THIS DAY IN HISTORY:
Battle of Taranto (1940)
The Battle of Taranto during World War II marked the first all-aircraft naval attack in history. The results were definitive, as British planes destroyed much of the Italian fleet anchored in Taranto, in an arm of the Ionian Sea. The battle is seen as a turning point in military history, marking the end of the reign of "big-gun" battleships and leading to the rise of naval air power. Certain aspects of the attack were studied as part of the planning for what other notorious aerial assault?
The answer, of course, is Pear Harbor. The two attacks (Taranto and PH) are remarkably similar. What is astounding is that the US commanders at PH failed to learn the lessons of Taranto in the ~13 months between that and the attack on Pear Harbor.
Kimmel and Short (the Navy and Army commanders at PH) were relieved of command shortly after the attack and, I think court martialed for failing to be better prepared for the attack. There has been a lot of support for rehabilitating their reputations based on the information learned from broken codes possibly not being properly communicated to them. I come down on the other side of that debate. Even without a direct warning from codebreaking they were WELL AWARE of significant tension between the US and Japan and the entire US hierarchy knew that war with Japan was probable and that Japan had started the Russo-Japanese war with a surprise attack. They should have foreseen the possibility and been better prepared for it.
That said, in the long run it is probably better that they didn't. If they had been better prepared the US Aircraft at Pear Harbor would likely have gotten into the air and done significant damage to the Japanese attackers. It is even possible that the aircraft could have mounted a counter-attack against the Japanese fleet and inflicted damage on or sunk one or more Japanese carriers. However, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that the US aircraft from Hawaii would have been more than a nusiance for the Japanese carriers.
The bigger problem, had Kimmel and Short been better prepared, is that they would probably have had the ships ready to sail and thus they would have left port. If they had evaded the Japanese that would have been great but it is FAR more likely that they'd have still been sunk but instead of being sunk in the very shallow harbor where they could be refloated, repaired, and put back in service in a few years, they'd have been sunk outside the harbor in DEEP water. The water even just barely outside the harbor is far to deep for recovery efforts so any ships sunk basically outside the mouth of the harbor would have been lost forever.
Additionally, USS Enterprise was West of Hawaii on it's way back from dropping off airplanes at Wake. Assuming Kimmel and Short had done a better job of surveillance, they probably would have diverted Enterprise to investigate the Japanese fleet and/or attack. That would likely have involved USS Enterprise in a lopsided 6 vs 1 engagement with Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku.
As it was, the attack caused around 2,000 deaths. Other than that the only losses not repaired and put back in service were:
- Arizona - still sitting where it blew up and sank.
- Oklahoma - Was refloated and slated to be scrapped. During tow across the Pacific to the West Coast for scrapping post-war it foundered in a storm.
- Utah - Like Arizona, Utah still sits where she sank (not exactly, they moved it a little bit) but Utah wasn't much of a loss anyway. It was an ancient battleship that had been disarmed and was in use only as a gunnery practice target. It was set up to be remote controlled and the decks were covered with RR Ties so that the Navy could shoot at it with other ships to practice hitting a BB.
If the BB's had gotten underway it is fairly likely that there would have been more permanently lost ships. Additionally, the crews of any lost ships would have been adrift at sea rather than within a short swim of Ford Island.
