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I Am Interested In Stories About This Day In History

[center][b]Attack on Pearl Harbor - 77 Years Ago Today[/b][/center]

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, led to the United States' entry into World War II.

Great thanks to The Greatest Generation!
ArishMell · 70-79, M
This surprised when by chance, I learnt it only a week ago:

Tragically, and perhaps because genuinely no-one in the USA or anywhere else had previously expected any attack from Japan, radar officers on Hawaii who reported the planes approaching, were shrugged off.

"Well, don't worry about it. It's nothing", replied Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, Duty Officer that day at the island's military Information Centre, to them.*

It may still not have been enough notice to save many lives, but it would given the US Navy on the other side of Hawaii a chance to mount a more robust defence.

To be fair to the Lieutenant, the most senior US Military and Intelligence officers had previously dismissed the notion that Japan would attack the US, or join the Axis.

I understand the hull of the USS Arizona still lies there, a war grave and memorial to all those courageous Servicemen who died - over a thousand men on that ship alone.



*Source, quoted in [i]They Got It Wrong - The Guinness Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations[/i]; compiled by David Milstead, 1995.

Misjudgements like that have been in common in military planning and fighting through recorded history. The same book records the error that led to the notorious "Charge of The Light Brigade" - cavalry against artillery. There, one of the two British commanding officers responsible was on a hill, the other in the valley; each could see only one of two lines of Russian guns, and it was not that seen by the other.

 
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