Questions never
before asked or answered on the Japanese attack from an operational and tactical
perspective.
The attack on Pearl Harbor on 7th
December, 1941, has been portrayed by historians as a dazzling success,
“brilliantly conceived and meticulously planned”. With most historians
concentrating on command errors and the story of participants’ experiences, this
book presents a detailed evaluation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on an operational and tactical
level.
It examines such questions as: Was the strategy underlying the attack
sound? Were there flaws in planning or execution? How did Japanese military
culture influence the planning? How risky was the attack? What did the Japanese
expect to achieve, balanced against what they did achieve? What might have been
the results if the attack had not benefited from the mistakes of the American
commanders? The book also addresses the body of folklore about the attack,
supporting or challenging many contentious issues such as the skill level of the
Japanese aircrew, whether midget submarines torpedoed Oklahoma and Arizona, as
has been recently claimed, whether the Japanese ever really considered launching
a third wave attack, and what the consequences might have been.
In addition, the analysis has detected for the first time a body of
deceptions that a prominent Japanese participant in the attack placed into the
historical record, most likely to conceal his blunders and enhance his
reputation. The centrepiece of the book is an analysis using modern Operations
Research methods and computer simulations, as well as combat models developed
between 1922 and 1946 at the U.S. Naval War College. The analysis puts a new
light on the strategy and tactics employed by Yamamoto to open the Pacific War,
and a dramatically different appraisal of the effectiveness of the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
