Tactical implications The attack was notable for its considerable destruction, as putting most of the U.S. battleships out of commission was regarded—in both navies and by most military observers worldwide—as a tremendous success for Japan. Influenced by the earlier
Battle of Taranto, which pioneered the all-aircraft naval attack but resulted in far less damage and casualties, the Japanese struck against Pearl Harbor on a much larger scale than did the British at Taranto. The attack was a great shock to all the Allies in the
Pacific Theater, and it was initially believed Pearl Harbor changed the
balance of power, similar to how Taranto did the
Mediterranean, both in the attackers' favor. Three days later, with the
sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of
Malaya, British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill exclaimed, "In all the war I never received a more direct shock. As I turned and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American capital ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbor who were hastening back to California. Over this vast expanse of waters Japan was supreme and we everywhere were weak and naked." However, Pearl Harbor did not have as crippling an effect on American operations as initially thought. Unlike the close confines of the
Mediterranean, the vast expanses of the Pacific limited the tactical value of battleships as a
fleet in being. Furthermore, unlike new
fast battleships such as the , the slow battleships were incapable of operating with carrier task forces, so once repaired they were relegated to delivering pre-invasion bombardments during the
island hopping offensive against Japanese-held islands. These Pearl Harbor veterans were later part of a force that defeated IJN battleships at the
Battle of Surigao Strait, an engagement very lopsided in the USN's favor in any case. A major flaw of Japanese strategic thinking was a belief that the ultimate Pacific battle would be between battleships of both sides, in keeping with the doctrine of Captain
Alfred Mahan. Seeing the decimation of battleships at the hands of aircraft, Yamamoto (and his successors) hoarded his battleships for a "decisive battle" that never happened, only committing a handful to the forefront of the Battles of
Midway and
Guadalcanal. One of the main Japanese objectives was to destroy the three American
aircraft carriers stationed in the Pacific, but they were not present: was returning from Wake, from Midway, and was under refit at
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Had Japan sunk the American carriers, the U.S. would have sustained significant damage to the
Pacific Fleet's ability to conduct offensive operations for a year or so (given no further diversions from the
Atlantic Fleet). As it was, the elimination of the battleships left the U.S. Navy with no choice but to place its faith in aircraft carriers and submarines—particularly the large numbers under construction of the U.S. Navy's
Essex-class aircraft carriers,
11 of which had been ordered before the attack—the very weapons with which the U.S. Navy halted and eventually reversed the Japanese advance.
Battleships Despite the perception of this battle as a devastating blow to America, only three ships were permanently lost to the U.S. Navy. These were the battleships , , and the old battleship (then used as a target ship); nevertheless, much usable material was salvaged from them, including the two aft main turrets from
Arizona. The majority of each battleship's crews survived; there were exceptions as heavy casualties resulted from
Arizona magazine exploding and the
Oklahoma capsizing. Four ships sunk during the attack were later raised and returned to duty, including the battleships , and .
California and
West Virginia had an effective torpedo-defense system which held up remarkably well, despite the weight of fire they had to endure, resulting in most of their crews being saved. and suffered relatively light damage, as did , which was in drydock at the time.
Chester Nimitz said later, "It was God's mercy that our fleet was in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941." Nimitz believed if Kimmel had discovered the Japanese approach to Pearl Harbor, he would have sortied to meet them. With the American carriers absent and Kimmel's battleships at a severe disadvantage to the Japanese carriers, the likely result would have been the sinking of the American battleships at sea in deep water, where they would have been lost forever with tremendous casualties (up to twenty thousand dead), instead of in Pearl Harbor, where the crews could easily be rescued, and six battleships ultimately restored to duty. This was also the reaction of
Joseph Rochefort, head of
HYPO, when he remarked the attack was cheap at the price. , 2005 Many of the surviving battleships were extensively refitted, including the replacement of their outdated secondary battery of anti-surface
5"/51 caliber guns with more useful turreted dual-purpose
5"/38 caliber guns, allowing them to better cope with the new tactical reality. Addition of modern
radar to the salvaged vessels would give them a marked qualitative advantage over those of the IJN. The carriers
Lexington and
Enterprise were ferrying additional fighters to American bases on the islands of
Wake and
Midway while
Saratoga was under refit at
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. At the time of the Japanese attack, the US was expecting imminent war with Japan, beginning in any of several places, such as the Philippines or Allied bases in Borneo. Nagumo's hesitation, and failure to find and destroy the American carriers, may have been a product of his lack of faith in the attack plan, and of the fact he was a gunnery officer, not an aviator. In addition, Yamamoto's targeting priorities, placing battleships first in importance, reflected an out-of-date
Mahanian doctrine, and an inability to extrapolate from history, given the damage German submarines did to British trade in World War I. In the end, Japan achieved surprisingly little for all her daring and apparent success - with the first of the fourteen wartime-commissioned U.S. Navy
Essex-class aircraft carriers,
Essex, being commissioned just over a year (New Year's Eve Day 1942) after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Shore installations Tank farms, containing 140 million U.S. gallons (530 million liters) of bunker oil, were unscathed, providing a ready source of fuel for American fleets at the submarine base. About this missed opportunity, Admiral
Chester Nimitz would later say, "Had the Japanese destroyed the oil, it would have prolonged the war another two years." These were vital to the initial phase of the war, and to commerce raiding throughout, and illustrate the deficiencies of Japanese planning for the attack. The Navy Yard, critical to ship maintenance, and repair of ships damaged in the attack was untouched. The engineering and initial repair shops, as well as the torpedo store, were intact. Other items of base infrastructure and operation, such as power generation, continued to operate normally. Also critical to the way the Pacific War was actually fought was the
cryptanalysis unit,
Station HYPO, located in the basement of the old Administration Building. It was undamaged and even benefited by gaining staff from unemployed ship's bands. The
United States Army Air Force's loss of aircraft must be balanced against the fact that many of them were obsolete, such as the
Curtiss P-40 Warhawk's predecessor, the
Curtiss P-36 Hawk. Japan might have achieved a good deal more with not much additional effort or loss.
Charts Of the 22 Japanese ships that took part in the attack, only one survived the war, the
Ushio. As of 2006, the only U.S. ships in that were present at Pearl Harbor during the attack still remaining afloat are the
Coast Guard Cutter WHEC-37 and the yard tug . Both remained active over 50 years after the attack and have been designated as museum ships.
Strategic implications Some historians argue the Japanese fell victim to
victory disease (overconfidence after early successes). It has also been stated by the Japanese military commanders and politicians who visited and lived in the United States, that their leadership (mostly military personnel) took the war with the United States relatively lightly, compared to them. For instance, Admiral Yamamoto and General
Tadamichi Kuribayashi expressed concerns about the greater industrial power of the United States. The "Europe First" strategy, loss of air cover over Pearl Harbor, and subsequent
loss of the Philippines, meant the U.S. Army and Army Air Forces were unable to play a significant role in the
Pacific War for several months. Japan was temporarily free of worries about its major rival Pacific naval power, which was at least part of the intention of the attack. Because Australian, New Zealand, Dutch and most British forces were in Europe, Japan conquered nearly all of Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific, and extended her reach far into the
Indian Ocean without significant interference and with nearly universal tactical success. In the long term, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a
grand strategic blunder for Japan. Indeed, Admiral Yamamoto, who conceived it, predicted even success here could not win a war with the United States, because the American industrial capacity was too large. It spurred the United States into a determination to seek complete victory. The war resulted in the destruction of the Japanese armed forces, the
occupation of the home islands (a state never before achieved in Japan's history), and the occupation of
Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands by the United States until 1972, while the Soviet Russian re-annexation of the
Kuril Islands and
Sakhalin's southern part, and the restoration of
Formosa (Taiwan) to
China, and the loss of
Korea have not been reversed to this day.
Contrast to other similar operations The earlier
British raid on Taranto, which is often regarded as the inspiration for the Pearl Harbor attack, achieved its strategic goal being a considerably smaller operation that inflicted much less devastation. Not only did it cost the Italian fleet half of its capital ships in one night, furthermore in response the
Regia Marina immediately transferred its undamaged ships from Taranto to Naples to protect them from similar attacks, until the defences at Taranto (mainly the anti-torpedo nets) were brought up to adequate levels to protect them from further attacks of the same kind (which happened between March and May 1941). After Taranto the balance of power swung to the
British Mediterranean Fleet which now enjoyed more operational freedom: when previously forced to operate as one unit to match Italian capital ships, they could now split into two battlegroups; each built around one aircraft carrier and two battleships. Battleships were found to be more useful in the confines of the Mediterranean as opposed to the expanses of the Pacific; furthermore the
older US battleships were too slow to escort the carriers and were chiefly used as fire support for amphibious operations. Although the US Pacific fleet had five out of eight battleships sunk (three of them permanent losses) at Pearl Harbor, this instead meant a reliance upon the untouched aircraft carriers for offensive operations against the Japanese.
Truk Lagoon, often considered by some as the Japanese equivalent of Pearl Harbor, was attacked by US carrier aircraft in
Operation Hailstone in 1944. Beforehand the Combined Fleet evacuated their major units - carriers, battleships, and heavy cruisers - so the only warships lost were two light cruisers and four destroyers. Nonetheless the Japanese shipping losses totalled almost 200,000 tons including auxiliaries and cargo ships which hampered logistics, particularly serious was the loss of valuable
fleet oilers.{{cite book ==See also==