December 7, 1941

Vincenzo said:

and so? in the 1940 the descendent of americans that were alive during the civil war were a much smaller minority, 75/80 years are not few

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The last widow of a USA civil war veteran just died less than a month ago Last Known Surviving Widow of a Civil War Veteran Dies at 101 in Missouri Viola Jackson, the last known widow of,where she had been living for many years.

A few years back, I took my kids to the local air show. One of the last surviving Doolittle Raiders was there. As he took his photo with the boys he reminisced about meeting the old GAR soldiers at 4th of July parades when he was a boy.

I had two family members at Pearl on 7 December, both USAAC. One wasn't able to get to his P-40 s it was destroyed and the other wasn't able to arm his P-36.
My Mom's two older brothers drive to Medford (Oregon) and enlisted in the Navy on 8 December - with saw considerable action in the PTO, one being a submariner and the other was a signalman aboard destroyers.
My Grandfather (WWI US Cavalry vet) was called up by the Army to be a guard at the Tule Lake internment camp in Northern California shortly after the Ni'ihau incident.

We had a great many friends of the family who were combat vets of WWII - one such friend was a Marine, who had 5 Amtracs shot out from under him during the course of the island invasions.
One was with the US 10th Mountain Div. and once revealed the horrors of an 88 barrage in Italy (alcohol was involved that evening) that obliterated US troops and it was very emotional.
Another was a crewman aboard Bockscar (the B-29), one was with the 82nd Airborn during the Normandy landings and so on.

One thing that these guys rarely ever spoke about, was their combat. They'd talk about training, liberty and all sorts of shenanigans, but rarely ever spoke of what they saw.

windhund116 said:

Sure hope this isn't, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

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Soviet Era Purges, Extermination of whole classes of people such as small Ukrainian farmers, Cultural Revolution, Cambodian "Year Zero" Killing Fields and now we have "cancel culture". All the same mentality of destroying history. I was blown away when this cropped up in the US, UK, Aus.

I think it was George Orwell in 1984 who said "he who controls the present, controls the past and he who controls the past controls the future". We now have 'curated' search engines that don't use algorithms to index materials but to manipulate media for commercial and political reasons rather than to find information. Even the Waybackmachine has been cleansed of wrongthink.

The history most people know about is the one that is favourable to the powers that be. The Pacific conflict is only of academic interest. China is the new Imperial Japan.

SaparotRob said:

No argument there, Admiral.
U.S.S. Yorktown and U.S.S. Hornet were still in the Atlantic. U.S.S. Lexington was delivering F-4F's somewhere. Losing CV 3 and CV 6 might not be disabling but it would sure would've hurt.
The USN kept playing the role the IJN assigned it wrong throughout the war.

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Let's assume Saratoga and Enterprise were in the harbor at the time of the attack. That would mean most of the ships' air groups would be on shore. If the Japanese allocated airplanes to attack the carriers, they would have fewer planes to attack the airfields and vice versa. The odds are that one or more carrier would survive the first strike as would the majority of the landed aircraft. This means there would be more fighters available to oppose the second strike, and some SBDs and TBDs that could strike at the Japanese carriers if they could be located and in range.

The bottom line is the presence of the carriers in the harbor raised the risk of these ships not being available in 1942; but it also raised the probability that the results of the Pearl Harbor raids would be something other than a one-sided Japanese victory.

Conslaw said:

Let's assume Saratoga and Enterprise were in the harbor at the time of the attack. That would mean most of the ships' air groups would be on shore. If the Japanese allocated airplanes to attack the carriers, they would have fewer planes to attack the airfields and vice versa. The odds are that one or more carrier would survive the first strike as would the majority of the landed aircraft. This means there would be more fighters available to oppose the second strike, and some SBDs and TBDs that could strike at the Japanese carriers if they could be located and in range.

The bottom line is the presence of the carriers in the harbor raised the risk of these ships not being available in 1942; but it also raised the probability that the results of the Pearl Harbor raids would be something other than a one-sided Japanese victory.

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I disagree but you do bring up an interesting point. The American forces were caught completely off guard. I believe that the carrier air groups would have been caught on the ground, wing tip to wing tip as well. I can't call up any stats but the majority of USAAC planes never left the ground. There was difficulty getting the few that did take off prepped and manned. It was pretty chaotic that morning. IIRC, many of the pilots weren't even at their own base. I believe that there were a couple of Army pilots driving to satellite fields looking for a plane. If the Navy aircraft were there, most of them would have been destroyed on the ground. Keep in mind that U.S.S Enterprise was scheduled to drop its hook right by U.S.S. Utah in Pearl HARBOR at same time the first bombs were falling. It wouldn't have been possible for Enterprise to launch her planes in the channel.
However, with more planes at Pearl HARBOR, it would stand to reason that there would've been more planes for CAP by the second strike.
I commend you on spelling Pearl Harbor correctly.
Had there been P-39's available though, the entire attack would have been repulsed.

Please don't give me a time out.

SaparotRob said:

I disagree but you do bring up an interesting point. The American forces were caught completely off guard. I believe that the carrier air groups would have been caught on the ground, wing tip to wing tip as well. I can't call up any stats but the majority of USAAC planes never left the ground. There was difficulty getting the few that did take off prepped and manned. It was pretty chaotic that morning. IIRC, many of the pilots weren't even at their own base. I believe that there were a couple of Army pilots driving to satellite fields looking for a plane. If the Navy aircraft were there, most of them would have been destroyed on the ground. Keep in mind that U.S.S Enterprise was scheduled to drop its hook right by U.S.S. Utah in Pearl HARBOR at same time the first bombs were falling. It wouldn't have been possible for Enterprise to launch her planes in the channel.
However, with more planes at Pearl HARBOR, it would stand to reason that there would've been more planes for CAP by the second strike.
I commend you on spelling Pearl Harbor correctly.
Had there been P-39's available though, the entire attack would have been repulsed.

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it was the regular practice to fly off a portion of the planes prior to entering port. Hence Enterprise SBDs were flying into Pearl Harbor while all the shooting was going on. The odds may have largely depended on how many aircraft were landed. If the majority, things could have gotten tough for the IJN.

VS-6 and VB-6 were scouting ahead of Enterprise's task Force as she refurned to Pearl from Wake Island.
Since they were returning to (and within range of) port, they were instructed to land there instead of returning to Enterprise after their sweep.
Also, since Halsey had enacted "Battle Order Number One" enroute, the SBDs were armed and performing a combat sweep ahead of the task Force.