Attack on Pearl Harbor (33 page)

Egusa could also be embarrassed by the poor target selection command decisions made by the dive-bombers’ leadership. He was directly involved in the decision to attempt to sink ships in the channel, which resulted in the attacks on
Nevada
(a poor weapons-target match and inadequate level of effort), and on what were identified as class “B” cruisers that were actually destroyers
Dale
³⁰
and
Helm
. Class “B” cruisers, similar to the
Omaha
class, were not high on the target priority list.
³¹
All of these attacks were poor weapon-target matches or poor target identification. If the final assessment reported a poor dive-bombing hit percentage, it would open the door to inquiries, and Egusa might be held responsible for using valuable bombs on targets too tough for the weapon, or targets too small to be worthwhile.

A poor performance by the dive-bombers might open up the floodgates of criticism. Genda and Fuchida might have a share of the blame thrown in their direction in their role as attack planners. Genda was Fuchida’s friend. Fuchida had assisted him in formulating the attack plan. Fuchida had also briefed the dive-bombers to be alert to an opportunity to sink a battleship in the channel, an effort that failed.

Lastly, a poor performance by the dive-bombers would also reflect poorly on the performance of
Kido Butai
as an offensive weapon system, something an air power advocate like Fuchida would deplore. Dive-bombers were one-third the aircraft and half the offensive punch of the fleet carriers. Aviators were still sensitive to the competition between carrier advocates and battleship gunnery specialists for leadership in the Imperial Navy, and were in competition with them for resource. To have half of the offensive punch of the carriers perform in an unsatisfactory manner would not have promoted the aviators’ cause. This is especially the case when it is considered that the torpedo bombers’ attack could be represented as a fluke that could not be repeated against a forewarned enemy at sea and free to maneuver and evade torpedoes.

Torpedo bombers were already assumed to be, in some aviation circles, ineffective. The Americans questioned their viability, at one period considering abolishing torpedo bombers. The carrier
Ranger
was built without facilities for torpedo bombers and was to carry only fighters and dive-bombers. If aviators expected the torpedo bombers would score few hits and suffer debilitating attrition from enemy AA fire, and if the dive-bombers were also found to be ineffective, then the carriers would have their credibility questioned in the Imperial Japanese Navy as well. Carriers’ effectiveness in anything but a surprise attack might be questioned. The Imperial Navy might look to build more battleships like
Yamato
and fewer carriers like
Shokaku
.

There was also another possible motive, an institutional motive. A poor showing by the dive-bombers would put that aviation sub-community under scrutiny. Careers could be threatened. The Imperial Navy’s commitment to dive-bombing might be questioned.

All these factors point to very serious consequences if the BDA Report stated that the dive-bombers did not perform as expected. Fuchida might have taken it upon himself, or he might have been directed by some higher authority, to change the hit numbers to forestall internal conflicts within the aviation communities and to make all the carrier aviation branches look good. Such an order might not be made explicitly, but in conversations and other ways such demands could clearly be made or implied.

These are all potential motives. There is no evidence to support or challenge these observations. They are only possibilities—but strong possibilities.

Fuchida had potential personal, social, professional, and institutional motivations for seeing the dive-bombers perform well. Fuchida was in position, through manipulating a few numbers, to help his friends, protect himself, protect the dive-bomber community, protect the concept of carrier striking forces, and protect naval aviation in general.

These problems could have been solved by “padding the returns.” Twelve GP bomb hits were assigned to
Maryland
, eight to
California
, three to an oil tanker that Fuchida assessed as “sunk,” and six to a cruiser, all hits that had not occurred. Other bogus hits were scattered about among targets at the naval shipyard. Two hits and “moderate damage” was also assigned to a “Class B Cruiser” that was actually the undamaged destroyer
Dale
. These inflated returns brought the score for the dive-bombers up to a hit percentage in line with their performance during training, and gave Egusa’s men justification to take pride in “their share” of the destruction of several targets.

These bogus hits were not arbitrarily assigned. It appears that they were assigned after careful consideration to ensure that the deception could be concealed to the largest extent possible.

Additional hits against ships on battleship row could be assigned because:

Dive-bombing attacks on Battleship Row would have been nearly impossible. There was dense smoke boiling out of
Arizona
, along with the burning oil on the water that caused the evacuation of the after part of
Tennessee
and of
West Virginia
and
California
. Photographs show that area to be totally obscured by smoke as high as 8,000 feet. Only
California
, on the extreme southern end of Battleship Row, peeked out from under the smoke clouds; apparently only
California
was actually attacked by one
shotai
of dive-bombers.

The disparate performance between the various carriers’ can also be explained.
Akagi
’s dive-bombers were given credit for 6% hits, while the other carriers were given credit for hit percentages between 78% and 94%. Fuchida was on board
Akagi
and had direct access to
Akagi’s
airmen, and they undoubtedly knew what they achieved and could be interviewed directly to provide reports of what they attacked and if their bombs hit. The leaders of
Akagi’s
dive-bombers likely assisted in formulating the BDA Report. It would be very difficult to manipulate the results of
Akagi
’s airmen, as they were literally looking over his shoulder. Fuchida would have little flexibility regarding
Akagi’s
reported results. However, the other carriers’ aviators could not immediately review the work. If hits were to be added to improve the D3A Vals’ overall score, they would have to be credited to the other carriers.

The number of torpedo hits credited in the BDA Report was larger than the aviators’ claimed. It was inflated apparently to give a hit for every torpedo dropped and one for every aircrew that returned, sparing anyone the embarrassment of failure, a critical consideration in Japanese society. This establishes in principle that the final BDA report numbers were manipulated, as it would be impossible to count torpedo hits from post-action photographs. Similarly, the results reported for the level bombers exceeded practice scores and exceeded the aviators’ own claims, indicating that someone on the flagship upped those numbers, too.

Aviators had a tendency to see hits where no hits occurred, or hits that were not their own, and report results that were serious exaggerations. Fuchida himself claimed two hits for his formation that did not occur. This is not an indictment of dishonesty, but rather recognition that in high-stress environments the mind’s eye tends to see what it expects to see. The Japanese aviators at the end of the war suffered badly from this syndrome. According to their reports, Halsey’s Fifth Fleet was sunk several times over.

However, what is being extracted now is different. The question is not only the hit percentage, but the location of the claimed hits compared to the truth on the ground of what they actually attacked.

Either about half the second-wave dive-bombers’ aircrews misrepresented or mistook the targets in which they attacked and claimed hits that did not occur, or Fuchida signed a report that misrepresented their targets and results. Occam’s razor might come into consideration: “All other things being equal, the simplest answer is the most likely.” What is simpler, a collusion authored by a large group of unassociated personnel, or a few tweaks to the report under the authority of one individual?

If Fuchida saw the need to report some 30 additional 250kg GP bomb hits, how could it be done? Hits could not be claimed where photographs did not show damage. Some hits could be assigned to targets that were actually attacked, but the battle damage assessment photographs would not support too many hits since the damage simply was not there. Some hits could be assigned to the tanker that disappeared off the photographs and could be claimed as sunk at its moorings when the mooring area became totally obscured by fires, and to the “cruisers”
Dale
and
Helm
attacked in the channel.

But even with extra hits assigned to these targets, the photographic evidence would still not support 30 additional hits. The hits had to be assigned to something that had been destroyed, could likely be thought of as absorbing many hits to prevent accusations that bombs were wasted on destroyed ships, and to targets that were on the priority list to prevent investigations on why inappropriate targets were attacked, and to targets that were obscured in the photographs so that individual smoking holes could not be counted.

The only targets that filled all these requirements were the ships on Battleship Row. There were valid targets there and too much smoke to allow a detailed count of bomb hits.

Additional Questionable Claims

Fuchida reported a tanker sunk at the location occupied by the
Neosho
at the beginning of the attack.
Neosho
was underway just before the arrival of the second wave. The conventional explanation is that, observing an empty mooring, Fuchida believed
Neosho
disappeared under the water at the fueling dock. This reasoning does not stand up.

When built in 1939
Neosho
was the largest tanker in the world, displacing almost 25,000 tons when loaded. She was not much shorter than a battleship. She had a draft of 32 feet, comparable to battleships’ draft of between 33 and 36 feet. In the photograph showing her beyond
California
and backing away from her berth, she is at about 75% load with about 15 feet of freeboard.

Another photograph shows
West Virginia
outboard of
Tennessee
.
West Virginia
is sunk and sits on the bottom. Her main deck is barely awash. There is only a six to ten foot draft difference between normal riding conditions and sitting on the bottom of the harbor. This documents the depth of the water at these mooring locations adjacent to where
Neosho
was located.

The depth of the channel at the battleship row moorings was 40 to 44 feet. The water just covered
West Virginia
’s main deck, leaving the entire superstructure above the water. Had
Neosho
been sunk at the fueling pier, she would have lowered only about eight to ten feet. Her main deck would have been barely awash and her amidships and after superstructure would remain above the water, along with her elevated forward gun tubs, her masts, and her kingposts.

Fuchida was acutely aware of depth of the water in the harbor, as were the other aviators involved in formulating the BDA Report. He would have known that the depth of water next to that pier could not conceal a sunken ship.

By claiming
Neosho
as sunk, Fuchida had a way to run up the dive-bombers’ score by another three hits, and to credit them with a ship sunk solely by their bombs, a morale-building effort.

Neosho
got underway at 0842.
Nevada
was underway two minutes earlier, at 0840. A photograph shows
Nevada
passing
California
, just before the beginning of the dive-bombers’ attack, with
Neosho
in the background on a course to enter the loch past the shipyard.
³²
Another panoramic photograph taken just after the beginning of the second-wave attack shows Neosho prominently in the center of the channel. None of the dive-bomber aviators would have reported attacking an oil tanker at the fueling pier off Ford Island because there was no ship there. The photographs clearly show that
California
and
Neosho
were not obscured by smoke.

Fuchida was over the harbor awaiting the arrival of the second-wave dive-bombers. He reported seeing
Nevada
underway. It is difficult to believe that he missed seeing
Neosho
get underway at the same time. Two dive-bombers attacked
Neosho
as she passed the naval shipyard. It was not as if she was stealthy.