Best means to protect Pearl Harbor/reduce damage

[psteinx]

There are a lot of possibilities to pick from in ways that Pearl might have been better protected.

Pick your 3 favorite (ideally, those that would have returned a particularly high degree of protection at a low cost, monetarily or via wear and tear on equipment, supplies and manpower).

I'm omitting stuff like "be more aware", "replace Kimmel", etc. Trying to be relatively concrete here... Also, most of this stuff is on the scale of months/weeks/days, not stuff that would have taken 1+ years to implement.

 

[psteinx]

Or, feel free to explain why any/all of the choices were particularly impractical...

 

[psteinx]

Some other ideas :

Decoy planes near runways (cheap wooden and/or canvas planes), ala those used in England pre D-Day.
Greater efforts at human espionage within or targeting Japan.
Hardened bunkers, or even generous use of camoflage netting, for masking/protecting airplanes.

Were radar ships possible by December 1941? (i.e. Put a radar on a ship, send it out 200 miles from Pearl, hopefully it has a 100+ mile radar range)

 

[psteinx]

Among the conventional shortfalls of Pearl's defense, there are a few I haven't really seen adequately explained:

Supposedly ammunition was locked up by AA guns. Was this widespread or a couple of eratic instances? Concerns about theft or what?

Is there a limiting factor, other than personnel, for limited radar coverage (i.e. less than 24/7, among units available). Did the radar units break a lot, or was it simply a manpower shortage?

Is it correct to say that Pearl's warning coordination systems (warnings inbound and out) were far behind state of the art (as for instance, in the UK)? In defense of the US side, Oahu is one small (albeit important island), with far less personnel than England had. How did Pearl, in this respect, compare to other US facilities (including the Philippines)?

What's the upside and downside of barrage balloons? I presume they make close air attack much more difficult/less effective. Costly to implement? Interferes with general operations at Pearl? Shortages of key materials?

 

[John_MC]

You would have to educate the GOFO on what radar does. The RAF took several years to get ready for the Battle of Britian. I'm not sure you'd have enough time to the pieces in place in time.

 

[CaptainCalvert]

Check out Naval Aviation Fan's thread from a few weeks back. It was for a more specific case, but there should be common points of interest.
The key message from that was that while each individual thing could help, the real game changer is a proper integrated system so that the right info gets to the right people in time to do something. With that in place everything extra - spotters, pickets, air patrols etc - is useful. Without a decent control centre, it's just one more thing that more than likely gets overlooked.

 

[alspug]

Radar by itself that is not listened to is useless, long range PBY patrols are hit and miss and even if they stumble upon the Japanese you need to hope they get a message off before being shot down. The improvements to base defence really take months/years to improve during peacetime. The agreements not to fortify pacific bases also came back to hurt the USA. If for example the anchorage was ringed by say 40 quad 50 cal the defence would have been better. The lack of modern AA gun systems even aboard the ships of the Pacific fleet are an example of how the peacetime US Military was badly served by the lack of funds. The funds had begun to flow but it would take heaps of time to pick up significantly.

 

[YYJ]

What's the upside and downside of barrage balloons? I presume they make close air attack much more difficult/less effective. Costly to implement? Interferes with general operations at Pearl? Shortages of key materials?

Barrage balloons around Pearl Harbour would be a hazard for Ford Island Naval Air Station. Hickam Field was also immediately to the east of the Navy Yard.

 

[marathag]

Barrage balloons around Pearl Harbour would be a hazard for Ford Island Naval Air Station. Hickam Field was also immediately to the east of the Navy Yard.

Set to channel air patterns, not a bad thing,
Barrage Balloons were around Scapa Flow, some tethered to trawlers

Color!

Washington and Wasp at Scapa Flow in 1942

 

[rob2001]

I got another one, how about listening to the man who tried to give some kind of warning to Kimmel in late 1941, Edwin T. Layton.

 

[1Big Rich]

A couple thoughts on radar and radar training:

Early radar displays looked like this

with an 'A' scope display. Radar operators called the jagged line on the display 'the grass' and targets appeared as a deep 'V' in the 'grass'.

Needless to say, it was a difficult and time-consuming task to gain useful information from an A scope display.

The first American radar with what we would consider a 'modern' PPI display like this

with the radar transmitter at the center of the display and range and bearing shown relative to the transmitter was the SG surface search sets installed on American ships.

This might be helpful

The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia: Radar

pwencycl.kgbudge.com

Regards,

 

[CaptainCalvert]

A couple thoughts on radar and radar training:

Early radar displays looked like this

with an 'A' scope display. Radar operators called the jagged line on the display 'the grass' and targets appeared as a deep 'V' in the 'grass'.

Needless to say, it was a difficult and time-consuming task to gain useful information from an A scope display.

The first American radar with what we would consider a 'modern' PPI display like this

with the radar transmitter at the center of the display and range and bearing shown relative to the transmitter was the SG surface search sets installed on American ships.

This might be helpful

The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia: Radar

pwencycl.kgbudge.com

Regards,

The A Scope is still useful if you have a good setup for confirmation sweeps by patrol aircraft. You'll get some false contacts (and a few misses), but at the least it maximises the value from the aircraft.
A response plan for a positive ID from the confirmation flight or a loss of contact with the patrol is also important.