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Can anyone verify that the naval exercises these reports talk about included a US Navy "attack" on the fleet sleeping at Pearl Harbor?Now I wish I had collected more articles on the war games. They were on the front page for several days. I don't believe these games involved the Pacific fleet. I may be wrong.

I know there were several similar exercises, any one of which put the lie to claims that "no one expected" such an attack. In fact, by December 1941, our Navy had been practicing these for many years.

I am in the middle of At Dawn We Slept, by Gordon Prange. He describes the war games simulating a Japanese attack on Hawaii in the May 1941. The problem was that General Short saw it as an assault on the islands and not the fleet. He saw his mission as defending against an amphibious attack backed by surface ships.

"I am in the middle of At Dawn We Slept, by Gordon Prange. He describes the war games simulating a Japanese attack on Hawaii in the May 1941. The problem was that General Short saw it as an assault on the islands and not the fleet. He saw his mission as defending against an amphibious attack backed by surface ships. "

I tried googling up reports on US Navy exercises during the 1930s.

According to this link: Admiral Yarnell attacked Pearl Harbor with Lexington and Saratoga, February 1932.

According to Wikipedia there was a 1933 US Navy exercise attack on Pearl Harbor

This report: 1933 & 1939 Naval exercises says: "The Navy held similar games involving a Pearl Harbor attack by enemy aircraft carriers in 1933 and in 1939. In the 1939 exercise, aircraft from the carrier USS Saratoga succeeded in a surprise attack on a Sunday morning. The attacking aircraft “sank” several ships at anchor in Pearl Harbor and attacked Hickam, Wheeler and Ford Island airfields before returning safely to their carrier."

This link says, Admiral Kimmel sent Fleet to find Japanese on November 23, 1941 but was ordered by Washington to return to Pearl Harbor.

Somewhere else I read that the US Navy practiced attacking Pearl Harbor every year during the 1930s. Seems pretty clear that the idea of such an attack was not so far from the thinking of top US officials.

I’m just about to finish up “An Army at Dawn” myself and then I need to review Shrier again in preparation for the end of Czechoslovakia here in a few days. I’m thinking that the next book will have to be “The Day of Battle” to continue the trilogy and hope that Atkinson has the third one done by the time I finish it. It can be a hard read since at least with “An Army at Dawn” U.S. troops are surely not shown at its finest. There was a lot of learning through big mistakes in the African campaigns.