From the bridge of Antares, Grannis gazed in angry dismay toward the “confusion, blackness and disaster” of Pearl Harbor. Suddenly “one of the most beautiful sights” he had ever seen met his eyes—a destroyer breaking through the curtain of smoke and heading for the sea. The sunspangled waters piled high on each side in impressive bow waves.1 This was probably Helm, the first of several destroyers to clear Pearl Harbor. She had already been under way when the attack started. At 0817, as she emerged from the channel, she spotted a midget submarine struggling to free itself from the coral reef. Helm “increased speed to 25 knots, turned hard right toward enemy submarine,” and fired, but none of her shots went home. The intruder broke loose and submerged at 0821.2
The craft held the unfortunate Sakamaki, who had managed to struggle this far. There he stuck three times on the coral in his attempts to penetrate the harbor. He might have fired on and perhaps hit Helm, but he decided to save his torpedoes. He had his instructions to aim at a battleship or a carrier, and he had his heart set on torpedoing Pennsylvania, unaware that the flagship was in dry dock. He should have settled for the destroyer. Either a shot from Helm or the crashing of his minisub into the reef knocked him temporarily unconscious and destroyed one of his torpedo firing mechanisms.3
Another destroyer to escape was Aylwin. She received orders to get under way at 0828, and a bomb dropping fifty yards off her starboard bow emphasized the directive. Another bomb explosion thrust the fantail against the anchor buoy. The destroyer’s vibrations told her officers that one of her screws had been damaged.
Aylwin put to sea with an all-ensign officer complement. The four, of whom Ensign Stanley Caplan was senior, were naval reservists, and their combined sea experience totaled slightly more than one year. They were almost certain they could never get the ship out of harbor through the rain of bombs, but after much difficulty and maneuvering, Aylwin broke into the open sea at 0932. Her skipper, Lieutenant Commander R. H. Rodgers, pursued his ship out of harbor about an hour later, but Caplan did not stop because he had orders to rendezvous with Enterprise and because he feared that the numerous submarine contacts being reported made it too risky to heave to.4
Lieutenant Commander Harold F. Pullen and his gunnery officer of the destroyer Reid parked their car in the first available opening near the officers’ landing. As Pullen looked toward Battleship Row, for the first time the real impact of the attack hit home. “My God, it looks like a movie set,” he said to his companion. Suddenly he saw his little twenty-four-foot gig, and there at its controls was Reid’s cook. Since everyone else was manning the guns, the cook had decided to bring the gig to the dock in case some of the destroyer’s officers showed up. Pullen was a proud man when he climbed over Reid’s side and one of his officers met him with: “Skipper, everything is under control.” Because the destroyer had come in only a week before for a complete overhaul, Pullen worried that she might not be able to get out of this hideously dangerous situation for a long time, so he could not believe his ears when his chief engineer told him, “Captain, we can get going in half an hour.”5
At Dock 1010 Captain Allen G. Quynn, chief of staff to Admiral Calhoun, waited for the launch to take him to the base force flagship Argonne. “Dock 1010 was a tragic and pathetic sight,” he remembered. Rescue operations centered there. Wounded men dragged themselves ashore, some badly burned, some bleeding, many suffering excruciating pain. Others came by the ubiquitous small craft. Cars and ambulances, engines roaring, sirens screaming, raced on and off the dock. Officers and men trying to reach their duty stations congested the area. Many in their haste did not even wait for the launches but dived right off Dock 1010 and swam.6 The Base Force Band, accustomed to working as a unit, organized itself into a stretcher-bearer team, carrying load after load of wounded to Argonne’s crowded sick bay.7
At 0830 Private Raymond F. McBriarty, an aerial gunner and armorer of the Forty-fifth Pursuit Squadron at Bellows Field, saw a single plane come in from the sea and open fire on the tent area. But “the bullets sounded just like blanks . . . and the ship looked like the AT-6 trainer.” Quite unconcerned, McBriarty went to church.8
That lone strafer did Bellows a favor, for the warning gave Colonel Leonard D. Weddington, commander of the Sixth Air Service Area, about an hour’s grace to disperse the planes. A small base a few miles south of Kaneohe, Bellows was permanent home of the Eighty-sixth Observation Squadron, which at the time had only six 0-47s and two 0-49s on hand. One squadron of P-40s was there also for “a month’s gunnery practice.”9
Almost from the moment of action Americans referred to the period between the first and second attack waves as the lull. But it was merely a high plateau between mountain peaks of action and on any other day would have seemed the most crowded minutes of their lives. Every installation on Oahu burst into activity as the defenders prepared for the next blow they were sure would come. Grimly determined and angry men cleared debris from runways, dispersed aircraft, set up machine guns and AA emplacements, patched up damaged but still airworthy planes. When the Japanese returned, they would find an alert enemy with many more guns blazing.
When Fuchida cried out, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” Shimazaki’s second wave of 167 planes was about halfway to Oahu. Like the first wave, the second flew at staggered altitudes for greater maneuverability and better interception of enemy aircraft. Fifty-four high-level bombers ripped through cloud tops on the starboard wing of the flight at about 11,500 feet. They were divided into two groups of twenty-seven planes each. Shimazaki’s own Sixth Group from Zuikaku was to complete the destruction at Hickam Field. The Seventh Group from Shokaku was under the immediate command of Lieutenant Tatsuo Ichihara. Eighteen of his planes would pound Ford Island, while the other nine knocked out Kaneohe.
At about 10,000 feet, slightly to port and somewhat below Shimazaki’s planes, roared Egusa’s seventy-eight dive bombers. Organized into four groups, they were to concentrate on the ships and wreck as many as possible beyond repair. Seventeen planes from Soryu flew under Egusa’s immediate direction. Another eighteen were supposed to fly under Lieutenant Michio Kobayashi, but engine trouble kept him aboard Soryu. Chihaya commanded the Eleventh Group of eighteen dive bombers from Akagi, while Kaga provided twenty-six under Lieutenant Shigeo Makino.10
Lieutenant Shindo led thirty-five sleek Zeros on the prowl above the bombers. Actually his task would be more difficult than Itaya’s. Shindo could not count on surprise, and the time lag of approximately thirty minutes between the end of the first attack and the beginning of the second would be just enough to enable U.S. forces to man their defenses in greater strength. Shindo’s fighters were divided into three groups of nine planes, one of eight. Shindo led the First Air Control Group from Akagi, and Lieutenant Yasushi Nikaido the Second from Kaga. Iida headed the Third Air Control Group from Soryu; Lieutenant Sumio Nono, the Fourth from Hiryu. Besides cutting the enemy out of the skies over Oahu, Nono’s and Iida’s fighters would drench Wheeler Field and Kaneohe with hot lead.11
Shindo had confidence in the poised strength of the second wave, as well as in the shattering firepower of his Zero. But he cocked an eye for potential trouble ahead. He knew from experience in China about the unpredictable factors of aerial combat.12
Ofuchi, too, kept his eyes peeled for enemy planes. In due time Oahu emerged in the distance, rising over the edge of the sea. What was that hovering just above the clouds? Barrage balloons? No, they were puffs of brownish smoke, ack-ack exploding like subdued fireworks.13
Fujita flew a Zero from Soryu in Shindo’s swarm of hornets. A leader of the second fighter unit in Iida’s group, Fujita worried whether he could reach his objective. He also speculated about the first wave’s success. Over Pearl Harbor he saw Shimazaki’s high-level bombers floating like hawks in a single file high above their targets. “My one thought was to do as good a job as I could and hope to God I would get through it all alive,” he said in retrospect.14
Just a moment before Shimazaki deployed the second wave, Bill Burford had his destroyer Monaghan on a southwesterly course between Pearl City and Ford Island. As ready-duty destroyer, Monaghan had been ordered to sea to support Ward. Now, with Pearl Harbor under attack, Burford wanted “to get out of that damn harbor as fast as possible.” At exactly 0839 his signalman drew his attention to Curtiss. The seaplane tender had signaled a submarine sighting. An enemy submarine in Pearl Harbor’s shallow waters? “Well, Curtiss must be crazy,” said Burford flatly.
“That may be, Captain,” the crewman conceded, “but what is that down there?” Burford followed his gesture off the starboard bow and saw “an over and under shotgun barrel looking up” at him at about 1,200 yards. “I don’t know what the hell it is,” he announced to those with him on the bridge, “but it shouldn’t be there.” With that he ordered flank speed and headed for the intruder to ram. Ships all around fired at the object, churning the waters with bullets. “It was a hectic few minutes,” Burford recalled. “There was that sub coming directly at me, and I at him, and all that speed, and the firing by others, and a number of ships out ahead of me in restricted maneuvering space, and all that Japanese air attack behind us and our antiaircraft fire, their planes—God, a lot was going on in just a few minutes of time.”
Soon the submarine “commenced surfacing in damaged condition and was hit directly with both 5″ and .50 caliber shells” from Curtiss at 0840—just ten minutes before Shimazaki ordered deployment. The submarine had a “5-inch shell hole through the conning tower, which killed the captain. He was blown into a mass of crumpled steel. . . .”
Monaghan hit the submarine a hard glancing blow which sucked it under the destroyer. As it swirled astern, the destroyer dropped two depth charges, risking that the “ash cans” might very well tear off her own stern. Indeed, the charges lifted Monaghan right out of the water. Even before the crash those aboard Monaghan observed “one torpedo track passing about 50 yards on starboard beam.” But the midget’s torpedoes did no damage, and Monaghan’s depth charge “just tore the hell out of the bow.” Burford’s full-speed run carried the destroyer safely beyond the explosions, but into collision with a dredge, sustaining light damage. This was not enough to stop Burford in his seaward drive, and he cleared the entrance at 0908.15
Just when the submarine had entered Pearl Harbor one would hesitate to guess. The net had been open since 0458, when it admitted Condor and Crossbill. It did not close until 0840—exactly as Burford attacked the midget.16 This allowed ample time for any or all of Japan’s midget submarines to enter and, for that matter, get out again, except of course, for the one which Ward sank and that of the misfortune-plagued Sakamaki.
Shimazaki’s second-attack wave crashed down on Oahu about ten miles east of Kahuku Point. When he ordered his airmen to deploy at 0850, the defenders had AA and other guns warmed up, and by the time he ordered “Attack!” five minutes later, the defense was something to reckon with. As Shimazaki’s airmen swarmed in, Fuchida, who had been flying over Oahu to assess the damage, thought he might take over the second wave and direct its attack. But Shimazaki had the situation so well in hand that Fuchida let him go ahead while he continued to observe results.17
Shindo’s Zeros swooped in first. Swinging slightly to the west, they divided into two groups. Half of the planes reversed to pass over Kaneohe from the northwest; the other half sped straight for Hickam and Ford Island. Over Kaneohe the first eighteen-plane group again split in two. Nine Zeros strafed the floatplane installation, then turned west and machine-gunned Wheeler Field; the other nine flew on southward, past Kaneohe to Bellows.
Iida’s group hit Bellows at about 0900, in three units of three-plane V formations. McBriarty and another man mounted a gun in an aircraft and hit a plane flying “right down the runway” with no apparent objective. He “could see holes going in the fuselage behind the pilot,” but he did not believe he scored a kill.
Iida’s men did considerable damage. They wounded one man, set fire to a gasoline tank truck, damaged one 0-49 and one 0-47, and shot down one officer of the Forty-fourth Squadron trying to take off. Two others got airborne, only to fall victim to the Japanese immediately behind them. One “crashed into the beach and burned there”; the other landed in the water about three-quarters of a mile up the beach, and the pilot swam ashore.
Iida discovered unexpectedly big game at this little field. One of the incoming B-17s “landed about midrunway and went off the end of the ramp” with three men wounded. All nine Japanese machine-gunned the Flying Fortress repeatedly, but evidently the plane had already been wrecked in landing. The men of Bellows removed its guns and “placed them up for ground defense.”18
Soon Iida and his group streaked back to Kaneohe, where nine of Shimazaki’s high-level bombers had the base under attack. Most of the bombs fell “on the southern side of the hangars and on the southeastern corner of No, 1 hangar. This destroyed the planes in the hangars. The fire engine ignited the hangar itself.”19
The Zeros “cruised around over us, firing sporadically at any likely target,” recalled Avery. They strafed homes, cars, pedestrians. “Particularly did they harass the firemen who were fighting the blazes among the squadron planes standing on the ramp.”20
Among Iida’s group was Fujita. He had butterflies in his stomach as he sprayed machine-gun bullets at rooftop level and took a hit in his wing.21 Iida drilled the station armory and swooped down just as an aviation ordnanceman named Sands stepped out the side door and got off a burst with a BAR. A sailor of the old school, he called to his mates in the armory, “Hand me another BAR! Hurry up! I swear I hit that yellow bastard!”22
As Iida moved in for the kill, the defiant sailor “emptied another clip” and escaped Iida’s bullets, which “pockmarked the wall of the building.” Iida appeared to break off the unequal duel and hastened to overtake his buddies, who had reformed and headed toward a mountain gap. But as he did so, a spray of gasoline began to flow from his plane, and he “headed directly back to the armory.”23 No doubt this was the moment when Iida, faithful to his preachings, pointed first to himself, then to the ground, thus indicating that he was going to plunge into the enemy.24
A sailor saw him returning and, evidently considering Iida Sands’s particular pigeon, shouted, “Hey, Sands! That sonofabitch is coming back!” Sands grabbed a rifle; Iida roared straight at him. Ignoring the bullets splattering around him, Sands “emptied the rifle at the roaring Zero. . . . Iida ceased his fire a moment before passing over Sands’ head. . . .”
The Zero crashed into a road winding up a round, flat-topped hill and struck the pavement about five feet below one of the married officers’ quarters, “skidded across and piled up against the embankment at the opposite side.” The impact ripped out the engine, turned the plane upside down, and shattered Iida’s body to pieces. Avery was convinced that mercifully the pilot died before the crash because he took Sands’s fire head-on and seemed to lose control of the plane at that instant.25
Horror-stricken, Fujita watched Iida’s plunge to death. He mistakenly credited his friend with “crashing straight downward in the midst of a flaming hangar on Kaneohe Air Base.”26
One other Japanese aircraft fell at Kaneohe, but the defenders could not identify the pilot, for the plane crashed into Kailua Bay. Iida and his unknown comrade probably would have counted their lives well lost. Kaneohe was about as wrecked as wrecked can be. Of Kaneohe’s thirty-six PBYs, three on patrol flights escaped, six were damaged, the rest destroyed.27
Fujita re-formed Iida’s group and led it toward Wheeler, determined to exact a savage vengeance. Suddenly sharp bursts of machine-gun fire flashed from the wings of U.S. fighters—Fujita was not sure of the exact number.28
When Lieutenants Taylor and Welch sped out of Wheeler to Haleiwa, they hoped to join battle immediately but received instructions to patrol Barber’s Point. Finding no enemy in that sector, they returned to Wheeler for additional .50 caliber ammunition. “We had to argue with some of the ground crew,” said Welch. “They wanted us to disperse the airplanes and we wanted to fight.” As they were loading ammunition, the Japanese came back. The crew ran for cover, but the lieutenants took off.29
Fujita’s guns poured bullets into an enemy fighter below him, and the American plane disappeared in a trail of black smoke. Another American—a P-40 or a P-36—came at him, all guns blazing. Fujita took his adversary’s fire straight on, but although winged by AA fire and now with a shot-up engine, he fired at another plane. All around him his comrades engaged in a slashing dogfight with other American fighters. The Zeros handled beautifully and consistently outmaneuvered U.S. interceptors, yet the Japanese had as much as they bargained for.30
More than likely this was part of the air battle in which Taylor and Welch wound up. Here is Taylor’s description: “I made a nice turn out into them and got in a string of six or eight planes. I don’t know how many there were. . . . I was on one’s tail as we went over Waialua, firing at the one next to me, and there was one following firing at me, and I pulled out. I don’t know what happened to the other plane. Lieutenant Welch, I think, shot the other man down.”31 Welch added to the story: “We took off directly into them and shot some down. I shot down one right on Lieutenant Taylor’s tail.”32
After a spell Fujita decided enough was enough. He rocked his wings to signal the other pilots, and they tore off for the rendezvous. As a result, they did not stop to “attack any combat planes at Haleiwa,” as Genda had planned.33 Thus, Haleiwa became the only field of any consequence on Oahu which escaped Japanese attention, not because they did not know of its existence, as some Americans later assumed, but because two men from Haleiwa and their comrades chased off the attackers.
In the meantime, Shindo’s and Nikaido’s sixteen fighters sped to Hickam and Ford Island to prepare a clear field for Shimazaki’s and Ichihara’s fifty-four horizontal bombers, which were to complete the destruction of the two bases. Shindo approached Hickam Field at high altitude, but fierce AA fire drove him even higher. Then, as Shimazaki’s horizontal bombers began their deadly work, Shindo dropped to treetop level to strafe. By now shell blasts filled the air, so he limited his strafing to one quick pass. He fought equally without fear and without pleasure. This was his job, and he worked with stolid thoroughness. His fighters “attacked with machine-gun fire the technical buildings behind the hangar lines and certain planes which by then were dispersed.”
Before Shindo took off from Akagi, Genda had instructed him to assess the damage wrought by the second wave. So, after his single strafing operation, Shindo left his formation and “flew over Pearl Harbor at an altitude of 300 meters to make observation of the battle result.” He wrapped up his report to Genda in just three words: “Inflicted much damage.”34
The pilots of the second wave’s high-level bombers, all of whom came from Shokaku and Zuikaku, were, for the most part, a jittery bunch as they flew on their maiden combat mission. Even a few like Lieutenant Takemi Iwami, who had had four or five years of flight experience and had tasted combat in China, knew they were in a scrap: “Identification of the targets was also not easy. The enemy’s AA fire proved accurate and it came close to us even when flying over clouds.” Nevertheless, luck stayed with the Japanese. Although several bombers of both waves returned to the carriers liberally peppered, none of the hits proved fatal.35
These inexperienced airmen scored direct hits on Hangars 13 and 15. The mess hall, already severly damaged in the first attack, took another bull’s-eye, the concussion killing all the Chinese cooks, who had sought protection in the freezer room. “The hangars looked as if they were being lifted right off the ground.”36
Lacking the all-important element of surprise which had brought the first wave through almost unscathed, Egusa’s dive bombers met an aroused enemy striking back with all the ferocity and power at his command. Lieutenant Zenji Abe noted that as soon as they flew beyond northern Oahu, “fierce AA barrages began gradually to close in. . . . This gave me the cold shivers.” he added candidly.37 And Chihaya flashed back to Akagi, “Enemy defensive fire strong.” That settled one question for Genda: If the task force launched a third major strike, the torpedo bombers would remain on the carriers.38
Egusa had orders to finish off any ships damaged in the first attack, preferably the battleships. Each plane carried one 250-kilogram bomb, so each bombardier had but one crack at the enemy. But when Egusa’s bombers reached Pearl Harbor, they had little choice of targets. The heavy rolls of black smoke obscured the vessels, and the exploding ack-ack made accurate sighting almost impossible. The Japanese would have to hit what they saw when they saw it.
Ofuchi swooped down on a battleship moored along the south end of Ford Island. “When we went into our attack dive, my feelings were numbed and, truthfully, I didn’t give a damn what happened. I just gave myself over to Fate,” Ofuchi said. “But when the bomb was dropped, and we pulled up to level off, I really got scared.”39
As the second wave broke over Pearl Harbor, doctors, nurses, corpsmen, and patients at the naval hospital scrambled for cover. Some vivid images would never leave Lieutenant Ruth Erickson’s memory: doctors, inured by profession and experience to human suffering, shaken to the core; a physician holding a needle to insert into a patient’s vein, his fingers quivering like reeds in the wind; the stench of burning flesh ripping up one’s nostrils. “I can still smell it . . . and I think I always will,” she said.40
By now Pearl Harbor was a hellpit of smoke—gray, brown, white, lemon yellow, black, and again black—acrid, foul, mushrooming billows erupting skyward, folding in and opening out like a mass of storm clouds. Out of this pall came a sight so incredible that its viewers could not have been more dumbfounded had it been the legendary Flying Dutchman—Nevada, heading into the channel, a hole the size of a house in her bow, her torn flag rippling defiance.
Nevada had been under partial steam when the first wave struck, and at 0850 the battleship got under way, Thomas at the conn, Ruff acting as navigator. Chief Quartermaster Robert Sedberry ably assisted.41 When Nevada limped past the blazing Arizona, someone saw three survivors swimming nearby and tossed them a line. They climbed up and helped man Nevada’s starboard 5-inch gun. Heat from the burning battleship was so intense that the gunners had to cover their shells with their bodies lest they explode.
The capsized Oklahoma was “another terrifying and shocking sight.” To some witnesses the fate of Oklahoma was the crowning horror of the day, worse even than the volcanic eruption aboard Arizona. The explosion of a battleship, although an awesome thing, was comprehensible. It even had a certain tragic grandeur. But for a battlewagon to overturn was unthinkable; it affronted human dignity. Something of this horrified incredulity held Ruff in its grip as Nevada moved abreast of the overturned vessel.42
When Egusa’s men saw Nevada plowing along below them, they recognized a golden double opportunity to sink a battleship and at the same time bottle up Pearl Harbor. High above the scene, Fuchida had his pilot bank deeply for a better look. Ah, good! he thought. Now just sink that ship right there!43 No wonder that, at 0850, “the Japanese bombers swarmed down on us like bees,” as Ruff remarked. One even ignored Neosho backing up Battleship Row, and every American on Ford Island who saw the narrow escape gasped in relief.
In spite of the severity of the attack, which sent five bombs crashing into the fore part of the ship and the superstructure, Ruff was confident that Nevada would weather the storm. But her chances looked slim when at precisely 0907 she came under another hail of bombs, many of which were “near misses.” One, however, struck the forecastle, killing “an unknown number of men.” After “some real twisting and maneuvering,” Thomas grounded the bow of the ship in the mud of Hospital Point at 0910. Five minutes later Captain Scanland came aboard, and by 1045 tugs had moved the battleship to the western side of Pearl Harbor’s entrance channel, her “starboard quarter aground, bow south.” Only then could Thomas and Ruff see the real extent of Nevada’s punishment.44 The fore part of the ship had been virtually destroyed, and the superstructure badly damaged. She had lost 3 officers and 47 men killed, 5 officers and 104 men wounded.45
By 0930 Oglala listed about twenty degrees and her crew “couldn’t stick to the decks any longer.” So Furlong ordered Abandon Ship. At 1000 Oglala “finally turned over and came to rest on the bottom of her port side.” Crawford, who had been blown off Vestal when Arizona exploded but made his way safely ashore, and Rafsky, hard at work aboard Argonne, later agreed that neither torpedo nor bomb damage really capsized Oglala. Both men insisted that the old girl “had a nervous breakdown and died of fright.”46
Vestal, too, had to be moved out of danger. It was typical of Fuqua that in the midst of heartbreaking toil aboard Arizona he could spare a thought for the repair ship alongside. At 0845 he ordered her forward lines cut. Her after lines already parted, she got under way “on both engines, no steering gear.” A tug pulled her bow away from the blazing battleship. The repair ship began to list to starboard and take water aft, both the shipfitter and blacksmith shops flooding. At 0945 Young remarked to Hesser, “The ship is getting into bad shape. We had better beach her.” This they managed to do at Aiea, where she settled on a bed of coral.47
Admiral Calhoun reached Argonne “just at the beginning of the second wave. . . .” Shortly thereafter his Mine Force rescued most of the crew of Utah. Two destroyers requested augmentation of their crews to put to sea. When Calhoun’s people asked the Utah men for volunteers, “force was necessary to restrain the 200 of them from going where only 55 were wanted. The men were so anxious that they could not wait for the boat; they jumped overboard and swam over there, the 55 of them.”48
The destroyer Blue got under way at 0847 with Ensign Asher commanding. “Two planes that dove over the ship were fired on by the .50 cal. machine guns. It is claimed that one of these planes, seen to crash near Pan American Airways Landing at Pearl City, was shot down by this vessel.” When the plane went down, the crew “stopped shooting and proceeded to pat each other on the back.” During the action Asher threw his field glasses at one of the diving planes. Later he was a bit apologetic about his irrational act; he guessed he “just was kind of mad.”
Safely out of the harbor, Asher reduced speed to a sedate ten knots and commenced patrolling. At 0950 Blue dropped depth charges on a sound contact. Investigation revealed a large oil slick and “air bubbles rising to the surface, over a length of about 200 feet.” So Asher believed that he had sunk this submarine.49
At 0902 Egusa’s dive bombers made a direct hit on Pennsylvania in dry dock. Then, at approximately 0907, a high-altitude bomber scored a strike at “frame 83, starboard side of boat deck.” However, Pennsylvania suffered remarkably little damage, considering her helpless position. Far worse than the material damage, the attack killed two officers and sixteen men and wounded thirty others from the enlisted ranks.50
Several of Kimmel’s destroyers took a terrific mauling. A direct hit exploded in the forward magazine of Shaw as she lay in floating dry dock not far from Pennsylvania, ripping her whole bow off. Soon raging fires from Egusa’s dive bombers engulfed Cassin and Downes so thoroughly that they had to be abandoned. Shortly thereafter magazine and torpedo explosions within each vessel shook them from bow to stern. Cassin rolled over against the stricken Downes, an almost unrecognizable ruin in the same dry dock as Pennsylvania.51
A large patch of burning fuel oil drifted toward California. His flagship gradually sinking and believing his proper place to be at sea, Pye told Train to get the staff together so that they could “shift over to any other ship of the force that could get out.” A boat had already drawn alongside to take them off when he received a signal from Kimmel that no more ships should sortie.52
Of all the battlewagons, Maryland escaped with the least damage. Her position inboard of Oklahoma protected her from the torpedoes. Seaman Second Class Harlan E. Eisnangle lost all track of time. He had no idea whether his gun crew hit anything or not, “for when you are loading the gun under those conditions, you are acting from instinct. For you are scared and you do your job from the drills you have been doing”53—an unconscious tribute to Kimmel and Kitts with their unremitting gunnery program.
At 0908 dive bombers dropped two missiles on Raleigh, still quivering from the first-wave torpedo attack. One “struck Raleigh aft at frame 112. . . .” Simons recorded its progress, adding, “In its path through the ship, this bomb missed our aviation gasoline tanks, containing three thousand gallons of high test gasoline, by about ten feet.” The second bomb dropped “less than 100 yards to port.” Then the pilot strafed the cruiser. To keep her from capsizing, Simons had his men jettison topside weights, about sixty tons in all.54
At 0920 more of Egusa’s bombers swarmed down on Honolulu, flagship of Kimmel’s Cruiser Force, moored at Berth 21. One bomb “struck the pier about 15 feet from the ship’s side at frame 40. It penetrated dock and exploded under water.” The concussion, however, caused a certain amount of damage and considerable flooding.55
Captain Rood felt St. Louis bounce in Berth B-17 when the bomb struck near Honolulu, moored beside her. The blast knocked down Commander Carl K. Fink, Rood’s executive officer. St. Louis’s gunners thought they hit the attacking plane after it pulled out. All Rood wanted was to go after the Japanese. So he ordered the engine room, “Make preparations for getting under way. Full power, emergency.” St. Louis was to have been in port for about a week for boiler repair. “Yet the men did jig time in getting those boilers ready so we could get steam up,” said Rood. What is more, repairmen had cut a hole about four feet in diameter in the side of the ship in order to pass gear in and out. Before St. Louis could get under way, the men had to close this hole and weld it securely. This efficiency paid off as Rood backed the cruiser out in the direction of Oklahoma at 0931.
Edging his cruiser toward the open sea, he did not pause to maneuver around a dredge with its steel cable extending to Dry Dock No. 1. Instead, he ordered emergency full speed and “hit that cable a smashing blow and snapped it like a violin string.” At 1004 St. Louis, making twenty-two knots in an eight-knot zone, cleared the channel. That very moment, looking off the starboard bow, Rood saw two torpedoes streaking for his ship, one just a short distance behind the other. St. Louis changed course and suddenly the steel fish exploded, sending geysers of water skyward. They had struck the coral near the channel entrance.
No doubt lightened by the release of its torpedoes, a midget submarine popped up near the surface. The cruiser commenced firing, and her men believed she hit the submarine’s conning tower.56
The sortie of St. Louis was the last major ship action in Pearl Harbor. Egusa’s bombers, racks empty, flew off to strafe Ewa, Hickam, and Ford Island. As Ofuchi raked Ewa Field, he saw several Japanese shot down.57 They had run afoul of the indestructible Taylor and Welch, newly refueled and freshly armed. The two Americans had flown to Barber’s Point to give the marines a hand. “We went down and got in the traffic pattern and shot down several planes there,” Taylor testified. “I know for certain I shot down two planes or perhaps more; I don’t know.” These two men between them accounted for seven attacking aircraft. Records credited them with four planes in their first action, three in the second.58
At Hickam Field, Shimazaki’s men had scarcely finished their task when a group of dive bombers, evidently having used up their bombs on Pearl Harbor, struck along the hangar line, strafing the aircraft. Allen was loading a B-17 when the strafers hit. His Flying Fortress had one engine “completely shot up and one wheel . . . shot from under it.” So he searched until he found another airworthy B-17 and once more started to load.59
Elsewhere on Hickam a middle-aged colonel shouted at Reeves, “Do something, Lieutenant! Do something!” Reeves asked, not unreasonably, “What shall I do?” To this the colonel snorted, “I don’t know, but do something!” As a pilot Reeves could not but respect the precision and tactics of the Japanese bombers. He and his friends noted that the American AA almost always shot behind the planes.60
Except for random strikes, the attack was over. The second wave cost the Japanese six fighter planes and fourteen dive bombers. Many others had been hit but escaped. Fuchida hovered over the fearful scene, assessing the damage and rounding up stragglers. His badly shot-up plane had circled for about two hours. As befitted a leader, he waited until the last of the rearguard fighters winged out of sight before he headed for Akagi.61 He could not secure a definitive picture because the heavy smoke obscured his vision. Even so, he reported to the rejoicing Nagumo success beyond his wildest dreams. With a perfect view, this is what he could have tabulated:
Eight battleships, three light cruisers, three destroyers, and four auxiliary craft either sunk, capsized, heavily damaged, or damaged generally—eighteen vessels. Naval aviation, too, had suffered heavy losses: thirteen fighters, twenty-one scout bombers, forty-six patrol bombers, three utility craft, two transports, and one each observation/scouts and training craft. To this one must add the Enterprise craft shot down that morning and others later felled by American guns.
General Martin’s Hawaiian Air Force took a terrific beating, with ultimate losses totaling four B-17s, twelve B-18s, two A-20s, thirty-two P-40s, twenty P-36s, four P-26s, two OA-9s, and one 0-49. In addition, eighty-eight pursuit planes, six reconnaissance aircraft, and thirty-four bombers had been damaged. At first it looked as though all these had been wrecked, but 80 percent were later salvaged. And the Japanese harvested an unexpected bonus with the destruction of Landon’s B-17s. Hickam, Wheeler, Ford Island, Kaneohe, and Ewa suffered extensive damage to installations as well as to planes.
One turns now to the most grievous losses of all—the dead, the missing, the wounded. Casualties for the day totaled:
| KILLED, MISSING, AND DIED OF WOUNDS | WOUNDED62 | |
| Navy | 2,008 | 710 |
| Marine Corps | 109 | 69 |
| Army | 218 | 364 |
| Civilians | 68 | 35 |
| Total | 2,403 | 1,178 |
By comparison Japanese losses were relatively insignificant—only twenty-nine planes. One large submarine and five midgets went down with all hands except for Sakamaki. No wonder Commander Sanagi of the Naval General Staff’s Operations Section waxed lyrical in his diary entry for December 8:
Our air force, together with the submarine force, achieved a great success unprecedented in history by the Pearl Harbor attack . . . which could only be done by the Imperial Navy. This success is owing to the Imperial Navy’s hard training for more than twenty years. Our navy had made this hard training only for this one day.
Nothing could hold back our Imperial Navy, which kept silent for a long time. But once it arose, it never hesitated to dare to do the most difficult thing on this earth. Oh, how powerful is the Imperial Navy!