[Milsurplus] Japan's Pearl Harbor Blunders

[Bill Cromwell]

On Mon, 2013-02-11 at 17:54 -0800, Joe Connor wrote:
> OK, for obvious reasons, the Japanese had to give priority to Battleship Row and Hickham Field. 
> 
> Did the initial strike have sufficient resources to also take out the oil storage tanks and dry-docks or would a second strike have been needed? You can see why the Japanese carrier force would not want to stick around for a second strike. After all, the U.S. carriers were unaccounted for. 
> 
>                                     Joe Connor


Hi Joe,

There was a second strike. The third strike that would have targeted the
repair and fuel facilities was canceled. The Japanese fleet commander
was worried that he would be attacked any minute by the U.S. carriers.
All the Japanese knew was the carriers were not at Pearl Harbor.
Therefore the carriers were at sea in an unknown location and he was in
danger of being attacked. So he recovered the planes from the second
attack and bugged out for Japan. His fears were not entirely unfounded.

Had the U.S. known the location of the Japanese fleet they would indeed
have attacked. Six months later the U.S did deepsix four of the Japanese
carriers off Midway along with inflicting other damage.

73,

Bill  KU8H