Pearl Harbor Betrayed (6 page)

drawn by Robert M. Berish for
The Rising Sun in the Pacific,
courtesy National Historical Center

At the naval air station on Ford Island, which was surrounded by fleet moorings, there was a trained seamen guard of two hundred men and a Marine Corps detachment of approximately one hundred men and two officers. These gunners were equipped with rifles, pistols, and aircraft machine guns, both .30 and .50 caliber, but no heavier weapons. An Army company held tactical exercises on the island using four 37-mm guns, for which there were permanent emplacements.
40
Ammunition for the Army's mobile AA guns and batteries was stored underground in the Aliamanu Crater between Fort Shafter and Pearl Harbor, where Short also had an emergency command post. The practice provided security, but the time required for AA batteries to access their ammo was to prove costly on 7 December.

*   *   *

A besetting problem with which Kimmel had constantly to deal was maintaining adequate numbers of trained personnel. Officers and enlisted men were being drained away from the fleet to man new ship construction, to provide expertise in ordnance manufacturing, or to staff aircraft training centers. “During the past year,” he wrote to Nimitz, who as chief of the Bureau of Navigation had responsibility for officer assignments, “the detachment of so many competent officers has reduced the number of experienced officers remaining in ships of the Fleet to such a point that I consider it
dangerous
[Kimmel's emphasis] to make further considerable reductions in our best officer personnel at this time.… This Fleet must be kept ready to fight, and that is impossible unless we stabilize the personnel to a much greater degree than has been done in the past.” He was particularly vexed at the loss of many ordnance postgraduates who occupied key positions in the fleet, “and I can see no source from which qualified reliefs will be furnished.”
41
Too, under the fleet's Aviation Expansion Program trained aviation personnel on Oahu were being sent to the mainland to train others. Each month Kimmel was required to send to the West Coast twelve trained patrol plane (PBY) crews. All across the enlisted level he was losing good men. Sailors were not reenlisting because of the high wages being paid in war industries on the mainland, and even in the repair facilities at Pearl. What enlisted personnel remained were mostly untrained new recruits. At times the number of men on board individual ships who had not heard a gun fired reached 70 percent. As late as December, Kimmel's staff estimated that the fleet needed 19,000 additional men to man ships and fill to capacity its training centers.

A blow worse than lost personnel came in April and May of 1941 when one aircraft carrier (USS
Yorktown
[CV-5]), three battleships (USS
Idaho
[BB-42],
Mississippi
[BB-41], and
New Mexico
[BB-40]), constituting Battleship Division Three, the strongest division of the fleet, and the only division with upgraded AA armament, four light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers were detached “in utmost secrecy” from the Pacific Fleet and transferred to the Atlantic, where they would be employed in meeting the German U-boat threat to Allied shipping. When Stark conveyed the news—the transfer having been decided by the President—he cautioned Kimmel: “I am telling you, not arguing with you.”
42

In a flash Kimmel lost approximately one-fourth of his fleet's strength. The Japanese Navy now held a
two-to-one advantage
over his forces. He was certain that details of the transfer would become well known in Japan, through agents in Honolulu and the Panama Canal Zone, with a further reduction in whatever deterrent Washington thought the fleet represented. Stark concurred, writing to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, “The truth is probably now apparent to Japan that the United States Pacific Fleet is no longer strong enough for sustaining an effective offensive against the centers of Japanese military power.” And he warned Knox that “any further weakening of the Pacific Fleet at this time is almost certain to precipitate action by Japan against the British Fleet and the Netherlands East Indies.”
43
None of the transferred warships would be returned to Pearl prior to 7 December, but many would be returned thereafter. When one examines the transfers of ships from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and vice versa, it is apparent how one-way that traffic was. Between 1 February and 7 December 1941 twenty-five warships were sent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and
one,
the
Tambor
-class (1940) submarine USS
Triton,
was transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Taken to the Atlantic at the same time were practically all of the fleet's trained Marine landing force at San Diego, together with their transports, leaving on the Pacific side only the Marines on the outlying islands Wake and Midway and the garrison at Pearl Harbor. While visiting Main Navy in June, Kimmel learned of plans to transfer an additional detachment consisting of one carrier, three battleships, four cruisers, and two squadrons of destroyers. In the face of his strenuous objections, the plans were dropped.

Another shortage with which Kimmel had to contend was fuel. All the reserve oil stocks were held in two tank farms, east and west of the naval station. The shortage lay not only in the amount of storage but also in the inadequate means available for moving fuel from storage into combatant ships. Early in 1941, Kimmel had reorganized the vessels of the fleet into three task forces, a fast carrier force, an amphibious force, and a battleship force. He found that it required from twenty-four to thirty hours to refuel a task force in harbor. Fuel deliveries at sea were even slower, owing to a shortage of tankers. Eleven were available, but only four had the speed and capacity for fueling combatant ships at sea. Destroyers required refueling every third day, heavier ships every fifth day. But fuel delivery never kept pace with consumption. For the entire fleet on distant operations not eleven but about seventy-five tankers would be required. The fleet's radius of action thus was severely limited by this shortage. And until more tankers, for which Kimmel constantly pleaded, arrived, even nearby exercises in operating areas would have to be curtailed. “It was this fact, and this alone,” Kimmel said, “which made it necessary to have two task forces simultaneously in Pearl Harbor at certain periods.”
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Aircraft of all types were in short supply for a fleet preparing for war. Mention has been made earlier of the small numbers of PBY patrol planes on Oahu. Kimmel's aviation staff cited other needs and problems: Carrier torpedo planes were obsolescent and spare aircraft of that category were too few. There was a serious shortage of aircraft machine-gun ammunition. No armor-piercing bombs or depth bombs for use against submarines were yet available. The level of experience of both pilots and aviation ratings was low, and there were not enough of either. Aircraft overhaul at Pearl was limited to PBYs, and transfer back and forth to the West Coast for overhaul of other types would be impractical, if not impossible, in an emergency.
45
An insistent Kimmel sometimes irritated Main Navy with his complaints about these deficiencies, and a somewhat nettled Rear Admiral John H. Towers, chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, wrote in a memorandum to Stark:

The impression of the Commander-in-Chief that the Bureau of Aeronautics is relegating fleet aircraft needs to a position of lower priority than the general expansion program is in error. This bureau has exerted and continues to exert every possible effort to provide the fleet with new replacement airplanes for the older models at a rate only limited by the productive output.… It is believed appropriate to invite the attention of the Commander-in-Chief to the fact that the Navy Department, in the face of long and determined opposition [from the Army Air Corps] has been successful in establishing the highest priority … for the
fleet
[Towers's emphasis]. This priority (A-1-b) is higher than that accorded any Army aircraft.
46

Before relinquishing his command to Kimmel, Admiral Richardson advised his successor to move his Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC) headquarters and staff from the USS
Pennsylvania
to a shore installation. Accordingly, Kimmel wrote Stark suggesting this, explaining, “Facilities on the Fleet flagship are not sufficient to provide living and working accommodations for the personnel required on the staff.” Stark approved and in February Kimmel transferred his flag ashore, to the submarine base. Communications to the fleet were improved by direct use of the high-power radio transmitters of station NPM on shore. Kimmel would still work aboard the
Pennsylvania
during tactical exercises, and his staff battle organization would require training on the flagship. But for most of the time, his staff lived and worked “on the beach,” the staff quartered at the sub base, while Kimmel found after-work quarters for himself alone at a house in a new development on Makalapa Heights, behind the base, with a view of Battleship Row.

The new CINCPAC assembled a staff that was so bright and able that Kimmel's successor, Admiral Nimitz, would keep it on in its entirety, and every captain and commander, with one exception, would rise to flag rank during the war. Captain William “Poco” Smith was chief of staff. Tall, athletic, possessed of a quick wit and a retentive memory, Smith had served for a year and a half in Hawaii as commanding officer of the new (1937) light cruiser USS
Brooklyn
(CL-40). In the slot of assistant chief of staff and operations officer was the familiar, hardworking Captain Walter S. DeLany, who had been Kimmel's chief of staff when the latter was commanding officer cruisers, Battle Force. For War Plans Kimmel chose Captain Charles Horatio “Soc” McMorris, nicknamed after Socrates for his philosophical bent, and known affectionately as “the ugliest man in the Navy.” Prior to joining the staff on 1 February, he had served in Hawaii for over a year as operations officer for Vice Admiral Adolphus “Dolly” Andrews, commander of the Scouting Force. McMorris was destined to give the most fatally wrong answer ever given to a Kimmel question. (To serve as McMorris's assistant Kimmel retained a Richardson staffer, Commander Vincent Murphy, whom the former CINCPAC regarded as “the finest officer in the United States Navy.”)
47
He also kept on board Richardson's intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton. Fluent in Japanese, Layton had gained detailed knowledge of Japan's Imperial Navy while serving as assistant naval attaché in Tokyo from April 1937 to March 1939. In Hawaii, together with cryptographer Commander Joseph J. Rochefort, he had developed radio intelligence into a fine science. (Officially, Rochefort was combat intelligence officer under Bloch.) Commander Arthur C. Davis, a pilot, was fleet aviation officer, in charge of technical training and aviation logistics. Another Richardson holdover, he was not consulted by Kimmel on the probabilities of Japanese attack. A staffer who worked closely with Kimmel in AA defenses and firing exercises at sea was Captain Willard A. Kitts III, the fleet gunnery officer. Kitts had served with Kimmel intermittently since 1918. He described his association with Kimmel as “quite close and intimate.” Communications officer Commander Maurice “Germany” Curts, who had served a year with Richardson, rounded out the staff. Outside the staff proper Kimmel had access to other strategically oriented minds, including that of Captain Charles M. “Savvy” Cooke, Jr., new skipper of the
Pennsylvania,
who had been Turner's predecessor at Main Navy as chief of War Plans. “I am sending you Savvy Cooke,” Stark wrote Kimmel on 13 January, “and I feel like I am losing my arms. That boy has one of the best brains I have ever run into.… I am sending him to sea to protect his promotion chances.”
48
Cooke did eventually advance to flag rank.

In his subordinate admirals Kimmel had the cream of the naval service afloat (excepting Ernest J. King, CINC of the Atlantic Fleet). Task Force 1 was commanded by Vice Admiral William Satterlee Pye, commander Battleships Battle Force, and as senior officer present afloat, second in rank to Kimmel. Like “Savvy” Cooke a veteran of War Plans, where he directed the preparation of WPL-46, Pye drew the praises of Stark, who wrote Kimmel: “I have always thought Pye one of the soundest strategists we have [and] I thought his handling of tactical situations outstanding. Particularly were his orders a model of clearness, brevity and effectiveness.”
49
Task Force 2 was commanded by the formidable William Frederick “Bull” Halsey, Jr., commander aircraft, Battle Forces, an audacious, locker-room-talking, scotch-and-water-drinking former classmate of Kimmel's at Annapolis, who at age fifty-two, in 1935, learned to fly, and now was poised to become the wartime commander of the Third (Fifth) Fleet, with which he would win fame (and controversy) in the Pacific Ocean. Commanding Task Force 3 was the low-profile Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, newly sent from Washington to be commander, Scouting Force. Among the duty stations listed in Brown's service jacket were: commanding officer of the New London, Connecticut, submarine base, skipper of the battleship
California,
and superintendent of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Below the level of force commanders were type commanders, of rear admiral rank, in charge of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, and a Base Force commander of the same rank.

With his outstanding trio of force commanders, Kimmel conducted regularly scheduled air raid drills both in port and at sea, and firing exercises in the operating area south of Oahu. Monthly air raid drills would last for as long as five days, for example, 14–18 July, when simulated glide and dive-bombing attacks were made against ships of the fleet, four days in Pearl, one day at sea. The schedules, deliberately planned to be “strenuous” and “with the maximum realism obtainable,” were designed to ensure that “sky lookouts” and AA batteries did not exhibit “slackness or perfunctory performances.” All condition-of-readiness watches were given the opportunity for drill under various forms of attack, at night as well as in daylight.
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The fleet also carried out quarterly exercises during which “enemy” aircraft over Pearl Harbor dropped dummy bombs on the fleet and base installations.
51
AA firing practice was conducted against towed sleeves or flares.