Adm Nimitz on Pearl Harbor - T or F?

[Pogo]

...................Guess I should have known better.

[m50a1ontos]

They made 4 mistakes....the already mentioned 3 plus...

They didn't touch the subs...

The "Silent Service" started wreaking havoc on Japanese shipping almost imedeatly while the surface Navy was still licking their wounds.

[Ploesti]

He wasn't selected to be Commander Pacific Fleet and to be promoted to Admiral until December 17, 1941, effective December 31, 1941.

I concur, I say BS

[RickH]

I concur, I say BS

What if the phone call was made, informally, then it took the additional time for all of the official paperwork to catch up ?

[Ploesti]

I concur, I say BS

What if the phone call was made, informally, then it took the additional time for all of the official paperwork to catch up ?

What I think is possible BS is a young sailor asking Nimitz what he thought about the distruction part of the story and Nimitz explaining back to him. I'd think Nimitz at that time would have kept his thoughts to himself or high ranking personel only. IMHO

[Canso42]

There are at least a couple of us here who knew the PB2Y pilot, then-Lt. Frank DeLorenzo who flew Nimitz to Pearl. "Delo" was quite a guy.

[Canso42]

As long as we're diverging some on ships instead of a/c..... I saw the IJN midget sub that went aground in HI in it's current display at the NMPW.
Has anyone else ever thought that the kaiten drivers were not exactly the cream of the crop of the IJN silent service?
The one on display navigated its way onto the shore..... and the one everyone knows about stuck his scope up for a look next to a gunnery target! And it was between an armed patrol bomber and the duty destroyer and both were wound up tight full of itchy trigger fingers.
Tactically challenged?

[Fearless Tower]

As long as we're diverging some on ships instead of a/c..... I saw the IJN midget sub that went aground in HI in it's current display at the NMPW.
Has anyone else ever thought that the kaiten drivers were not exactly the cream of the crop of the IJN silent service?
The one on display navigated its way onto the shore..... and the one everyone knows about stuck his scope up for a look next to a gunnery target! And it was between an armed patrol bomber and the duty destroyer and both were wound up tight full of itchy trigger fingers.
Tactically challenged?

Part of the problem is that the Japanese never really embraced the submarine like the US and Germans did. Throughout the war, they saw them as primarily covert transports rather than offensive weapons.

[SaxMan]

As long as we're diverging some on ships instead of a/c..... I saw the IJN midget sub that went aground in HI in it's current display at the NMPW.
Has anyone else ever thought that the kaiten drivers were not exactly the cream of the crop of the IJN silent service?
The one on display navigated its way onto the shore..... and the one everyone knows about stuck his scope up for a look next to a gunnery target! And it was between an armed patrol bomber and the duty destroyer and both were wound up tight full of itchy trigger fingers.
Tactically challenged?

Part of the problem is that the Japanese never really embraced the submarine like the US and Germans did. Throughout the war, they saw them as primarily covert transports rather than offensive weapons.

I would disagree. The IJN used their subs primarily to destroy other warships, rather than prey on merchant shipping like the US and Germans. To that effect, they were quite effective, especially in the earlier part of the war sinking Yorktown & Wasp while damaging Saratoga twice, taking her away from battles where her presence could have helped the American cause. Battleship North Carolina also fell victim to a sub, being damaged the same time Wasp was sunk and missing the Santa Cruz and Guadalcanal battles due to the damage. The light cruiser Juneau also was sunk by a Japanese sub after she was damaged after the horrific night action of November 12, 1942, taking with her the five Sullivan brothers.

At Tarawa, the I-boats sank escort carrier Liscombe Bay and damaged the new Lexington. Knowing this is how the Japanese employed their I-boats ultimately lead to their destruction, as the England proved prior to the invasion of the Marianas where she virtually singlehandedly wiped out the Japanese submarine picket line.

[JDK]

I certainly claim no expertise on IJN submarine ops, but the fact that they were able to use sub-borne aircraft to reconnoitre target cities in Australasia and the US Western seaboard, and penetrated Sydney harbour afterwards successfully was in a like-for-like measure an achievement none of the allies managed, AFAIK. We were lucky that on those missions they missions lacked good targets or accurate firing. The preparations for a sub-launched aerial attack on the Panama Canal was probably unlikely to have succeeded, but indicates an attempted tasking that again, none of the allies considered.

Interesting questions, as ever!