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First Blood
December 5, 1941
Richardson sends orders to Halsey and Brown to conduct maneuvers in the area south of Midway, with the Enterprise task group as a Red Force, and the Lexington/Yorktown task group as the Blue Force. Halsey is to simulate an attack on Midway from the North, while Brown is to move to simulate an attack on Red Force. As part of the exercise the Marine dive bomber squadron (equipped with 18SBU2 Vindicator dive bombers) will deploy to the island where it joins 12 PBY patrol bombers and 6 float planes that are already present. Heavy seas and rain prevent Halsey from conducting operations that day and the exercise is postponed for 48 hours. Brown orders his air groups to do a maintenance stand down aside from routine submarine patrols, air searches and fighter patrols.
Yamamoto and his fleet are battling these high seas as well but continue to encounter no traffic. Yamamoto is disappointed that a final report he was expecting from the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu is not transmitted. His best information is that two carriers, 8 battleships, 14 cruisers, and over 100 other warships are in Pearl Harbor. American air search aircraft, which are ranging 1,000 miles from Pearl Harbor, fail to spot the Japanese force in the gloom. The Japanese also fail to hear or spot the American B17D as it flies overhead in the late afternoon.
President Roosevelt—convinced on the basis of intelligence reports that the Japanese fleet is headed for Thailand, not the United States—telegrams Emperor Hirohito with the request that “for the sake of humanity,” the emperor intervene “to prevent further death and destruction in the world.”
The Royal Australian Air Force had sighted Japanese escorts, cruisers, and destroyers on patrol near the Malayan coast, south of Cape Cambodia. An Aussie pilot managed to radio that it looked as if the Japanese warships were headed for Thailand—just before he was shot down by the Japanese. Back in England, Prime Minister Churchill called a meeting of his chiefs of staff to discuss the crisis. While reports were coming in describing Thailand as the Japanese destination, they began to question whether it could have been a diversion. British intelligence had intercepted the Japanese code “Raffles,” a warning to the Japanese fleet to be on alert—but for what?
Britain was already preparing Operation Matador, the launching of their 11th Indian Division into Thailand to meet the presumed Japanese invasion force. But at the last minute, Air Marshall Brooke-Popham received word not to cross the Thai border for fear that it would provoke a Japanese attack if, in fact, the warship movement was merely a bluff.
Meanwhile, 600 miles northwest of Hawaii, Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet, announced to his men: “The rise or fall of the empire depends upon this battle. Everyone will do his duty with utmost efforts.”
“The son of man has just sent his final message to the son of God,” FDR joked to Eleanor after sending off his telegram to Hirohito, who in the Shinto tradition of Japan was deemed a god. As he enjoyed his stamp collection and chatted with Harry Hopkins, his personal adviser, news reached him of Japan’s formal rejection of America’s 10-point proposals for peace and an end to economic sanctions and the oil embargo placed on the Axis power. “This means war,” the president declared. Hopkins recommended an American first strike. “No, we can’t do that,” Roosevelt countered. “We are a democracy and a peaceful people.”
from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-...emperor-prevent-further-death-and-destruction
Japanese submarines are now in position in their patrol areas, with the special attack submarines moving into position to launch their mini-submarines. There are seven I-boats deployed in a semicircle southwest to southeast of Oahu. Another 3 are deployed in a line to the northeast of the island, one is due north, 3 are deployed in the waters between Oahu and Kaui, with two more deployed south of them and 5 boats are approaching the entrance of Pearl Harbor to launch their attack craft.
First Blood 1538 Hours December 6, 1941
A PBY piloted by Ensign G. Whitman is on its inbound track returning to base 530 miles north northeast of Oahu when the starboard waist gunner spots what he thinks are a fleet of ships 20 miles of to his starboard (right for you non mariner types). The PBY turns toward the sighting and at that moment is jumped by a flight of 3 Zeroes who blast the aircraft out of the sky. The radioman gets a partial distress call but is cut off in mid sentence and the signal is garbled. Kaneohe Naval Air Station is only able to determine that the aircraft is in trouble but does not identify why. Ensign Whitman and the 9 other men of his crew are determined to be the first American deaths in the Pacific Theater in World War II.
The destroyer mine layers Gamble, Ramsey and Montgomery are deployed in an arc 400 miles north of Oahu, and at 1600 hours report of an aircraft in distress reaches Admiral Richardson, who orders Fleet Operations to send the nearest, the Gamble, to the last reported position to look for survivors. It is at least 3 hours before the ship can reach the crash site however. Still uncertain as to what happened, Kaneohe is prepared to send another PBY out on a search and rescue mission, but it will be dark (sundown is 1719 hours) and the soonest the aircraft would reach the site would be 2 hours past twilight.
Aboard the Soryu, the fighter pilots land and make their report, and a signal is sent to the Akagi (Nagumo's flagship) and Tone (Yamamoto's flag). Yamamoto is forced to decide that the risk that the Americans got off a radio message is simply too high to assume that they did not. He orders Admiral Sentaro aboard the Abumkumo, a Nagara class light cruiser, and 4 of his destroyers (the Urakaze,Isokaze, Tanikaze, and Hamikaze) to steam further ahead of the fleet to a position of 20 miles in their van. They are to engage and sink any ships that they see.
December 7 1941 The first clash 0230 Hours 375 miles northwest of Oahu
The destroyer mine layer Gamble (D.A Crandell commanding) has his crew set to battle stations, boats ready to put over the side, extra lookouts ready and is steaming north at 25 knots with his recognition lights on and he and his crew are prepared to conduct what they hope will be a successful rescue but fear will be a hopeless search. His ship is plowing through heavy seas (heavy enough that the planned launch of the air strike by the Japanese will be delayed later that morning).
Meanwhile the Japanese advance screen picks up a series of radio exchanges between the Gamble and Pearl Harbor and moves to engage, spotting the American ship at 15,000 yards in the dark. The superbly trained Japanese lookouts with the best available binoculars and excellent doctrine have little trouble finding the American ship still running with recognition lights. A spread of torpedoes is fired by the destroyer Isokaze quickly races through the water and one detonates in her engine room spaces and nearly blows her in half right then. A frantic radio message from the Gamble reporting her position and that she has been torpedoed is all that her radio manages to get off before the ship is smothered in 6 inch and 5 inch shells, blasting her superstructure apart and a second spread from the Urukaze puts two more torpedoes into her, blasting the Gamble apart. Only a few dozen of her crew manage to get over the side as she goes down literally under them. Only six survivors, none of them officers or senior enlisted men, manage to survive until rescue on December 9.
Well within his 24 hour decision point to continue the attack whether discovered or not, Yamamoto orders the fleet by signal lamp to proceed to the launch point as planned.
Pacific Fleet prepares for action
Meanwhile, the report that the Gamble has been torpedoed, in light of the loss of a PBY at the same time, convinces Richardson that an attack is imminent. He sends an urgent cable to Washington at 0330 hours (where it is 830 Sunday morning and efforts to decode the 14th part of the Japanese message are already occurring). Richardson issues a string of orders.
First the entire fleet is put on alert, and all officers and men are to be ordered to their ships at once. A string of phone calls begins to ship commanders from base operations, followed by more calls to other officers and men. The Army is immediately notified and the Air Search Center is ordered to get every available plane in the air at dawn, while Harmon, concerned that the a bombing raid may be coming to support that evident Japanese submarine attacks offshore, orders that all squadrons are to be prepared for combat no later than dawn.
In the harbor, the outboard battleships of battleship row are moved while destroyers are moved alongside the battleships West Virginia (which is herself moved by tug), Tennessee, Maryland and Nevada. All ships are to go to general quarters right away, and if no sign of submarine activity occurs in the harbor in the next few hours can go to lower readiness. He is concerned that submarines may be trying to break into harbor, much like the Germans pulled off when the sank the Royal Oak, and orders the alert destroyers to reinforce the Ward.
Richardson also decides to send a task group to sea to reinforce the picket line, just in case that the Gamble met something other than a submarine which with the loss of a PBY seems not unlikely. He orders Admiral Leary to take the cruisers Phoenix and Helena, along with some destroyers, north to the position where the Gamble was lost to search for survivors and investigate the situation first hand.
By 0400 hours the harbor is a flurry of activity and meanwhile General Harmon is requesting an appointment with the Territorial Governor for 0800 hours, while Richardson schedules a conference between himself, Admiral Pye and Admiral Kidd aboard the Arizona at the same time.