radar warning at the info center

Im watching the military channel and they are talking about Pearl. A fact I never knew is that LT Kermit who was on duty and thought the radar signal was B17s did not have any means of contacting the airfields even if he had known the signal was not the bombers. To me this is one more failure of Short and Kimmel.

 

From all I have read and seen, the Radar, its operators and even the call center were all operating purely on a training schedule and essentially without any concern for 'operational' needs. Curious as Britain had fought and won the BoB with Radar a full year before. Certainly this is one of Pearl's command failures, the failure to use every asset to its utmost. Seemingly they could not get past the notion that technicly, America was at peace and therefore not at risk.

 

Perhaps the biggest "failure" of the radar system is that, post-attack, the radar was duly tracking the Japanese planes back to their carriers, but that information went nowhere. The USS Enterprise was "chasing ghosts" all over trying to find out where the Japanese forces were, getting false and misleading reports, and the info was at hand if only the communications "system" would allow it. Probably just as well the paltry forces of our lone carrier didn't try to take on the SIX carriers of the Kido Butai, but it would be nice to think that maybe an American scout bomber could have slipped through in the mass "confusion" of landing on the second strike and maybe left a Japanese carrier burning off Hawaii (scout bombers did that a couple of times around the Solomons)!

 

Remembering some of the research I did during Robdab's legendary "December 7th attack on the Panama Canal" WI on AHF....could the Info Center have vectored fighters??? Real GCI required VHF radios fitted to fighters, rather than HF; only a few of the fighters in the Carribean Air Force had been so fitted by December 7th - what was the situation in Hawaii???

Also - had Robert Watson-Watt made the first of his advisory visits to the Pacific theatre by then??? IIRC he was sent a number of times on shortish trips....then a much longer secondment.

 

Someone check A.V.Jone's book...I wold but mines under the chickens..holding the gate up.

 

Is there a good, handy ( I.E. net-available) overview of what was in place as an early warning net/filter process? By December '41, much more work seems to have done in the PCD than Hawaii?

 

Thanks for that...

Even just three pages into the Joint Committee testimony, I've seen FIVE major points-of-failure in the system God knows how many will rack up...

 

The simple fact was that Short had been told by the Navy that an air attack was impossible.
Short's error was that he assumed the U.S. Navy knew what the Japanese navy was capable of.
That provides the reason for his total incompetence in the event.

 

Nothing new to see here.......move along

 

??? It seems to me you would find a course in logic helpful.

 

It seems that the Army - who was responsible for AA defense of both Navy and Army Bases - complained of ready ammunition going bad in the Hawaiian climate sometime well before December 7. At the time, Navy fighter and torpedo aircraft had so little range the aircraft carriers would have to close to about 100 miles from the target to safely launch and recover them, putting a carrier attack fleet within range of search aircraft before dark of the previous day. The same would be true for a submarine or raiding cruiser that might shell the Oahu defenses or harbor. So, the Navy told the Army they would have at least 4 hours to prepare for an attack and allowed them to keep the ammunition safely storage. The ammunition was, in fact, placed at all the guns within 4-hours of the initial attack on December 7 and probably remained there unused until the war ended.