Abstract
Alan Zimm notes that from the day of the Pearl Harbor attack down to the present, descriptions of the attack have applied ‘backwards logic’: the Pearl Harbor attack smashed the American battle line, so such brilliant results must have come from brilliant planning, training, and execution. Among his other qualifications, Zimm is an expert in operations research and has written award-winning computer simulations of Second World War naval warfare, and he therefore goes beyond such superficiality to describe and analyse Yamamoto’s strategic and operational objectives, as well as the tactical planning and execution of the raid, based on contemporary doctrine, weapons, and tactics. The format he has chosen is the ‘hot wash’, the critique conducted after combat operations or training exercises, which emphasizes attention to detail in the evaluation of planning and execution. The result is the first militarily professional description of the Pearl Harbor attack, and for those who are serious about military history and operations, it is a joy to read. It is not possible to do justice to 400 pages of outstanding military analysis, evaluation, and insight in a book review, so a few high points must suffice.
Yamamoto’s Pearl Harbor attack was at cross-purposes with years of Japanese strategic planning and preparation, and was so illogical that if it succeeded in delaying the US counter-attack by six months, it would force the US to adopt the long-war strategy that spelled certain Japanese defeat. Readers will be astounded to learn that Yamamoto was so intent on sinking obsolete American battleships, estimating that this would fatally demoralize (!) the United States, that he was willing to sacrifice a large part of his carrier force and strike aircraft to achieve that objective, indeed was willing to conduct the attack even if the Japanese were detected 24 hours out. Yamamoto’s not-so-brilliant plan was actually a va banque gamble. The attack planning suffered from conflicted objectives, poor weapons choice, and a failure to match weapons against suitable targets. There was no cooperation between Japanese fighters, torpedo bombers, and dive-bombers. The execution of the attack could only be described as completely uncoordinated, beginning with the air commander, Fuchida, firing signals ordering two contradictory types of attacks. Fuchida’s falsehoods, which have already been demonstrated concerning Midway, are further exposed here, and his reputation, once so high, has been reduced to nothing. The failure to match weapon to target reached its apogee in the attempt to sink Nevada with 14 general-purpose 250 kg bombs – a practical impossibility (55 hits would have been necessary) and a waste of valuable ordinance.
The only thing that made the Japanese attack a success was the breathtaking incompetence of the American naval and army commanders. Zimm notes that the British had an integrated air-defence system (radar and ground observers linked to an air warning centre which controlled air defences) since the summer of 1940. The Americans had built such an air warning centre at Pearl, but even though General Short had received a war warning on 27 November, he decided not to make it operational until the war started! There were multiple indicators on 7 December of a Japanese attack (midget submarine sightings, radar contact with Japanese reconnaissance aircraft and then with the attack proper, etc.) that the air warning centre could have integrated: the defenders should have been given 40 minutes’ notice of the attack. Massed on the ground wing tip to wing tip, the Army air force was going to get massacred anyway, but 40 minutes would have been enough to ensure the watertight integrity of the fleet and bring the ships’ anti-aircraft defences to full readiness. Ship casualties would have been far fewer and Japanese losses in torpedo and dive-bombers heavy. If the Army air force had been dispersed and on alert, then with 40 minutes’ notice the Japanese fighters would have been hopelessly outnumbered and the Japanese attack would have met with total catastrophe, including possible counter-attack against the carriers by land-based bombers.
Zimm also demolishes myths which maintain that the fleet was better off in harbour than on the open sea (it wasn’t), that a third-wave attack on the oil storage facilities would have crippled the Pacific Fleet (it wouldn’t), and that the Japanese message delivered in Washington on the morning of 7 December was a declaration of war (it wasn’t). As an annex, Zimm describes the ‘perfect’ Japanese attack. I only wish he had also described ‘the perfect Japanese attack meets a competent American defence’.
Alan Zimm goes far beyond the usual anecdotal accounts to write a superb military analysis of the attack. Attack on Pearl Harbor has not only rendered all other histories of Pearl Harbor obsolete, it has set the bar high for other histories of the Pacific War.