An American admiral launched an almost perfect
carrier attack on Pearl Harbor during an exercise in 1932,
but the military failed to learn its lesson,
allowing the Japanese to launch almost exactly
the same attack nine years later.
Rear Admiral Harry E. Yarnell
was an early proponent of aircraft carriers,
but his displays of air power
were discounted by most of the admiralty.
The aircraft had only been invented
30 years earlier in 1903.
But almost immediately the military
started to look at how to use the technology in combat.
Now, different military branches
from different nations moved at different speeds,
and many navies considered planes
an observation platform and nothing more.
In World War I, pilots bombed enemy targets
by throwing munitions from their planes.
But aerial bombing was still considered a stunt by many,
and the U.S. Navy brass was convinced
that airplanes were not a threat to their capital ships.
Between the wars, aviation pioneers
tried to get the Navy and Army to understand
how important aircraft would be
in the next war.
Army General William Billy Mitchell had some success
in 1921 when his men sank the captured German battleship
Ostrfriesland in a test.
I don't know how to pronounce Ostrfriesland.
They wanted me to get it right,
they should have won the war.
But I'm glad they didn't.
Eleven years later,
Yarnell was given command of the attacking force
in an annual exercise to test the U.S. defenses
at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The defenders were certain that he,
like all of his predecessors,
would launch his attack using his battleships and cruisers.
Instead, he turned to his carriers.
Yarnell ordered his cruisers to remain near San Diego
in complete radio silence
while his two carriers, the USS Lexington and USS Saratoga,
proceeded to Pearl Harbor with three destroyer escorts
inside a massive rainstorm that hid them
from enemy observers and radar.
On the morning of Sunday, Feb. 7, 1932,
the attacking fleet was in position
and Battleship Row was essentially asleep,
just like Dec. 7, 1941.
And, except for Japan's use of modified torpedoes
and the size of the respective fleets,
the attacks were nearly mirrors of one another.
The fighters took off first, F-4Bs.
They launched strafing runs against the defenders' fighters,
barracks, and other assets, keeping them from taking off.
Behind them, flights of BM-1 dive bombers dropped flares
and bags of flour that simulated bombs,
destroying every single battleship
and many of the other vessels.
Like the Japanese,
Yarnell attacked from the northeast and,
like the Japanese, he attacked in the wee hours
of a Sunday morning.
The referees of the exercise
declared Yarnell the clear winner,
but later reversed their decision
when Pearl Harbor admirals and generals complained
that Yarnell acted in an unfair manner.
Their complaints included that Sunday morning
was an inappropriate time for an attack.
Attacking on a Sunday morning?
That's like attacking on Christmas!
Who would do that? ♪ The king of the spot ♪
♪ Doing my thing ♪
♪ It's real good ♪
♪ And the call me king ♪ ♪ Big bad tricks under my wing ♪
- They also doubted the capability of their enemy
to even pull off that kind of ambush.
Sound familiar?
It's kind of like the time a Marine general
war-gamed a fictional Iran against the US military and won.
Check out the video about it.
The US military tapped Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper
to lead the Red opposing forces
in the most expensive military exercise in history.
Unfortunately for the United States,
the Japanese had naval officers
at their consulate on Oahu in 1932
who witnessed the exercise
and read the press coverage that followed,
allowing them to report on it to their superiors
almost 10 years before Japan launched its own attack.
The bulk of the U.S. military refused to accept the result.
In 1941, average sailors and soldiers
paid the price for their hubris.
But could the 1941 attack against Pearl Harbor
have been prevented anyway?
Exhaustive investigations concluded
that there were many factors that contributed
to the overwhelming defeat that day.
The warnings from the past were ignored.
Intelligence was misread or unshared.
Assets were spread thin throughout the Atlantic
and Pacific theaters.
But mostly, the Americans underestimated the Japanese,
just like in 1932.
The architect of the attack, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto,
determined that war with America was inevitable,
and also unwinnable.
Therefore, Japan must strike hard enough on the first day
to destroy American morale,
quote, to such an extent
that it could not be recovered.
Unquote.
Their plan was to lead the world in exploiting
the lethal capabilities of aircraft carriers.
For eleven months, they prepared in secret,
and finally on November 26th,
the strike fleet set out across the Pacific.
The next day, the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington,
Harold Stark, sent out a warning to all U.S. Navy outposts
in the Pacific.
Intelligence suggested Japanese action in the Philippines
or Southeast Asia.
But as the warning didn't mention Hawaii,
U.S. Admiral Husband E. Kimmel,
the commander of the Pacific Fleet,
failed to predict the imminent threat.
The morning of December 7, 1941,
two privates reported an unusually high spike
on their early warning oscilloscope
and finally decided to report it to Fort Shafter,
but were allegedly told to disregard.
There just had never been such an attack in the history
of naval warfare.
Japan sent six aircraft carriers
with over three hundred and fifty planes.
A date that would live in infamy.
19 U.S. ships and over 300 aircraft
were damaged or destroyed.
2,403 Americans were killed
and another 1,178 wounded.
It would be nearly four years of brutal war
until Japan finally surrendered.
(suspenseful music)