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PACIFIC
OCEAN
'MARSHALL°
+ ^Kwajalein o
V __
° C7
ISLANDS
*' * 'jaluit
HONOLULU*^*
FRENCH FRIGATE SHOALS.
By David D. Lowman
Fiction is often stranger than truth. The Japanese high command which despatched two seaplane pilots who almost bombed Pearl Harbor three months after the Day of Infamy may have been inspired by an article in the Saturday Evening Post. But the only thing infamous about the second attack was Japanese marksmanship.
And if they did badly—four of their eight bombs not only missed Pearl Harbor, they seem to have missed Oahu—so did we. With three months of wartime experience under their belt, our forces didn’t do much better in staving off the attack than they had done three months earlier.
The Japanese planes were picked up on radar as they approached Hawaii; the Navy scrambled aircraft and sent them out to sink what they thought was a carrier; the Army hurriedly launched fighter aircraft to intercept the enemy- air raid sirens screamed a warning, and the whole islan went on alert. Nonetheless, the Japanese planes roared m, dropped—it was later learned—eight 550-pound bombs, and escaped untouched.
This frantic activity took place about 0200 on 4 Marc 1942. With the first light of day, the authorities discovere on the slopes of Mount Tantalus (just behind the city o Honolulu) what was left of a lonely cluster of algaroba shrubs, some of which had been blown to smithereens by the enemy bombs. Besides some broken windows on the
132
Proceedings / December
1983
lower slopes, this appeared to be the sole damage caused by the attack.
Since the closest Japanese base was more than 2,000 ?es away> there was a good deal of speculation about ere the planes had come from—all wrong, as it later urned out. A picture on the front page of the Honolulu k Ve’’t'ser showed several large craters made by the °rnbs, but no one had the foggiest idea of what had hap- PCn|!'^> no one, that is, except two U. S. naval officers.
he first, Lieutenant Commander Edwin Layton, Ad- 0 | Nimitz’s fleet intelligence officer, phoned the sec- n ’ Lieutenant Jasper Holmes in combat intelligence, r° asked if he could guess what had happened. Holmes CP led without hesitation that he supposed that Japanese eaplanes had flown out of the Marshall Islands, refueled tom submarines at French Frigate Shoals, and then had "own on to bomb Pearl Harbor.
id ,^at s "Sht,” chuckled Layton, “and they copied the ^Ca right out of Alec Hudson's story ‘Rendezvous' in last ugust’s Saturday Evening Post.” “Alec Hudson,” as yton knew, was the pen name of Jasper Holmes. Prior n° e'n8 recalled to the Navy, Holmes had taught engi- enng at the University of Hawaii—he also wrote sub- ^ine yarns, using the pen name of Alec Hudson.
U be story Layton referred to was a fictional account of a • b. air attack on a target 3,000 miles away, using sub- arines at a remote island along the way to refuel the P anes. When the Navy Department saw a draft of the ; "ry, it was so alarmed that it held up publication of ^ endezvous” for more than a year, and reluctantly greed to its publication only after Holmes had demon, ratC(-l that the techniques employed in the story were ^nown by other navies. Be that as it may, the official ePorts to Washington about the air attack state that it was ‘fly Probable that the Japanese had copied the idea from e story, and that the 4 March attack on Oahu was “Ren- ezv°us'' in reverse.*
One of the reasons that both men were able to connect e Japanese attack with the “Rendezvous” yam so Huickly Was because of the Navy’s code breakers. This n efatigable group of analysts, whose incredible contritions to winning the war are only now beginning to emerge, had alerted Commander in Chief, Pacific, two ays before the attack that Japanese submarines were operating around French Frigate Shoals, and that something tghly unusual was afoot.
After the war, Layton tracked down the relevant Japa- ncse "messages, orders, and operational reports, and recon- j "toted exactly what had happened. The Japanese planes ‘i*’ '"deed, come from the Marshall Islands. Flying 1,898 ties from Wotje, two Japanese “Emily” seaplanes anded at French Frigate Shoals and took on 3,000 gallons fuel from three submarines; and they waited for orders " Proceed on the next leg of their journey—the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Weather was crucial to the mission. Planning had been Predicated on calm waters for landings, refueling, and u 1-load takeoffs at French Frigate Shoals, as well as a 111 moon over Pearl Harbor to illuminate targets. The
t0H^es has always maintained that his Saturday Evening Post article had nothing sto ° Wlt^ attack, and that the Japanese Navy hardly needed to rely on his es in order to conduct their operations. Layton, on the other hand, wrote in the cra[^ Proceedings that the attack "followed too closely, in reverse, the gen- °ntline of Alec Hudson's story to have been coincidence or pure chance.”
Japanese were confident they would have access to timely weather reports, courtesy of U. S. naval air stations in the Hawaiian islands. Japanese cryptanalysts had succeeded in breaking the U. S. Navy weather code, but luck was against them. The Navy changed its code on 1 March, and the Japanese lost this invaluable aid. Nevertheless, having come all this way, and with generally favorable weather predicted for the next few days—according to the last readable U. S. transmissions—the Japanese decided to go ahead. The two bombers took off for the remaining 549- mile run to Oahu.
Blissfully unaware that they were being tracked by radar, the two seaplanes approached their target, flying between Kauai and Niihau to avoid being spotted by lookouts. Swinging east at 15,000 feet, the pilots picked up the winking eye of Kaena Point Lighthouse. They came in just north of Pearl Harbor, then turned south for their bombing run. Unfortunately for the Japanese pilots, they found their target obscured by a thick layer of nimbus clouds. Both pilots overshot their target, got separated, swept back, dropped their bombs on what they thought was Pearl Harbor, and headed for Jaluit Island 2,280 miles away.
Four bombs hit Mount Tantalus; the other four apparently missed the island altogether. The “Emilys” were fortunate, however, in that the same clouds which obscured their targets also prevented the U. S. Army Air Forces interceptors from locating them. According to the official Japanese report of the mission, known as “K Operation,” considerable damage was inflicted on important military installations. The report went on to claim that 30 sailors and civilians were killed and more than 70 were wounded.
Encouraged by their “success,” the Japanese proceeded with plans for a third attack on Pearl Harbor. This attack was to take place on 30 May, when there would again be a full moon. The major objective this time would be reconnaissance in support of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s huge fleet advancing against Midway Island. The operation commenced as scheduled, but when the Japanese submarines arrived at French Frigate Shoals to refuel the aircraft for another flight to Pearl Harbor, they found the area mined and U. S. Navy forces on patrol. Although Necker Island had been designated as an alternate site, the Japanese decided at the last moment to scrub the entire operation.
Had the Japanese followed through, using Necker Island as a refueling stop, there was an excellent chance they would have sighted the U. S. fleet on its way to the epic Battle of Midway. Unquestionably, this discovery would have had an enormous impact on that battle—the first decisive defeat of the Japanese Imperial Navy in 350 years and the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
Some years after the war, Holmes visited Japan. Given VIP treatment by the Japanese Navy, he found himself at a luncheon—in what surely must have been more than coincidence—seated next to a Japanese admiral who nonchalantly let it be known during the conversation that he was the one who had planned “K Operation.” Equally nonchalant, Holmes asked the admiral if he had ever heard of an American publication called the Saturday Evening Post. The admiral looked straight at Holmes and replied with such finality—“Never heard of it”—that the subject was dropped.
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ri’Oceedings December 1983