Posted on 12/06/2014 4:51:05 PM PST by Jacquerie
Adm. James Richardson strongly disagreed about permanently docking navy ships in Pearl Harbor, believing that the Japanese would feel threatened by the proximity of America's Pacific fleet and organize a preemptory attack.
With their exposed and isolated location, the ships would be vulnerable to any such aggression. He also recognized that the navy did not have the manpower to fight a war in the Pacific in 1940. He relayed these concerns to all who would listen and protested the decision to politicians in Washington. In response, Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt relieved Richardson of his command.
This biography covers Richardson's life from moderate beginnings to the investigations by the army and navy into shortcomings at Pearl Harbor, detailing his influences on the military.
My dad was on one so your logs are wrong. Previously he had been chief signalman on the heavy crusier Houston. Before her last cruise two chief signalmen wer assigns to her. They flipped a coin and my dad lost and got his orders changed. That is how he wound up in Alaska. He was haunted by that all his life as he believed he should have been with the ship when she was sunk. While I know the historical record is, in the vast majority of cases correct,I was recanting what I was told and I have no reason to doubt it. My dad was commissioned in WWII and had his ship shot out from under him at Guadalcanal. He was also involved in the invasion of Africa but spent most of his time in the Pacific.
Until presented proof otherwise, I’ll maintain for those saying FDR, George Marshall and Cordell Hull had a unique foreknowledge of a Pearl Harbor attack requires looking backwards and piecing together specific data points to prove their thesis. They have had to ignore the fact that these men were living out history forwards. The information the country received from traffic analysis, informants, investigations, and code braking swam in a sea of 10,000’s of data points each month. Remember a few years ago you could buy pictures that seemed a mass of random color pixels, but a single picture emerged if you stared at it in the right way? In this case a host of pictures emerged each week. To make some sense of this data it had to fit probable alternatives.
The population of the probable (in the fall of 1941 we had too few resources to deal with the possible as well) had to fit into War Plan Orange and the corresponding Japanese plan, which was generally known to the U.S. Both plans envisioned the supreme naval battle would be fought in the Western Pacific. Both navies were disciples of Alfred Thayer Mahan who wrote the outcome of war at sea would always be decided by the “decisive naval battle”. Past history had borne that out at Trafalgar, Tsushima, and Jutland. For Jutland Churchill said, “Jellicoe was the one man who could have lost the war in an afternoon”.
When Yamamoto proposed his radical departure from Japanese strategic principles only his firm commitment to resign at a meeting in October 1941 sealed the deal. The Naval General Staff could either find a new commander of the fleet at this late date, or accept his radical departure from existing plans.
In this country Plan Orange continued to determine the most probable interpretation to place on intelligence and events. That may have been an important factor for ignoring the implication of the data point called the “bomb plot” message. In September 1941 the U.S. decrypted a message sent to the Japanese Honolulu consulate asking for reports of ships anchoring or tying to wharves in five specific areas. Some thought this a departure from the ordinary while others thought this a normal interest in ship movements that could help them understand how quickly the fleet could sortie for that “decisive naval battle”.
It seems that only after the war started were men appreciated who could think outside normal channels. In the Pacific I think of men like Nimitz, Rochefort, and Doolittle.
(1) The extent to which FDR and the highest levels of the US armed forces recognized that an attack on Pearl Harbor was both possible and a risk that had to be prepared against;
(2) What warnings of the impending attack, if any, were delivered to FDR and other relevant decision-makers; and
(3) The degree, if any, to which these warnings were deliberately ignored and suppressed by FDR and his associates so that a sudden Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would assure that the US would enter WW II with a sense of unity and resolution in spite of powerful isolationist sentiments among the American public.
You argue that an attack on Pearl Harbor was not seen as plausible because it was contrary to US and Japanese war plans. The historical record is otherwise. By January of 1941, an attack on Pearl Harbor was feared at the highest levels of the War Department and the Navy and the Pacific Fleet was so informed. The essential documentation was collected and preserved as Exhibit 40 of the Hart Inquiry.
The opening passage of the first letter in January of 1941 to the Secretary of War from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox makes abundantly clear that a surprise Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor was seen as a distinct possibility:
The security of the U. S. Pacific Fleet while in Pearl Harbor, and of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base itself, has been under renewed study by the Navy Department and forces afloat for the past several weeks. This reexamination has been, in part, prompted by the increased gravity of the situation with respect to Japan, and by reports from abroad of successful bombing and torpedo plane attacks on ships while in bases. If war eventuates with Japan, it is believed easily possible that hostilities would be initiated by a surprise attack upon the Fleet or the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor.
In my opinion, the inherent possibilities of a major disaster to the fleet or naval base warrant taking every step, as rapidly as can be done, that will increase the joint readiness of the Army and Navy to withstand a raid of the character mentioned above.
The dangers envisaged in their order of importance and probability are considered to be:
(1) Air bombing attack.
(2) Air torpedo plane attack.
(3) Sabotage.
(4) Submarine attack.
(5) Mining.
(6) Bombardment by gun fire.
Defense against all but the first two of these dangers appears to have been provided for satisfactory.
My we take point 1 as established between us, that the risk of a surprise carrier attack on Pearl Harbor was in fact recognized well before December 7, 1941?
“My dad was on one so your logs are wrong.”
The problem here is that there are an awful lot of other people who were far more experienced in those events who are reporting “The Navy had no capital ships in Alaskan waters—and only six PBYs” and no destroyers on 7 December 1941; see Brian Garfield, The Thousand Mile War, Buckner’s War; and DANFS (Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships). Finally, the U.S. Government hearings on the Pearl Harbor attack included a list giving the position of every U.S. Navy ship of the Pacific Fleet at 8AM on 7 December 1941.
There were only two U.S. Navy ships located in the North Pacific of the Alaskan Sea Frontier on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. One of the ships was a U.S. Navy oiler located some 600 nautical miles offshore from Dutch Harbor, Alaska. The second U.S. Navy ship was a seaplane tender servicing Patwing Four while located in Yakutat Bay, Alaska. Although this seaplane tender was formerly a four stack destroyer before its conversion to a seaplane tender, it was not configured as a destroyer and it was located in Yakutat Bay where it was supporting six PBY-5 seaplanes at 8AM 7 December 1941.
The story has a number of additional major problems, such as the detail about having the ready ammunition on deck. Essentially your story has a lone destroyer charging many hundreds of miles across one side of the North Pacific ocean from Alaska towards the Earth’s equator with ready ammunition on its deck to attack a Japanese carrier task force that has air patrols capable of sinking the destroyer more than a hundred miles away from the ships it would attack. Can’t you see just how far fetched that sounds?
Exhibit 40 makes good reading and I made a copy to keep with my Prange book. However, delivering an attack by twelve squadrons would require every CV the Japanese had and then the decks would be empty of aircraft leaving nothing to defend the task force or launch a counter attack. The Japanese added two CVL’s for Pearl Harbor. When Yamamoto took six carriers he left the complex and extensive southern operations almost totally dependent on land based aircraft. Those folks were not happy and had opposed him vigorously.
In stating the maximum, the writer makes a speculation unexampled by actual operations or any war gaming. I remember a 1930’s Navy exercise involving attack by a single carrier on the Panama Canal, so I am willing to believe that my source on the subject of multiple carrier operations has done his homework. I said the attack was possible and therefore plausible, but not probable. Sorry about that terrible sentence, but must have been just too tired to wordsmith it properly.
Naval History: Pearl Harbor’s Overlooked Answer
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2011-12/pearl-harbors-overlooked-answer
Yes, we can certainly agree on point One. It agrees to my first post which said, “Revisionists offer arguments that FDR, Cordell Hull, and George Marshall foreknew the Pearl Harbor attack. These authors review historical events for those few data points that indicate an overwhelming attack. However, living history forward means accumulating and discerning patterns from 10,000’s of data points coming from humint, radio traffic analysis, code breaking, etc…..
The attack was a truly unexpected and improbable use of the Japanese air fleet.”
“Although full, 360 degree coverage was not possible, the partial PBY recon coverage that Richardson wanted and ordered was possible and likely would have detected the approaching Jap fleet.”
Even the partial PBY reconnaissance would have been very problematic with respect to the resources available to sustain it more than five days, but Adm. Kimmel was found to exercise less than superior judgment and demoted in part for canceling the long range reconnaissance altogether.
“The budgetary excuses are especially flimsy in that the Navy had issued a virtual war warning and it is hard to imagine why the PBY recon missions could not have been made part and attributed for budget purposes to the ongoing training effort.”
Patwing One and Patwing Two were assigned to the Pacific Fleet and not the 14th Naval District who had no such aircraft at its disposal. This organizational deficiency and lack of resources led to a problem of having too many mission obligations and training obligations with far too few personal, aircraft, and logistics to adequately perform those assignments. Adm. Kimmel was found responsible for not doing more of what could have been done to mitigate these shortcomings. While it was not possible to conduct long range reconnaissance capable of search and destroy missions to strike the Japanese carrier task force before they could launch their own strike against Pearl Harbor, Kimmel could and should have provided much more effective short-range and/or local air patrols and early warning systems in coordination with Short’s command capable of better receiving the Japanese air strikes.
While I strongly disagree with the premise and overall conclusions of the following video, I do agree with many of the statements about the limited capabilities of the long range reconnaissance assets available to Kimmel and Short. I concur with many of the findings from the: REPORTS, FINDINGS, AND CONCLUSIONS OF ROBERTS COMMISSION, ARMY PEARL HARBOR BOARD, NAVY COURT OF INQUIRY, AND HEWITT INQUIRY, WITH ENDORSEMENTS. It’s my opinion the demotions of Kimmel and Short were very justified, despite the long range reconnaissance capabilities being severely limited.
The Washington Cover Up of a Man Wronged for 70 Years - Episode 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BH2_JexFdI
“The wider case for conspiracy and cover-up by FDR and his associates is forcefully made in Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor Paperback, by Robert Stinnett, and Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy, by Percy L. Greaves Jr.”
Your citation and reliance upon these false conspiracy hucksters explains your failure to understand what actually happened. Stinnett invented false historical narratives to sell his book. Despite the massive and conclusive evidence to the contrary, Stinnett falsely invented the narrative claiming the Kido Butai broadcast radio messages from Etorufu because there was no other practical means whereby orders could be transmitted and acknowledged between that anchorage and the Home Islands. Many of us reminded Stinnett that his insistence that radio transmissions by the carrier task force was the only means to convey the orders and responses was obviously dead wrong, because office couriers were an ordinary means for conveying such secret messages between the Home Islands and Etorufu. Stinnett tried to deny the officer couriers could travel promptly enough between the Home Islands and Etorufu, but I reminded him about the airfield U.S. pilots used on Etorufu in their world circumnavigation flight many years earlier. Stinnet’s response was to delete these messages and block further messages to his forum.
Furthermore, I also researched and established the fact that submarine cables had been laid on the seafloor about 1886 (IIRC) to the Japanese government post office and telegrapher on Etorufu Island. My sources for that information did not indicate whether or not the submarine cables were or were not still operational in November-December 1941. To answer that question, I researched which Japanese companies originally built the submarine cable system and operated it in 1941. I discovered the same company was still in business, so I e-mailed them with an inquiry about the status of the submarine cable in November-December 1941. Surprisingly, I received a near immediate response from Japan. The company confirmed the details about the submarine cable system and the fact it was in use by the Japanese Navy at the post office on Etorufu Island for open and encrypted communications with the Home Islands. Stinnett refused to allow this evidence to be posted in his forum and continued to behave as if the evidence never existed to refute his outlandish falsehoods. Consequently, I cannot take seriously anyone who would rely upon the claims and statements of Stinnett and his fellow conspiracy hucksters who have been properly refuted time and again by credible sources.
In particular with respect to the matters involving signals intelligence and cryptography, I would refer you to the late Phil Jacobsen who was one of the senior officers involved in that effort in 1941. He has thoroughly debunked the conspiracy theorists in part with his own first hand accounts of the actual events.
David Bergamini in Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy does say Hirohito suggested study of a Pearl Harbor attack in January 1941. However, in September 1941 Hirohoto takes the unprecedented step of personally reprimanding the Supreme Command for claiming that diplomacy took precedence over military action while setting a definite deadline for military action. He said he was striving to introduce into the present Emperor Meiji’s ideal of international peace. That meeting should have been the primary talk among Imperial circles for months.
The suggestion of the Pearl Harbor attack went from the Navy General Staff to Yamamoto who lived on the Yamato I think to avoid possible assassination. Here the idea grew to fruition in a highly closed environment. In reading books like Bergamini’s and Gordon Prange’s At Dawn We Slept, I don’t find evidence of communications to political or private individuals that could have disclosed the attack. It appears that after final approval by the Navy General Staff all communication by the fleet with anyone ended.
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was driven by compelling strategic logic that was well-known for many years to naval planners in both Japan and the US. Unless the US Pacific fleet was taken out at the outset of the war, it would endanger Japan's conquest of East Asia, perhaps even denying Japan the vital oil fields of the Dutch East Indies.
Long before the vulnerability warned of in Exhibit 40, a Japanese carrier attack on Pearl Harbor was anticipated as a distinct possibility. In the late 1920s, war games at the Japanese Navy War College examined a carrier attack against Pearl Harbor. In 1929, then Captain Yamamoto lectured on the topic.
Of particular interest for our purposes, in 1932, widely-publicized US Pacific Fleet war exercises included a surprise carrier attack on Pearl Harbor carried out by Admiral Harry Yarnell -- on a Sunday morning no less. Prefiguring Japan's methods, in sailing from anchorages in California, Yarnell used radio silence, avoided shipping lanes and radar coverage, and had minimal escorts for his carrier striking force.
Not only was Washington well aware of Pearl Harbor's vulnerability to aerial attack, but so were the responsible naval officers on scene. Famously, on Dec. 2, 1941, Lt. Cmdr. Edwin T. Layton, the Pacific Fleet's intelligence officer, briefed Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, the Pacific Fleet commander, and presented a summary showing the approximate position of Japanese fleet units based on radio traffic.
Kimmel noted that there was no trace of either of the Imperial Navy's two carrier divisions. "You don't know where the carriers are?" "No, sir," replied Layton. "That's why I have 'Homeland waters' with a question mark. I don't know."
"You mean they could be coming around Diamond Head and you wouldn't know it?" The best reply that Layton could muster was that "I hope they would be sighted before now."
Was the Japanese attack on Pearl unexpected and improbable? Not really.
Eventually, when the relevant files are released from archives, we will get a more complete historical record. Perhaps that will resolve the issue.
Admiral Yarnell conducted a raid, but not a strategic attack. The author in the article says, “For the first time in history, there existed a carrier force comprising enough aircraft to do strategically meaningful things on the battlefield. Instead of just scouting, Kido Butai had the ability to attack enemy fleets—and enemy fleet bases.” He did and I need to do a better job of emphasizing the magnitude of the Japanese accomplishment.
When I looked up Admiral Yarnell on the Internet I found the below comment indicating his dramatic demonstration did not have the impact it could have had although defenses at Pearl were much more formidable than in 1932.
“Ironically, in the U.S., the battleship admirals voted down a reassessment of naval tactics. The umpire's report did not even mention the stunning success of Yarnell’s exercise. Instead they wrote, ‘It is doubtful if air attacks can be launched against Oahu in the face of strong defensive aviation without subjecting the attacking carriers to the danger of material damage and consequent great losses in the attack air force.’”
He could have been legitimately rebutted for emptying the decks of every operational aircraft for the attack. He should have left at least half of both fighter squadrons behind to defend the task forces.
Enticing the U.S. Navy into a sea battle in the Western Pacific was Japan’s best option. Japanese ships of short operational range would not be at a disadvantage. Japan could use land based reconnaissance and attack aircraft in battles as we attempted to counter their attacks against Guam and the Philippines. Ships lost at sea could not be recovered as they could if they were hit in harbor. But Japan’s Naval General Staff lost the arguments.
That statement by Layton relates to his last briefing of Kimmel and makes the point of just how indecisive it had to be when it was only based on traffic analysis. Naval traffic analysis in Hawaii had detected a message flurry followed by radio silence as they had observed for tactical operations in February and July when major units had remained in port. In context he talks about what is possible after telling Kimmel what is probable.
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