Did government officials know that the attacks on Pearl Harbor were coming?

[njlauren]

It wasn't that they didn't head it, the officer in charge thought it was the scheduled arrival of a flight of B-17's.
The technology was so new that the operators likely couldn't tell the difference between a large number of planes and the few B-17's, though the B-17 being much larger a few would present an image similar to a large number of single engine planes.

The attack wasn't supposed to be a complete surprise. It was only a complete surprise because of decoding and typing delays at the Japanese embassy. The message was supposed to have been delivered to Cordell Hull before the attack. Not that it was an actual declaration of war, but it was to say Japan was ending negotiations, which would have been a huge hint.

There were other US failures, aside from the the radar interpretation. Failure to take seriously the sinking of a mini-sub inside the anti-submarine nets at Pearl.
The FBI's failure to correctly interpret phone conversations they listened in on.
Thinking sabotage was a greater risk than military attack.
Failure of the US to learn from the Battle of Taranto and so thinking ships at Pearl were safe from torpedo attack.

Overall the attack did very little to impede the US war effort. The Japanese almost totally neglected the ship repair facilities which were key the success of the Battle of Midway (if the Yorktown, heavily damaged at Coral Sea, had had to go all the way to the west coast for repairs it likely wouldn't have been present to play it's pivotal role at Midway.

Many of the ships damaged at Midway were back in service, because of the on-site repair facilities, within months, including two battleships. But even without any battleships the course of the war would likely have been the same.

The key combat ships were the carriers, escort carriers, destroyers and destroyer escorts. The Battle off Samar (one of the battles of Leyte Gulf) being a prime example, when the DD's and DE's (most notably the USS Johnston and USS Samuel B. Roberts, both sunk) charged headlong in to an overwhelming Japanese task force (four battleships, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and around ten destroyers) in and effort to give the escort carries time to withdraw.
"In no engagement of its entire history has the United States Navy shown more gallantry, guts and gumption than in those two morning hours between 0730 and 0930 off Samar"
— Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume XII, Leyte

An uncle of mine died at Pearl so it's always held a particular interest for me. When I was a kid and first heard of the Roosevelt conspiracy, his secret meetings, etc., I thought "Wow!", but as I grew up and learned more about what actually happened, I can see there was no need for any conspiracy.
It's easy to look at history through the lens of the present and say, "It was obvious Japan was going to attack!", or "It could never have worked if Roosevelt hadn't aided and abetted." It's proper place is in the bin with the 9-11 conspiracies.

It can be hard to put yourself in 1940/41 and look at it from the perspective of just the pieces of information of which any one person was aware.

Nicely put, Average, and it tallies with what I know (and I am not going to claim to be a total expert)...you are correct about the repair facilities being Key, as you point out if they had been crippled, many of the ships damaged but salvagable would have been out of action a lot longer......between patching together the ships that were repairable (like the yorktown), and other ships, it allowed the US to stay in the war that led to Midway....which also bought us time for new ships to come online and modern aircraft that were in production. The problem with conspiracy theories is they take a question, like why did we fail at Pearl Harbor, but instead of looking at the facts, the details, and piecing together the truth, they instead make a supposition ("Roosevely and Churchill lied") and then try to find 'facts' that back them up, that often are suppositions (aka, we know that the US and Britain had code breaking groups, so therefore they must have known..what that leaves out is those codebreakers only broke certain codes, and I believe we hadn't broken the japanese naval code until well after Pearl which we did use at Midway(we did have limited capability on their embassy ones, but not enough). Worse, it requires fitting 'facts' to the theory, rather than fitting the theory to the facts. My closest ties to pearl were an uncle who served on the Essex class Yorktown, the replacement for the one at Midway.

 

[njlauren]

Actually, the major strategic threat in the Pacific at the time was considered to be the British. The naval war games were all based on that assumption.

But at the time, very few navies realized the real threat that the aircraft carrier represented (In spite of the Britsih raid on Taranto or the role naval aviation played in sinking the Bismark).

Very few within the US military establishment thought they could go toe to toe with a Western power and win (in spite of the Japanese trouncing the Russians in the Battle of Toshima Straits). Also, a majority of Japanese ground forces were tied up in China and Manchuko, the Japanese had made no overt moves against any western power or their colonies, and the Japanese had been allies to both the US and the UK in WW1.

Yes, the gov't had intelligence that could have forwarned of the attack, however, intelligence is a dicey game. One has to A) get the relevant information, and vette the source, then, B) see that information is collated with other relevant information, C) analyse the information and be able to defend the analysis as accurate, finally D) see that said analysis gets to the people who can actually do something about it.

Remeber this was the days way before the internet. Critical information was still hand carried (planes weren't that fast and ships/trains are much slower), everything was paper, which means finding and collating information was far slower as well.

Side note, it was the war in Europe that FDR saw as vital, and even with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the national sentiment about getting involved in another European War would have kept the US
out of that theater of combat, until Hitler foolishly decided to declare War on the US first.

Sick, nice commentary, well written and I believe dead spot on. Among other things, intelligence requires verification, when you have a piece of intelligence, you generally want it verified by something else (that was one of the problems with the claim of WMD's in Iraq, the claim was based on single sourced intelligence from someone supposedly running an intelligence chain in Iraq, and it wasn't every verified via other sources, it was taken as truth...), so that would take time. The other thing as you point out is few people thought the Japanese would take on the US, that it wasn't worth it to them, plus it also takes understanding that the Japanese were seen as inferior to western nations, specifically in the military, and the western powers took a big shock when they saw just how tough the Japanese fighters were, how in many cases good they were.

 

[njlauren]

As it turned out, with the exception of the USS Ward and USS Arizona, most of the ships sunk or damaged at Pearl were raised, repaired and saw action during the landings of '42 - '45. Battlewagons, though considered obsolete for sea based actions, still packed a mighty punch in gunnery for amphibious landings. Rocket based artillery (think katoosh rockets) did not have near the accuracy that the big naval rifles did.




Only the Yorktown was lost at Midway. USS Hornet was lost at the battle of the Santa Cruz islands in Oct. of 1942.

I stand corrected, I thought we lost a couple of carriers outright at Midway, since I am operating from memory, not to be trusted

 

[fuckwaffle]

When I said battleships, I was talking non carriers, I used a broad term I shouldn't of..cruisers, destroyers and so forth were big players, and that is what I was referring to. The Battleships themselves, the boats that later on carried 16" guns, did play a major role in MacArthur's island hopping campaign, for example. We didn't just lost battleships at Pearl, we lost a lot of the non carrier fleet there I believe, and that was my point, not specifically about the battleships themselves (bad teminology on my part). Battleships are not that numerous, even after we rebuilt the fleet there weren't all that many of the super ships like the NJ and Missouri. The advantage they had was the long range guns, they could fire a 16" shell many miles, so they could pound a target from way offshore, which was safer then close in firing (they figured that out in Vietnam, they re-activated the NJ and Missouri, and used their guns to pound target in North Vietnam inland. They had been using aircraft and we were losing planes to SAM batteries and such, the guns on the big ships could pound the same targets and not risk planes/crews).

The battleship versus battleship wars of the past, however, were a thing of the past, there were very few if any of those.

Strength
8 battleships
8 cruisers
30 destroyers
4 submarines
1 USCG Cutter
49 other ships
~390 aircraft
Mobile Unit:
6 aircraft carriers
2 battleships
2 heavy cruisers
1 light cruiser
9 destroyers
8 tankers
23 fleet submarines
5 midget submarines
414 aircraft


Casualties and losses
4 battleships sunk
3 battleships damaged
1 battleship grounded
2 other ships sunk
3 cruisers damaged
3 destroyers damaged
3 other ships damaged
188 aircraft destroyed
159 aircraft damaged
2,402 killed
1,247 wounded
4 midget submarines sunk
1 midget submarine grounded
29 aircraft destroyed
64 killed
1 captured

Of the 10 battleships only 4 were sunk and I believe 3 were later raised. As for other ships of the line, any not listed as destroyed were repaired and back in action in short order.

Yes there was a lot of damage done and yes it was awhile before the damaged ships could be utilized to hit back. But none of the 6 carriers were even touched.

Of those ships in Pearl at the time of the attack, this is a list of damage and when those ships were back in service.

Battleships
Arizona: Exploded; total loss. 1,177 dead.
Oklahoma: Capsized, 429 dead. Refloated November 1943; capsized and lost while under tow to the mainland May 1947 [89]
West Virginia: two bombs, seven torpedoes, sunk; returned to service July 1944. 106 dead.
California: two bombs, two torpedoes, sunk; returned to service January 1944. 100 dead.
Nevada: six bombs, one torpedo, beached; returned to service October 1942. 60 dead.
Tennessee: two bombs; returned to service February 1942. 5 dead.
Maryland: two bombs; returned to service February 1942. 4 dead (including floatplane pilot shot down).
Pennsylvania (Kimmel’s Flagship):[90] in drydock with Cassin and Downes, one bomb, debris from USS Cassin; remained in service. 9 dead.

Cruisers
Helena: One torpedo; returned to service January 1942. 20 dead.
Raleigh: One torpedo; remained in service.
Honolulu: Near miss, light damage; remained in service.

Destroyers
Cassin: in drydock with Downes and Pennsylvania, one bomb, burned; returned to service February 1944.
Downes: in drydock with Cassin and Pennsylvania, caught fire from Cassin, burned; returned to service November 1943.
Shaw: Three bombs; returned to service June 1942.

 

[hobbit.]

Some say that officials within the Roosevelt administration knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance, but allowed it to happen so that the United States could become directly involved in the war.

the nips are and always have been nasty wee slant eyed bastards, like the irish but with slitty eyes. you decide as to if bog trotting feenian bastards could attack america without america knowing! asuming bog trotters could build air craft carriers...

 

[Polarbear57]

Some say that officials within the Roosevelt administration knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance, but allowed it to happen so that the United States could become directly involved in the war.

No Administration after WWII will
open the Files, belive me.

 

[mark_j]

I stand corrected, I thought we lost a couple of carriers outright at Midway, since I am operating from memory, not to be trusted

As it turns out I was mistaken about the USS Ward. She was lost at Leyte in Dec. of '44 after a kamakazi attack. It was the Ward who fired the first shot of WWII when she sunk a Japanese sub 3 miles off Pearl.

It was the USS Shaw that I thought was lost when her forward magazine exploded, but she was only damaged and later repaired and put back in service. She continued to serve until Oct '45 when she was decommissioned having earned 11 battle stars.