Re: 1942 pearl harbor attack

Dilbert Firestorm wrote:
> question...

> was there any evidence that FDR knew of an impeding japanese attack and
> had the carriers removed from harm?

For the 1942 raid, there is evidence that the US military was warned
from their radio analysists of the two plane raid. However, due to
circumstances that infuriated Rochefort, they decided to take no action
against them. The aircraft flew over by night, dropped a few bombs
that missed, and AFAIK, were never heard from either side again.

Now, if you are talking about the 1941 raid on Pearl Harbor...

> I thought ordering the carriers out and leaving behind the BBs &
> cruisers was an odd thing to do.

The carriers were out on aircraft-ferrying missions to Wake and Midway,
as part of the build-up of US forces in the Pacific. Adm. Kimmel did
offer the battleships to accompany Halsey, but Halsey turned down the
offer, citing the slow speed of the battleships as a factor inhibiting
any pursuit or flee scenarios in case he met a major portion of the IJN
fleet. I don't have Brown's testimony on hand at the moment, but I
wouldn't be surprised if he turned them down also.

Kimmel did not want the battleships sailing without air cover, so he
kept them in port.

For more information, try:
http://ibiblio.org/pha/pha/index.html

It has the texts of the Pearl Harbor investigations, along with a wide
variety of other stuff.

.

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