Peter G. Tsouras

by Rising Sun Victorious: An Alternate History of the Pacific War

  The 14th Pursuit Wing had four interceptor and four fighter squadrons, all stationed at Wheeler Army Airfield. The army fighter force had ninety-nine modern P-40Bs and Cs, and thirty-nine P-36As, although only sixty-four P-40s and twenty P-36s were operational that Sunday morning. Martin had two P-40 squadrons (twelve aircraft each) temporarily posted to the outlying Bellows Airfield—44th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor)— and Haleiwa Airfield—47th Pursuit Squadron (Fighter)—for gunnery training. Major General Martin had been preparing for possible hostilities by having 120 revetments constructed at Wheeler Field for the pursuit aircraft.

  Lieutenant General Short's Alert Number One was designed to protect against sabotage rather than air attack. It ordered Martin to group all of his fighters close together and in the open so they could be easily guarded against sabotage with the minimum of personnel, instead of leaving them in their revetments, which required a larger guard force. Additional security measures included: locking the controls in each plane via a system of cables and locks, which normally required three to four minutes to undo; storage of all machine gun ammunition in hangar number three, with individual .30 and .50 caliber rounds stored separately from their belts.

  The Hawaiian Air Force was also on a four-hour alert status for half of operational aircraft to get airborne. They would need every minute of it, considering the need to recall pilots, belt the ammunition, and get to altitude in the sectors where enemy aircraft could be expected. The planes at Bellows were in particularly bad shape. After a week of gunnery training, they had not only been parked on Saturday afternoon without having their fuel tanks filled, but their machine guns were removed so the armorers could give them a thorough cleaning on Sunday. The 47th Squadron had its P-40Bs' fuel tanks full and machine guns on board, but in their ammo dump they had only .30 caliber ammunition for the wing guns and no .50 caliber ammunition twin-fifties in the fuselage.

  Late Word to the Army

  Back in Washington, General Marshall arrived at his War Department office at 1130 EST (0600 Hawaii) and found Colonel Bratton waiting for him with the fourteen-part message. After reading it, he wrote a warning message to be radioed immediately to all Pacific commands. All were notified except for the army commander in Hawaii, Lieutenant General Short, because the radio circuits were down. Bratton decided not to send via RCA (Radio Corporation of America) and urged Marshall to telephone Short with the warning. Marshall hesitated noting that the army suspected the Japanese had tapped the transoceanic cable and could decode scrambled telephone conversations. Bratton said he thought the chance had to be taken, and reminded Marshall that he could use the 1300 meeting between Secretary Hull and Ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu as the reason for the call, to check on their alert status. At 0650 (1220 EST) Marshall telephoned Short, awakening him.

  General Marshall inquired what alert status the Hawaiian Army was on. Short replied “Alert Number One.” Marshall was relieved because Alert One meant all troops were on full alert, with antiaircraft artillery in defensive positions and the air force on thirty minute takeoff status.

  “I'm glad you're on full alert,” said Marshall, “that's what's needed. I don't see sabotage as the major threat this morning.”

  Short replied: “Alert One is antisabotage. I changed the numbering last summer after I arrived so folks out here wouldn't be alarmed.”

  Shocked at this revelation, Marshall was furious. “You know the army standard is for Alert One to be full alert. Did you pass that change on to War Plans here? If you had I would have denied permission for it! You need to get your folks up and deployed right now! It may be nothing, but I don't think this is the time for worrying if the local civilians are 'alarmed.' ”

  Short was startled. “We just came off of a week's full alert yesterday morning, but OK. I'll call everyone out now.”

  “Let's hope that nothing happens,” replied Marshall, “because that is what you bet your stars on when you changed the alert procedure. I didn't expect you to be asleep on guard duty out there.”7

  As Short hung up, his phone rang again. This time it was Major General Martin, calling to inform him of Rear Admiral Bellinger's call and of the navy's full alert status. Short told Martin to put the Hawaiian Air Force on full alert as well. The island defense plan was to go into effect. PBY patrols were to be reinforced and fighters manned and ready. Short called Col. Walter C. Phillips, his chief of staff, and repeated the instructions to him. The time was now 0715 hours.

  The First Wave Strikes

  The Opana Point radar site was slated to close down at 0700 hours. Since the morning chow truck had not arrived however, its operators, Pvts. Joseph L. Lockard and George E. Elliot, decided to keep the set on and to get more training. At 0702 hours a large blip appeared on the radar screen. They estimated it included at least fifty aircraft on a heading of three degrees east of north at a range of 130 miles. They continued to track the southward-moving target for thirteen minutes before they called the AWC to report that it was now 88 miles from Opana Point on an inbound bearing. Only a single telephone operator and the duty officer, 1 st Lt. Kermit A. Tyler, were in the AWC when the report came in. Tyler concluded that the sighting involved Major Landon's flight of sixteen B-17s, due in that morning from San Francisco.

  The Japanese cruiser Tone's floatplane spotted Enterprise and the rest of TF 8 at 0733 hours and reported it to Commander Fuchida. Two minutes later, Chikuma's Pete reported there were no aircraft carriers in Pearl Harbor but many carrier planes landing and taking off from Ford Island and that ships seemed to be getting up steam. Commander Fuchida faced a decision about how to exploit this new and unexpected information. He quickly decided to split his attack force between Pearl Harbor and Task Force 8. He ordered the torpedo bomber and fighter squadrons from Akagi and Soryu (twenty Kates and eighteen Zeros), along with two of Zuikaku's dive-bomber squadrons (eighteen Vals), to find and sink Enterprise along with her escorting cruisers (see Map 4). The remainder of the force would attack Pearl Harbor as planned. At 0745 he fired double red dragon flares to signal “surprise lost” to the half of the force that was to attack Pearl.8

  Simultaneous with the Japanese scout plane reports came the arrival of Cmdr. William E. G. Taylor and the navy's four man contingent at the AWC. Tyler received a call from Maj. Kenneth P. Bergquist, the AWC second-in-command, asking if any radar sites were still operating and if any recent targets had been reported. Tyler told him of Opana Point's report. Bergquist ordered him to call Opana Point to see if they were still tracking it. While Tyler was making his call, Major Bergquist phoned Major General Martin about the blip. Martin said that it could not be the B-17s because it was coming in from the wrong direction. Martin then called Wheeler Field and told them to get every P-40 and P-36 they had airborne and to intercept a possible enemy force to the north of Oahu. Bergquist had army plotters recalled from breakfast to put the AWC into full operation. He also ordered the crews of the sites at Kaaawa on the northeast coast and at Koko Head to resume operation.

  The resources and expertise of Commander Taylor and Major Bergquist had been squandered because of interservice non-cooperation, a lack of understanding of radar by Lieutenant General Short and Admiral Kimmel, and the lack of central army control over the Air Warning System and its radar.”9 The final Opana Point radar plot came in at 0739, when Lockard and Elliot reported contact being lost as the target entered a “dead space” twenty miles to the north. It was just after disappearing from the radar screen that Fuchida split his force.

  By then the crews at the various American airfields were scrambling to disperse and ready their fighters, bombers, and PBYs for combat. Dragged from their all-night poker game, 2nd Lts. Kenneth M. Taylor and George S. Welch were among the pilots sent from the Wheeler Field BOQ (Bachelor Officer Quarters) to their planes at Haleiwa and Bellows Fields. The Japanese were unaware of Haleiwa Field and had not targeted Bellows in the first wave. The splitting of the strike force had halved the fighters and reduced the dive-bombers alloc
ated to strike Wheeler Field to nine.

  Map 4. Oahu and Environs: Lines and Japanese Attack

  Nine Val dive-bombers and six Zero fighters began their strike on Wheeler Field at 0752. The Vals struck the fuel dump and then each of the hangars in succession, just as they had practiced. The Zeros began their strafing run from the west end of the field. However, they found not a neat row of planes as expected but only a dozen P-40s and P-36s along with another fourteen obsolete P-26s sitting out in the open. Most of the P-40 Tomahawks were in their revetments, protected from the first strafing attack, but six were taking off as the attack began, in response to Martin's order to intercept the unidentified target north of the island. Two of these were shot down as they were pulling their wheels off the runway. The leading four climbed for altitude as the Zeros went in the opposite direction. Within moments the Zeros zoomed to engage the Tomahawks, leaving the strafing to the Vals, which were ill equipped for the mission. In the swirling dogfight that followed, all of the P-40s were shot down, but they claimed one Zero. The army pilots had been caught at takeoff and knew little of how the Japanese flew and fought. Their sacrifice, however, had depleted the Zeros' ammunition and saved the bulk of the fighters at Wheeler Field.

  Meanwhile, 2nd Lieutenants Taylor and Welch, along with four squadron mates, were taking off from Haleiwa Field and heading toward the “large target” near Opana Point, while at Bellows Field ground crews were rapidly fueling and reinstalling the hastily cleaned .50 and .30 caliber machine guns aboard the dozen P-40Cs. Of the major airfields, Kaneohe Naval Air Station was the most fortunate, spared attack because the fighters and dive-bombers designated for it were searching for TF 8 instead.

  Zero fighters from Kaga opened the attack over Pearl Harbor by shooting down six of Enterprise's Devastator (TBD) torpedo bombers as they climbed southward from Ford Island. The Zeros then pounced on and destroyed four more TBDs and three Dauntless (SBD) dive-bombers on the Ford Island runway. Victorious over Ford Island, they winged their way to Ewa Field and destroyed the few Marine fighters and dive-bombers that had not been sent to Wake and the Midway Islands. At 0755 twenty-seven Vals from Akagi and Kaga began their dives on Hickam Field, destroying most of the B-17s and B-18s parked in the open. The twenty remaining torpedo-carrying Kates began their run toward Battleship Row from the southeast, flying over Fort Kamehameha and down the Southeast Loch (see Map 5).

  Map 5. The Main Targets: Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field

  Despite the warning, both Hickam and Wheeler Fields were defenseless. The antiaircraft artillery units assigned to defend them were still in their motor pools at Schofield Barracks preparing to deploy. The Kate torpedo bombers nonetheless ran into a barrage of .50 and 1.1-inch caliber machine gun and three- and five-inch antiaircraft gunfire from the ships in Pearl Harbor. This fire was not as withering as it would become later in the war, when each cruiser and battleship carried dozens of 20mm and 40mm antiaircraft guns.10

  USS Oklahoma was the target of seven Kates. Her crew splashed two, but the modified torpedoes from the remaining five ripped out her port side. Rapid counterflooding prevented her from capsizing, though she settled at a thirty-degree list. West Virginia also received four torpedoes to her port side; however, her hits were more evenly spaced and she settled on an even keel. The three remaining Kates began their run on Nevada, but two were shot down and the third's torpedo missed. California and the ships anchored on the western side of Ford Island escaped attack entirely, because the force scheduled to attack them was another of those heading south to intercept Task Force 8.

  Minutes after the torpedo-bombers struck, the level bombers began their run over Pearl. They carried armor-piercing bombs modified from fourteen-inch battleship shells. Their targets were the inboard battleships Maryland, Tennessee, and Arizona. Long hours of practice paid off. They made repeated hits on the battleships. At 0820, Soryu's petty officer, Noboru Kanai, placed a bomb through Arizona's forecastle and into her forward powder magazine. The explosion that followed not only destroyed the battleship, but its concussion knocked sailors to the deck on all the surrounding ships. Admiral Kimmel watched in shock from his headquarters next to Southeast Loch as the pride of his fleet sank into the forty-foot waters of Pearl Harbor that was thought to have been too shallow for a torpedo attack.

  Enterprise Is Discovered

  The ad hoc strike group under Lt. Cmdr. Shigeharu Murata separated from the main force at 0745 to seek out Task Force 8. They found their prey at 0830, steaming south at thirty knots. On Enterprise and her escorts all hands stood at their battle stations. They had long since heard the radio message, “Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is no drill.” Circling at 20,000 feet was their combat air patrol of ten Wildcats. Enterprise's thirty SBDs and six remaining TBDs were circling over the island of Maui, sent out of harm's way by Halsey. His plan was to recall, refuel, and arm them to strike the Japanese fleet, once he had an idea of its location.

  Commander Murata ordered his veteran torpedo pilots to split their force in half, his element engaging Enterprise while the others hit her escorts. The Vals were to strike after the Kates had made their run. Murata's ten Kates began their runs at both sides of Enterprise, charging through a hail of antiaircraft fire much heavier than their comrades were facing at Pearl. Three went down before launching their fish, but the remaining planes successfully launched their torpedoes. Three hit Enterprise on her starboard side in quick succession, followed by another two on her port. She began to slow. Her advanced damage control design matched the effects of the five massive torpedo holes, but once the modified battleship shells dropped by the Vals exploded within her hull, destroying her watertight integrity, she began to settle slowly to the bottom of the Pacific.

  Meanwhile her Wildcats had been engaged by the Zeros as they dove to attack the Kates. In a whirlwind fight, seven Wildcats went down, taking three Zeros and two Kates with them. The remaining Kates and Vals made their runs on the cruisers Northampton, Chester, and Salt Lake City. Swerving wildly and putting up a dense canopy of triple A, Chester and Salt Lake City took repeated hits and were soon ablaze and sinking. Of the nine escorting destroyers, Blach, Dunlap, and Benham were sunk. Northampton, flagship of Rear Adm. Raymond A. Spruance, escaped with one torpedo hit and one bomb strike.

  His job done, with Enterprise sinking, Murata led his strike force—less eight Kates, seven Vals, and three Zeros—back to its home carriers. The remaining U.S. destroyers rescued the survivors of TF 8, Vice Admiral Halsey among them.”11

  The Lull Between Strikes

  The destroyer Helm, which had gotten under way before the attack, cleared the harbor entrance at Pearl at 0817. She was followed by the destroyer Monaghan a few minutes later. Both escaped attack during the initial assault. At 0825, coinciding with the end of the first wave's attack, the light cruiser Phoenix slipped her moorings and sailed through the harbor. She was not noticed, for all eyes were on Nevada. Taking advantage of Nevada's standard practice of having one boiler on line when in harbor, Ensign Joseph K. Taussig, the officer of the deck that morning, ordered her remaining boilers fired up when General Quarters were sounded. It was his order that enabled Nevada to be the only battleship ready to sortie. With an ensign navigating, Chief Quartermaster Robert Sedberry piloted her down battleship row and into the main channel by 0855, a masterful feat of seamanship that would be for naught.

  At 0830 the Opana Point radar site reported another “fifty plus” blip approaching Oahu on a southward heading. Kaaawa Station, now on the air, reported it too. Both stations also reported smaller blips departing to the north-northeast. Major Bergquist relayed the new targets to Wheeler Field control so it could direct the P-40s that had taken off to intercept them. Koko Head Station began reporting a scattered group of targets approaching from the east. These were Major Landon's twelve B-17s just arriving from the mainland; four had turned back because of mechanical problems. Major Landon, who had heard the attack over the radio, contacted Hickam control for landing ins
tructions. He was ordered to divert his flight to alternate airfields on Maui and Hawaii and to await orders to return to Hickam.

  Commander Taylor relayed the information about the incoming Japanese flights to Rear Admiral Bellinger and Patrol Wing 2 at Kaneohe Naval Air Station. Their presence confirmed the wisdom of Bellinger's earlier decision to send the PBYs scouting to the north in search of the Japanese fleet. So far the eighteen PBYs that were airborne had not encountered any Japanese aircraft.

  The Haleiwa Field P-40s landed at Wheeler to refuel and rearm before taking off with orders to patrol over Bellows Field since the planes there were still not airborne. Twelve P-36s stayed over Wheeler Field as well, to serve as local air defense, but the thirty P-40s that took off from there after the initial attack were directed to intercept the inbound second wave. They spotted 150 Japanese planes flying below them at 0840. Exploiting their altitude, they shot down two Zeros and a half-dozen Vals and Kates as they dove through the surprised formation. Climbing back up to reengage the enemy, however, they made the fatal mistake of engaging the nimble Zeros with classical dogfighting techniques. As a result, twenty of their number never made it home. The rest escaped after running out of ammunition. Many were damaged. The thirty-four remaining Zeros regrouped and raced ahead of the bombers, splitting to attack Bellows, Kaneohe, and Hickam Airfields.

  Fifty Vals arrived over Pearl at 0855. Commander Fuchida ordered them to concentrate their attack on Nevada, which had just entered the main channel. The battleship's antiaircraft guns opened fire but there were too few of them to deter the attack. However, compelled to steam straight and slow in the channel, the ship was racked from stem to stern with repeated bomb hits, some of which ripped through her armored decks and exploded in her interior, starting fires and knocking out her main electrical system. Minutes after being hit by the first bomb, she also took two torpedoes in the stern from one of the mini-submarines that had penetrated the harbor earlier that morning. The first hit destroyed her rudder and screws, while the second tore a forty-foot hole in her stern. Losing headway, she slowed to a stop in the narrowest part of the channel, where she blew up fifteen minutes later, at 0910.