Attack on Pearl Harbor (40 page)

Many of the Army’s AA batteries were manned by young reservists with less than 90 days Regular Army experience.
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The CinCPAC AR identified three periods of attack:

While the times are somewhat inaccurate—for example, a more accurate estimate of the second wave dive bomber attack on the fleet would give the attack lasting between 0854 to 0930—the overall duration of 95 minutes likely reflects how long AA guns were engaged fairly well.

Twenty six guns firing at a sustained rate of eight rounds per minute
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would be expected to destroy 12 to 30 aircraft. At four rounds per minute (assume targets were in range only half the time), 6 to 15 aircraft would be downed. The figures serve as an upper and lower bound for the expected number of rounds fired. The lower rate of fire does not imply that the guns were fired slower, but rather account for times when the gun was not firing due to changing targets, or a lack of appropriate targets.

40-Minute Notice for AAC fighters

In Alert 2, which the Army maintained up until 28 November 1941, the AAC fighters were ready to fly.

According to one pilot, “We were under virtual house arrest. It was tough to get your laundry done and get to the PX. We were in our flight suits for a week at a time and got pretty ripe.”

Sunday, 7 December, was the first Sunday for months when the alert was relaxed. Unlike Alert 2, the controls in unattended planes were locked using a large metal collar that fit over the joystick, with four cables attached to the seat. They were difficult to remove even under normal circumstances.
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The Japanese had originally scheduled their attack for one of these alert periods, but the attack was delayed. According to Araki and Kuborn:

There were 94 fighters operational on 7 December, lower than the norm. Many aircraft had been put out of service to catch up on maintenance deferred during the previous weeks of alert. One entire squadron was placed out of service to remove and clean their guns. Under normal circumstances, this work would probably have been done on a plane-by-plane basis during the overnight hours. Adding these aircraft into the total would give 106 available fighters.

Historically, the 14 fighter sorties that were able to get to altitude achieved 8 to 11 kills.
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At that rate 106 defending fighters flying one sortie apiece would score 61 to 83 kills.

To those steeped in tales of the invincibility of the Zero, this will seem high. It is high, compared to the early war record of the P-40 in the Philippines and the record of the defenders of Java, Ceylon and Singapore.

A better metric might be the performance of the US fighters defending Midway the following June. The island’s defenses were alert, and the incoming Japanese raid was spotted by a PBY and by ground radar. There were 28 fighters on the island, 21 F2-A Brewster Buffalos and seven F4-F Wildcats, with one of each unavailable due to engine problems. 26 fighters intercepted the Japanese strike of 72 bombers and 36 A6M Zeros. The A6M Zeros dominated the air-to-air engagement—only a few of the defending fighters were able to get through to the bombers, and all were quickly placed on the defensive trying to deal with “the swarm of Zeros, from one to five of which got on the tail of each Marine fighter.”
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Of the 26, 10 returned, with only two in a flyable state. The US AR gave them credit for 33 kills.
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In the Japanese AR, 5 to 8 aircraft losses were attributed to Midway’s fighters.
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Applying these results to the defense of Pearl Harbor would give between 20 to 33 Japanese aircraft lost to defending fighters, compared to the 61 to 83 kills with the previous methodology.

The most probable result would have been somewhere between the extremes. At Midway there were factors that reduced the effectiveness of the fighters compared to the situation at Pearl Harbor:

At Pearl Harbor, the US fighters could have outnumbered the first wave of Japanese fighters, 43 Japanese to 106 US. They were experienced flyers with lots of hours in type and training together as a team. The Japanese strike was fragmented, with the Japanese fighters scattered among their many ground targets in penny packets. And, the P-40 and P-36 fighters could be effectively flown against the A6M Zero with the appropriate tactics.

At Pearl Harbor the US fighters got aloft after the Japanese fighters had abandoned their covering mission and were concentrating on strafing. The American fighters were protected by the fact that they were so few among so many—by the time they got into action, most of the Zeros were “target fixated” on ground targets and had dismissed the possibility of seeing any defending fighters aloft. Some of the US sorties were initially unnoticed until they opened fire for their first kills.

The 14 fighter sorties that did get off were piloted by exceptionally aggressive and skilled aviators. One witness noted that when aviators recognized they were under attack there was a general scramble for available aircraft, but some of the pilots were not running as fast as others. The ones that got aloft really wanted to fly, leaving behind their less confident compatriots.

A study conducted of 800 Korean War fighter pilots found that half did not achieve any kills, while less than 10% of the pilots achieved over 50% of the kills. The pilots that did get aloft were more likely to be in this latter group, more aggressive and more skilled than the average pilot. If 106 aircraft had been airborne all of the pilots would not have achieved the same rate of kills as in those 14 sorties.

There are arguments for accepting the higher figure. It is known that the P-40 could be effective against the nimbler Japanese fighters. In China, Claire Chennault devised a set of tactics for the Flying Tigers that gave the advantage to the P-40s, and the American Volunteer Group racked up a confirmed 15:1 kill ratio.
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Several things contributed to the poor early showing of American fighters in the Pacific, particularly in the Philippines. There was a lack of intelligence information and appropriate tactics to counter the A6M Zero. Good intelligence would have driven them to the same conclusions as those reached by Chennault: American fighters should not dogfight with the Zero. Second, at the Philippines many of the US pilots were very junior, some just out of flight school and then with no flying time for months during their sea voyage to the islands. Many had only a few hours in type,
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and were flying aircraft that sometimes literally had just been assembled, with engines not broken in for high-performance flying.

These conditions did not apply in Hawaii. “The pursuit squadron commanders and most flight leaders were all seasoned pilots with nearly 1,000 hours of flight time. Many of the junior pilots were from the Flying Class of 1940D but still logged 500 to 600 hours, half of it in fighters.”
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This can be compared with the pilots of
Kido Butai, who
averaged 800 hours, with about 10% of the pilots with combat experience in China.
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But the 800 hours figure was an average, and included all types of aircraft. There was a shortage of Zero pilots for the Pearl Harbor attack, and many of the very young and very inexperienced were prematurely transferred to carriers. Their training for the months before the attack concentrated on flying fundamentals—take-offs and landings, carrier qualification, navigation, and formation flying.

The 14th Pursuit Wing at Pearl Harbor did not lack information on how to properly kill the A6M Zero. Chennault had passed through Oahu in July of 1941 and took the time to make a presentation to the Army pilots. One of them recalled:

This visit was reinforced by several documents that were distributed in Army and Navy aviation circles. Major James H. McHugh, USMC, the Assistant Naval Attaché for Air in China, filed a report based on an interrogation conducted by the Chinese of a captured Japanese pilot. It provided accurate information on the fighter’s speed, armament, and rate of climb. Lieutenant Stephen Jurika, Jr., USN, the last pre-war US Navy Attaché for Air in Japan, attended an aviation exhibit in Tokyo and, in a monumental security lapse by the usually paranoid Japanese, was allowed to sit in an A6M Zero. He copied all the information on the aircraft’s side plate and the labels inside the cockpit, and filed a report with the Office of Naval Intelligence. Another report on the A6M Zero’s characteristics was filed by Major Ronald Boone, USMC, in the summer of 1941.
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Chennault himself had written a report on the A6M Zero which he delivered to General George Marshall on 12 December 1940. A few days later Marshall told a conference about the new Japanese fighter which had effectively eliminated the Chinese Air Force. Marshall passed on the information in a letter to General Short in February of 1941.

The Army had good pilots in Hawaii who knew their aircraft and would not be surprised by the quality and performance of their enemy. The Zero pilots were not overwhelmingly skilled or experienced. Chennault undoubtedly passed on his tactical ideas that led to the 15:1 kill ratio for the Flying Tigers. Given all that, the kills-to-sorties ratio achieved at Pearl Harbor, 8 to11 kills in 14 sorties (officially, 9 kills and 4 probables), is understandable. There is less reluctance to extend this ratio to a full battle with 100-odd defending fighters with a 2.5:1 advantage in numbers.

The Japanese expected high losses if the Americans were alert. In their first September 1941 wargame, an American scout reported the approach of the Japanese. The first wave