Pearl Harbor: A Sneak Attack?

yeah,im not so sure the germans were after peace man,they were still paining from WW1,hitler was disgusted in germany for their surrender....hence his drive to win WW2

a reply to: hellobruce

The same as Poland, France, Belgium, Norway etc. etc. did!

History books i have read tell me those countries where invaded and had puppet governments installed.

Or have i missed something ?

originally posted by: hiddenNZ
i remember reading somewhere that winston churchill knew the japs were going to attack PH but didnt share the info with the US because england was essentially starving from all the u-boats sinking the food ships.....basically they needed the US in the war to survive as a country.
Also that the germans may have done more damage if they hadnt taken so much time making their tanks and such,production couldnt keep up with demand,because they were so festidious with assembly and reliability......they were out numbered by the manufacture of the sherman tanks

Japan attacking the United States would not activate the treaty between Germany and Japan. For that to come into effect the US would have to attack Japan. Germany declaring war on the US made life much easier for FDR who would have had to convince Congress to declare war on Germany. This would be hard to do with Japan now at war with the US since Congress would not want to take the focus off Japan. In fact the Japanese attack could have completely derailed FDRs plan to get the US into the war in Europe. If Germany had no declared it is unlikely the US would have either. At least until Japan was on the ropes.

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: rossacus

The sole fact that not a single a/c carrier was in Pearl at the time is telling. We were on a war footing already for a couple of years. We were hard at work and producing all manner of military equipment. We just needed a spark to enliven the public.

Actually, the lack of carriers at Pearl Harbor isn't suspicious at all, if you do a bit of research. On December 7, 1942. USS Lexington was ferrying aircraft to Midway, USS Saratoga was in San Diego (home port), USS Yorktown and USS Hornet were in Norfolk. The USS Enterprise was heading back to Pearl Harbor after a ferry mission and training cruise to Wake Island. That's every one of the Pacific Fleet's big carriers, and none of those missions is particularly unusual or contrived. Had the Japanese waited a couple of days, the Enterprise would've been in port, but Battleship Division 1 (the USS Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada) would've been at sea. The whole fleet is practically never all in (or out of) port at the same time.

The images of the ironwork of the Arizona has always bothered me. It has an appearance of being an old, used up WWI ship. Was it left in Pearl as a viable decoy? What about our subs, how many just happened to be out at sea and missed the action? Was the cost of allowing a "sneak attack" worth it? Many in command will say it was because we only lost a couple of thousand people.

The USS Arizona was a World War 1 ship, but she was hardly 'used up'. Take a quick look at the Washington Naval Treaty. Among its other provisions, it imposed a 'building holiday' on all the signatory powers that essentially stopped the construction of new battleships. If memory serves, every battleship in the Pacific Fleet was of World War 1 vintage or close to it...and on the Japanese side, Fuso, Yamashiro, Ise, Hyuga, Nagato, and Mutsu were of similar vintage. If the presence of "old....World War 1" ships is evidence of a conspiracy, it's a very wide ranging one.

It's easy for us to look backward (having read about the experiences of World War II), and regard those "old" battleships as nothing more than targets, or scrap metal, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, while the aircraft carrier was staking out its claim to the 'queen of the seas', the issue was far from settled, and those battleships were still seen as major strategic assets.

originally posted by: alldaylong
a reply to: Zaphod58

Without the B-17s, those raids wouldn't have happened on the scale that they did.

So the 21,000 British built Lancaster, Wellington and Stirling bombers had no impact on the bombing of Nazi Germany then?

Right, i see where you are coming from now.

Well, you seem to have very few problems ignoring the (admittedly insignificant) impact that 12,731 B-17s, 19,526 B-24s, 9,600 B-25s, and 5,288 B-26s might have had on the progress of the war...so perhaps you could be more forgiving of others' lapses?