“Tora,
Tora, Tora”
Commander
Mitsuo Fuchida, Mission Commander, Air Component, Imperial Japanese Navy, Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941 to signal
achievement of complete surprise two minutes before commencement of attack on
US Pacific Fleet.
Alphen, Netherlands. 7
December. Could Pearl Harbor happen again? Seventy-five years ago today, at
0605 hours Central Pacific Time, Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo hoisted the signal
“Climb Mount Niitaka” aboard his fleet flagship the aircraft-carrier Akagi. Five minutes later the first of 353 fighters,
dive-bombers and torpedo-bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy rose from the decks
of six Japanese fleet ‘carriers’ some 136 nautical miles NNE of Pearl Harbor.
Three hours later four US battleships of the US Pacific Fleet lay sunk,
together with a host of cruisers and other warships as the last Japanese
warplanes headed back to their fleet leaving 2403 Americans dead, 1778 wounded,
and having also destroyed 188 US aircraft.
To answer the question at
hand one has to compare the current relationship between Western policy,
strategy and military capability with that of the US in 1941. The key policy
decision that led the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor was the July 1941
decision by the US, Britain and the Netherlands (government-in-exile) to impose
a complete oil embargo on Japan as Tokyo moved to seize the vital oil and rubber
resources in the Dutch East Indies. Washington had been moving towards such a
decision ever since the Japanese had launched a policy of expansionism in East Asia
during the 1930s.
Whilst President Roosevelt
was fully aware that war with Japan was a possible eventuality there was little
or no relationship at the time between US policy and strategy. Worse, there was absolutely no relationship
between US policy, strategy, and military capability. Even whilst the ‘appeasing’
British rearmed in the 1930s US forces remained stuck in a post-World War One time-warp.
This was particularly the case for the US Navy. Whilst the Americans possessed
three fleet aircraft-carriers at the time the ‘van’ of the fighting fleet was
comprised of ageing World War One battleships. These ships also formed the
backbone of the US Pacific Fleet. US military air and land power was also markedly
inferior at the time of Pearl Harbor to its German, Japanese and British
counterparts.
Fast forward to today and
there is a growing gap between Western policy, strategy, and military capability,
on the one hand, and strategic reality, on the other, as the balance of power
shifts away from the West. As in the days prior to Pearl Harbor too many
Western leaders believe the West’s illiberal adversaries will somehow heed
calls to respect toothless international law and weak and weakly-applied Western
economic sanctions – covenants without the sword as Thomas Hobbes would once
have called them. In other words a ‘Pearl Harbor syndrome’ again stalks the
corridors of Western political impotence.
A ‘Pearl Harbor’ today
would of course take a very different form from the carrier-strike of 1941,
although a surprise military attack on NATO forces cannot and must not be ruled
out. More likely is that such an attack would take place in conjunction with a
wave of mass destruction terrorism, information warfare, and some attempt at
cyber-Armageddon. After all, the use of carrier air power in 1941 was simply a surprising
means to a shocking end with the aim of effectively knock the US out of a war
Imperial Japan saw as inevitable. Tokyo hoped at the time that such a strike
would enable Japan to gain a decisive advantage that would enable her to
successfully fight a war with an intrinsically far stronger America.
In the event of a new ‘Pearl
Harbor’ the West would be forced into a long war to prevail as it was in 1941.
Equally, as in 1941, once the Western democracies began to mobilise the immense
and intelligent resources available to them they would likely eventually
prevail. The problem is that the application of such Western liberal
rationalism is not normally what prevents illiberal regimes from acting.
Moreover, the cost of failed deterrence would be enormous be it in terms of
lives, geld, and political credibility. There is another problem; an eventual
victory could not be guaranteed. Therefore, for the sake of re-establishing
credible deterrence what matters now is that unlike in 1941 Western policy, strategy
and military capability must again be aligned.
In the event the Japanese
failed at Pearl Harbor because they also failed militarily and strategically.
They failed strategically because they did no damage to the US homeland, which became
the ‘great arsenal of democracy’ as American industrial capacity was rapidly transformed
into military might as American genius was applied to the war. They failed
militarily because the Imperial Japanese Navy failed to locate and sink Admiral
William (Bill) Halsey’s aircraft carriers which were fortuitously not present
at Pearl Harbor.
The absence of the
carriers on that fateful day was both indicative and decisive. First, Admiral
Halsey agreed with Admiral Yamamoto, the Japanese fleet commander, that in the
vast expanse of the Pacific aircraft carriers not slow battleships were the decisive
power-projecting naval weapon of the age. Whilst in the wake of Pearl Harbor
Yamamoto lost the carrier v. battleship battle in the ultra-conservative Tokyo of
the time, US carrier air power was to prove vital in the later conduct of the
war. Second, one of the carriers absent from Pearl Harbor, the USS Enterprise, was to play a vital role
in the decisive American victory at the Battle of Midway six months later which
took place between 4 and 7 June 1942. The Japanese lost four carriers at
Midway, whilst the US lost only one, a defeat which decisively tipped the balance
of naval power in the Pacific in America’s favour and opened the way to the
brilliant island-hopping strategy with which America won the war in the Pacific.
The irony is that the
Japanese had been inspired to carry out Operation
AI by Operation Judgement, the
Royal Navy’s 11-12 November 1940 attack against the Italian fleet base at
Taranto. At Taranto 21 Swordfish bombers and torpedo-bombers, under the command
of Lt Cdr M. W. Williamson RN, 815 Squadron Fleet Air Arm, sank one Italian battleship
and badly-damaged two others.
There is one final irony.
Today, the last operational British aircraft-carrier HMS Illustrious will be towed from Portsmouth en route to Turkey
and scrapping. In five months the first of the two new Queen Elizabeth-class super-carriers will arrive in Portsmouth to
begin sea trials. It was a forebear of the soon-to-be no more ‘Lusty’ that launched the attack on
Taranto that so inspired the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor.
Could Pearl Harbor happen
again? Yes, if Western leaders fail to properly align policy, strategy and military
capability and in so doing render deterrence no longer credible. Indeed, such an attack would be the preferred 'weapon' of choice of an enemy.
In memory of the
servicemen of both the United States and Imperial Japan who lost their lives
serving their countries on 7 December, 1941.
