Day of infamy guide
And eight new ones the navy was building were even better. Navy already had two brand new battleships in its Atlantic Fleet that could run rings around them. The American battleships at Pearl Harbor were slow-moving antiques from the World War I era.
On paper at least, this rivaled the British Royal Navy’s triumph at Trafalgar. Pacific Fleet with its pants down and wrought havoc in spectacular fashion. 7, 1941, launched their planes into the rising sun, caught the U.S. So it was that, in one of history’s finest displays of tactical management, six of the world’s best aircraft carriers furtively approached the Hawaiian Islands from the north just before dawn that fateful Sunday, Dec. Lost in the shuffle was any serious consideration of trying to cripple Pearl Harbor’s ability to function as a forward naval base. Standard histories of the Royal Navy emphasized its victories in spectacular naval battles. The Imperial Navy’s model for everything it did was the British Royal Navy. But in this case the expert poker player picked the wrong target. warships that were moored each weekend in Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto had a reputation as an expert poker player, gained during his years of study at Harvard and as an Imperial Navy naval attaché in Washington. It soon became apparent that the basics of either strategy could be carried out through a surprise air raid launched from the Imperial Navy’s six first-line aircraft carriers. Without them, the Pacific Fleet would have to return to the U.S., where it could no longer deter Japanese military expansion in the region during the year or so it would take to rebuild Pearl Harbor.
The most effective way to cripple Pearl Harbor’s ability to function as a naval base would be to destroy its fuel storage and ship repair facilities. fleet would require disabling the eight battleships that made up the fleet’s traditional battle line. One was to cripple the fleet itself through a direct attack on its warships, or cripple Pearl Harbor’s ability to function as the fleet’s forward base in the Pacific.Ĭrippling the U.S. The Imperial Navy had two strategic alternatives for neutralizing the U.S. The government assigned this task to the Imperial Navy, whose combined fleet was headed by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.