Indeed, the station was supposed to be unmanned by that time, but the breakfast truck was late that morning, so they were just playing around when they spotted the formation..... ..... the station officer first-lieutenant Kermit Tyler, but not to the operators, who on their part did not inform Tyler of the size of the formation.
There was not a proper fighter control system manned either. It was being organized and some training had been conducted, but Sunday morning as most days in those weeks only a minority of pilots would have been ordered aloft, and those with little direction as to where the enemy was.
I have no clue what the schedule was for standing up a operational fighter direction system. Perhaps that would have occured in as little as a month, but probablly not one week. On Luzon there was some eight hours warning but the attempt to operate the planned and partially rehearsed fighter direction system fell apart during the morning, with the Army aircraft assigned to CAP landing for lunch and fuel & no replacement launched. The USN fighters still on CAP over the naval base failed to either receive or respond to messages about the the approaching bombers.
Allowing weather hasn't caused serious damage to the
K.B. enroute (IDK what it was like mid-December '41), & presuming
Enterprise &
Lexington are in harbor on the day (IDK what their planned schedules looked like OTL) &
Saratoga has arrived (IDK if she was due back from refit yet offhand), you've actually got Japan doing significantly better.
As I understand it this was probablly the last weekend the fleet would have been concentrated in PH. There had been a war warning just before Thanksgiving (when the Japanese had originally thought the best date for attack.) That warning had caused a considerable amount of unplanned activity, by both the fleet and Army. The Navy leaders decided to slow down operations for a few days to sort out the numerous problems developing from the unanticipated and frantic pace of the previous week. I dont know the specific schedule for post 8 December but nothing like the stand down of 5-8 December was anticipated. I expect a quarter to a third of the fleet, perhaps more, would have been at sea 14 December either on patrol or training.
Both the Army and Navy had identified a mass of problems in their patrol plans during the Thanksgiving alert. At least some of those would have been sorted out by 14 December, tho actually encountering the Japanese fleet is expecting too much.
What has not been addressed here are the series of war warnings issuing from Washington, and the information being teased out by the Allied inteligence services. If Japanese preparation has proceeded as in OTL, but the attack delayed a full week then there are increased odds of the US anticipating war starting. That would lead to another 'alert' of the sort that came to PH at Thanksgiving.
So, what does Nimitz do? (Presuming he gets the nod as OTL.)
If the worst of the Japanese attack is avoided then Nimitz may not replace Kimmel. Kmmel may even receive a medal.
[/QUOTE]My usual answer is, pull all the subs in PTO back to Hawaii & rely on them as his main striking arm. (I know, I'm showing a strong bias there.

) If he does, it's bad news for Japan...
He'd pull at least two CVs from Atlantic Fleet (
Hornet &
Yorktown OTL), maybe
Wasp, too (which pulls her from AVG duty to Malta; replaced by
Ranger?) That ends up meaning no major changes through Coral Sea. Midway, he might (just) avoid fighting, or might demand
Wasp for. (Was
Essex near enough completion to be rushed into service? OTL she commissioned in December. I presume loss of 3 CVs at Pearl changes that somewhat...)
Short answer: you'd need to be a history buff or AHr to notice the change.[/QUOTE]
I agree here. War Plan Orange had long outlined a extended period of defensive strategy. the overall concept was to delay major offensive for 12-18 months until the new battleships, carriers, and new specialized logistics ships were ready, that is until 1943. Meanwhile the plan was to raid and look for opportunities to damage and attrit the Japanese military. Kimmels operational plan issued after he took over the Pacific fleet from Adm Richardson reiterated the fundamentals of WPO. The current Rainbow Plans reflected all this, placing priority on The Atlantic and Europe - leaving the Pacific theatre on the strategic defense into 1943 or even 1944. In OTL Nimitz was simply following the war plans that had been in place and to which he had trained to for much of his career. Even if he had a less damaged fleet it is unlikely the USN would have launched any sort of large scale strategic offence in 1942. The material superiority in combat units was not there and the US leaders knew it. More important the logistics capability in the form of cargo and support ships did not exist until 1943.