It was a typical balmy winter morning at Pearl Harbor on Oahu that fateful Sunday so many decades ago, with clear conditions over the harbor itself and dense rain clouds over the island towards the north. The Navy and Army were well-prepared for an attack from the ocean from the south, and southern Oahu bristled with ships, submarines, aircraft, coastal artillery, and troops. Unfortunately, the enemy perversely chose to attack from the north from its undetected naval task force. The carriers launched their planes at the break of dawn, and the aircraft achieved total surprise and domination when they flew over the island and popped out of the clouds. Virtually all defending aircraft were parked helplessly on the ground, and the naval fleet lay immobile and helpless bottled up in the harbor.
The only reason why not all of the defending ships were sunk and not all of the defending aircraft were destroyed was that the enemy planes were armed only with flares and bags of flour. This attack took place on February 7, 1932, when the U.S. Navy was conducting massive maneuvers to test the defenses at Pearl Harbor. Half of the fleet was supposed to "attack" the facility while the other half, along with the ground troops, artillery, and Army Air Corps, was to defend. The commander of the attacking fleet, Admiral H. E. Yarnell, left all of his proud battleships and cruisers behind and relied totally on two aircraft carriers with four destroyer escorts to do the deed--with overwhelming success.
Yarnell and his supporters urged during the post-game analysis that perhaps it was time for the Navy to rely more heavily on aircraft carriers and not so much on its beloved battleships. Unfortunately, the traditionalists prevailed, arguing in part that the exercise was not fair because the attack took place on a Sunday when everyone was less alert and that it would not have succeeded but for the element of surprise and the fact that the attackers approached from the "wrong" direction.
Although the U.S. Navy apparently did not learn anything from the exercise, such was not the case with the Japanese. They had a well-established intelligence network on the island who reported back to Tokyo exactly what had happened. As a result, nearly ten years later, Japan launched its own devastating attack using the plan which had been devised by the Americans.
For further information on this initial attack on Pearl Harbor, as well as a second one in 1938, which achieved similar results, click here.
