admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Comannder and cheif of combined fleet set in motion one of the worlds most memorable operational plans, and the U.S. Navy were fish in a barrel. On a more positive note Japan's carrier force failed to launch their follow up attack which left most of the machine shops among other things well in tact. It gave the U.S. some breathing room, just enough to make a come back not too long after the attack. Not much to say about this one. Simple, direct, and effective.
Shore facilities were not mentioned once, not a single instance, in the operations order for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Launching of a third wave attack, in the order, was left to Nagumo's discretion, however the order stipulated that any third strike so exercised was to have any torpedo bombers, the B5N's, to be armed with torpedoes not bombs. Bombing shore facilities requires in most cases some special ordnance. Don't expect to take out a dry-dock with the typical land bomb. There is little evidence the Kido Butai brought along anything that would do the trick. And the fuel farms? Well, you can poke holes in big cans of bunker fuel, but getting it to burn as it is stored is another problem all together. More special ordnance. Not to mention each storage tank was surrounded by an earthen berm, a standard safety practice. And machine shops and such? No evidence the Japanese had any firm intelligence on the location of specific facilities, not to mention that the smoke from the first attack was already making target identification difficult for the second wave, it would have been worse for a third. And by the time the second wave had returned to the Kido Butai it was already obvious that they'd lost almost 10% (this is where the word "decimate" comes from) of the aircraft in the two strikes, not to mention not just a few damaged beyond further immediate use. Those that were left would have had to attack a waiting Pearl Harbor, try to identify their targets thus being targets longer themselves, and when done, return to their carriers for landings in the dark. Not exactly a prescription for happy endings. There was also, for the worriers, the nagging question of the location of the USN carriers, if not at Pearl Harbor, then where were they? Did anyone really want to wait around and find out? Sure, certain fire breathers, but they had not been flying for the last six hours, and now someone wants a third mission? And while they're off for another 3 hour round trip what happens when the US carriers come boiling over the horizon? Fresh planes, fresh, and very angry, pilots from, what, two, maybe three, carriers, against a really meager, and worn from constant operations since dawn, CAP? Yes, yes, Saratoga was at San Diego, Lexington was 200 miles south of Midway, and Enterprise was 215 miles west of Oahu, on her way back from Wake. Only Enterprise could have been remotely capable of making an attack - - - but the Japanese did not know any of that, they just knew that they did not know where the USN carriers were. Beating up on poor Nagumo for failing to launch a third attack was and is something that stems from end of war US criticism of Japanese operations. Sort of a "well . . . we would have . . ." And yes, they would have, in 1945, with all the advantages of 3 and a half years of progressing doctrine, technology and capability. But were the positions reversed, the USN would not have struck the shore facilities at Yokosuka or Sasebo in 1941, they would have been happy, as were the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, with what ships they could have sank or damaged. All that "should have hit the tank farms" business came much later and as a criticism leveled by US analysis. Further, one might consider that in 1941, the US was a net oil exporter (Remember, the Japanese were made because the US government forbade US companies to sell fuel products to the Japanese and convinced the Dutch in their East Indies possessions to take the position when the Japanese approached them when their US oil was cut off.) Anyway, the US had more tanker bottoms than any other maritime nation; not just USN tankers, but civilian haulers as well. And refineries right on the Pacific coast for just the purpose of export. Fuel lost in any hypothetical third wave attack would have been quickly replaced. Key to the whole thing was that the Japanese operations order made no reference to a third wave beyond a "if there appears to be a necessity and even then be torpedo heavy" phrasing. There was no, zip, zero, nada provision or direction for a strike, 1st, 2nd 3rd, or 25th on shore facilities. The order specifically said: "Immediately after the return of the first and second attack units, preparations for the next attack will be completed. At this time, carrier attack planes capable of carrying torpedoes will be armed with such as long as the supply lasts." Nagumo did what his operations plan ordered him to do, he got away with it, and it was time to go. The place to address what the Japanese should have or could have done is to look at the operations order and then their doctrine and operational culture. Careful reads and it all makes sense. See http://ibiblio.org/pha/monos/097/index.html for a start. The operations order spells out which unit attacks what target with forces allotted. The words "fuel tanks," "oil," "storage," "machine," "dry dock," and other descriptors of typical shore facilities do not appear in the order.
