Pearl Harbor Betrayed (41 page)

This time Fuchida's estimate was off the mark. Army Air losses in terms of aircraft destroyed were 28 percent of total air strength.
42
Lost at Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows Fields were 4 B-17s and 14 other bombers; 32 P-40 pursuit planes; and 27 other aircraft. Thirty-four bombers, 88 pursuit planes, and 6 reconnaissance aircraft were damaged (though 80 percent eventually would be salvaged).
43
Human casualties were heavy, particularly at Hickam Field. The totals were 163 killed, 43 missing, and 336 wounded. Damage to ground installations was extensive, again particularly at Hickam. Nineteen pilots managed to fuel, arm, and get airborne in P-40 and P-36 pursuit planes at Wheeler, Bellows, and Haleiwa, an auxiliary field north of Wheeler. They accounted for six Japanese aircraft shot down, while losing five of their own.

The most notable Air Corps achievement that day was experienced by the twelve B-17s arriving in two separate flights from California, on the very tail of the Japanese first wave. (Fourteen had started out from Hamilton Field, but two had turned back shortly after wheels up.) With no armament and marginal fuel in their wing tanks, two bombers of the first flight, under the command of Major Richard H. Carmichael, successfully put down on the 1,200-foot runway at Haleiwa; three others passed through the thicket of Japanese air attack and American ground AA fire to safe landings at Hickam; and one landed on a golf course. The second flight, led by Major Truman H. Landon, was harried by Zero fighters as it made its own approach and landings, two bombers at Haleiwa, one at Wheeler, one at Bellows, and seven at Hickam. Remarkably, the sturdily built Flying Fortresses suffered minimal casualties: one was destroyed, three were heavily damaged; only two crewmen were seriously injured.
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Proportionately, naval aviation assets on Oahu were more severely impacted than were those of the Army. The total number of aircraft of all types at Ford Island, Kanoehe Naval Air Station, and Ewa Marine Air Station was 301. Of 69 patrol planes, most of them PBY-3 and PBY-5 Catalinas, 24 were destroyed and 34 damaged. The Patrol Wing 1 base at Kaneohe Bay, the first site on Oahu to be struck that morning, at 0750, was particularly devastated by bombing and strafing attacks during both Japa-nese waves; 18 men were killed. Of 24 fighters, 9 were destroyed, 15 damaged. Of 60 SBD scout bombers, 31 were destroyed, 15 damaged. Of 92 battleship and cruiser reconnaissance aircraft, 10 were destroyed, 71 damaged. And of 54 noncombatant utility and transport aircraft, 6 were destroyed, 32 damaged.
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The Navy also had planes flying into Oahu airspace while the raid was under way. While 215 miles west of Oahu on her return voyage from Wake,
Enterprise
flew off (at 0615 and 0637) eighteen SBD Dauntless dive-bombers toward the air stations at Ford Island and Ewa. Like the B-17 crews who stumbled into the Pacific war, the Navy pilots were stunned as they closed the shore to find Oahu under enemy fire. Four of the planes were shot out of the air by Zeros, killing two pilots. American AA fire mistakenly accounted for another. At 0908 14ND radioed to all ships: “Do not fire on our planes coming in”; and, again, at 0921: “To all hands. Reported that enemy ships [
sic
] has [
sic
] red dot on bottom of fuselage.”
46
(The red rising sun roundel, later called the “meatball” by U.S. servicemen, was actually on the underside of the wings.) One SBD crash-landed at a field on Kauai Island. The remainder found dangerous havens at Ford or Ewa.
47
Damage to ground installations at Ford, Ewa, and Kaneohe was heavy.

*   *   *

Fuchida's Kate departed Oahu with the rear guard of fighters and, about noon, finding the carriers recovering the last of their aircraft on a northeast heading, successfully caught one of the arresting cables on
Akagi
. Not every plane before his had been so fortunate. Newly aroused seas had the carriers rolling and pitching. Numerous returning aircraft crashed onto the decks. When Fuchida tallied the casualties from AA fire and landing accidents, he reported 14 dive-bombers and 6 fighters lost from the second wave of 171 aircraft, for a total of 29 lost in both waves, and 74 damaged. “How many did you expect to lose?” he was asked in a postwar interrogation. “About half,” he answered, “and we thought we would lose half our ships.”
48
When Fuchida and Genda energetically clasped hands on
Akagi
's flight deck it was with relief as well as with elation and triumph.

Fifty-five officers and men had been lost.

*   *   *

How did the American principals seen earlier on this day first learn of the Japanese air attack? A few minutes before 0800, Ensign Tanner's 14P1 began to crackle with “frenzied” voice and coded Morse messages, one of which, eventually, was directed to him. Base headquarters at Kaneohe turned his flight of three patrol bombers northwest and north to search between 270 and 360 degrees for Japanese carriers responsible for an attack under way against Oahu. Tanner and his crew found nothing in that sector, but one of the other PBYs in his flight, searching due north, encountered Zero fighters and took a number of hits in the aft fuselage. That bomber, commanded by Ensign Fred Meyer, continued scouting but also came up empty. Tanner later wrote, “I have often thought of the hour-plus warning we had, based on the action with the Jap submarine. I've wondered why we didn't better use that time to mount a defense of the island.”
49
The hour-plus of which Tanner wrote would be correct if one counted from
Ward
's message at 0653; but not from the time of his own message, which was sent coded at 0715 and was not decoded until 0735. Still, any warning would have helped.

*   *   *

Ward
's skipper, Lt. Outerbridge, continued to be busy following his famous attack and message. He brought in a sampan that had been found in restricted waters and he made more depth charge attacks on submarine contacts.
Ward
was still at general quarters when the ship's executive officer, standing next to Outerbridge on the bridge, pointed toward the harbor and said, “They are making a lot of noise over there this morning, Captain.” Outerbridge replied, “Yes, I guess they are blasting the new road from Pearl to Honolulu.” The Exec said, “Look at those planes. They are coming straight down.” Outerbridge looked, as the Exec added, “Gosh, they are having an attack over there.” Outerbridge said, “They certainly are.”
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*   *   *

Lt. Comdr. Kaminski was still at his watch officer station in 14ND headquarters when, at approximately 0755, “I heard a plane approaching from the south. I saw it from [the] southerly lanai [porch] of [the] administration building. I could discern the Rising Sun of Japan under the wings. The plane was joined shortly by others with the same insignia on [them]. This plane was flying very low and hedge-hopping, just going over the roof.”
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*   *   *

At Opana, Privates Lockard and Elliott closed down the radar operation when the return signal from “an unusually large number of planes” reached a distance of about twenty-two miles and became distorted by a back wave off the mountains. Anyway, the truck had arrived to take them down for breakfast at the eighteen-man tent camp nine miles away at Hawailoa. As Elliott remembered it:

About a quarter way away from the camp, we noticed from our truck all of the men from the camp driving very fast in the opposite direction in which we were going. They were going to the [radar] unit. They had their field packs, and helmets, and what not. We still had no indication as to what had happened until we arrived at the camp, when we were told that we had been attacked by the Japanese.
52

There the two privates turned over their record of readings to platoon commander 2nd Lt. John Upson. “We were very proud of the reading that we had gotten,” said Elliott. “We brought it back to show it off, so to speak.”
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There is no information in the surviving documents that this writer has found to explain what Upson did with the readings—whether, for instance, he communicated the report to his superior, Capt. W. H. Tetley, or to overall AWS commander Lt. Col. C. A. Powell, both at Schofield Barracks. Lockard said later that, in camp, the men remaining were “looking at the sky,” where, to the south, they could see “black oil smoke,” and that they were aware that Pearl Harbor was being attacked by Japanese aircraft. He turned to Elliott and said, “I bet that is what we saw”—or “something like that.”
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When in 1945 Elliott was asked in the JCC hearings, “Did anybody come to you during that day and ask you to tell them what you saw in the radar at seven o'clock that morning?” he answered, “No sir; only the men at our individual camp that were interested to know just what had gone on.” So all the men there had the information? “Yes, sir; very definitely, sir.” And if anyone had called your camp on the telephone they could have gotten that information from practically anybody there? “Yes, sir.”
55
When, later, Lockard was asked, about the information, “When was it first taken notice of officially?” he answered, “It must have been about a week.” Actually, a copy of the radar plot reached CINCPAC on Tuesday the ninth.
56

At the Information Center at Fort Shafter, operator Private McDonald was relieved from his switchboard at 0730:

I took this message [from Opana] with me. By the way, it was the first time I ever did that, but I wanted to show the fellows, up at the tent; so they all saw it; and when the planes were coming over there, I began to get a little shaky.… When they started coming down and diving all around I just started running for the nearest pile.
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*   *   *

Lt. Tyler, who had told Lockard and Elliott “not to worry about it,” stated on 20 December that:

At about 0750 I heard some airplanes outside and looking toward Pearl Harbor saw what I thought to be a navy [sic] practicing dive bombing runs. At a little after 0800, Sergeant Eugene Starry, A[ir]. C[orps]., Wheeler Field called me to tell me that Wheeler Field had been attacked. I immediately had the telephone operator call all men back to duty.… I remained on duty … until about 1615, 8 December 1941, with the exception of rest periods.
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*   *   *

Lt. Comdr. Ramsay was in his operations office at PatWing 2 on Ford Island when he received a call from the staff duty officer reporting Ensign Tanner's message from patrol bomber 14P1. He immediately reported in turn to the CINCPAC duty officer, Commander Murphy, and went to the PatWing 2 Command Center, where, together with the staff duty officer, he observed what both thought was a U.S. Navy aircraft diving (“flathatting”) over the southern seaplane ramp on the island. They did not see that the plane had dropped a bomb near the VP-22 hangar until the delayed fuse detonated at 0757. “Never mind: it's a Jap,” he said, and at 0758 broadcast a voice alert, in the clear on all frequencies, that Samuel Eliot Morison later called “a message that shook the United States as nothing had since the firing on Fort Sumter”:
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AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.
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The alert was repeated by the signal tower in the navy yard to all ships and stations at 0800.
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*   *   *

Admiral Bloch, as noted earlier, first became aware of the air attack when “he heard the explosion in close proximity to my house, and that was around 7:55.”
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He went “as fast as I could” to 14ND headquarters, where he sent notice that Oahu had been attacked to Washington, Manila, Guam, and all ships at sea. He then issued the following orders:

Close all Navy Yard gates to traffic. Have Captain of the Yard detail fire parties. Notify Marines to make all men available to assist in fighting fires. Notify Marines to bring in from Salt Lake Camp all available Marines. Notify Yard to flood drydock. Make arrangements for civilian workmen to be rounded up and brought to the Yard to assist in damage control. Notify hospital to establish emergency measures for caring for killed and wounded.
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*   *   *

Bloch's opposite number, General Short, heard the first bombs “about 7:55” at his quarters in Fort Shafter. He thought at first that the Navy was conducting exercises about which either he had not been made aware or had forgotten. When some more explosions sounded, he went out on the back porch to have a look—Pearl Harbor was only four statute miles distant—“and about that time the chief of staff [Colonel Phillips, who lived nearby] came running over to my quarters about three minutes after eight, and said he had just received a message from Wheeler or Hickam, or both—I have forgotten which—that it was the real thing.”
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Short told Phillips to put into effect Alert No. 3. By 0810, with telephone calls to the Army's four major units, that was done. Because of the manner in which the full alert plans had been written and practiced, every unit down to the company level sprang into action. “We didn't have to issue a long winded order,” Short said in the following month. “Everybody knew exactly what his job was, because there was no confusion.” The Army's 24th and 25th Divisions took up battle positions against the possibility of a land invasion. And the AA batteries scrambled for their ammunition.
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*   *   *

Admiral Kimmel was buttoning on his white uniform at his quarters when Captain Murphy called for a second time, to report that
Ward
was towing a sampan into Honolulu Harbor. Before Murphy could finish that message, a yeoman interrupted him to say, “There's a message from the signal tower saying the Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor and this is no drill.”
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Murphy relayed that message to Kimmel, who bounded out the front door toward the automobile door held open for him by his driver. There would be no golf game as scheduled with General Short this morning. Seeing Captain Earle's wife standing on her front lawn looking down on Battleship Row, he paused to follow her eyes, first, toward the black oil smoke beginning to rise over the Battle Force, then overhead to the Japanese aircraft with their red roundels flying figure-eight bombing runs across the harbor. Mrs. Earle later told historian Gordon W. Prange that, for that brief wordless moment, Kimmel seemed to be in a state of “utter disbelief and completely stunned.” His face, she said, was “as white as the uniform he wore.”
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