And clearly you have neither read Wohlstetter for yourself, nor, for the FIFTH TIME, have you consulted ANY of the Jacobsen articles. It’s not I who needs to go back to school. Over and out. You can’t tell North from East. ‘Nuff said.
Remember, the distance from Japan to Hawaii is about 4,000 miles east, and a few hundred miles south. So, for every mile south the fleet travelled, it travelled about 20 miles east.
Since the fleet averaged roughly 350 miles per day, ending up 235 miles DUE NORTH of Oahu, we can say that overall, each day its heading was well over 300 miles easterly and under 50 miles southerly.
Point is, to anyone tracking, imprecisely and in DELAYED time, the fleet's location would have appeared far more WEST of Hawaii than NORTH right up until the final day.
Therefore, might it not be more reasonably surmised that ONI did not really know the PRECISE location of the Japanese fleet, and so assumed it was more-or-less on a path east from Japan?