who thinks that the attack on pearl harbor couldhave been stopped?

I think that the attack on pearl harbor could have been stopped if the Americans did recon around the Japanese. What do you think?

 

The Japanese what? Naval Bases? Home Islands? People? Your questions are extremely vague. If it could have been stopped, we would have stopped it!

Home Islands - We were at the time at peace with Japan. Why would we send recon planes over a neutral country to find out where there ships are? All it will do is increase suspicions and hatred for America.

Military Bases - Same as above

Japanese People - Same as above

 

but how would we have known to stop it if it was a surprise attack

 

It could have been stopped and was not. The book We Slept at Dawn is a great source on this. There was in place orders to do recon out from Hawaii. The reason given for not doing this was that the planes would break down too often. There were several scenarios that admitted that Japan could attack Hawaii but were not followed up.

In the end Japan caught the US unprepared and since the US has done everything it can to prevent such things from happening again.

 

Are you going to ask these sort of questions on every thread you go on. Read the replys you are getting and do some research yourself, and offer an insight as to what you are asking no one minds questions but it seems so far that is all you have done.

 

I of course agree. Try to put some effort into what you post. Even if it is only a question. Other posters would like to know what you think and what your views are on the subject. Not just post "what they think". You had 3 threads closed because of just asking a question so far. Provide some background or insight.

 

Why do your questions always sound like you are looking for help with your homework?

 

I wish I could have taken a class with that as the homework. Man I must have missed out.

 

Pearl Harbor could not have really been stopped, but they did kinda know an attack was coming.

They just didn't know where, or how.

 

So what you are saying is that no matter how many scout planes the US had had, no matter if the Japanese fleet had been spotted, nothing could have prevented the attack on Pearl Harbor?

 

Certainly it could have been stopped, of course America had the military capability to do that in 1941. The US was aware of the possibility that Pearl Harbor could be attacked but the gov't and most of the military leadership did not really think Japan would attack Pearl Harbor - they assumed theyd be fighting Japan somewhere else first. The US Navy did have ship, air and sub patrols in the Pacific in 1941 but almost all of them were in the mid and south Pacific. (Remember the main naval effort that year was in the Atlantic where German u-boats were prowling the shipping lanes for convoys bound for England and while not yet at war with the US, could have started attacking American shipping any day.)

The Japanese knew the American patrol routes and chose to come down from the North Pacific to attack Pearl Harbor. The sea in this region is so rough and the weather so unpredictable the US Navy assumed no Japanese fleet could or would try to come through there. So US patrol action in this area was light and this may have been a decisive factor to the success of the Pearl Harbor raid.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor they went straight for the big ships and the airfields. Several critical targets, such as oil and fuel storage facilities, were left untouched. When the Japanese aircraft landed back on their carriers, the Japanese flight leader wanted to refuel, rearm and attack Pearl Harbor for a second blow. The commander of the fleet rejected this idea in favor of caution and having the fleet make a mad dash out of the area. But actually Pearl Harbor was in such a shambles that day the Japanese could easily have launched a second attack that would have done even more damage and gone largely unopposed.

 

Missed opportunities for the US before the attack:
- failing to keep all PBYs operational and on patrol
- Reaction to sighting and sinking of submarine outside of the harbor
- Ignoring the radar contact from the one and only radar station (Whatever happened to that Lt who told the radar operator,"It's probably that flight of B-17s coming in"?)
- Failing to raise any alarms after such incidents

Making the Japanese job easier:
- lets line up the interceptors we have so we can keep a good eye on them (instead of revetments) there are so many spies here
- Army & navy turf wars on who does what and where and when
- constant WD messages calling alerts/cancellations - but the worst was the lost of a coded message to Adm Kimmel warning that the Japanese were burning papers in their DC embassy through commercial channels .....

I just wish that the guys had had more time to react to be ready to fight and get underway...maybe the carnage and loss could have been reduced.

Watched a program about CV-76 (USS Ronald Reagan) coming into Pearl after deployment..the Sailors manned the rail and presented arms for 15 minutes as the carrier passed the USS Arizona.

Chills man. That is Honor and Respect!

 

The only way I could see the attack failing is if every ship and AA installation was doing a combat drill all at the same time... but the chances of that are the same as a rogue wave hitting one of the Japanese carriers and rendering it incapable of attack...

 

The USN did have a number of PBY's on patrol on December 7, 1941, but most were patrolling the fleet exercise areas closer to Oahu, looking for hostile submarines. In order to have any chance of sighting Japanese carriers before they were able to launch a strike, patrols would have to extend out at least 400 miles in a 360 degree arc. Seven hundred miles would have been even better. But since none of the Navy's PBY's were equipped with radar, only daylight patrols were feasible. That meant it would be nearly mpossible to assure that Japanese carriers could not approach to within strike range with the 70 or so PBY's available. Especially since, even with maximum efort, only about 75% to 85% serviceability could be expected. There simply weren't enough PBY's to mount a reasonable patrol effort around Oahu. The Navy's patrols centered on the South and Southwest because that was the direction of the nearest Japanese naval bases (in the Mandates) from which an attack might be expected.

The radar contact wasn't "ignored". In fact, it was reported to the embryonic air defense center which happened to have been shut down. The only oficer still there was not trained, and actually made a reasonable guess as to the nature of the contact. Even if Lt. Tyler had guessed correctly that it was an incoming Japanese attack, there was no communications system with which to notify the various defense bases and AA batteies. The system was still being established, officers and men trained, and operating doctinres developed, opeartional status was still about a week away. Lt. Tyler, I have read ended his carreer as a senior officer with the NORAD air defense command.

The warnings form Washington had seemed to emphasize the danger of sabotage posed by the supposedly hostile (Japanese) elements of the Hawaiian population. Concentrating the aircraft in long lines made them easier to guard against this type of attack. I don't believe there were, as yet, enough revetments on then Oahu air fields to shelter more than a handful of aircraft.

Perhaps you could elaborate on this issue? From what I have read, the Army and Navy seems to have cooperated fairly well on Oahu. Turf wars there might have been, but the various defense responsibilities were fairly well understood. The Army, of course, failed badly in carrying out it's responsibility of providing air defense for the Navy's ships while they were in port, but not because of competition with the Navy.

Almost all of the American military officers who did receive information about the Japanese embassies being instructed to burn their codes and destroy their cypher machines, failed to conclude that it presaged a surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor. Why should either Kimmel or Short intuit such a thing from the same evidence?

 

So Kimmel and Short get an A for defense from you then?

 

Stopped? No. It couldn't have been.

Not been a surprise attack? Certainly.

The radar warning from the Opana station is taken seriously.

The attack on a submarine in the exclusion zone by USS Ward is taken seriously.

The submarine warning alarm on the net area at the harbor entry when USS Curtiss enters harbor is taken seriously.

The fact that the Japanese dive bombers arrive too early and have to mill around on the West shore of Ohau for nearly 20 minutes is actually discovered for what it is. Many people saw the planes but nobody thought they were Japanese.

The Washington telegram / communications arrives in a timely fashion.

That is a few of the more than 20 things that could have tipped the US off prior to the attack and raised the alarm so that the Japanese arrive to find the US fully prepared or at least partially prepared for the attack. It also means much heavier aircraft losses for the Kido Butai; possibly crippling ones that would have had a major impact on following events.

 

Well if there had been a US warship or two out a day or three form PH in the path of the Japanese fleet it might have stopped them. They had provisions for abandoning the strike if they were discovered soon enough.

 

This is a "what-if' rather than historical fact. I gave historical facts that on their own could easily have ended in a general alarm and Pearl Harbor being alert and ready for an attack had the US chain of command acted more quickly on the information.
This is not much of a historical stretch as opposed to having to change the base course of history entirely.

 

'LOL The question was a "What If?" type one from the start.

 

It always struck me as incredibly foolish that the Japanese would believe that a single strike would cripple the US navy long enough for them to conquer Asia.