Nagumo was not particularly thrilled about the idea of attacking Pearl Harbour, especially considering his inexperience with airborne operations.Nonetheless, he was put in command of the First Air Fleet. This was a failure in two ways; the war coordinator did not go to war and an inexperienced, hesitant, substitute took his place. It is noted that Nagumo conceivably withdrew from the attack too early, or earlier than Yamamoto would have. There were still carriers that had not been hit and America had not been immobilized enough to stop a counter attack. Yamamoto’s leniency in giving Nagumo authority to make crucial decisions was not a good idea.
If NORAD's story was true, then someone in the FAA should have been arrested and charged with a criminal offense. No one in ether the FAA or NORAD was punished though. In fact some workers were even promoted. The problem with NORAD's story is that they did not even send the scramble order until 8:46 AM. The second problem with their story was that they sent the scramble order to the air force base in Cape Cod which was 180 miles away instead of sending it to the New Jersey base only 70 miles away (Griffin 9).
They lost the bulk of their fleet and did not have the time or resources to rebuild, at least not at the pace of the Americans. This is ironic given that knowledge of the inverse, namely America’s shortage of ships and carrier aircraft following Pearl Harbor and the Battle of the Coral Sea, was what inspired Japan to proceed with an attack. The Battle of Midway marked the last time the Japanese had a solid grasp on the Pacific. Admiral Yamamoto remained in command, but, after his defeat at Midway, his reputation was not so grand. This remained appropriate because Yamamoto was less effective after Midway with the Japanese on the defensive.
The crew of the Imo claimed that there was a ferry in their way so they had to go around. That is not an excuse because there was plenty of time to correct their course after they had passed the ferry. Another option that they had was that they could have simply waited for the ferry to move. The Imo didn’t respect the rules of safe passage in the harbour, which started the chain reaction that led to the
During the trip Earhart kept in communication with the USS Itasca however transmissions became faint prompting Earhart to send several messages: "We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet." Later Earhart sent another message, "We are running north and south."
Who was responsible for this tragedy? The Americans or the Russians? Both have very different views of the real reason why. The battle of controversy between the two is never ending and still not clear till this day. Many historians and authors are debating as to what really happened as KAL 007 flew an ‘incorrect’ flight path over a hyper sensitive military area of the USSR at the time, some 369 miles off course.
He thought he could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe, taking approximately 12,000 miles. Most people believed it would take about 24,000 miles and they were correct. Columbus did not “prove the world was round” and even wrongly thought he was in Asia because of his wrong calculations and convinced himself that he was
Long, the aluminum sheet was proven to have not been from Earhart’s plane. Ric Gillespie believes that repairs were made after Earhart’s first attempt to fly around the world and that the aluminum sheet was truly a piece of Earhart’s plane, but experts say otherwise. One expert who worked in the factory that manufactured Earhart’s plane states that in Earhart’s time, repairs that were made followed strict regulations, if the whole exterior of a plane were to be changed, it would not go unnoticed. Records do not show of such a repair. (Finding
Aircraft and ships were aligned in rows and ammunition was locked away in storage. Aboard ships, only half of the anti-aircraft positions were manned. The sheer lack of preparation for an attack portrayed the general attitude of ignorance in the American government and military. Many high-ranking officials believed that a country such as Japan, which did not even have the resources to survive a lengthy war, could not possibly deliver the large-scale attack required for a victory at Pearl Harbor. The ignorance was so great that on the day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, several major incidents were noted and ignored by officers on duty.
But overall For one, the military started to believe in the value of the newly developed radar installation. Before then, they didn't have much confidence, but the radar operator had seen a rather large indication of incoming aircraft and blamed it on birds instead of the possibility of the Japanese invasion. Also, the attack resulted in an immediate U.S. declaration of war against Japan. Japanese Americans were not trusted since other Japanese had been assuring government officials that they wanted peace and that there was no possibility of an attack. Maybe it wasn't right to send all Japanese Americans to camps, but U.S. officials didn't see much of an option.