You would be in a better position to know more about the AAC getting caught on the ground in the Phillipines still 10 hours after the attack. – but what I’m curious about was whether there were any simulated alerts being practised during the many months prior to the attack. The Japanese spent exhaustive practice runs and intense training before the attack. What did we do? Plans on paper are quite meaningless if they aren’t actually field tested. Perhaps both the lack of simulated response attack missions along with a general malaise at AAC command were contributing factors. It is always risky making sweeping statements about major historical events – but I feel it’s safe to say from the entire chain of U.S. command: A egregious lack of strategic security.

I agree that it was a massive intel failure. And failure of imagination. Despite the defeat of the Russians in ’05, I think there were some pretty racial biases in effect, too. “Well, the Russians weren’t a first rate Navy. The Japanese wouldn’t do so well against us.” I think there were plenty of voices in the intelligence community warning about the Japanese, and the Navy in particular had an eye focused on the Pacific. One of the reasons our aircraft carriers were at sea so much in 1941 was so they wouldn’t be caught in port by an attack. Intel reports had the Japanese making a move, but we guessed it would be a southward move. (It was that, too.) To me, the utterly grotesque neglect, sill unexplained, was how the AAC in the Philippines could have been caught on the ground at Clark airfield, midmorning, some ten hours after the Pearl Harbor raid, and after receiving lots and lots of notice. MacArthur should have burned for that.

Gregory – very astute and insightful comments. My only response, (not refuting your comments) is that although we never imagined the unimagineable we should have when we’re dealing with Japan. I don’t think it’s “excusable” to say that we had no conept of Japan’s capability. Although our pre-war intelligence was weak and undeveloped we still could have had human intelligence infiltrate Japan – even prior to their invasion of Manchuria. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were among our most patriotic citizens, had families in Japan who were not partisans. The Japanese complete destruction of the Russian fleet in t905 shocked the world. Any astute military historian would realize that some 30 years after this shocking and stunning event – should have been a wake up call for us as a nation. World War 1 was the best thing that could have happened to Imperial Japan. They watched (probably in glee) as Western European countries completed decimated each other’s military and will to fight. It’s unimagineable to me for members of our so called”brain trust” wouldn’t have tuned the scope on high toward Japan.

True, but we considered sabotage to be the biggest threat at Pearl, and we did do something about that — line up all the airplanes so we could guard them easily.

Gross misunderstanding of the carrier based airpower of the Japanese. Worth noting that US naval air control wouldn’t advance to the point where we could coordinate 350 airplane strike until the Truk raid in late 1943. They had acquired an incredible capability that we had barely conceptualized.

Thanks for the comment, Peter. It’s a disgrace that we didn’t stand with the other democracies through the middle and late 1930s.