There are no "right" answers, I'm wondering what your thoughts are-

First off, it's not even a real debate, FDR not only knew about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, he baited Japan into it by dictating the US Navy move its primary Pacific base from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, to the point where he sacked the Admiral in charge who argued that a fully-supplied US fleet in San Diego was more of a deterrence than a half-supplied fleet in Hawaii, but whatever. If you don't know what the McCollum Memo is, where it's in writing that we should "completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, if by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better." - that's virtually a smoking gun.

The US Battlewagons were sacrificed because they were worse than useless, they were deathtraps. If we had defended them and they hadn't sank, they would have put to sea and been wiped out by the Yamato and Musashi, and thousands and thousands of men would have died in the deep, instead of being on shore leave or able to swim to the beach 100 feet away.

QUESTION FOR YOU:
So, was FDR justified in sacrificing a few thousand men to get the deathtraps out of commission, or should he have vigorously defended Pearl Harbor, knowing that if those BBs survived and got out to fight, every man on every ship was doomed?

No, FDR did NOT know of the Pearl Harbor attack.  There were SEVEN different investigations into Pearl Harbor and no evidence of the claim was ever found.

Just more conspiracy tard Bullshit.


Link.

For me, the answer is:  I don't know.

But this does raise another mirror-like question:

Did the Emporer of Japan know we would drop atom bombs on them to save them from having to continue to fight the war and to bring peace?

FDR was either inept or deceitful.  

You missed the point. This isn't arguing the obvious.

And yeah, when the gov't investigates itself when it comes to joining a world war, do you really think they're going to "find themselves guilty"? Do you oppose this because you think government is too virtuous?

Attached File

He's not right. That article has a date of Dec-1982. The freedom of information act didn't expose the McCollum memo until... 1994?

It's telling when FDR's point of view, written in black and white, is: "[We should] Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan,... If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better."

That's really, really telling. Explain that away.

It's really sad when people can't see the evidence because they believe that a tyrant like FDR is somehow full of virtue, not a socialist dictator that packed the court, caused the great depression, criminalized the possession of gold, etc.

Don’t believe FDR knew the attack would happen. At least not at Pearl Harbor.

Correct.  There was a strong suspicion Japan was mobilizing and moving forces.  To what end, where, etc. was a big question.

About a week prior to the attack, the War Department had given Pearl, Manila, etc. a “War Warning” to be at top readiness.  They had in fact told Short, Kimmel, McArthur to be ready for anything. The Japanese had planned well and struck in an unexpected way.  There was no direct foreknowledge of any attack.

The history of this is very, very well documented and examined by many, many eyes - sympathetic and unsympathetic.  No credible evidence nor any objective evaluator has suggested anything was done to encourage or enable an attack.

It was a CONSPIRACY ! !  

Or the Japanese just were sneaky & lucky and we unluckily missed several opportunities.

The "Magic" intercepts showed the Japanese were up to something, but the wisdom of the time was they would move locally - perhaps Malaya instead of Gonzo full roll of the dice Sneak Attack on a Fleet in shallow harbor by fleets of naval launched aircraft.  The Navy was moved to Pearl Harbor to put them much closer to any conflict & to defend US territory (Philippines, Wake, Midway, Hawaii, etc)

With the Air Power available on the island (PBY Patrol, B-17s, lots of P-40 fighters, not to mention Navy & Marine air assets) it should have been very defensible.  Unlucky for us that we got caught with out pants down on a Sunday Morning as the Japanese had planned.

Bigger_Hammer

My dad was in the Army and said they were receiving reports on the location of the Japanese fleet as it moved east.  On Monday morning they looked for the reports and they were all gone and no one knew what happened to them. Someone must have issued an order to destroy them and keep the destruction of the reports secret.

whole lotta wtf with OP

Hindsight is always 20/20.

Had we really known that the Japanese would attack Pearl, we would have been on the defensive.  The outcome (war) would have been the same.  Hawaii Army and Navy were warned, but Kimmel didn't put the fleet on a war footing because he believed an attack would come elsewhere.  Short bunched up all of the air assets because he was worried more about the possibility of sabotage from the high percentage of ethnic Japanese in Hawaii.  Neither were prepared for anti-air because the peacetime SOP was to keep all of the ammo locked up.  Radar was just a parlor trick.

The Japanese had a good plan and executed it well.

Good article:

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/pearl-harbor-missed-tactical-warnings

There's a whoooole lot of incredulity here, I guess everyone thinks that FDR was a saint, and that the highest officials of a government were too virtuous to EVER withhold such a thing, much less orchestrate it?

The fact is, there's motive, and opportunity. The McCollum memo proves that they WANTED Japan to attack. The moving of the Naval Base to Pearl, and the sacking of the Admiral that argued against it, was a clear attempt to bait Japan. He stopped supplying them which made an attack inevitable, and he knew it. I don't believe that FDR knew the date or time, but he certainly knew it was coming, wanted it to come, and where it was going to hit. We were already prepped for war, 18 fleet carriers were already well underway, 27 cruisers, 115 destroyers, battleships, planes etc, and that was just in 1940.

"Plan Orange" was the plan to race across the Pacific and defend the Philippines, and that had long been scrapped. The Admirals (who knew tactics much better than the politicians) argued that a fully supplied US Fleet in San Diego would be a better deterrent than a half-supplied fleet in Pearl Harbor, but Pearl Harbor wasn't fully constructed, fully defended, and would have been much easier for the Japanese to hit, which is why FDR sacked the Admiral and forced the move. And, back to the point, it was a convenient way to get rid of the deathtraps that was the US Battle line, and force the Admirals to adopt the new way of fighting, air power.

If there's to be a conspiracy, you know it's not going to be known by everyone in the war department, do you? Pearl Harbor as bait is certainly going to be kept close to the chest, not known by the whole war department.

And as far as direct knowledge, no. The Japanese were radio silent, nobody knew tactically what they were doing. They just knew that we had offered tempting bait, and they were taking it. It's a basic Sun Tzu principle, to know what the enemy is going to do before they do.

...and the Democrats didn't steal the 2020 election.

Yup.  Anytime US .gov documents are set to be released 50-75 years from the incident, something smells.  See the JFK Jr. files, Seth Rich computer files, COVID trial studies, etc...  Yet big brother's wisdom is proven right time again: when a lie has been circulating for decades, it become the truth.  Or at least become the pillar of lots of people's moral principle based on.  So much so that they will even chastise the truth bringer so that their cognitive dissonance can stay intact.  Just like to this date, even though we know the US government lied us into Arab Spring in Syria and Libya; terrorism in Yemen; Colored revolutions worldwide; WMD in Iraq; whatever excuse it was for Afghanistan; Gulf of Tonkin for Vietnam, WW II, WWI, Remember the Maine for Philippines, etc... we are taught to see those incidents as righteous, celebrate the battles we fought, and revere those who started those wars.

As if the past 3 years have not taught not only Americans, but all the first and 2nd world countries of how disposable we, the subjects, are to the ruling elite.  It was they who funded and released this unfinished bio-weapon to the world, yet they punish the people for being infected and dying in droves (at least initially).  They are perfectly willing to lock you up; destroy your business/career; beat/kill/fine you for protesting.  To top it off, they mandated jabs that are exponentially more likely to kill you.  But if you don't comply, they will shut down your business, revoke your licenses, force you to concentration camps, etc...  Everybody still remember the 24/7 propaganda .gov have been putting out, even to this date.  If our .gov is perfectly willing to lie and kill its own subjects for consolidation of power, how does one think it treats foreign subjects/countries?  How about do some more deep dive into history podcasts and deprogram oneself from our public indoctrination system.

On a footnote, in all of world history to date.  Can anyone name another empire, past or present, that had the capacity to wage constant wars for decades on end, none-stop, on multiple fronts, against different foes? Not the mighty British Empire, not the Mongols, and certainly not the Romans.   All prior empires I recall had limited war chests, seasonal limitations, faced revolt from war taxes/famine, etc...  At least under the Roman and Mongol Empires, the elites participated in their conquests and died on the battlefields.  Yet here we are.  I dare say the elites ruling over US enjoy more secure continuous reign than any monarchy in history despite all the heinous crime against humanity, domestic and abroad.

 
Ep. 248: "Led to Commit an Overt Act of War": A Fun-Size DHP Pearl Harbor Day Special

Join Professor CJ as he discusses the so-called "McCollum Memo" from the Office of Naval Intelligence, written by ONI officer Arthur McCollum & dated October 7th, 1940, which served as the blueprint for the FDR Administration's strategy of deliberately provoking Japan, a strategy that culminated in the Pearl Harbor attack 14 months later.
http://profcj.org/

So You really believe that "The Plan" was that FDR WANTED the US Pacific Fleet Battleships & Cruisers to be Destroyed with huge loss of life at Pearl Harbor to "Force" the Admirals to adopt "Air Power" ? ?

Attached File


IF the US Navy had been based in San Diego, and then travelled across the Pacific to try to relieve the Philippines, the losses would have been far worse (both in ships & lives lost) fighting the Japanese Navy in Deep Water (irrecoverable hull losses & not much hope of rescue for crew) than in shallow Pearl Harbor.    

Japanese carrier aircraft were superior in range & performance & in numbers to to US aircraft, The Japanese had several bases from which long ranged land based aircraft could sink the ships (see Sinking of "Prince of Wales" & "Repulse") and after any ships still surviving that gauntlet of attacks by Japanese aircraft, would still face a massive number of Japanese Surface Combatants whose gunnery was some of the best in combat.

With respect - that is pretty hard to sell that FDR "Conspired" to destroy the US Surface fleet at Pearl Harbor because he was "secretly" a fan of air power.

Bigger_Hammer

Remember the Maine gentleman !

The goal was to get us into the war, obviously. But the original question is based on the virtual FACT that US BBs wouldn't have had a snowballs chance in Hawaii to survive a Jutland-type battle with Japanese BBs, and MANY THOUSANDS MORE of our men would have died.



You have to understand that Plan Orange (where we raced across the pacific to aid the Philippines) wasn't a thing anymore. The Japanese didn't have nearly as many bases at the beginning, almost all their bases apart from those in the Caroline Islands (Truk) were captured in the early days, so no, you wouldn't have had much land-based planes to deal with.

And it's not a "secret" that he was a fan of new tech (air power). We had 18 fleet carriers being built, and 2 BBs. He knew which was the wind was blowing.

The plain and simple fact, in writing, is that FDR wanted the Japanese to attack. Read it for yourself. If you accept that, then the rest comes a lot easier.

The Kido Butai maintained strict radio silence after they sortied, so I'm not sure how anyone outside the fleet could have access to that knowledge?

I think we can agree that there were people who were tasked with tracking the Japanese fleet.  Their work, even if just estimates of location would have been in daily or weekly intelligence reports.

This part is wrong. Yamato aren't even in commission yet. At the beginning of the war a combined US battle fleet could have taken down the IJN.

While I despise FDR (see sig), one memo does not convincing evidence make.  Remember that when the investigations were done, FDR was dead, and making the dead guy the goat is easy.  And yet they didn't.  I think his notes on that memo did reflect wishful thinking, but again that doesn't mean he knew.   Remember also that in the 1940s the world of intelligence was not near as capable as it is today.  No satellites.  No supercomputers to decrypt messages.  No SOSUS net to listen for and track Japanese fleet movements.  And Japan was a closed society, a large ocean away.

I think FDR knew. The Pacific Fleet Commander who preceded Kimmel resigned in protest when the fleet was moved from San Diego to Pearl Harbor.  Pearl Harbor was too exposed and moving the fleet was provocative to Japan.

Second, FDR wanted war.  The Germans sank the destroyer Reuben James and that didn't create sufficient outrage to provoke Americans to clamor for war.  He sent the USS Texas into war waters too and a U-boat spotted her and was denied permission to fire on her.  

Third, as mentioned earlier, the alluded to McCullom memo had eight things that FDR could do that would render Japan's present condition untenable without resorting to war against the US.  Japan could not save face if she acquiesed on those things.

USN knew from War Plan Orange that the Philippines could not be reinforced until an auxiliary fleet was built to support it.  More tankers, ammunition ships, repair ships, food ships, ammunition ships, refrigerator ships, floating dry docks, ocean going salvage tugs, destroyers, mine layers, net layers and harbor defense ships were needed.  That would take two years to achieve and the USN was incapable of going on the offensive.  It recommended against reinforcing Dugout Doug (read John McManus' Fire and Fortitude) who should pre-supply Bataan for a lengthy siege and await for relief.  Dugout Doug rejected that and decided he should stop the Japanese at the landing zone (yeah, island with more coastline than he had trained toops).

Less well known is that our battleships were not fully crewed (so not as efficient) and that some of them really needed engine overhauling and barnacle scraping.  While rated at 21 knots, our slowest could manage 16 kts which gave the better staffed (100%) Japanese ships a marked advantage.  The slowest the well kept Japanese battleships could do was 23 knots, enabling them to cross the "T" ala Tsushima.  In a sense, it was fortunate for us to have our ships sunk in a shallow harbor where they could be salvaged and brought back to surface.  Only the Arizona was totally destroyed (magazine explosion) and the Oklahoma while raised, was not worth the effort to restore to fighting condition.  

Conclusion:  Ph*c FDR.  I knew a woman who as a teenager campaigned for FDR.  As a senior citizen, she told me she regretted doing that.    RIP H. Trimpi.

I hope we can do better, but with Pedo Pedro poking medved, we haven't.  F*cking globalists (and sorry for going off topic).

If you start with the memo, and understand that FDR wanted, actually WANTED, to get involved in WW2, you have to go from there. It's easy to see that he's not going to want to sit back, he's going to want to provoke. And aging, useless BBs with incomplete crews on shore leave (but to Japan the cutting edge of the US Fleet) is a tempting target bait. We had 18 fleet carriers in building, and 2 BBs. We knew which way the wind was blowing.

It doesn't take a leap to know that FDR was playing 3-dimensional chess. He knew how the Japanese thought. He knew their MO (surprise attack, just like what they did to China in 1894 and Russia in 1904). He knew we were going to be involved in WW2. He knew that the BBs would be worse than useless in an actual battle, they'd be a hinderance. It's not rocket science.

Just gotta connect the dots.

with Respect.

The Japanese HAD military bases already ON the Caroline Islands (1914) & the Marshall Islands (1920) and before WWII had built a significant number of VERY well established & equipped bases throughout those islands.  

Japanese Fighters, Torpedo & Bomber Aircraft - not counting their excellent ground based long range aircraft like the Mitsubishi GM-4 Bomber all significantly outranged US aircraft.  They could punch us from the safety of a distance, while we in turn couldn't reach them back.

The US had only THREE aircraft carriers in the Pacific at the time of Pearl Harbor, while the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor with six & their aircrews were at their peak as the finest combat experienced carrier aircraft crews in the world - period.

Just some facts to keep in mind.

Bigger_Hammer

I don't know anything about Pearl Harbor, but FDR absolutely was trying to bait the Japanese into attacking the USA first.

Before Pear Harbor, FDR ordered an a lightly armed Navy ship to be sent out in the midst of the Japanese fleet.  The Navy man in charge believed he was being sent on a suicide mission to provoke a war.  The Japanese attacked shortly before the ship was to leave, and the "mission" was cancelled.

I can't find the a reference now.  Does anyone else here remember reading about this?  

Absence of evidence is not in and of itself evidence of absence.  We only have the McCollem memo because ONE copy was mis-filed - all the rest "got lost".

Even the U.S. Naval Institute Press has published articles indicating that FDR did indeed know ahead of time.

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1999/june/advance-warning-red-cross-connection

Actually  - no.

Airplanes back then had to go through many, many hours of maintenance for every hour in the air, and a 360 degree air patrol around the entire Hawaiin Islands out to a 250 mile radius would eat up lots of hours in the air.  This would far exceed the maintenance manpower, budget, facilities, and materials available, even ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of the airplanes there did not have aerial recon as their primary mission - instead they were to be training to perform their wartime missions of bombing raids, fighter sweeps, escorting bombers, etc.

That is one of the reasons why Pearl Harbor was a bad place to put the fleet.

What were the weapons that did the majority fo the dmage to the American ships at Pear Harbor?


High-level dropped armor piercing bombs and aerial torpedoes.  (Plus MAYBE a couple of midget sub torpedoes, btu that's a whole other can  of worms....)


Left: Type 98 #25 land bomb (replica) 551 pounds. Val bombers targeted Pearl harbor hangers, parked aircraft buildings and ships with this bomb.
Middle: Type 91 modification 2 Torpedo “Wooden Finned Torpedo” 1764 pounds. (Replica) Breakaway wooden fins made sure that torpedo entered the shallow water of Pearl harbor at the proper angle.
Right: High Altitude bomb. Type 99 #80 Mark 5 (replica). 1764 pound, armor piercing. Modified from 16 inch naval artillery shells. Battleships Tennessee, West Virginia, and Arizona were hit by this bomb released by Kate bombers at 10,000 feet.


What were the armor piercing bombs?  They were superceded 400mm battleship armor piercing shells that had been modified into aerial bombs.   WE DIDN'T KNOW THEY HAD THEM.

The aerial torpedoes?  Conventional wisdom at the time was that the water at Pearl Harbor was too shallow to use torpedoes off an airplane.

So the U.S. thought that we would take some damage - but not to the extent that took place.

Signals intelligence, which was refined to the point that not only individual radio transmitters could be identified, but also individual operators sending morse code on those sets could be differentiated.  The radio silence itself is a clue - where are these transmitters that we know are on aircraft carriers, and the operators who routinely use them?  Where is theroutine traffic like noon position reports, fuel consumption reports, etc?  Why can't we hear them any more?

Yes - some old boat with a mostly Phillipino crew but a few U.S. officers and a .50 cal so it would qualify as an armed Navy vessel.

When the American gunboat USS Panay was bombed and sunk by the Japanese, there wasn't enough outrage to declare war.  When the Germans sank a destroyer, there wasn't enough outrage for America to wake from isolationism.  FDR knew then that he needed a major event.

Besides an embargo of oil and steel, FDR knew that relocating the Pacific Fleet was provocative to Japan.  It also left it very exposed.

Remember, the keels for new battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers were already laid before the first Japanese plane flew over Pearl Harbor. We were preparing for war before the war.  US Army was already in an expansion mode.  When Poland was invaded, the US Army was only 175,000 strong and grew to 1.4 million in 1941.  By 1942 it had doubled to over 3 million.  All that increased military spending before Dec. 7 was no accident.

Just like with the Clintons!  

The idea that was totally lost on politicians then was that ruinous embargoes can provoke a pre-emptive attack. The very reason that gifting Ukraine long range missiles is a bad idea.

The naval treaty that the USA, the UK, and Japan were signatories to limited the IJN to 66,000 tons of aircraft carriers. Perhaps two fleet carriers and one light carrier without cheating on the displacements. So where did the 6 fleet carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor come from? Japan withdrew from the treaty in 1934 and constructed 4 more fleet carriers with the last 2 commissioning in 1941. The US response was to build to the treaty limit 135,000 tons (7 carriers) and added only one over beginning in 1938.

The primary cause of the US being unprepared in December 1941 is the reluctance to answer Japan's armament program with one of our own in 1935. An isolationist Congress failed to provide funds for a serious deterrent. The main increase in military spending only came in 1940 with France calling for an armistice with the Nazis.

The idea of the battleship admirals holding down naval air power development in the USN is not true. On the other hand, the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm was held back by the Royal Air Force who regarded the heavy bomber as the only offensive weapon needed.

To captain a US carrier, you had to have your wings. No black shoe captain could pull seniority. It was a law passed by the US congress. Further, from the commissioning of USS Lexington CV-2 and USS Saratoga CV-3 in 1929, a large amount of funding was spent on aircraft and training. Also the building of many cruisers which ended up as the main escorting vessels assisted the formation of the strike forces.

@zapthycat
The Battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor were NOT "deathtraps". Of the four sunk, Arizona, Oklahoma, California and West Virginia, only the Arizona and Oklahoma stayed sunk, the California and West Virginia were both raised and repaired and took part in the war. Yes, it took until 1944 for them to be repaired, but part of that was the four damaged battleships, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Maryland were repaired first. These Battleships were all old and slow, part of the "Standard Classes" built during WWI, but proved very effective in shore bombardment in the Pacific island campaigns. And many of these battleships took part in the last battleship on battleship action, the Battle of Surigao Straight;  which had the battleships West Virginia, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee, California, and Pennsylvania (all WWI Standard Battleships) versus the Japanese battleships Yamashiro and Fusō, and the old US battleships did their job. As far as the Yamato and Musashi, neither of these Battleships did much of anything during the war. The Yamato was driven off during the battle of Leyte Gulf by an escort carrier, a destroyer and a couple of destroyer escorts. She was also at Midway, but all the action was between the carrier forces and she only fired her anti-aircraft guns. Musashi was at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, again escorting the carriers and didn't have reason to fire her big guns but was just an anti-aircraft platform. That's all the actions these two Japanese "super battleships" ever saw; it is much easier to argue that they should never had been built and the money and steel would have been better used to have more heavy and light cruisers built instead.

SOMEBODY knew.  At least according to the U.S. Naval Institute Press ...

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1999/june/advance-warning-red-cross-connection

"A previously unsubstantiated report that President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested the national office of the American Red Cross to send medical supplies secretly to Pearl Harbor in advance of the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack is beginning to look much more feasible.

Don C. Smith, who directed the War Service for the Red Cross before World War II and was deputy administrator of services to the armed forces from 1942 to 1946, when he became administrator, apparently knew about the timing of the Pearl Harbor attack in advance."

As to your 7 investigations, Epstien committed suicide, right?

As to the battleships being "obsolete deathtraps", no - battleships and battlecruisers were indeed capital ships, especially when carrier aircraft had 700 - 1000 HP engines, could carry a nominal 250KG munition, or a 500 KG munition for short ranges, and at a time when night and bad weather operations basically didn't happen.  Carriers were simply not yet the force projection tool they would later become when aircraft were twice as powerful, carrying more than twice as much payload, to greater distances, and aided by radio navigation and radar.

For an understand of the early war relative strengths of aircraft carriers and large gun equipped ships, look into the loss of HMS Glorious to the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the North Sea with the loss of over 1,200 lives.

Battleships continued to be useful, to the point that they were used in the Korean Conflict, the Viet Nam war, and the Gulf War.

At the time, and despite intelligence reports, Japanese carrier aviation was thought to equipped with poor copies of western designs, Pearl Harbor was thought to be too shallow to successfully employ aerial torpedoes (which were considered the greater threat to capital ships, more later ...) and the fact that the Japanese had adapted old battlehsip armor piecing shells into heavy armor piercing bombs was unknown (hence the belief that torpedoes were the bigger threat.)  So, if the powers that be did indeed know of the imminent attack, the extent of the losses likely came as an unpleasant surprise.

"With tensions high and war imminent, U.S. Naval intelligence indicated Wake Island would be the target of a Japanese surprise attack. In response, on 28 November 1941 Admiral Kimmel ordered Halsey to take USS Enterprise to ferry aircraft to Wake Island to reinforce the Marines there. Kimmel had given Halsey "a free hand" to attack and destroy any Japanese military forces encountered.[15] The planes flew off her deck on December 2. Highly anxious of being spotted and then jumped by the Japanese carrier force, Halsey gave orders to "sink any shipping sighted, shoot down any plane encountered." His operations officer protested, "Goddammit, Admiral, you can't start a private war of your own! Who's going to take the responsibility?" Halsey replied, "I'll take it! If anything gets in my way, we'll shoot first and argue afterwards."

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Halsey_Jr

Per the quote, by late November U.S. Naval intelligence knew we were going to get a surprise attack from Japan, and soon.  Per the "Red Cross Connection" article, the location suspected was ... actually Pearl Harbor itself.  Although Wake as well ended up under assault eventually.

If I recall correctly, we only know about the McCollum Memo because a single copy of it was mis-filed - all the other ones that are supposeed to be in the records - aren't there ....

1.  No.  The battleship shells converted into heavy armor piercing bombs (and carrier aircraft capable of carrying them to the target) and the torpedoes modified to run in shallow water came as technical surprises to the U.S. as did the notion of combining that many carriers together for a surprise strike.

2.  FDR had previously displayed a willingess to get U.S. dailors killed if it got him an excuse to take a mora active role in the war.  He had ordered the USS Texas to escort Lend Lease shipping into the war zone which almost got it torpedoed well before Pearl Harbor ...

"Only a month after the Bismarck’s sinking, the U-203, seeking a favorable bow angle, chased a zigzagging and unaware battleship Texas (BB-35) for 140 miles between Newfoundland and Greenland. "

Source:  https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2004/february/fdrs-undeclared-war

FDR also orderd a ship be equipped with at least a mcahine gun, crewed by Philippinoes but with U.S. Navy officers to sail toward Japan as a provacation, but IIRC the war erupted before he could put this into action.

Then, of course, there are also the Rueben James and Greer incidents that FDR provoked, as well as the involvement of U.S. supplied aircraft operating with a U.S. Navy pilot in command involved in the hunt for the Bismark, as well as the provision of U.S> military pilots flying U.S. built fighters to form the American "Volunteer" Group / FLying TIgers well before Pearl Harbor.





There is merit to this argument.  However the whole point of the Pearl Harbor strike was to disable the heavy elements of the Pacific Fleet to allow Imperial Japan to act unhindered by them for 6 months, rendering War Plan Orange (of which they doubtlessly were fully aware) impossible, adn to enable them to achieve a dominant position for a favorably negotiated end to the conflict.   The additional distance to try to strike at San Diego renders the attack plan impossible. This it could have prevented the Pacific chapter of the war from opening as it did.



Yah.  About that.  Task Force Z was *SUPPOSED* to have an aircraft carrier to provide a combat air patrol for just such a reason.  (Although there is controversy over this.)   HMS Indomitable was damaged in a grounding incident in Kingstown, Jamaica on 2 November.

The IJN naval code JN25 and its derivative JN25b were substantially broken well before Dec. 7th.  The IJN traffic to order the Kido Butai to assemble at Hittokapu Bay was in fact intercepted but not "offically" decrypted and translated until 1944 - supposedly.

You lost me at this…

Attached File

Not arguing yes or no, but that passage does not confirm prior specific knowledge.
State of mind? Sure.

Unrelated, a good inner view is a book titled  "The Last 100 Days, FDR at War and at Peace".
He really was full of himself.

The only thing I can add is that there are pre Pearl Harbor classified JN 25 decrypts. What was decoded is anyone's guess. But they are to this day still classified

I agree that FDR baited the Japanese into attacking first. I believe his reasoning was that the American People would never agree to another world war unless our country was attacked "unprovoked". Even then, politicians understood the victim card very well.

Did he know it would be Pearl? Berthing ships such as they did on Dec 7 was common. Giving sailors a day of rest on Sunday was common. They had PLENTY of warning something was up. We were reading enough of their encrypted traffic to puzzle that out. Consolidating aircraft the way they did was foolish. Perhaps that was just 20/20 hindsight, as the thinking was they would be easier to protect. But it made them better targets.

My favorite story of that day was of the USS Ward who fired on and sank a Japanese Mini-sub that morning. Roundly chastised, it was decades later when the wreck was found...exhibiting a shell hole through the sail.

We were lucky the Japanese didn't target the shipyards, docks and fuel storage depots, that they held back their third wave.

The "mistake" by the Japanese embassy staff in delaying their delivery of the declaration of war memo only added to the anger Americans felt at that time. I believe FDR was devastated by the losses that day and likely never recovered from that. It colored his thinking the rest of his life.

And yet there were 10 BB's built or laid down from 1937 to Jan 41. 2 North Carolina's, 4 South Dakota's, and 4 Iowa's

6 Iowas - two of them weren't completed before the war ended.  Also the Alaska class sorta-battlecruisers.

If FDR knew about it why weren’t our carriers waiting to annihilate the Japanese fleet after they sent off their attack waves?
Halsey was at sea so FDR could have had him waiting to ambush them ala Midway.FDR would have looked like the greatest military mind since Alexander the Great.

I didn't count the last two Iowa class as they were not laid down until after Pearl Harbor. Yeah 3 Alaska class made it to being laid down, once again after PH. I guess plans were drawn up before.