Pearl Harbor Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Pearl Harbor - Essay Example The American never thought that Japan was capable of performing such an act. However, rumours of Japan’s surprise mass attack had been reported but were not taken seriously. (Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, 2000) The answer I think it was the former, though the strategy was a good one it had completely gone wrong. Now you may ask why? The Japanese had developed the technology, attack strategy and skills to successfully accomplish the impossible as they had been planning this for at least six months prior to the main attack. The Japanese had good defensive plans against the US. Such as fortifying individual islands with troops, reinforcing air squadrons and also they kept a large fleet to retaliate in case the US attacked. So what went wrong? Its simple, the Japanese became over confident and they changed their plans and instead implementing this defensive plan they went further to attack the US Midway. It turned into a big disaster and the Japanese lost a huge number of their carriers and thus with their naval and air forces which were in a weak situation now, they could not resist the American troops and they reached the Japanese air space itself. Another factor of this raid to go wrong was that the commander of the Japanese fleet became nervous and he aborted the third strike attack of the two which had already taken place, which was aimed at the oil supplies and repair facilities of the US fleet. If this had taken place then the US would have had a difficult time in retaliating. The attack plan of the Japanese would require the loss of one –third attacking force of the planes and two carriers. Another problem was of refuelling the planes over the pacific and also fixing of wooden fins on naval torpedoes so as to stabilize them in shallow waters. (Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, 2000) Many messages were dispatched about the movements of the Japanese fleet but the American ignored them as they thought a formal war declaration would