All our bases in the Pacific were on alert a week before in anticipation the Japanese were going to strike somewhere...they did not of course...but war was coming and everyone knew it, including Kimmel and Short...Halsey even had a shoot on sight order when he sailed out in the Enterprise before Dec 7...bottom line we had no patrol planes out during this period, including Dec 7...that was not on orders from FDR...it was gross incompetence on Kimmel and Shorts part.
Kimmel stood by the window of his office at the submarine base, his jaw set in stony anguish. As he watched the disaster across the harbor unfold with terrible fury, a spent .50 caliber machine gun bullet crashed through the glass. It brushed the admiral before it clanged to the floor. It cut his white jacket and raised a welt on his chest. “It would have been merciful had it killed me,” Kimmel murmured to his communications officer, Commander Maurice “Germany” Curts.