint, wooden furniture was offloaded, paints, oils, and fuels better stored and better controlled, watertight integrity corrected and verified, and other measures taken—damage control quickly took precedence over habitability, comfort, or convenience. The susceptibility of ships to bombs and torpedoes would be greatly reduced as the war progressed.
Assessment: The Japanese Fleet Submarine Effort
Twenty three large fleet submarines were sent to Hawaiian waters. On 7 December they were deployed in three layers around the harbor, at choke points, and along expected shipping lines of approach.
Five were “special attack force” submarines carrying midget submarines. They departed the area on 12 December 1941, leaving 18 submarines to blockade the islands.
(14) Submarine Patrol Areas
Yamamoto expected the air attack to flush the fleet out of the harbor. Damaged ships would be sent to the mainland for repairs. Those ships underway at the time of the attack would need to return to Pearl Harbor for fuel. The submarines were to sink these ships. At one time Yamamoto mentioned that he expected better results from the submarines than from the aerial assault.
In fact, both US carriers were out on missions, and there were a large number of cruisers, destroyers, and minesweepers in the exercise areas—44 Pacific Fleet combatants were out of the harbor at the time of the attack.
Merchant shipping was also a target. The Hawaiian Islands themselves were not self-sufficient: in 1941 imports required approximately 25 shiploads per month to bring in food and manufactured goods and take away export products (mostly sugar and pineapple).
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This traffic was also to be sunk.
There was every indication that the Hawaiian area would provide ample targets, fully justifying the deployment of almost half the available Japanese submarine force.
The submarines’ performance was disappointing. Warships moved with little interference. Merchant traffic was not interrupted. About the only accomplishments from this massive submarine deployment was a single torpedo hit on the
Saratoga
on 11 January 1942, putting her out of action for three months. The oiler
Neches
was sunk on 23 January 1942. This represented a slim return for the deployment of 23 submarines over several months.
Very few attacks were executed. Upon their return, Admiral Ueda accused the Japanese submariners of cowardice.
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BATTLE DAMAGE ASSESSMENT
The initial damage assessment was reported to Admiral Nagumo by Commander Fuchida. He had lingered over the harbor until after the departure of the second wave to evaluate the results. He returned to
Akagi
and made a quick round of the other aviators, comparing observations prior to going to the flag bridge. His initial estimate was two battleships sunk, four battleships with severe damage, and four cruisers greatly damaged.
A Japanese submarine reported a tremendous explosion in the harbor after dark. Later the Naval General Staff received a report through diplomatic channels that a battleship had been sunk by midget submarines after the air attack, a report that was accepted happily and uncritically.
After Fuchida’s initial report, the aircrews were individually debriefed, recording their assessments as to what they attacked and their results. Admiral Kusaka, “a man of the highest integrity who would scorn to embroider,”
1
relates how “on each carrier a minute examination was conducted against the claimed result of the attacks, gathering the returned fliers. Its results were successively sent to the
Akagi
.”
2
On
Akagi
,
Fuchida instructed all officers to develop their attack photographs at once for study in preparing a final assessment of damage inflicted. Courier planes from the other five carriers landed aboard
Akagi
, bringing data and photographic film from the attack units. By late afternoon he had all the prints. The flight leaders studied them most of the night, and the next morning Fuchida turned in his battle report.
3
On 17 December, while still at sea, Nagumo transmitted a preliminary Action Report. Torpedo hits were estimated at “over 35 out of 40.”
4
The report estimated four battleships, two heavy cruisers, and one tanker sunk; “one type uncertain (sunk by torpedoes)”;
5
two battleships, two light cruisers, and two destroyers with “heavy damage;” and two battleships and four light cruisers with “small damage.”
6
The biggest change over Fuchida’s initial verbal report was that the number of battleships sunk was doubled.
Eight cruisers were claimed hit. Two were reported sunk by a combination of torpedoes and 250kg GP bombs; the other six were assessed as damaged by a total of nine 250kg GP bomb hits.
A total of 26 250kg bomb hits are mentioned specifically, along with “several” 250kg hits against a
Maryland
-class battleship.
The report would go straight to the top:
Most signal honor of all, the Pearl Harbor raiders learned that the Emperor wished to hear the account of the operation directly from those who had led the attack…. Fuchida and Shimazaki [the leader of the second wave] worked together on their reports. Fuchida would relate to His Majesty the story of the strike on the United States ships; then Shimazaki would brief Hirohito about the attack on the air bases. Because Shimazaki was far handier with the controls of an aircraft than with brush and paper, Fuchida had to write both reports.
7
Four days after returning to Japan, on 27 December Commander Fuchida briefed the Emperor. He used a top-secret map with beautiful brush-strokes and vivid colors, which showed in detail the position of the ships, the number of torpedoes hitting each ship, and the numbers of AP and GP bomb hits. The chart identified the ships by type or class, but not specifically by name. This will be referred to as the BDA Report.
8
On the chart, damaged ships were classified either as “sunk” (symbolized as “X” on the chart); “serious” damage (“///”), meaning impossible or very difficult to repair; “moderate” damage (//), meaning possible to repair; and “minor” damage (“/”). Symbols identified the location of each torpedo, AP or GP bomb hit.
Destroyers
Dale
and
Helm
were misidentified as class “B” cruisers, repair ship
Vestal
was misidentified as an oiler, and tender
Dobbin
was misidentified as either an “A” or “B” class cruiser. The movements of
Nevada
and
Oglala
were shown, but the escape of
Neosho
was not. Otherwise, the depiction of the ships and their locations was remarkably accurate.
The left portion of the next table contains a summary of the information contained on Fuchida’s BDA report. The right portion shows the actual damage inflicted taken from official reports and two published accounts of the salvage efforts.
Torpedo BDA
Fuchida’s BDA briefing chart shows an arrow symbol representing “torpedoes.” There are 36 torpedo symbols shown on the chart.
In
Lessons
, the Japanese stated that 40 torpedoes were launched, of which 39 ran and 36 hit for 90% hits.
9
The initial assessment made at sea claimed “over 35” hits. The torpedo hit percentage claimed was greater than the best hit percentage (82.5%) achieved during pre-attack training.
According to Kusaka, the battle reports from the individual carriers claimed 33 torpedo hits (
Akagi
11,
Kaga
8,
Soryu
and
Hiryu
combined for 14). How Fuchida and his assessment team arrived at 36 hits is unknown. 36 torpedoes were not launched—four aircraft were shot down before dropping, and one jettisoned its torpedo. Three hits were reported against cruisers, while Fuchida’s report claimed five, all on
Helena
.
Chart 15 shows the hits claimed in the BDA report, shown in the dark circles v. the actual hits, shown in the light circles.
The BDA Report assessed 25 torpedo hits against four battleships. Of them, 21 (84%) were concentrated against only two,
Oklahoma
and
West Virginia
. The report honestly records the six torpedoes wasted against
Utah
, and the BDA chart identifies her by name. All six are assessed as hits. The torpedo that hit
Raleigh
was evidently unobserved.
JAPANESE BATTLE DAMAGE ASSESSMENT
ACTUAL DAMAGE INFLICTED
