PEARL HARBOR

U.S. Naval attack aviation's hasty birth 75 years ago.

     75 Years ago this month, US naval attack aviation got its rocky birth at 8:05am Oahu time on December 7th 1941 when an armored piercing bomb crashed through the deck of the battleship Arizona and turned the dreadnaught into the funeral pyre of the battleship era.

     Up to that point, the U.S. Navy seemed technologically and mentally backwards in the application of the aircraft carrier. To the Navy elite of the post World War I era (1918-1941) the backbone of naval power lied in the clashing of steel, the old manly art of ship to ship gunfire warfare, of steel titans slamming shells into each other at great distances. To American admirals; the carrier was a support ship good for only target spotting and searching for opposing fleets.

    One U.S. Army general, Billy Mitchel, was court marshalled for insubordination for daring to question the wisdom of ignoring the true capabilities of air power. How dare this upstart army man dare assault the sacred battleships.

    Well the Japanese were listening to what Mitchel proposed and one of them, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, began to tailor the Imperial Japanese fleet away from reliance on the battleship to focusing power around the aircraft carrier.

     Naval Aviation attack warfare was not invented by America but by Japan and by the time 353 Japanese plans were sending American ships to the muddy bottom of Pearl Harbor; they had a ten year jump in carrier warfare experience.

       The attack on Pearl Harbor was aided by America's rabid racism and grand overstatement of its superiority. No one in the Government or the Navy could conceive of these "funny little Asians" being so capable of carrying out such a mastery of tactical brilliance. Today's racist in America hides himself behind silly conspiracy theories rather than admit that the experienced Japanese planed and executed an efficient assault.

      For all the horror and sadness of the disaster that befell the American Navy at Pearl Harbor on that Sunday morning; the attack was a shock treatment that brought the stupidity of loving the Battleship to its over due end. The void had to be quickly filled by forceful leaders and daring airmen. The victory at Midway in June 1942 came down to lucky breaks and the willingness of American pilots to die...their tremendous courage celebrated by the defeated carrier commander who had led his carriers to Pearl Harbor six months earlier.

     The Pacific War became a carrier war and as Yamamoto predicted before the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was only a matter of time before the shear industrial might of the United States overwhelmed and defeated the Japanese Imperial fleet. Men like William Halsey, Mark Mitchner and Ray Spruence brought the American Navy into the 21st century and turned it into the most formidable carrier based force known to this day.

      Formidable leaders create heroic men and no pilots were more heroic than the attack pilots of World War II who sank four Japanese carriers at Midway, Slaughtered the Imperial Fleet at Truk lagoon and supported the Marines in their offensive sweep across the Marianas, the Marshalls, the Gilberts and to the door step of the Japanese empire on the blood soaked island of Okinawa.

     Had it not been for the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago, there would never have been a modern American carrier navy poised for attack on demand.