what if- 12 Hours before Pearl

A U.S. sub has definite ID of Jap fleet the night before they launch their attack at Pearl.

Same scenerio,the carriers are out to sea.
Will word get to Washington in time?
Will US fleet sail out to fight...there's been no hostilities,yet.
No time for a battle plan?

 

I doubt it would have made much difference. First, how much did the sub see? Likely not the entire fleet so reporting would be spotty at best. Second, the report would have been made as a routine transmission to SubPac rather than to Washington. SubPac would have to diseminate the message to ComPacFlt and then to CinCUSFlt in Washington. From there a decsion might be made to alert Pearl based on the traffic.
However, given that the USS Ward fired on and sank a Japanese submarine in the exclusion zone outside Pearl and then reported this to PacFlt almost an hour before the strike and nothing was done would seem to confirm that there was a peacetime mentality that overrode logical military considerations from hindsight.
Now, on the other hand, given that the Philippines had over 12 hours warning that they were at war what would happen if the USAAF hadn't been caught on the ground? How much difference would that have made?

 

Alrighty then, if the USAAF was on notice...what did they have available to counter the japs?
Maybe a U.S. PBY sent up to scout the jap fleet,first. Not sure the US had anything to deal with Zero's at the time.

 

The USAAF had P-40s and P-36s available - over 100 altogether IIRC. These were not as good as the Zero, although the P-40 wasn't too far behind; equal speed, better diving, less agility. But most crucially, less experienced pilots.

However, only about 40-50 Zeros accompanied the first wave of bombers and 30-40 the second (all figures approximate, from memory), so had the USAAF been alerted in time they could IMO have seriously disrupted the Japanese attack. And if the USN had their AA guns manned that would have caused more disruption. So the end result would have been higher Japanese casualties, less damage to the USN's battleships.

I do of course deal with a similar scenario in my novel 'The Foresight War'

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk