The Miracle of the United States Part one: Pearl Harbor

Few images are as recognizable or stir deeper emotions more than those of the Arizona sunken and burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Not many people would say the attack was a miracle or an act of God, but I submit to you, God was in fact working that day.

We were on a collision course with war; one we very much wanted to avoid after our recent experiences with WW1, but the clouds of war gathered over Europe and in Asia. Conflict was imminent and the American people, like those in Continental Europe, chose to ignore the warning signs and hope for the best.

Our embargo of Japans' oil supply is what had pushed us to the brink of war with the tiny nation. We were fully justified in placing this embargo considering:

1.) Japan's refusal to follow the Washington treaty limiting warships to a maximum tonnage of 35,000 tons.

2.) The manufactured international incident in Manchuria and their subsequent rape of the land. Oil and rubber were at a premium for the Japanese war machine and if they could not get us to loosen sanctions through diplomatic channels, they had but two choices: Scrap the mammoth battleships they were building which violated the treaty, or, they would go to war. Historical perspective of course gives us the benefit knowing which path they would choose.

It is also worth mentioning the Japanese cunning went so far as to attempt to enlist the help of Mexico with the promise of returning Texas to Mexico once they were victorious. But their plan, while audacious and bold, was executed with flair for not fully exploiting their success which would be a common theme of the Japanese military campaigns in the coming years.

The first miracle was that Admiral Chester Nimitz was, though being several years junior to other ranking naval Admirals, chosen to be the CINCPACFLT. Realizing there to be a rising storm in the west, he declined the position thus putting Husband Kimmel in the hot seat and forever dooming him to be the scapegoat of all scapegoats. This put Nimitz in the commander's chair 10 days later. A man with such strategic insight and nerve was exactly what we needed at that moment.

Second, thankfully military people are typically not terribly out of the box thinkers. As such, the battleships were still highly regarded as the capital ships. This is why they were all arranged quite neatly in rows on the morning of the attack. Aircraft carriers were largely viewed as a distraction and subservient to the battleships (BB's).  Thinking at the time essentially held the aircraft would be more valuable as scouts and spotters not as a prime arm of attack.  This is also the primary reason our aviators were so sorely outclassed with their under-performing a/c while the Japanese enjoyed many advantages in the air.  This is all miraculous for if they truly appreciated the quantum change in naval warfare, the naval leadership would not have sent the 3 American aircraft carriers to sea by themselves to ferry plane to American outposts.

Third, the Japanese failed to strike the oil tank farms (see below, in the bottom right of the image annotated "Oil Storage") immediately east of Battleship Row. These would have been plainly visible and clearly defined during the attack. In fact, many planes flew over them during their ingress/egress to their targets, or as they swooped in on Hickam Field to the south. This farm constitutes the oil reserve for the Pacific fleet. Just a couple of bombs would have set them afire, also threatening CINCPAC HQ which was within shouting distance. Without these reserves, refueling would have had to have been done on the West coast of the U.S.,  requiring many oil tankers and at sea refueling. This would have effectively ended our ability to check the Japanese advances in the Pacific at Coral Sea and later at Midway. So at a minimum, their failure to at least damage these reserves was a grave and costly strategic mistake.

Fourth, the fact the harbor was indeed so shallow made it easier to resurrect some of these damaged ships, returning them to see action against these foes, exacting some means of retribution and revenge.

Lastly, and I feel most important, they failed to secure the islands. Things would have turned out much differently had this occurred. This possibility was raised to my attention by their having not attacked the tank farms mentioned above. The very reason they attacked was for an oil shortage.

While we will probably never know exactly what the Japanese intended or why they failed to exploit their success, one fact is absolute; the outcome of WWII would have been far less certain had they continued the attack on the islands. They had won a great victory over the U.S. Navy, but because they had lost many more aircraft in the second attack, Japanese leadership thought it best to retire rather than press a third attack.

But what if the Japanese fleet had continued to advance on Pearl Harbor and the capital ships then started shelling the installation and surviving U.S. vessels? They wouldn't have had to be too terribly close to do so.

Most likely, their overly-conservative stance coupled with a fear of being discovered by aircraft from land or the elusive American carriers. Surely though, they knew our few remaining P-40 and F4F fighters were no match for the A6M Zero in the hands of accomplished combat pilots. So why? Why did they leave such a valuable strategic asset so close, yet so far away? Could it have been the threat of submarines patrolling? Surely they too could have been hunted down and dispatched.

Perhaps they felt they would be finding oil in the Australia/Western Pacific approaches, in SE Asia or within a few months following a successful campaign against Midway Island they would be returning to Hawaii. Had they brought an occupation force with them, they secure Oahu within a few days, replenish their fleet, finish off our remaining ships and find those carriers of ours before cruising the west coast with impunity.

To compound the question is also Admiral Yamomoto's reluctance to attack the U.S. in the first place. He had studied in America for some time before the war, and was awed by the industrial might of the United States. He warned his superiors such an attack was unwise, and if they followed through with the attack, they would have approximately 6 months of impunity before America would respond. In fact, after the attack he was quoted as saying "I fear we have only awakened a sleeping giant."

His foresight was eerily prescient. Almost to the day 6 months later, despite numerical advantages in every category, the Japanese would be handed one of the most catastrophic losses of any naval battle in history at a little known atoll named Midway- the site of another miracle in the history of the United States.