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We were surprisedsee post # 19How so?goes both ways--doesn't itMonday morning quarterbackingthey had ''peacetime'' mindset--after a war warning --after Tarantohttps://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-war-warning-is-sent-to-commanders-in-the-pacific
It was a failure from the top down, everyone believed Hawaii was too far away and too strong to be attacked.
Kimmel and Short were scapegoats.
Now one commander that was guilty as hell was MacArthur, he was told of the Japanese attack on Pearl and ordered to prepare his air forces accordingly and expect an attack from the Japanese. He acknowledged those orders then did nothing, the Army Air Corps in the Philippines was caught on the ground the same way (and in the same parked configurations) as in Hawaii but obviously he did not suffer the same fate as Kimmel and Short.
Also, specifically in Africa the main ground commander, Fredendall was still "stuck" in WWI with his thinking and also tended to play his subordinate commanders off against each other while making no real decisions. Things obviously changed when Patton replaced him.
We were litterally "An Army at Dawn" as Atkinson wrote about in an excellent book with the same title.
We also had a lot of learning to do in the pacific in all branches of service specifically with moribund attitudes and ideas at the upper echelons of military command and control.
.....--I remember reading in the mid 80's about how the Israelis defended against airplanes used as weapons ......but then after 9-11, many professionals never even thought of it ---well, I knew about them in the mid 80's as an mere E2 in the military....the professionals should've been thinking about that--just as Short and Kimmel should have known about Taranto = and know Pearl was vulnerable
There were no significant directives out of the Navy warning of a serious threat of a Japanese carrier attack.
Taranto was twenty something planes. Pearl Harbor was 350 planes. The magnitude of the attack was unprecedented