Attack on Pearl Harbor (31 page)

(17) GP Bombs: Hits Claimed and Attacks Claimed

Actual Hits

US War Damage Reports (WDR) and ARs document 15 hits, 19% of 78 bombs, less than one-third of the hits claimed. Seven of the hits, against destroyers
Shaw
,
Cassin
, and
Downes
, and tender
Curtiss
, were on low priority targets that did not materially contribute to the objective of the attack.
²²

One hit on
Pennsylvania
resulted in minor damage that was put to rights in a few weeks, while a hit on
California
did not lengthen the time the ship would be out of commission to repair the damage from her two torpedo hits.

A hit on
Raleigh
added damage to a torpedo hit and nearly caused the ship to capsize, forestalled by excellent damage control. Five hits on
Nevada
started fires in the forward part of the ship that interfered with the crew’s attempts to contain the progressive flooding. Two of the hits broke the skin of the ship and added to the flooding.

Examined critically,
none
of the 250kg bomb hits hits contributed to mission success. The six hits on
Nevada
and
Raleigh
merely added damage to ships that were out of the fight from torpedo damage. The bomb hits did not extend their time out of service, only added to the manpower that would be needed for repairs. In
Nevada’s
case, the bombs mostly damaged parts of the superstructure that would eventually be removed anyway in the modernization effort.

The hit claims Fuchida showed on the report to the Emperor show a curious disconnect with reality. For example, 12 250kg hits were claimed on
Maryland
.
Maryland
was not hit by any 250kg GP bombs, only by two 800kg bombs from first wave level bombers at approximately 0810.
Maryland
did not record that she was attacked by dive-bombers for the duration of the second wave attacks.

Of the other ships along Battleship Row, five hits were claimed against
California
(actually hit by one 250kg bomb), and one against
West Virginia
(no 250kg hits). Three hits were assessed against
Neosho
which supposedly sank at the fuel transfer pier aft of
California
.
Neosho
had actually gotten underway at 0842 and moored near the submarine base at Merry Point at 0930. She was underway for the duration of the second wave attack, and was targeted by two dive-bombers while she was in the channel. The Japanese BDA report shows
Neosho
sunk at her Ford Island pier, her location at the beginning of the attack.

Matching Claims with Hits

The next chart shows the hits claimed by the Japanese and the hits and DNMs recorded in ships’ damage reports and ARs.

Hit Claims Away From Battleship Row

Five hits were claimed on three different cruisers at the shipyard piers. Only one bomb was an actual DNM. Six hits were claimed on
Helena
moored along 1010 dock, with no hits actually achieved. Two hits were claimed on
Dobbin
with no actual hits, two against
Dale
with no actual hits, and five against
California
with one hit actually scored. 14 hits were claimed vs. one hit and one DNM actually achieved.

(18) GP Bombs: Hits Claimed and Actual Hits

Hit Claims Along Battleship Row

Five hits were claimed on
California
, one on
West Virginia
, three on
Neosho
, and a rather remarkable 12 on
Maryland
, 21 hits at all. Applying the claimed overall hit percentage (63%) to these attacks would imply that 33 dive-bombers attacked Battleship Row targets, almost half of the total dive bombing effort. Such a significant level of effort ought to have merited entries in the American logs and accounts of the attack.

However, there are few references to second-wave dive-bomber attacks against Battleship Row, by either Japanese or Americans. In one veteran’s account:

The “we” Ofuchi refers to apparently means himself and his rearseater. He does not relate how many other bombers accompanied his attack, but it was probably his
shotai
of three bombers.
California
was damaged by a 250kg GP bomb that hit her starboard side amidships and exploded on the second deck, blowing a hole in the main deck and starting a fire that engulfed three secondary battery casements.

In another account, Lieutenant (j.g.) Furuta claimed he attacked
Maryland
. He remembers that he “aimed at the enemy battleship’s mast using my scope…. I identified the ship as
Maryland
from its position in the battleship formation.” According to
Hawaii Sakusen
, Furuta’s target was the fleet oiler
Neosho
.”
²⁴
Neosho
had nothing that looked like a battleship mast, and she was well away from the “battleship formation” before the arrival of the second wave.
Maryland’s
log and AR do not record anything corresponding to Furuta’s claimed attack.

Lieutenant Commander Abe reported he attacked Battleship Row:

Vestal
had cut her mooring lines and was clear of
Arizona
ten minutes before the second wave arrived.
Arizona
at that time was totally obscured by smoke. There were no reports of bombs impacting at the northern end of Battleship Row to correlate with this claimed attack. Abe probably actually attacked
Dobbin
and her nested destroyers.

Assessment

Aviators during WWII generally overestimate the number of their hits, sometimes by as much as 100%. Overestimating by a factor of seven is unusually poor reporting. Considering that this was a “set piece” battle with targets at anchor, the aircrew had trained for months for this specific attack, and that the strike leader was flying over the area doing nothing but observing, it is unusually bad reporting. The 78 dive-bombers attacked over about a 36-minute period, an average of 2 per minute. From US witness reports, nearly all of these attacks were well clear of the smoke cloud rising from
Arizona
.

Claims Distribution

Twenty-seven of the 49 claimed GP bomb hits were against battleships—along Battleship Row,
Pennsylvania
in drydock, and
Nevada
underway. This was a poor weapon-target match, particularly considering there were four modern 10,000 ton cruisers tightly packed into the shipyard area, undamaged and clear of smoke, and four others at anchor. In the absence of the carriers, cruisers were the dive-bombers’ top priority. Only two cruisers sustained damage from 250kg bombs, rather than the seven claimed.

The GP bomb hits on battleships caused mostly superficial damage which would not have kept them out of the war for six months. The Japanese BDA report is an admission of poor weapon-target matching, poor target selection, and poor target identification—if it actually happened that way.

The
Chronology
estimated that 30 dive-bombers from the second wave attacked the Navy Yard area, which included the cruisers at the Naval Shipyard piers,
Pennsylvania
in drydock, and
Shaw
in the floating drydock. If that were true, then only two of these 30 bombers (7%) damaged targets on their priority list: a hit on
Pennsylvania
, and a DNM on
Honolulu
. If bombs that struck
Cassin
and
Downes
are included (bombs that missed their intended target,
Pennsylvania
), along with the hit on the
Shaw
, then six of the 30 bombs (20%) were useful.

Estimating the Japanese Attack Distribution from US Reports

The Japanese claims and US damage reports conflict. Ideally a combination of Japanese records of the debriefings of their aircrew combined with American ARs could be used to ferret out an accurate account. Detailed Japanese records did not survive the war, and the surviving dive-bomber aviators have left only a few anecdotal testimonies. The Japanese attack must be reconstructed largely from American records.

The most important records are the ARs submitted by the ships and the
Chronology
put together by the CinCPAC staff to support the Congressional Investigation of the attack. Care must be taken in using these sources. AR times were recorded inconsistently. They were mostly based on ships’ logs which, understandably, might not have been the Officer of the Deck’s first concern during the battle. Some entries record when an event started, some when it finished, and some might just indicate the time the Officer of the Deck glanced at his watch before writing the entry, which might be many minutes after an event. Some time shifts in the logs were as great as 20 minutes.

Many of the logs recorded “attacks” by dive-bombers. “Attacks” could have been bomb runs, strafing attacks, or even dummy bomb runs to draw fire away from other bombers, or just a bomber flying by as it recovered from its dive on a different target. The Japanese dive-bomber gunners sprayed machine gun rounds at whatever came into sight, making a log entry of an “attack” understandable.

The American logs are remarkably specific in recording bombs. They recorded how many were dropped, where they landed, and what they did. Cases were encountered where several ships in close proximity all would claim that a given bomb was actually aimed at them—a rather human propensity—but such entries could be correlated and helped reconstruct the Japanese expenditure of bombs. Consequently, this analysis relied on bomb counts to reconstruct the dive-bombers’ attack.

The next chart adds where 250kg GP bombs were dropped. The list of these attacks and sources are provided in
Appendix A
, with a summary provided in the table.

The analysis accounts for 76 of the 78 bombs. The “Possible” column adds up to 85 because the entries in that column represent the maximum number reported in each attack—when several maximums reported from different observers are combined there was some double counting, which was eliminated in the summary count.

(19) GP Bombs: Hits Claimed and US Records of Attacks