That's right. FUEL efficiency! Much has been made over the years of how grievously wounded the US Navy was by the attack on Pearl Harbor 80 years ago. HOWEVER (comma!) HOW we got INTO World War II might just be as misunderstood and perhaps miss taught as how we ended it. IN REALITY...the Japanese might JUST have done the US a larger favor by putting those eight old, inefficient, and overmanned battlewagons on a shallow mud bottom in Pearl Harbor than they would have by luring them out into a stand-up fight on the high seas. We lost over 2300 men in the attack in that harbor on that morning, but if the IJN had lured the USN out for a fight on the open ocean instead, WE WOULD ALMOST CERTAINLY have lost well over 10,000 sailors, AND due to the vagaries of political personnel assignment, the brightest people with the most promising futures WERE assigned to those eight hulls, and later RE-assigned throughout the fleet bringing with them their experience and knowledge to leaven the inexperienced future crews of ships still on the drawing boards. The USN would not have been able to salvage the steel, equipment and guns from those old hulls to be repurposed on NEW hulls. BUT...even if all eight battleships had survived the attack intact, we would have been compelled to USE them, and they were OLD, SLOW, had marginal fire control systems, AND they drank bunker oil at a dizzying rate. FAR too much to have been of much use in those early days of WWII. Ask our friends, the Brits. They lost TWO front-line battleships, three days later without trading salvos with a single opponent, and they also lost their "super-power" status, perhaps forever. It would not be until nearly a year later that the first of three new classes of FAST USN battleships would be able to join the fleet. Fast enough to keep up with the carrier battle groups. Efficient enough not to require the PRE positioning of a bunch of slow, fleet (or commercial) oilers to allow the new battleships to stay with the fleet. AND.... What we did NOT lose at Pearl was more consequential that what we did lose. None of our Aircraft Carriers. None of our fleet boats. None of the oil and drydock facilities at Pearl. None of the administration facilities.(*) The Unites States, caught COMPLETELY flat-footed actually fought back a little on that morning, destroying or damaging some 100 aircraft (one out of four present that morning) 5 submarines (one a few hours before the attack!) compelling the Japanese to cancel a planned third wave attack, and beat feet for the barn. This left the USN with a faster, more agile, more fuel efficient fleet! They were much more able to feint and jab while gathering up assets for the massive brawl that would END the war...a few years later. People do not think about those ungainly, unglamorous "trash haulers" in the fleet that provide the beans, bullets, and GAS to the fighting ships, but warfare is always, was always an exercise in logistics. You had to PRE-POSITION relatively slower oilers in those days to fill up the big boys, and the Pacific was a BIIIIG and DANGEROUS lake!! Ask USS Neosho.... -or??? Ask the Imperial Japanese Navy!!! Their submarines targeted warships. OURs targeted cargo ships and, most especially....OILERS. This is why the largest and most heavily armed battleships ever built in human history (all Japanese) MOSTLY sat the war out anchored in their home waters - and when they DID finally come out to fight, they did not have the bunkerage to make it back home. Of the eight battleships sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor, all but two were raised....Arizona and the target ship Utah were too heavily damaged for salvage and remain where they were sunk. IIRC, Five of the eight went on to serve until the end of the war, in a role that they should have been originally reserved for: Slow, Inefficient, but VERY heavily armed Amphibious Support Ships. Happy Pearl Harbor Day! (*) ADM Kimmel, was struck by a spent machine-gun round which came through his office window at the fancy new Fleet HQ that morning while he was watching the attack unfold. The still-warm bullet literally bounced off of his chest, and yes....It was probably one of ours. Fired in disgrace shortly thereafter, he reportedly wished that the bullet had gone through his heart.
Sadly, the date no longer seems to represent infamy. Even 9/11 has quickly lost its infamy. One of the only good things about December 7th, 1941 is that had it not been for the Japanese surprise attack, the United States would have continued with its isolation stance. Entry into war by the United States unbalanced the balance of power. If the war had dragged on without the United States, Germany could have perfected their delivery of rockets jet fighter Air Force, and nuclear weaponry. Ironically, China and Russia could have easily been destroyed then - as well as the United States. .
Patton thought likewise. An unashamed anti-commie, he had a different “Marshal Plan” in mind for Europe. The US was understandably a bit more isolationalist on 06 DEC 1941, but not as much as people seem to remember. If you check the “born-on” dates for most of the large USN ships that we used in the first couple of years of WW2 you will find that many of them were started well before most Americans had ever heard of a place called Pearl Harbor, which in part is why our serving Carriers are (presently) named for Admirals, Presidents, and segregationist US senators from the Deep South. (Vinson for his work before WW2, Stennis afterwards) Before the attack on Pearl, the “non-participating US” had already invaded Greenland officially, Iceland unofficially, were trading shots with and losing warships TO both Germany and Japan, AND had active if unofficial fighter squadrons working both against Japan and the Germans. We (FDR) also gave as much hardware to the UK as our myopic newsies would let him get away with. It wasn’t much. We were still BUILDING fleets of aircraft and grey hulls in 1941 and in terms of manpower we weren’t even in the top 10. As despicable as he was at times, I give FDR as much credit for his virtues as I give him criticism for his considerable faults. Through the sheer force of his personality, and almost single-handed, he saved America TWICE. Once, by quelling an early dalliance we were having with Socialism/Communism through a “vaccination” that would be the first threads of our social safety net. A second time, by wiping his backside with the US Constitution during those early days and laying down the beam-ends for the “arsenal of democracy.”
