Written by: 12/7/2011 4:10 PM
If you are interested in taking a step back into history on this, the 70th anniversary of the attack at Pearl Harbor, I encourage you to read, “Pearl Harbor's Overlooked Answer.” This article is written by Jonathan Parshall and J. Michael Wenger and appears in the December 2011 issue of the Naval History Magazine.
From official investigations to conspiracy theories, efforts to account for how the United States was caught so unprepared on December 7, 1941 have almost all failed to take into account that the attackers were wielding a quickly evolving aircraft carrier force that would revolutionize naval warfare.
Accurately assessing a potential enemy threat hinges on one’s appreciation of the enemy’s capabilities. If you don’t know what your adversary can do, it is nearly impossible to predict likely operational targets or ways to forestall attacks. In the case of the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. Navy had no real inkling of Japanese carrier warfare capabilities and therefore could not accurately assess likely operational targets.
The picture that emerges is of an enemy carrier force whose capabilities in late 1941 were mutating almost overnight. The Kido Butai of December 1941 was entirely different from the force that began exercising together in the summer of that year. It was 50 percent larger in terms of flight decks, could make much longer voyages, and was capable of speedily launching and efficiently coordinating huge groups of attack aircraft. In their frantic efforts to prepare for Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had created a brand-new monster.
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