Abstract
The objective of this paper is to make a battle analysis of Pearl Harbor and look at the possible alternate outcomes using intellectual standards. Would the Second World War end differently if U.S. hadn't intervened? There are different facets to Pearl Harbor and how those tangents could have shaped the war in a different way. The paper looks at the weaker side of US military and how the Japanese took advantage of that.
Introduction
Background
The United States and Japan had been inching towards a war for decades. By 1938, the US remnants were desperate for humanitarian aid and this led to the development of a stable and elaborate network of trading between west and east that connected different territories through trade. Japan had always wanted to be the most powerful nation in the Far East. It was not pleased with the trade network that was supplying its various enemies in Southeast Asia. There was already a friction between U.S. and Japan, when it was forced at the Washington disarmament conference of 1922 by the United States to accept a lower warship ratio. The Japanese thought that the only way to solve its economic and demographic problems wanted to remove this trade network. This was their first step of their Pacific Campaign (Morris, 1947).
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. The two hours barrage was devastating and left 20 American naval vessels, and 200 airplanes destroyed. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers were killed, and thousands wounded. Three days later, Japan allies with Germany and Italy, who declare war on the United States. America finally joins World War II. Pearl Harbor attack led the start of the Pacific War.
Alternative ?
Could there be a different outcome for Pearl Harbor? The aim of U.S. to set a naval base in Pearl Harbor in early 1941 was to restrict Japanese expansion in the central Pacific. The United States was unprepared for any war, and its defenses were inadequate. When the air attack on Pearl Harbor began, there was an element of surprise when more than 300 Japanese planes attacked U.S. air bases. The Hawaiian battleships were sitting in the harbor and unmanned, and were thus an easy target.
If American intelligence officials were not so confident of Japanese not attacking them, and were alert all the time, the outcome would have been different. The fact that Japan and Hawaii were about 4,000 miles apart (Gudmens, 2009) made the American military leaders expect any attack closer to European colonies in the South Pacific. However, for the Japanese, Pearl Harbor was too irresistible to ignore, what with hundreds of airplanes squeezed onto adjacent airfields.
Before the attack, Japan had made an extensive plan based on the intelligence and information required to plan an attack on the Pacific Fleet. The planners knew the exact location of the aircrafts assigned to each airfield. Moreover, the Pacific Fleet had a pattern of sailing on Mondays and returning on Saturdays (Gudmens, 2009). Perhaps this pattern gave an edge to the enemy. If US had been more careful and looked at all possibilities, it could have avoided being exploited by the enemy. The enemy knew that the fleets were always in port on Sunday and were always focusing on the southern aerial screens. The element of predictability played an important role here in the outcome of the war.
The American intelligence officers knew about the Purple code (Gudmens, 2009) used by the Japanese to send messages. If US code breakers had been quick to decode the messages and took 2-3 days instead of a week, they would perhaps have got an alert of the Pearl Harbor attack. Furthermore, there was a power struggle among the Navy’s senior commanders and this only led to mistrust and poor information (Kahn, 1991).
Conclusion
References
Gudmens, J. (2009). Staff Ride Handbook for the Attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941: A Study of Defending America. Combat Studies Institute Press.Kahn, D. (1991). The intelligence failure of Pearl Harbor. New York: Council on Foreign Relations.
Morris, L. (1947). Salvage of The OkhLahoma At Pearl Harbor. Engineering and Science Monthly.
Richard Frank. (2012). Attack on Pearl Harbor. Leesburg: Weider History Group, Inc.
William L Shields, & Joseph Romito. (2012). Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, combat, myths, deceptions. Rockville: Air Force Historical Foundation.
