[Vendome]

Europe is damned lucky the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, otherwise we would have sat out the war until everyone, including the Brits, were speaking German.

[Patton@Bastogne]

Thanks ... on Amazon wish list ...

[CrazyIvan]

Patton warned of the possibility also.

http://www.army.mil/article/49030/patton-warns-of-pearl-harbor-attack/

[bubbacluck]

I know that T.R. was but didn’t FDR also consider himself a Naval expert?

[Rockingham]

Richardson’s most stunning claim was that his superiors specifically vetoed his plan to use newly arrived PBYs to mount aerial patrols to the northwest of Hawaii. Such patrols might well have detected and warned of the approach of the Jap attack force.

[BenLurkin]

Hillary says we should have empathized with Togo and the Japanese Empire.

[AmericanVictory]

And then there was the prediction of Billy Mitchell.
We were fortunate our carriers were not there and, as Tom Moorer flew for 72 straight hours to confirm, the Japanese did not know where they were.

[Retain Mike]

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 Pearl Harbor attack astonished the administration and military professionals. Never before had even two carriers for any country planned and/or coordinated an attack on a naval or land target. No inkling existed in any allied Naval operational and intelligence community of a capability beyond the 21 bi-plane torpedo bombers from a single British carrier that attacked the Italian Navy at Taranto.

Yet, for Pearl Harbor the Japanese had forged a strategic weapon of six carriers with escorts and auxiliaries for a coordinated attack by 360 planes. The attack was not only unprecedented, but unexpected, because all preparations were conducted without recourse to the diplomatic Purple Code that U.S. codebreakers were reading in substantial portions. The U.S. had no agents in Japan and the Imperial Japanese Navy excluded the diplomatic corps from their plans.

To solve problems regarding bombing, torpedoes, and underway refueling the attack plan relied on oral doctrines and technical innovations developed during the last ninety days prior to deployment. Therefore, even reading the naval JN25 code vital for Midway would not have helped.

The attack was a truly unexpected and improbable use of the Japanese air fleet.

War Plan Orange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Orange
Naval History: Pearl Harbor’s Overlooked Answer
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2011-12/pearl-harbors-overlooked-answer

“And I Was There” by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton

At Dawn We Slept by Gordon W. Prange