New docs on Pearl Harbor attack emerge

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by Blakduk

Regarding the opening comments of this topic- it's interesting to note the belief that the USN was caught completely unaware that an attack was imminent. In fact the USN did have good intelligence that a surprise attack was coming but didnt know where- the reason the Enterprise was not at Pearl Harbour when the attack came was because it was delivering planes to Wake Island where US Navy Intelligence guessed the attack was coming. Fortunately for the Enterprise a storm delayed its return to PH and it missed the attack.
Whenever there is a choice of explanation for extraordinary events between a grand conspiracy and incompetence, i know which is more likely to occur.

uhmmm although I can accept that a part of the political class of the time was incompetent, I wouldn't say the same of the US military.

I'm not saying that everybody in the chain of command knew it, but I'm wondering whether the consistent and concrete intelligence that had reached the higher spheres of the time was not being deliberately ignored or dismissed..

Come to think of it, it's the perfect plan: first you poke a potential opponent, then you just sit and wait for him to do the first move, possibly a dramatic, coward and big scale attack. Next thing you know you're in the game: industries working around the clock, hundreds of thousands of young men armed and sent to fight, but above all the war is being fought somewhere else, with no damage to cities, factories and population.

America might not have been willing to go to war again, but first thing they did was declaring war to Germany and send troops and ships to Europe.. even in the collective imaginary, it was a war to fight the Nazis, the Pacific war was never as "glamorous" or famous as the one in the ETO, and then again the US war effort was started and ended with Japan..

It's probably because I like playing the devil's advocate, but again I don't think for a minute that the fact that the USA was the only country to actually become the first superpower and gain so much economic and military strength after WW2 was a coincidence..