On the 5th, Task Force 12 sailed from Pearl. Eighteen light gray Vought SB2U-3 Vindicators from VMSB-231, under 41-year old Major Clarence J. “Buddy” Chappell, then made the 1.7-hour flight from Ewa and landed on board Lexington, along with the “Lady Lex” air group. Planes recovered, the force set course for Midway. The Lexington departed Pearl Harbor on the morning of 5 December. That afternoon saw the arrival of Battleship Division One from gunnery exercises in the Hawaiian Operating Area, and the three dreadnoughts, Arizona (BB-39), Nevada (BB-36), and Oklahoma (BB-37), moored in their assigned berths at the quays along Ford Island. The movements of the ships in and out of Pearl Harbor had been the object of much interest on the part of the espionage system operating out of the Japanese consulate in Honolulu throughout the year 1941, for the information its operatives were providing went to support an ambitious and bold operation that had taken shape over several months.
Unbeknownst to Admiral Kimmel, a Japanese task force under the command of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, formed around six carriers and the most powerful force of its kind ever assembled by any naval power, had set out from the remote Kurile Islands on 27 November. It observed radio silence and steamed via the comparatively less traveled northern Pacific.
Nagumo’s mission was to destroy the United States Pacific Fleet and thus ensure its being unable to threaten the Japanese Southern Operation poised to attack American, British, and Dutch possessions in the Far East. All of the warning signs made available to Admiral Kimmel and General Short pointed toward hostilities occurring within the forseeable future, but not on Oahu. War, however, was about to burst upon the Marines at Pearl Harbor “like a thunderclap from a clear sky.”
Suddenly Hurled into War
Some 200 miles north of Oahu, Vice Admiral Nagumo’s First Air Fleet—formed around the aircraft carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku—pressed southward in the pre-dawn hours of 7 December 1941. At 0550, the dark gray ships swung to port, into the brisk easterly wind, and commenced launching an initial strike of 184 planes 10 minutes later. A second strike would take off after an hour’s interval. Once airborne, the 51 Aichi D3A1 Type 99 dive bombers (Vals), 89 Nakajima B5N2 attack planes (Kates) used in high-level bombing or torpedo bombing roles, and 43 Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 00 fighters (Zeroes), led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, Akagi’s air group commander, wheeled around, climbed to 3,000 meters, and droned toward the south at 0616. The only other military planes aloft that morning were Douglas SBD Dauntlesses from Enterprise, flying searches ahead of the carrier as she returned from Wake Island, Army Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses heading in from the mainland, and Navy Consolidated PBY Catalinas on routine patrols out of the naval air stations at Ford Island and Kaneohe.
Jordan Collection, MCHC
Aerial view of Ewa Mooring Mast Field, taken 2 December 1941, showing various types of planes arrayed on the mat and living accommodations at middle and right.
Jordan Collection, MCHC