Posted on 03/21/2008 6:59:38 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Details of the farflung operations are being kept secret. Rear Admiral Orin G. Murfin, who commands the Fourteenth Naval District at Pear Harbor, knows much of what is going on but he is not telling. He commands the Red fleet, a force based at Pearl Harbor to defend Hawaii against the attack of an invader, a Blue fleet.
Under his direction are the ships of the mine force and of the submarine base, both established in Pearl Harbor, and the 100 long-range, twin-engine aircraft which make up Patrol Wing 2 of the fleet air base on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. How far to sea his planes will scout in conjunction with army aircraft and when and in what direction is something Admiral Murfin is reserving for the ears of the staff of officers who are carrying out his orders on defense.
This phase of the manoeuvres will reach its climax with an attack from sea and air on Pearl Harbor and its defenses such as startled Honolulu late on a Saturday afternoon in the Spring of last year. That show was a good example of what war, minus its actual horrors, might be.
During the engagement columns of battle craft hid behind a smoke screen laid from Diamond Head to the southeast, blinking their searchlights to simulate gun fire, while a horde of fighting planes, taking off for the carriers Saratoga and Lexington, lying to the northeast in the Molokai Channel, sped down from 5,000 feet above Pearl Harbor, dashed over the city proper and fled back to their mobile bases. The invaders later claimed they had wrecked Pearl Harbor’s shops and drydock.
The attack upon Oahu will be the second phase of Problem 19. The manoeuvres start with the assumption that the fleet must defeat an enemy seeking to establish a base in hostile territory. Such a situation will afford an opportunity for training personnel of the fleet in cruising at sea under simulated war conditions.
After the “Battle of Oahu” some ships may come into port for servicing but most of the fleet units will move out to complete another week of manoeuvring before anchoring at Lahaina Roads, Maui, and Hilo, Hawaii, for refueling, provisioning and shore leave for personnel between March 31 and April 3.
Five days later the ships will enter Pearl Harbor for a mass berthing exercise in which the new fleet moorings, giant blocks of concrete lined up in long rows, will be utilized. The rest period at Pearl Harbor will be between April 8 and 18, after which the armada will steam for California, returning to the bases there on April 26. On the way home the third manoeuvre phase, defense of the Pacific Coast against an invader, will be enacted.
During the early part of the naval war games the Hawaiian department of the army will conduct its annual manoeuvres. Major Gen. C. O. Herron will be in charge. Troops will leave their comfortable quarters at Schofield Barracks and the forts that guard the sea side of Honolulu for pup tents, field kitchens and the rain and mud of out of doors.
The army problems, while carried out at the same time as those of the navy, will not make up a joint manoeuvre with the sea forces. However, army aircraft, including the thirteen Douglass bombers which recently came to the $18,000,000 Hickam Field, will join the navy in the defense of Oahu as probably will Martin bombers and Curtiss and Boeing attack and pursuit ships at Luke Field and Wheeler Field.
Hickam Field is far from its maximum strength. Its first commanding officer, Colonel H. C. Kress Muhlenberg, arrived but a few weeks ago. The Thirty-first Bombardment Squadron is the field’s first combat unit. It has been here less than a month. Only four of the eight double hangars provided in field plans – each hangar has more than an acre of floor space in each section - have been completed.
No quarters for men are available, except for frame and canvas structures which will do little more than keep rain and wind out. Contracts for barracks and service building have been let or soon will be let. Homes for officers and non-commissioned officers are about to go up. Completion is visualized for the field in two or three years.
Hickam Field is the latest addition to the most intensively fortified area of the United States. Within the space occupied by a circle with a radius of five miles are the enormous air base, Pearl Harbor, with its full repair facilities, fleet air base, minecraft base and submarine base, and Forts Weaver and Kamehameha, which are two of the powerful defenses of Pearl Harbor.
Not far away to the east is the army’s new ammunition dump, tunneled out of the lava stone of Red Hill, six miles from Honolulu; Fort Shafter, with the Sixty-fourth (mobile) Coast Artillery Regiment and the Hawaiian ordnance depot; Lualualei, the gigantic naval ammunition dump to the west, and Fort Barrette, newly completed and mounting some of the most powerful guns in Hawaii.
Within the same general area are John Rodgers Airport, the hub of Hawaii’s commercial airlines, and the Pan American Airways base on the north side of Pearl Harbor. Also within the area will be the proposed international airline base which the United States is to build on the south shore of Oahu.
To the east are Forts Armstrong (quartermaster), De Russy and Ruger. The latter two parts of the Hawaiian Separate Coast Artillery Brigade charged with the defense of Honolulu. Diamond Head, on Oahu’s south coast, is no longer a fortified area but is used for observation purposes.
The whole Oahu defense, with its 20,000 soldiers, is linked up with broad, hard-surfaced highways over which the army’s mobile artillery, tanks and infantry troops can move at 30 to 35 miles an hour; trails into the mountains leading to observation points and emplacements for batteries; a network of communication cables and wires which can center wherever the commanding general decides; railway and other artillery which can encircle the island with its fire.
Tie all this in with flocks of swift aircraft that can report the approach of an enemy or attack him, and the magnitude of the problems of the capture of Oahu appear.
In addition to the opposition provided by man, nature herself would play a part because she has restricted the regions in which an invader might have a reasonable measure of success in landing troops from transports by small boats on the beaches. In many sections of the island the surf is too violent to permit such an operation, while in others coral reefs run out half a mile from shore.
The army has carried out carefully planned drills with ball cartridge ammunition used against dummies in boats sent ashore which proved that the likelihood of any sizable part of a landing force getting through is extremely remote. Beaches where there is shelving sand tucked away out of the wind and attractive to an enemy have been so thoroughly ranged from all possible points of fire that an attempt to use them would result in a slaughter worse that that of Gallipoli.
While the fleet is attacking Oahu this month citizens may ponder on what conditions would be in the city were hostilities actually under way. The army knows just what it would be necessary to do. Numbers of aliens are under suspicion because their sympathies are with the land of their birth, Japan. It is pretty well established that the army has picked out the sites for its prison camps, should a war occur, and that the army intelligence service has a good idea of those who would go into those camps. A possible place of imprisonment might be the island of Kahoolawe, southwest of Maui and separated from its larger companion by seven miles of water.
Escape from Kahoolawe is almost impossible. It would take a tremendously strong swimmer to negotiate the rough, current-swirled channel, even should he be able to avoid the sharks that infest that neighborhood.
Kahoolawe, now a privately leased cattle ranch, would serve as an efficient detention station. The one problem would be sufficient water and food for the inmates and guards. All requirements for human beings would have to be imported.
While army officers characterize the procedure as routine and say that it has occurred many times before, it is known that a check was made last week on young ROTC students at the University of Hawaii to learn whether they had been expatriated. Those who had taken the step were asked to produce documentary evidence to that effect.
All youths who are in the ROTC, of whatever racial background, are eligible for reserve commissions in the American Army upon graduation, whether they are dual citizens of Japan and American or not, so long as they are American citizens. Decision as to whether a young man is to be commissioned rests with the President, acting upon the advice of the War Department.
The investigation, according to the army, had no connection with the expatriation pronouncements before the Diet by Koki Hirota, Japanese Foreign Minister, nor the recent stimulation of expatriation in Hawaii because of the visit of the Congressional statehood investigation committee.
Both army and navy here have become publicity shy. No news, outside of routine personal matters such as social affairs, marriages, births, etc., is given out by any one but the authorized chiefs of intelligence of both services. Even deaths are carefully investigated before details are made public.
Pictures of airplane crashes are strictly taboo, although there are no restrictions on photographs of planes in good condition. Considerable excitement was caused not long ago when a Honolulu newspaper published a story, dug up by an Associated Press correspondent, describing plans for sending a squadron of fleet air base planes to Guam for station. Since that incident news from the fleet air base is scarcer than ever.
The story was never confirmed, neither was it denied; but to this day no one has been able to learn officially whether that squadron has gone out to the west or is still here. It is known on good authority that a navy squadron recently made a secret flight to an island or group of islands in the Central Pacific, but just where the planes and the men went is a mystery. The personnel is back on duty at the base, but lips are tightly sealed.
Before the recent departure of the Coast Guard cutter Roger J. Taney on what was characterized as an ordinary trip to the equatorial Baker, Howland and Jarvis islands, persistent rumors said that something unusual actually was in the offing. How well the secret was kept was shown in the announcement last week, after it had occurred, that the Taney had landed Hawaiian boys from Honolulu on Canton and Enderbury Islands as colonists and as weather observers to gather data for the use of the commercial aviation of the future.
Things may be going haywire in Europe, but at least in the Pacific we are on top of things. Except for that slight vulnerability of Pearl Harbor to attack from carrier-based aircraft, Hawaii looks impregnable.
Numbers of aliens are under suspicion because their sympathies are with the land of their birth, Japan. It is pretty well established that the army has picked out the sites for its prison camps, should a war occur, and that the army intelligence service has a good idea of those who would go into those camps.
I predict a public relations problem with this plan.
So it looks like EVERYONE knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened.
I believe it was in 1938 that the US Navy carriers, under the command of Adm. Harry E. Yarnell, executed a surprise carrier-borne “attack” on the Pearl Harbor facilities.
“No Details of Movements of Army and Navy Are Given Out for Publication”
This looks pretty detailed to me. The NY Slimes was doing it back then as well.
No. Everyone knew their would be war with Japan and preparations were taking place throughout the Pacific. The problem was nobody knew precicely when or where the hostilities would begin.
Everyone knew the Japanese would want to attack Pearl Harbor. Nobody knew they wanted to do it on December 7, 1941.
ONE MAN knew that Pearl Harbor was specifically vulnerable to a Japanese attack. He predicted it in 1924.
Billy Mitchell.
Not on Dec 8th, 1942.
Not in 2008.
1924.
One of our most visionary soldiers.
> “Billy Mitchell.”
It is amazing to me that the Battleship crowd still hate him with a passion.
That is strange. I didn't know there even was a battleship crowd. Do they still think this naval aviation thing will blow over soon?
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN
about 2/3-3/4ths of the following linked page:
http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Prophets/Prophecy.Duduman.America.html#WHEN CHRIST RETURNS
For a scenario from Dumitru Duduman’s dreams/visions/prophecies.
Look for the title in the center:
“CHINA AND RUSSIA STRIKE”
between a yellow line above and below the words.
He “saw” China attacking our West Coast . . . and through Mexico IIRC . . . and giving Hawaii to Japan for Japan’s help in such an effort.
“ONE MAN knew that Pearl Harbor was specifically vulnerable to a Japanese attack. He predicted it in 1924.
Billy Mitchell.
Not on Dec 8th, 1942.
Not in 2008.
1924.
One of our most visionary soldiers.”
I remember a movie about him; showing him trying to get people to wake up.
Everyone knew the Japanese would want to attack Pearl Harbor. Nobody knew they wanted to do it on December 7, 1941.
The Chinese won’t make that mistake. After all was said and done with Pearl Harbor, of the some 21 ships beached, damaged or sunk, we managed to put 18 or 19 of them back on active duty. The Japanese would have had to feel pretty stupid after that.
The Chinese are being far more circumspect, complex and subtle in their approach. Like it or not, their best and brightest have clearly developed a better set of strategies, and they have developed a far better system of gathering intelligence than the Japanese ever did. Yeah, we’ve had fun with their weaknesses, but they are persistent in becoming a dominant military force. Plus, they are not making the mistakes the Russians made. Developing a strong economic middle class, while developing a more professional military, as well as developing a true domestic manufacturing base, provides the necessary foundation for sustained warfare.
With over one billion people, they have lots of room for making mistakes until they get it right.
screed stops here for now....
Billy Mitchell.
Not on Dec 8th, 1942.
Not in 2008.
1924.
There was one other. This man was a Harvard Graduate and studied at the U.S. Naval War College. In that same year, 1924 at He changed his specialty in the Navy from gunnery to naval aviation.
I'll give you two guesses who he was, but I bet you will only need one.
Halsey?
Nope. One more
Yamamoto.
Yamamoto.
Yamamoto...
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