The surprise Japanese aerial attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941 stunned America. The attack was followed the next day by President Roosevelt making one of his most famous speeches to Congress when he said, ‘Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.’70 News of the devastating attack soon spread around the world. In response toy manufacturers were quick to cash in on the huge interest generated by the attack among children, particularly those of serving naval personnel. As a result, a toy and games manufacturer in New York, E. E. Fairchild, rushed into stores a card game called Squadron Insignia.
Marketed as part of their ‘All-Fair Card Games’, the thirty-six-card game was composed of seventeen pairs of Navy Squadron Insignia Cards plus one enemy card (an extra instruction card on how to play the game was also included). The pairs of cards featured the squadron insignia of the United States Navy’s bombing, fighting, scouting and torpedo squadrons (a squadron was typically composed of between twelve and twenty-four planes). The box cover and the backs of the cards featured a flying boat patrol bomber, a Consolidated PB2Y-2 ‘Coronado’, which was extensively used for bombing, anti-submarine and transport operations during the early years of the war.
The card game proved extremely popular among children, each card telling them about a different squadron. Later in the war, the pack was brought over by American pilots to Britain and given to children, so the game was enjoyed on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the most famous squadrons featured in the pack was the Scouting Squadron No. 41 whose insignia was a top hat and who were commonly known as the ‘High Hats’ because they originally flew in them. Described on their card as a ‘Squadron which flies at high altitudes and scouts for the enemy’, it was the Navy’s oldest active squadron, being formed in 1919. By the Second World War they were flying a carrier-based dive-bomber called a Vought SB2U Vindicator. It was the first monoplane in the role, Vindicators being delivered to the navy in 1937. Seven were destroyed during the attack on Pearl Harbor and despite showing its age, the plane remained in service until the Battle of Midway in 1942. A year later, after serving their country in its darkest hour, they were finally withdrawn and redeployed to training units.
Following the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, E. E. Fairchild, a toy and games manufacturer based in New York, rushed into stores a card game called Squadron Insignia.
The card game was composed of seventeen pairs of Navy Squadron insignia cards plus one enemy card. They featured the squadron insignia of the United States Navy’s bombing, fighting, scouting and torpedo squadrons.
The game was based on snap with players scoring points for each pair completed with the same insignia and numbers. Squadron Insignia continued until all the pairs had been matched and one player was left with the black airplane card or the enemy (scoring was as follows 1 pair Bombing Squadron = 65 Enemy Planes, 1 pair Torpedo Squadron = 50 Enemy Planes, 1 pair Scouting Squadron = 25 Enemy Planes, 1 pair Fighting Squadron = 10 Enemy Planes, the player holding the Enemy card deducting 50 planes from their total).
On 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler, without consulting his military generals, declared war against the United States. Although the US had declared war on Japan, it was still officially neutral in relation to the war in Europe. The formal declaration was made by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to his American equivalent, the Chargé d’affaires Leland Burnette Morris. Later that day, the US declared war on Germany and at a stroke eliminated any remaining isolationist opposition to entering the war in Europe.
The unilateral declaration was one Hitler’s ‘most puzzling’ decisions of the war. It meant declaring war on a country possessing the greatest economic and military might in the world, and it proved to be a turning point in Germany’s fortunes. At the outset the US Navy took a severe hit at Pearl Harbor and it had just 2,500 airplanes. However, by the end of the war it had the largest navy in the world and had produced nearly 300,000 planes. Hitler had played his cards with no way of attacking or defeating his opponent. Obsessed with Jewish influence in the US, it was a busted flush born out of his extraordinary megalomania.