The U.S. Army And

The U.S. Army and In recognition of the new national security strategy’s focus on the Asia- Pacific Region, ARMY Magazine will include articles this year on the role of land forces in the Pacific theater in peace and war. Articles will highlight the history and current presence in the region. We start with Pearl Harbor. y v a N . S . U By COL Stanley L. Falk f the 43,000 officers and men in the U.S. Army’s Hawai - AUS retired ian Department on December 7, 1941, barely a handful Owere awake and at work in the predawn hours of that warm, sleepy Sunday morning. Among those on duty were a few members of the Signal Aircraft Warning Company, Hawaii, manning half a dozen new mobile SCR-270 radar sets at key locations on the island of Oahu. These air warning stations, while still in a training status, had been operating for three hours daily since Thanksgiving, Above, the destroyer Shaw ex - when LTG Walter C. Short, the department commander, had issued plodes in the floating drydock, her bow blown off by a bomb. an alert order against the probable start of war with Japan. 50 ARMY I February 2013 December 7, 1941 LTG Short had acted in response to a series of warnings from the War Department that hostilities were “possible at any moment.” The wording of these warnings, however, had appeared to suggest sabotage and other subversive ac - tivities as posing the greatest danger to his command. The general’s alert order, therefore, emphasized the dangers of saboteurs and internal unrest rather than of any overt at - tack on Hawaii or its great Pearl Harbor naval base. Nevertheless, to guard against the possibility of a Japan - ese air attack—however improbable this appeared then— LTG Short directed the air warning stations to operate each day from 0400 to 0700, two hours before dawn and one hour after, the most likely time for a carrier strike. At about 0645 on December 7, the three stations on Oahu’s north shore began to pick up radar blips indicating a small number of aircraft approaching from the north. Since the U.S. Navy was known to be flying some sort of dawn patrol, the radar men ignored the blips and began to prepare to end their watch at 0700. In fact, however, these blips represented scout planes from the Japanese Pearl Har - bor Strike Force, then less than 300 miles away and prepar - ing to launch their attack. The Japanese task force, built around six heavy carriers with 360 aircraft, had left the Kuril Islands 12 days earlier and reached Hawaiian waters undetected. Its mission was to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the first hours of Japan’s war with the West. The fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor was a powerful one and, as Japan’s naval planners well under - y m r A stood, a major threat to Japanese military ambitions. Defense . S . of the American warships was, of course, a naval responsibil - U Above, the engine nacelle of a destroyed Army air - craft was incorporated in a hasty antiaircraft revet - ment at Hickham Field. Below, a fuel dump burns at Hickham, with wrecked vehicles in the foreground. y m r A . S . U February 2013 I ARMY 51 Hawaiian Depart - ment artillerymen drill on an M1917A1 75 mm gun in a beach de - fense position dur - ing exercises in the summer of 1941. y m r A . S . U ity, but LTG Short’s primary mission was also to protect the t a few minutes before seven on the morning of fleet. To do so, he had only limited means. On December 7, December 7, the mobile radar stations on Oahu 1941, the Hawaiian Department contained two under - prepared to shut down. At Opana, the northern - strength infantry divisions, four antiaircraft artillery regi - Amost station on the island, PVT Joseph L. Lockard ments, four coast artillery regiments, a single company of and PVT George E. Elliott decided to keep their set in oper - light tanks, supporting troops and the Hawaiian Air Force. ation until the truck arrived to pick them up. At exactly The latter, LTG Short’s primary defense against air attack 0702, a large, luminous blip appeared on the set, larger than or invasion, included just over 230 aircraft, half of which either of them had ever seen before. They soon concluded it were obsolete. Furthermore, his aircraft warning system was a mass flight of aircraft about 130 miles away and mov - was far from complete, short on parts and trained person - ing rapidly south. It was, indeed, the 183 bombers, fighters nel, incapable of differentiating friendly from hostile planes and torpedo planes constituting the first wave of Japanese and without any mechanism for vectoring defending air - attackers. craft to intercept attackers. At approximately 0720, PVT Elliott called the Aircraft LTG Short had cordial relationships with the Pacific Warning Information Center at Fort Shafter, several miles Fleet commander, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, and with east of Pearl Harbor, to report the radar sighting. Just about Rear Adm. Claude C. Bloch, commandant of the 14th everyone at the center had left except PVT Joseph P. Mc - Naval District, but there was no arrangement for close Donald, still on the switchboard, and LT Kermit Tyler of the Army-Navy coordination and mutual support. Completely 78th Pursuit Squadron. PVT McDonald was impressed by lacking was any effective means of developing joint plans, the report, but LT Tyler told him and the two men at Opana coordinating operations or even exchanging intelligence that the sighting was merely a group of Army B-17s ex - information. pected to arrive that morning from the mainland. Since assuming command in February, LTG Short had Privates Lockard and Elliott continued to track the on - concentrated on badly needed troop training, airfield de - coming planes until they were obscured on their screen by velopment, coastal defense improvement, and replacement the permanent echo of the surrounding mountains. Then, at of obsolete or inoperable planes and equipment, yet, on the 0739, when the Japanese aircraft were 20 miles from Oahu, eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, his defenses were inade - the two men shut down their set. A quarter of an hour later, quate to meet precisely the kind of assault the Japanese as they rode back to camp, the aerial onslaught began. were about to launch. The Japanese blow came in two great waves. The first, detected earlier by Privates Lockard and Elliott, struck at COL Stanley L Falk, AUS Ret., PhD., is a military historian about 0755 and attacked repeatedly, with few lulls or and author specializing in World War II in the Pacific. This ar - pauses, for almost an hour before withdrawing. Torpedo ticle is reprinted from the December 1991 ARMY. planes, dive bombers and high-level bombers smashed at 52 ARMY I February 2013 Japanese aerial photograph taken during the attack, showing ranks of burning and, as yet undamaged, Army aircraft at Wheeler Field in central Oahu. y v a N . S . U the warships anchored in Pearl Harbor, while dive bombers lmost simultaneously with the raid on Hickham, and fighters pummeled Army and Navy airfields on Oahu. Japanese dive bombers struck the grounded air - The second wave, almost as large as the first but without craft of the 14th Pursuit Wing at Wheeler Field, in torpedo planes, arrived at about 0915 and followed a simi - Acentral Oahu. For 15 minutes, they wreaked havoc lar pattern of assault. By 1000 all Japanese aircraft were on among the closely parked planes. One bomb tore through a their way back to their carriers. dispensary in a former hangar, inflicting heavy casualties. Behind them lay the smoldering wreckage of the Pacific Another left a huge crater in the 34th Engineers area at Fleet: eight battleships sunk or crippled, more than half a nearby Schofield Barracks. Japanese fighters followed this dozen other warships heavily damaged and some 2,700 assault with repeated strafing attacks. naval casualties. Despite the ferocity of the onslaught, a number of Ameri - While the fleet had been the primary objective of the at - can fighters were able to take off from Wheeler. Four old P- tack, the Japanese had placed an even heavier emphasis on 36s of the 46th Pursuit Squadron even managed to shoot hitting the Oahu airfields. Nearly 60 percent of the strike down two Japanese planes, while losing one of their own. force had been targeted against the air bases in an effort to Other Japanese bombers and fighters devastated the smother any American aerial resistance. Navy and Marine Corps air bases on Ford Island, in the At Hickham Field, on the Honolulu side of Pearl Harbor center of Pearl Harbor, at Ewa, 10 miles to the west, and at and the headquarters of Maj. Gen. Frederick L. Martin’s Kaneohe, on the east coast, yet they almost missed two Hawaiian Air Force, some 50 bombers of the 18th Bombard - other smaller Army airfields. ment Wing were lined up in the open. Parked close to - Bellows Field, a few miles south of Kaneohe, was strafed gether for protection against possible sabotage, they made by a single fighter and then by a flight of nine more, appar - an easy target. The Japanese dive bombers and fighters ently only as a target of opportunity. The Japanese struck struck repeatedly at the massed planes and at hangars, bar - just as P-40s of the 44th Pursuit Squadron were trying to racks and other airfield installations. take off, destroying two of them as well as many still on the There was little opposition.

Load more