Aircraft Carriers

A Day to Forever Live in Infamy

        On Sunday November 26, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a sneak attack on the United States. The Japanese sent a carrier force equipped with Bombers, fighters, and torpedo planes to attack the naval base Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941, twelve days after leaving Japan, the Japanese carrier force was ready to attack its target. At 5:30 A.M., just about the time of sunrise, the first wave of planes left the decks of 6 Japanese aircraft carriers.(1) Eighty-nine planes consisting of bombers and torpedo planes homed in on the signal of KGMB radio station to guide themselves into Honolulu.(2) By the time the third wave had left 182 planes were airborne and headed directly towards pearl harbor. No attack like the one on pearl harbor had been executed before. When what appeared to be a large group of planes about 230 miles north of Oahu was picked up on radar in Hawaii, it was disregarded as friendly bombers.(3) One of the main reasons that these planes were disregarded was that no attack had been like this before. It made more sense to the radar operators that bombers with a flight capability of this distance would be appearing than a large group of Japanese planes. The ensuing decision to not scramble the fighters caused the casualties at Pearl Harbor to be even more one-sided.

       Once the attack began the destruction that was capable with carrier task forces such as this one began to show. As the first wave of torpedo planes and bombers approached Pearl Harbor they began lineup with their target. Battleship row was their main objective; eight battleships lined up one next to the other in the harbor.(4) As the first planes attacked, onlookers watched, not sure at first what they were witnessing. One witness recounts, “I remember very clearly what looked like a dive bomber coming over the Arizona and dropping a bomb. I saw that bomb go down through what looked like a stack, and almost instantly it cracked the bottom of the Arizona, blowing the whole bow loose.”(5) The planes continued their runs, destroying boat after boat as the United States soldiers tried to fight them off with little success. By the end of the battle the U.S. Navy had lost eight battleships, three destroyers, three cruisers, three auxiliary ships, and over 180 aircraft.(6) Luckly no aircraft carriers had been lost due to the fact that they were out of base at the time of the attack. By the end of the day 2,403 U.S. service men lay dead.(7) In comparison the Japanese only lost 29 aircraft, 5 midget submarines, and sustained 64 casualties.(8) The Japanese had dominated the first battle between them and the United States, and they had done it with a carrier task force.

        In the first battle of World War Two for the United States the aircraft carrier was already proving to be a crucial piece of technology to have at a navy’s disposal. Even though Pearl Harbor may have been a sneak attack, the Japanese’s had brilliantly used the aircraft carriers to their full potential. The U.S. had suffered heavy losses, but were not out of the fight yet. Luckily, the three aircraft carriers in the American pacific fleet had not been in the harbor that day, and were spared. These three carriers would prove crucial in the next major battle in the Pacific, the Battle of The Coral Sea.