“Someone in Pearl suspected enough to want to send the whole fleet out to sea, and someone in Washington knew enough to order the Battleships kept in. This was from my Grandfather, who was stationed there at the time (on a destroyer, which was out at sea).”
The fleet carrier task forces were absent, because they were engaged in pre-war operations. These operations included ferrying combat aircraft to Wake Island. One of the task forces was engaged in training carrier air units nearby the Hawaiian Islands, and sent the naval carrier aircraft to Pearl Harbor where they unexpectedly ran into the Japanese air attacks.
The battleship divisions happened to be in port because the war warnings during the previous weeks kept them out of port and made it necessary to perform some replenishment, training, inspections for war duty, and other tasks they were unable to accomplish while at sea. The choice of date, day of the week, and all BATDIV at the same time was questionable. The choice was apparently made in the wrongful assumption that Pearl Harbor was not a feasible target of attack by the Japanese fleet. A part of this assumption was the belief the Japanese navy had not yet developed their own underway refueling capability to compensate for the fleet escorts having insufficient range to reach the Hawaiian Islands. The Japanese navy formerly did not have such an underway refueling capability, but they developed the capability specifically to prepare for the attack upon Pearl Harbor.
According to my grandfather, the destroyers were told to scatter to no place in particular. GIven that battleships are equipped to spend months at sea at a time, it seems quite a coincidence that they all had to be called in at once. I think the inspections, replenishment, etc., would be accomplished much more efficiently if done one or two ships at a time. If all were called in at once, just in time for the Japanese to hit them, it seems to be more than “questionable.” It seems Obamaworthy.