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The Attack on Pearl Harbour – Part 5

Summarised from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ships lost or damaged

Twenty-one ships were damaged or lost in the attack. Except for three ships, all of them were repaired and returned to service.

Battleships

•  The Battleship Arizona was hit by four armour-piercing bombs and exploded and was a total loss. 1,177 dead.

•  The Battleship Oklahoma was hit by five torpedoes and capsized and was a total loss. 429 dead.

•  The Battleship West Virginia was hit by two bombs and seven torpedoes and sunk. It returned to service in July, 1944. 106 dead.

•  The Battleship California was hit by two bombs and two torpedoes and sunk. It returned to service in January, 1944. 100 dead.

•  The Battleship Nevada was hit by six bombs and one torpedo and was beached. It returned to service in October, 1942. 60 dead.

•  The Battleship Pennsylvania was in the dry dock with the Cassin and the Downes and was hit by one bomb and debris from the Cassin. It remained in service. 9 dead.

•  The Battleship Tennessee was hit by two bombs. It returned to service in February, 1942. 5 dead.

•  The Battleship Maryland was hit by two bombs. It returned to service in February, 1942. 4 dead including a floatplane pilot who was shot down.

Ex-battleship used as a target and training ship

•  The Battleship Utah was hit by two torpedoes and capsized and was a total loss. 64 dead.

Cruisers

•  The Cruiser Helena was hit by one torpedo. It returned to service in January, 1942. 20 dead.

•  The Cruiser Raleigh was hit by one torpedo. It returned to service in February, 1942.

•  The Cruiser Honolulu suffered a near miss and received light damage. It remained in service.

Destroyers

•  The Destroyer Cassin was in drydock with the Downes and the Pennsylvania and was hit by one bomb and burned. It returned to service in February, 1944.

•  The Destroyer Downes was in drydock with the Cassin and the Pennsylvania and caught fire from the Cassin and burned. It returned to service in November, 1943.

•  The Destroyer Helm was under way to West Loch and was damaged by two near-miss bombs and continued to patrol. It was dry-docked on the 15th of January, 1942, and set sail again on the 20th of January, 1942.

•  The Destroyer Shaw was hit by three bombs. It returned to service in June, 1942.

Auxiliaries

•  The Minelayer Oglala was damaged by a torpedo hit on the Helena and capsized. It returned to service (as an engine-repair ship) in February, 1944.

•  The Repair Ship Vestal was hit by two bombs and blast and fire from the Arizona and was beached. It returned to service by August, 1942.

•  The Seaplane Tender Curtiss was hit by one bomb and one crashed Japanese aircraft. It returned to service in January, 1942. 19 dead.

•  The Harbour Tug Sotoyomo was damaged by explosion and fires on the Shaw and sunk. It returned to service in August, 1942.

•  YFD-2 (a yard floating dock) was damaged by 250-kilogram bombs and sunk. It returned to service on the 25th of January, 1942, servicing the Shaw.

Salvage

After a systematic search for survivors, a United States officer was ordered to lead a formal salvage operation.

Around Pearl Harbour, divers from the Navy, the Pearl Harbour Naval Shipyard, and civilian contractors began work on the ships that could be refloated. They patched holes, cleared debris, and pumped water out of the ships. Navy divers worked inside the damaged ships. Within six months, five battleships and two cruisers were patched or refloated so they could be sent to shipyards in Pearl Harbour and on the mainland for extensive repair.

Intensive salvage operations continued for another year involving a total of about 20,000 man-hours under water. The Arizona and the target ship Utah were too heavily damaged for salvage and remain where they were sunk, with the Arizona becoming a war memorial. The Oklahoma was successfully raised but it was never repaired. It capsized while under tow to the mainland in 1947.

News coverage

The initial announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbour was made by the White House Press Secretary at 2:22 p.m. Eastern Time: “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbour from the air on all military and naval activities on the island of Oahu, the principal American base on the islands of Hawaii.” As information developed, the Press Secretary made a number of additional announcements to White House reporters over the course of the afternoon. Initial reports of the attack were transmitted over news wires at approximately 2:25 p.m. Eastern Time. The first radio coverage was on the news program, World News Today, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time. A newspaper report at the time compared the attack to the Battle of Port Arthur in which the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the Imperial Russian Navy 37 years earlier, triggering the Russo-Japanese War. Modern writers have continued to note parallels between the attacks.  

Aftermath

Following the attack, 15 Medals of Honour, 51 Navy Crosses, 53 Silver Stars, four Navy and Marine Corps Medals, one Distinguished Flying Cross, four Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, and three Bronze Star Medals were awarded to the American servicemen who distinguished themselves in combat at Pearl Harbour. Additionally, a special military award, the Pearl Harbour Commemorative Medal, was later authorized for all military veterans of the attack.

The day after the attack, President Roosevelt delivered his famous Infamy Speech to a Joint Session of Congress, calling for a formal declaration of war on the Empire of Japan. Congress agreed to his request less than an hour later. On the 11th of December, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, even though the Tripartite Pact did not require it. Congress issued a declaration of war against Germany and Italy later that same day. The United Kingdom declared war on Japan nine hours before the United States did, partially due to the Japanese attacks on Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, and partially due to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s promise to declare war “within the hour” of a Japanese attack on the United States.

The attack was an initial shock to all of the Allies in the Pacific Theatre. Further losses compounded the alarming setback. Japan attacked the Philippines hours later. Because of the time difference, it was the 8th of December in the Philippines. Only three days after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk off the coast of Malaya, causing Churchill later to recollect “In all the war, I never received a more direct shock. As I turned and twisted in bed, the full horror of the news sank in. There were no British or American large warships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbour, who were hurrying back to California. Over this vast expanse of waters Japan was supreme, and we were weak and naked everywhere”. Throughout the war, Pearl Harbour was frequently used in American propaganda.

One further consequence of the attack on Pearl Harbour and its aftermath was that Japanese-American residents and citizens were relocated to nearby Japanese-American internment camps. Within hours of the attack, hundreds of Japanese-American leaders were rounded up and taken to high-security camps. Eventually, almost all of the 110,000 Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast of the United States were forced into interior camps. However only 1,200 to 1,800 people were interned in Hawaii, even though there were 150,000 Japanese-Americans there, which was over one third of the population.

The attack also had international consequences. The Canadian province of British Columbia, bordering the Pacific Ocean, had a large population of Japanese immigrants and there were a lot of Japanese-Canadian descendants. Pre-war tensions were made worse by the attack on Pearl Harbour, and this led to a reaction from the Government of Canada. The Canadian Government passed an order under the War Measures Act that allowed the forced removal of Canadians of Japanese descent from British Columbia as well as stopping them from returning to the province. On the 4th of March, regulations under the Act were adopted to evacuate Japanese-Canadians. As a result, 12,000 were interned in interior camps, 2,000 were sent to road camps and another 2,000 were forced to work in the prairies on sugar beet farms.

Strategic implications

Admiral Tadaichi summed up the Japanese result by saying, “We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbour and therefore lost the war.”

The attack on Pearl Harbour accomplished its objective. However, it turned out to be largely unnecessary. Admiral Yamamoto, who conceived the original plan, was not aware that the United States Navy had decided as far back as 1935 to abandon charging across the Pacific towards the Philippines in response to an outbreak of war. The United States instead adopted “Plan Dog” in 1940, which emphasized keeping the Imperial Japanese Navy out of the eastern Pacific and away from the shipping lanes to Australia, while the United States concentrated on defeating Nazi Germany.

Fortunately for the United States, the American aircraft carriers were untouched. Otherwise the Pacific Fleet’s ability to undertake offensive operations would have been impossible for a year or more. The elimination of the battleships left the United States Navy with no choice but to rely on its aircraft carriers and submarines. These were the very weapons that the United States Navy used to halt and repel the Japanese advance. While six of the eight battleships were repaired and returned to service, their relatively low speed and high fuel consumption limited their deployment. They were mainly used for shore bombardment. A major flaw of the Japanese strategic thinking was a belief that the ultimate Pacific battle would be fought by battleships in keeping with the doctrine of Admiral Mahan. As a result, Yamamoto and his successors saved their battleships for a “decisive battle” that never came.

The Japanese confidence in their ability to win a quick victory meant that they neglected Pearl Harbour’s naval repair yards, oil tank farms, submarine base, and the old headquarters building. All of these targets turned out to be more important than any battleship to the American war effort in the Pacific. The survival of the repair shops and fuel depots allowed Pearl Harbour to maintain logistical support for United States Navy operations such as the Doolittle Raid and the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway. United States submarines immobilized the heavy ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy and brought Japan’s economy to a virtual standstill by crippling the import of oil and raw materials. By the end of 1942, the import of raw materials was halved and the import of oil was almost negligible. Finally, the basement of the Old Administration Building was the home of the cryptanalytic unit which contributed significantly to the Midway ambush and the Submarine Force’s success.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor


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