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Pearl Harbor will forever be remembered for the devastating loss of life and equipment, and the introduction of the nation into one of the most destructive conflicts in history. When Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz looked back at the tragedy, however, he did not remember it for what it was, but for what it could have been.
The world was in turmoil in 1941. Europe was in the fight of its life while the United States and its population were intent on maintaining a hands-off position, content to only provision the United Kingdom with much needed supplies.
When polled, the majority of Americans opposed entering the war in Europe entirely. They saw an intervention in Japan’s conquest of the Dutch East Indies and Singapore as acceptable, but going to war in either theater was not a popular idea. In fact, the United States and Japan were in active diplomatic negotiations for peace in Asia.
The morning of December 7, 1941 would change the opinion of the American public and persuade them to join the fight when the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. After two hours of bombing, 21 U.S. ships were sunk or damaged, 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed and 2,403 people were killed.
One day later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to it as “a day which will live in infamy” while addressing the 77th United States Congress. An hour after the speech, congress declared war on the Empire of Japan.
The attack unified the nation overnight. A poll taken five days later showed that 97% of respondents supported a declaration of war against Japan. As the strike’s planner, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, wrote in his diary, the attack had “awoken a sleeping giant.” Soon after, Germany and Italy formally declared war against the United States and thus the nation entered World War II.
While the attack on Pearl Harbor was certainly devastating in terms of loss of life, ships and aircraft, it could have, “very easily been devastatingly worse,” according to our ship’s namesake, Nimitz. While most historians and strategists agree that the surprise attack was a great success for Japan, Nimitz, who arrived on the island only a few days later, pointed out some of what he called, “Our Good Luck at Pearl Harbor,” in an essay he wrote about the holes in the Japanese plan, 17 years later.
First, he proposed that had the forces at Pearl Harbor known about the attack sooner, they would have surely gone to sea in an attempt to thwart the attack.
He wrote, “Our one old carrier would have been hopelessly overwhelmed by the six Japanese carriers that accompanied the attacking force. Our battleships and cruisers would have come under heavy air attack by greatly superior forces and might have been sunk in deep water with 100 percent loss of life.”
Nimitz believed that had this hypothetical battle taken place, it would have occupied most of the day of December 7, 1941. Given the time to prepare by the battle at sea, the forces ashore would have had time to prepare for the blows to come.
“Despite this, the greatly superior Japanese fleet could have returned on December 8 to complete the destruction of all American air strength and then methodically and leisurely proceeded to destroy the repair facilities of the naval base and to burn – with explosive machine-gun fire – 4,500,000 barrels of fuel oil stored in a completely exposed tank farm,” said Nimitz.
He goes on to write that the destruction of the repair facilities alone would have forced our Navy all the way back to the west coast of the United States.
He then addresses the fact that the massive fuel supply was not destroyed.
“The loss of that great fuel supply would have been nigh-well irreparable,” said Nimitz, writing that the U.S. campaigns against the Japanese in the Western Pacific would have been so delayed by lack of access to fuel that it could have taken years to expel them.
He later mentions the shallow depth of the water at Pearl Harbor where the battleships were sunk, which allowed many more Sailors to be rescued and ultimately six of the sunken ships to be repaired and returned to service. Additionally, the repaired battleships were equipped with a new modern radar system that later provided an advantage over those in the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Another shortcoming of the Japanese, explains Nimitz, was that they failed to inflict any damage to the submarine base at Pearl Harbor.
“Its destruction by bombs would have been easy and it would have greatly hampered our most effective – and only – available weapon, our submarine force,” Nimitz wrote.
The submarine force was the only unit that could operate unsupported in Japanese waters, and did so very effectively throughout the war.
“The effectiveness of those submarines in cutting down Japanese naval strength and their merchant marine, is too well known to require retelling,” said Nimitz.
Although not mentioned in the essay, another set of critical intended targets were missed: the Pacific fleet’s three carriers, the USS Lexington, USS Enterprise and USS Saratoga.
Lexington and Enterprise were ferrying additional aircraft to the islands of Wake and Midway while Saratoga was in refit at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Carriers became the dominant force of the seas throughout the war while battleships, which couldn’t keep pace with a carrier task force, were mostly used for cover during amphibious landings.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was intended to damage U.S. Naval power so greatly that it would give the Imperial Japanese Navy free rein to expand and consolidate their holdings. “What happened instead was perhaps the greatest boon and good luck to our Navy to come out of the misfortune at Pearl Harbor. Because we were caught by surprise, our fleet was in a relatively shallow port. This fact allowed us to salvage most of our outdated ships and greatly reduce the loss of our trained officers and men,” said Nimitz.
The results of the attack on Pearl Harbor and “what could have been” has been debated by historians and scholars for decades. However, if one thing could be seen from Nimitz’ assessment of the attack, it’s that one can’t dwell on the negatives of a dire situation and that progress requires the mental fortitude to look back on such a tragedy and still find positives. This type of mental fortitude survives aboard Nimitz today and has been made clear throughout this long deployment
| Date Taken: | 12.07.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 12.30.2020 14:16 |
| Story ID: | 386150 |
| Location: | ARABIAN SEA |
| Web Views: | 102 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Boon & Good Luck, by PO2 Dale Cornelison, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
