Interesting story about the Japs missing the repair facilities at Pearl: There was a big reason for that, that they couldn’t have planned for even if they meant to. There was/is a set of portal crane tracks between DryDock#1, where Cassin, Downes, and battleship Pensylvania were docked and the main row of repair shops on the opposite side of the tracks. There is always, both now and then, at least one portal crane (self-propelled, wheeled, high-lift, heavy lift crane) on duty around the clock. The crane operator at the time saw what was happening, lit up his crane, and started swinging his headache ball over the dry dock and shops , paying out as much cable as he could swing. At the same time driving his crane up and down the length of the waterfront. DD#1 is nearly a quarter mile long, points straight at battleship row, and while the cranes aren’t fast, he ran the length of it every few minutes swatting away the Zeros.
Notably, his crane received no bullet holes and only the shops on the ends of the row took some hits.. The Nips never knew what to do with that, and the Pennsylvania took no real damage either-—just a wet drydock from fighting fires on the other two ships.
The crane jockey stayed at Pearl, received an award for his action even tho he was a civilian, and retired in the early 70’s.
Back when the use of common sense didn’t need permission from higher authorities..
Cool story.
That’s such a great story! That was back when men were men and could be counted on in an emergency. A twenty-something now might be more likely to hide in the crane cabin and hope they didn’t see him.
One man can make a difference.