What the odds that a third strike on Pearl Harbor. . .

McPherson

Banned
That would be the Mk14. The older Mk13, still carried on the S class subs had been better tested back it's day. Also what model we're the aircraft carrying?

a. The aircraft were carrying the Bliss Leavitt Mark XIII; which required a crash program to replace some defective components.
b. The modern submarines (long tubes) carried the Mark XIV. Ditto.
c. Modern destroyers carried the Mark XV. Ditto.

d. Old destroyers and early PT boats carried the Mark VIII.
e. K,O,R class subs carried the Mark VII (yes, still in inventory and in use!)
f. Mark VII was also the first air dropped torpedo.
g. WW I battleships (Standards before the tubes were landed) carried Mark IXs.
h. Submarines, short tube, 21" carried the Mark X.
i. Interwar cruisers and destroyers carried the Mark XI or Mark XII.

ALL of them were lousy.

Fixes included, redesigned exploders, disabled or improved magnetic influence detonator, new warhead filler, redesigned gyro guidance, and depth keeper controls and or copied German guidance package features, or home developed acoustic and wake homing steer guidance. (post war). In 1941 the Mark XIV was about 20% reliable; 1944 about 60% reliable. By 1945 the Mark XIV and its variants was about 80% reliable. The Mark XV was similar for the same exact reasons. The Mark XIII, best of the lot, was about 85% reliable by 1944. Armed PT boats in 1944, that one did. Too fat to fit into a submarine torpedo tube or it would have armed American subs, too. Same reason not fitted to US destroyers. Horrible scandal, worse than the German torpedo crisis. People should have been court martialed and SHOT for that one. Seriously, the murder year that should have been 1942 was delayed until 1944 until all the problems were sorted out. Remarkably FAST, but it prolonged the Pacific War, and made a desperate situation much worse, because US subs clanged fish on 1.7 million tonnes of Japanese shipping that should have gone straight to the bottom.
 

McPherson

Banned
Fuel oil. 7 of the 11 tanks at Stokes Hill on the water front were destroyed in 3 raids. The Pembroke oil tanks burnt for 18 days when they were bombed in 1940.

a. Maybe February 1942 you mean?

b. Types of applicable ordnance the Japanese had that could do that damage;
  • Type 99 No.3 Mk 3 (Most likely as this was the standard 250 kg bomb body. The Type 98 was too light and the Type 3 did not enter service until 1943.)
  • Type 3 No.6 Mk 3 bomb model 1
  • Type 2 No.25 Mk 3 bomb model 1
  • Type 98 No.7 Mk 6 bomb model 1
  • Type 98 No.7 Mk 6 bomb model 2
  • Type 1 No.7 Mk 6 bomb model 3 mod 1
Most of those incendiaries used phosphorus dissolved in carbon disulferide; spontaneous ignition upon Comp 94 booster charge and would be more than able to set off heavy oil.
 
Not likely, American torpedoes didn't reliably explode until mid 1943.

The Japanese have literally no way to possibly know that though. So they would HAVE to weigh the risk of staying for a third strike vs some lucky sub commander getting into the perfect position and putting all ten tubes into carriers.
 
Not difficult to make those repairs on the tanks. No one in these conversations ever mentions bombing the pumps and power generators. Destroying those would be a bigger show stopper.

Replaced by mobile versions of pumps and power generators until the new permanent infrastructure is built/ rebuilt?

Also, what @CalBear said about the hardiness of hardware may apply here:
The odds?

Zero.

Zip.

Nada.

Machine tools are notoriously difficult to destroy by bombing. In fact if one looks at the BDA photos taken by American photographers after the attack one of the striking things is the sight of machine tools staging in the burned down hangers that had once housed them. This was also demonstrated time and again by the CBO in Europe, and close review of the aftermatch of the major firebombing attacks against Japan will show machine tools have survived the firestorms. Undoubtedly many tool would receive damage, especially to power cords, handles, etc., even to motors if the heat was high enough, but the actual tools, not so much. It would require actual close contact with something like thermite, which the IJN bomb inventory totally lacked, to do any actual damage to the machine tools.

Dry docks are also quite difficult to destroy by bombing. Had there been a sufficiently long clear path it would have been possible to try to use torpedoes to destroy the dock doors or even the floating dock cassions, but given the layout of the harbor those did not really exist. The attackers did take numerous shots at 1010 Dock, all failed

The fuel tank issue has been addressed so many times here that it is almost a meme. Fuel tanks are very difficult to destroy, being a fairly small target, especially for a level bomber, each tank was bermed, limiting splinter damage, and not a tenth as flammable as some folks imagine (fuel oil is about half a step over road asphalt, is as viscous as 35F molasses, and is surprisingly difficult to get to burn, drop a lighted match on it and the match will snuff out).

All the targets were also increasingly difficult to see as the raid's two strikes continued, thanks to smoke from the fires (both structures and things like paint, diesel, gasoline, and some fuel oil that was ignited by things like burning gasoline.

Lastly, the infrastructure of the base was, quite literally, the last thing on the target list provided to the Strike Force. There were still several battleships afloat (trapped by their sister's who had floundered after torpedo hits (both Maryland and Tennessee were damaged but combat capable with reduced effectiveness immediately after the attack; both went under their own power to Puget Sound for repair/refit and were back in Hawaii in a couple months. Pennsylvania, which was IN 1010 dock, took one bomb hit that wiped out one of the 5/25 guns, and was ready for sea as soon as the dock entry was cleared and the three shafts that were being repaired were reattached; she sailed for the West Coast in December 20th, again under her own power and was back at Pearl in about 10 weeks. If the Japanese had gone back for a third strike those three BB, all of which were continuing to fire throughout the attacks, making their operational status quite evident, would have been the primary targets of any third wave, followed by the numerous heavy (New Orleans and San Francisco, but under routine repair but effectively undamaged in the attacks) and light (Detroit, Phoenix, Honolulu, St. Louis) cruisers in the harbor and either undamaged or only lightly damaged. After those ships the next priority would have been the TWENTY-FIVE undamaged destroyers and 4 undamaged subs (although these would probably have been well away and hunting the task force before the fifth or sixth wave of attacks reached them on the targeting list somewhere around the afternoon of December 8th.
 

marathag

Banned
Replaced by mobile versions of pumps and power generators until the new permanent infrastructure is built/ rebuilt?
TPU15.JPG

USS Lexington providing 25% of Tacoma's power needs in 1930

Turbo Electric Drive had that for an advantage.

Tie up one of the Standards to provide power
 
Replaced by mobile versions of pumps and power generators until the new permanent infrastructure is built/ rebuilt?
...

I wonder what mobile equipment was at hand? Might take a few weeks to ship something from the eastern US. Probablly would be a priority with lots of hustle.

As I mentioned some weeks ago the worst case arriving tankers can be parked in the harbor and arrignements made to transfer from those to the ships. High speed at sea oilers are not needed where you are using a protected anchorage.
 
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McPherson

Banned
Yes, but Pembroke isn't. It is however another case of bombers hitting oil tanks, which is presumably why it was brought up.

Perhaps, but we were not involved with discussing Nazi bombing of Pearl Harbor's oil farm, but whether or not the Japanese could have set them on fire. The "oil bombs" that Cornwall and Dorsetshire survivors report that were used in the sinking of those cruisers in the Indian Ocean raids, could have been Type 99 No. 3 Mk. 3's and were potentially part of the standard Kido Butai loadouts for strike missions at that time, so Darwin is now of some particular interest to us in February as to a model of a Kido Butai port raid as Pearl Harbor was. A capability not so used on 7 December 1941 suddenly has to be explained. I find it most curious, now that I am putting these pieces of evidence together. The Pembroke example, while an ancillary sidebar, has no bearing on the Pearl Harbor question unless one can show me a Heinkel or Stuka flying over Ford Island or near the east headland of Pearl Harbor?
 
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Pembroke was 3 medium bombers (Ju88) and 2 fighters setting off 1 tank that the lack of fire fighters meant it consumed 18 tanks. This doesn't look like it would happen this easy at PH but Darwin does show that when the IJN/IJA put their minds to it they could damage or destroy oil facilities. However, it would probably take several attacks and the smoke will obscure targets.
 

McPherson

Banned
Pembroke was 3 medium bombers (Ju88) and 2 fighters setting off 1 tank that the lack of fire fighters meant it consumed 18 tanks. This doesn't look like it would happen this easy at PH but Darwin does show that when the IJN/IJA put their minds to it they could damage or destroy oil facilities. However, it would probably take several attacks and the smoke will obscure targets.

I could think of a method, whereby a Val drops a SAP bomb to blow the walls of an oil tank out and a follow up Val could drop an incendiary to light off the splashed fuel oil in the berm catch. It would be a difficult feat, but would result in something catastrophic like what the Indians did to the Pakistanis when they blew up Karachi's oil refinery during Operation Trident in 1971. Horrific event. It took the Pakistanis a week to bring it under control (Second attack was the killer, the fire got out of hand and they had to let it burn out.) and probably did more to wreck their naval operations during the Indo-Pakistani war than any other action the Indian navy undertook against the Pakistani navy.
 
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