Pearl Harbor Betrayed (4 page)

Because it was later charged in a government investigation (Roberts Commission, 1942), and by certain members of Congress, that Kimmel and Short were estranged from each other in their official and social relations during the eleven months they held their commands—Harry S. Truman, for example, U.S. senator from Missouri and Democratic vice presidential nominee, asserted in
Collier's
magazine (26 August 1944) that the “root cause” of the American defeat at Pearl Harbor was the lack of cooperation between Kimmel and Short, who, Truman insinuated, were not “on speaking terms”—it is instructive also to have Short's appreciation of their association, given in 1944:

I would say that [our relations] were extremely friendly, cordial, and cooperative. We were on a very friendly basis personally, as well as officially. We played golf together about every other Sunday, and the Sundays we didn't play golf, very frequently Admiral Kimmel dropped in to see me in the morning; because his family was away he came to my quarters more than I went to his.…
16

By 28 March, Short and Bloch completed a final draft of what was called the “Joint Coastal Frontier Defense Plan, Hawaiian Department and Fourteenth Naval District.” The Coastal Frontier was defined as including Oahu and the other major islands of the Hawaiian chain; also, Midway, Johnston, Palmyra, Canton, and Wake Islands. Because the agreements contained in the plan were to take effect “at once”—Short and Bloch signed the plan on 2 April—and because this was the plan that was in force on 7 December following, its principal paragraphs bear examination. First considered was the appearance in Coastal Frontier waters of hostile surface vessels. Joint air attacks made upon such warships were to be executed under the tactical command of the Navy. The Army would give the Navy use of its bomber aircraft, Boeing B-17D Flying Fortresses and obsolete Douglas B-18 Bolo medium bombers—the model was six years old and the planes themselves were five years old. The number was to be the maximum practicable. After one or repeated attacks, as required, the bombardment aircraft would revert to Army control.

In the event of an enemy air attack over and in the immediate vicinity of Oahu, defensive air operations, antiaircraft, and gas defenses were to be executed under the tactical command of the Army. The Naval Base Defense Officer (Bloch) would release to Army control as much Navy fighter strength as was practicable. After “repeated patrols or combat or for maintenance of the required alert status,” Navy fighters would revert to Navy control. In another key provision, the plan placed responsibility with the Navy for long-range aerial reconnaissance of the ocean approaches to Oahu. Utilizing the Navy's twin-engine Consolidated PBY-3 and PBY-5 Catalina patrol bombers (flying boats), Bloch would be the responsible officer for instituting distant air searches. If called upon, the Army would place such bomber strength as was available under Bloch's command to supplement the Navy's distant patrol assets.

To ensure prompt exchange of information about both hostile and friendly aircraft, Army and Navy communications personnel were to install and operate common communications equipment, such as page printer teletype machines connected to the same landline circuit; and to utilize joint radio circuits on 219 and 2,550 kilocycles for voice communication. The plan anticipated that, at some future date in the year, Aircraft Warning Service radar would be supplied to the Hawaiian Department. Until such time, the Army would operate what, admittedly, was a primitive Antiaircraft Intelligence Service (AAIS), employing visual recognition of incoming enemy aircraft and radio broadcast warnings on 900 kilocycles. Four further major points were addressed in the plan: (1) the Marine Corps antiaircraft units on Oahu would be under the tactical control of the Army; (2) the possible use of balloon barrages over Pearl Harbor would be investigated; (3) smoke screens would
not
be employed over Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field, since they would hinder one's own surface and air operations; and (4) a joint harbor control post would be established for the defense of Pearl and Honolulu Harbors.
17
A slightly more detailed plan for the Hawaiian Islands proper was signed and issued on 11 April.
18

In an important addendum, dated 31 March, the air defense officers of the two services, Major General Frederick L. Martin, for the Army Air Corps, and Rear Admiral Patrick N. L. Bellinger, for the Navy, signed off on a report that cannily predicted that a surprise attack on Oahu would likely be launched at dawn, prior to a declaration of war, and from a distance inside three hundred nautical miles. Martin was Commanding Officer, Hawaiian Air Force; Bellinger, among various other offices, was Commander, Naval Base Air Force and Commander, Patrol Wing Two. Their prescient monition could well be stapled to a dispatch dated the next day, 1 April, from Naval Operations (OpNav) in Washington to all naval districts, including the Fourteenth, advising that “Axis Powers often begin activities in a particular field on Saturdays and Sundays or on national holidays of the country concerned.…”
19

The Martin-Bellinger estimate considered that in the past Orange (the code name for Japan in all the war plans of the period) had never made a declaration of war before launching hostile actions; that Orange might send into the Hawaiian area one or more submarine squadrons and/or a fast carrier raiding force to make a sudden attack with no prior warning to Pearl Harbor from U.S. intelligence; and that the damage to ships and naval installations resulting from such an attack might prevent effective offensive action by the U.S. Navy in the western Pacific for a long period of time. The best information available was that Orange possessed eight carriers (she had ten) that embarked from 20 to 60 aircraft (in fact, 27 to 104). The 1939 edition of
Jane's Fighting Ships,
the latest then available at Pearl, listed forty Orange submarines that were capable of projection into Hawaiian waters. (Nothing was known about the existence of Orange's midget submarines, which would number twenty by the following December.)

The best first means of defense against a carrier striking force was its detection by long-range reconnaissance aircraft, such as the PBY-3 and PBY-5 Catalinas, which had a theoretical range of seven hundred and eight hundred nautical miles, respectively. But, stated the estimate,

The aircraft at present available in Hawaii are inadequate to maintain, for any extended period, from bases on Oahu, a patrol extensive enough to insure that an air attack from an Orange carrier cannot arrive over Oahu as a complete surprise.… In a dawn air attack there is a high probability that it could be delivered as a complete surprise in spite of any patrols we might be using and that it might find us in a condition of readiness under which pursuit would be slow to start, also it might be successful as a diversion to draw attention away from a second attacking force.
20

Only within “narrow time limits”—a matter of four or five days, Bellinger would later define it—could the available patrol aircraft fly seaward through 360 degrees to a distance of the seven to eight hundred nautical miles required to prevent a carrier from launching an attack without prior detection.
21
Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, Director of War Plans at the Navy Department (Main Navy), concurred in that assessment—it being understood in Washington as well as in Hawaii that only a search of
all
sectors of approach to an island base deserved the name. In support of that principle, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who would succeed Kimmel as CINCPAC, observed on 7 January 1942 that “It cannot be assumed that any direction of approach may safely be left unguarded.… Neglect of any sector is apt soon to be known.”
22
But a full-compass sweep of 360 degrees to the maximum range of scout planes could not then be mounted with the aircraft available; neither would it be possible for a period beyond several days, as will be seen, in the following November-December. And the Army Air Corps' assets were of minimal assistance in that regard. The comparatively short-legged B-18 medium bombers could not make the 700 to 800 mile distance (and return), and the B-17 Flying Fortresses, which could, were always so meager in number that they could cover only a few degrees of arc.

Furthermore, both services were heavily pressed by expansion training: the Army's bomber aircraft were consumed by crew training for the Philippine Air Force, and the Navy's PBYs were also totally engaged in crew training. Part of that PBY training was for crews manning new aircraft on the mainland. And part was for manning patrol wings of the fleet, with which they would be employed in offensive combat assignments stipulated in war plan WPPac-46 (effective 7 September), which included within thirteen days after the opening of hostilities a raid by Navy surface and air striking forces against Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands. Kimmel would be promised an additional one hundred PBYs, but they never arrived—they were allocated to Great Britain instead—with the result that long-range aerial reconnaissance, absent a full-fledged alert from Washington, could not be ordered as a routine procedure.

In the event of an air attack against the fleet and/or ground installations, the Martin-Bellinger estimate advised the immediate dispatch of all aircraft suitable for aerial combat both to intercept the attackers and to follow them back to their carriers. But under the present conditions, without the advance warning that long-range scout aircraft and radar could provide, the estimate acknowledged that no pursuit (fighter) planes could be dispatched “until an attack is known to be imminent or has occurred.” It therefore recommended that interservice air task forces should be organized right away, that missions be assigned, and that conditions of readiness be defined so that immediate action could be taken when one of the visualized emergencies arose. Among the contingencies was a submarine attack, conducted either singly or in concert with an air attack, off the harbor channel entrance or in the fleet operating area to southward. In that event, shore-based antisubmarine aircraft would conduct patrols and take offensive action against surfaced or diving submarines in close communication with Navy destroyers.

Once his Hawaiian Department staff was assembled, General Short set about strengthening Army defensive forces. It would be a ten-month effort, and one that seems to have encountered more than its regulation share of impediments, since, repeatedly, the War Department refused to supply Short's expressed needs, either for alleged budgetary reasons or because the War Plans Division differed with Short's understanding of Oahu's vulnerability to air attack. The blame for the latter failure cannot be traced to any misconceptions by General Marshall himself: the Chief of Staff worried aloud frequently about the possibility of “a surprise or trick attack” against Oahu;
23
and in his letters to Short he expressed his pleasure at reading of the latter's progress “with regard to defense from air attack,” which he called “a matter of first priority.”
24
But below the Chief's level, deputies and assistants were not as understanding or supportive. A representative example of that disparity is provided by Short's identification of his number two priority (“Cooperation with the Navy” being number one): “Dispersion and Protection of Aircraft,” which he proposed to the War Department on 19 February, and again on 15 March. Calling attention to the vulnerability to attack of aircraft at the Army's Hickam and Wheeler Fields, as well as at the Ford Island navy field—“On all fields the planes have been kept lined up on the field where they would suffer terrific loss [in the light of future events an ironic prediction]”—he sought money and engineer troops to build dispersal landing strips away from the main bases and to erect protective bunkers, or revetments, for those aircraft that could not be dispersed.
25
For his part, Marshall judged Short's plan to be “sound,” and he answered that, as soon as Short submitted sufficient details to support the expenditures, “funds for these purposes will be included in estimates.”
26
But once the proposal fell into the maw of deputies and assistants below Marshall's pay grade it met opposition and delay; one staffer, Brigadier General Harry J. Malony, Acting Assistant Chief of Staff, wrote, “War Plans Division believes: That the danger of sustained air attack against air fields in Hawaii from carrier based aviation is not serious.”
27
Eventually, on 12 September, the War Department promised $1,358,000 for the work, but with the proviso that the funds would not become available until 1 January 1942.
28

Other examples abound. In February 1941, with Marshall's concurrence on 13 March, the Army assumed responsibility for defending the new naval air station and its three squadrons of PBY patrol aircraft at Kaneohe Bay. On 14 April Short asked for procurement of a 12-inch gun battery and a war strength garrison of 2,300 men to make that defense possible. His request did not receive a favorable response. Not only air defense but urgent aviation training required the construction of ten additional airfields. No funds were forthcoming. Aircraft Warning Service (AWS) radar was, Short said, “the most important single project in the department.” At present, aircraft could be visually and sound-detected at a maximum distance of four to five miles; with radar that would increase to 120 miles. Short was authorized to receive three fixed and six mobile stations. He asked the War Department that Oahu be given top priority (A1-f) in receiving the permanently placed stations. But no such installation was in place by 7 December.
29
Short had wanted to install one of the fixed AWS stations at the 10,000-foot summit of Haleakala crater on the island of Maui, seventy-six nautical miles east-southeast of Oahu, which commanded the eastern and southern approaches to Oahu. But the crater formed part of a national park, and the National Park Service, of the Department of the Interior, insisted on employing its usual long process of vetting the architecture and building plans for appropriateness, as it also insisted that the AWS station when erected not “materially alter the natural appearance of the reservation.” A fuming Short thought that “the seriousness of this situation has not yet been appreciated in the War Department,” and that, in view of the Pacific theater emergency, “all quibbling over details should be stopped at once.” But Major General William Bryden, Deputy Chief of Staff, told Short: “It is not believed that it would be advisable to attempt to alter the informal decisions of the Department of the Interior by carrying this matter to higher authority, or to prolong the discussion through official channels.”
30