Japanese 3rd Wave at Pearl Harbor

[barnee]

I guess I just don’t see how the third wave sinks the carriers since they weren’t there. At any rate, it’s good they didn’t need to find out.

[ABWorsham4]

Question: How much of the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility was in use on December 7, 1941?

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@abworsham4

I’m not sure.

[KaLeu]

@abworsham4 said in Japanese 3rd Wave at Pearl Harbor:

Question: How much of the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility was in use on December 7, 1941?

Nothing. According to https://www.asce.org/about-civil-engineering/history-and-heritage/historic-landmarks/red-hill-underground-fuel-storage-facility :

Work on the first tank was completed in September 1942

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@kaleu

But there were other oil facilities, right?

[KaLeu]

@superbattleshipyamato

There certainly were. The link I gave before, quotes Admiral Chester Nimitz: “We had about 4.5 million barrels of oil out there and all of it was vulnerable to .50-caliber bullets. Had the Japanese destroyed the oil, it would have prolonged the war another two years…”.
It’s also not too difficult to find a picture of those facilities, which indeed look like very tempting targets:

I suppose AB Worsham asked about the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility because if a lot of fuel would have already been stored there at the time of the attack, any third Japanese wave would have been unable to destroy that fuel.

When reading up on this, I came across the name of a very interesting fellow: Captain Mitsuo Fuchida. He was the leader of the first wave, and his accounts of what did or did not happen have been highly influential in (re-)writing history. Here are a few more links:

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2016/december/commander-fuchidas-decision

https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=nwc-review

And while I didn’t read all of that, it seems that no third wave was launched against the oil containers because (a) the Japanese didn’t think of them as very important, and (b) no third wave had ever been planned to begin with. It was only when Fuchida was questioned by what must have been some amazed American interrogators after the war, that he began to realize that the celebrated Japanese victory had actually not nearly been as devastating as it could have been, and that his own role in the whole affair was not nearly as glorious as he would have liked it to be. So he began to change his story in later years, and the whole affair of him and other Japanese officers urging Admiral Nagumo to launch a third wave, was really Fuchida’s fabrication and never actually happened that way.

[General 6 Stars]

Ya plus the fact the first under ground tank wasn’t complete until end of 42.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@kaleu

But what if what he said was true? We’re already diving into the “what if” world anyway.

[KaLeu]

@superbattleshipyamato

No, we’re not. He changed his story and kept changing it. Witness accounts did not conform anything he said.
I’m not an expert on this, but what I found seems pretty convincing to me.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@kaleu

So the story wasn’t true. But as I said, what if, in an alternate timeline, the story was true? And what if it was launched? What would have been the damage?

A “what if” has to be done to make this conversation work (or even have a chance of being “realistic”).