I decided to read again “At Dawn We Slept” starting at page 1. The first few dozen pages surprised me with the extent to which both sides Navy staffs had kicked around the idea of an aerial attack on Oahu/Pearl Harbor/the US Fleet during 1930’s war games(bottom page 14 Japan and top page 33 US).
The subject was enlivened after the British success (hell they needed a success) with an airborne torpedo attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto 12Nov1940.
Admiral Yamamoto wrote to high Navy colleagues on the subject in Jan1940 saying that if war with the US was inevitable then a surprise carrier borne attack on the US Fleet at Pearl Harbor could give Japan a head start.
Late in January the Peruvian Ambassador in Tokyo heard a rumour of an attack on Pearl Harbor and passed this on to the US Ambassador and it was duly passed to State Dept., Navy in Washington, Navy in Hawaii and was duly kicked around with many top people having a say.
All this was against a back ground of much high level Navy discussion from December to February initially ignited by Taranto.
Fast forward to late 1941 – so despite all the above,
despite the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu sending home gridded maps of the Pearl Harbor fleet anchorage;
despite US Navy Intelligence losing radio touch with the Japanese carriers late Nov1941;
despite Japan changing Navy radio codes twice within a month, unheard of;
despite Japan instructing Embassies & Consulates to burn codes;
despite various “war warnings” to Pearl Harbor from Washington;
despite the Japanese invasion force observed moving south towards Malaya;
The disaster the US Navy had speculated about for years came to pass; and it quickly turned out a bigger disaster for Japan.
via Errors in IPCC climate science
March 21, 2019 at 01:33PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 