WI: the Japanese DoW is delivered on time

This might have actually made things worse for the Americans. The fact that the battleships were sunk inside Pearl Harbor made it possible to raise them and return them to service. If the fleet sorties out and meets the IJN in a major fleet action, any ships sunk are going to the deep, deep bottom.
OTOH, ships at action stations are much harder to sink. Of course, even with half-an-hour or an hour's warning, many of the ships will still be in the harbour (it takes time to raise working steam), but at least it will mean the ships will be battened down.
 
Shadow Hawk said:
an alert to Hawaii had to be sent by Western Union telegraph, because of atmosphere conditions
"Was", not "had to be". It was possible to phone a warning. (I doubt that was secure enough to be a real option, unless it was on the lines of, "The 27 November warning is repeated for today. Act accordingly.") Also, it was possible to use USN facilities. Marshall refused.

For all that, it makes no difference. Nobody but nobody actually expected Japan to hit Hawaii by air. Nobody outside IJN, that is.
SgtD said:
I think neither were anticipating an attack on pearl
You're right. Nor were they alone.:rolleyes:
crackpot said:
lets say that the warning is such that there is just enough time to scramble the fleet out of pearl harbor into some manner of formation, spread planes out of close clusters on the airfields and launch CAP.
With the Condor sighting & Ward's attack, they had that. There had been a lot of false sightings, so it's understandable the DO had doubts.
Carl Schwamberger said:
From the minimal power condition it took the BB 2-4 hours to get up enough steam pressure to get under way.
Would that have applied for all the BBs in harbor, or just Nevada? Because from first contact with the minisub to first bombs falling at Kaneohe was about 4h...:eek:

Which makes it just about long enough for an aggressive Kimmel (& he was) to produce exactly the disaster Rochefort & Nimitz realized could have obtained.:eek::eek::eek:
I'd want to see the look on the guy's face at Pearl recieving that message.
Have you ever seen "Tora! Tora! Tora!"? It has Kimmel read the message to his staff... (This is about 10.00.) "We have no idea the significance of the timing, but take precautions accordingly.":rolleyes: Needless to say, he's not thrilled.:rolleyes::p
 
"Was", not "had to be". It was possible to phone a warning. (I doubt that was secure enough to be a real option, unless it was on the lines of, "The 27 November warning is repeated for today. Act accordingly.") Also, it was possible to use USN facilities. Marshall refused.

p

Phone? How? The first telephone cable wasnt laid until 1957.
 
Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Phone? How? The first telephone cable wasnt laid until 1957.
I can't speak to that. I've seen mentions of phone calls... Radiophone? (Persistent mistake based on an early error?)
Shadow Hawk said:
There were no good reasons to not send it priority.
Actually, since nobody in DC expected Japan to be able to carry off two major operations at once, & nobody ever expected an attack on Hawaii to begin with, there were, in fact, no good reasons to give it more than routine priority.
 
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