Infrastructure

One thing that also came back to bite the Japaneses was that Pearl Harbor was so shallow it allowed of most of the ships to be repaired and put back in to service.

cthia wrote:The information that I gave came straight out of the mouths of several Japanese officers and a few who flew the planes. The pilots were specifically ordered not to target the storage tanks for the reasons I gave -- tanks that were so large you could see them from miles away. Especially from the air.

This is all fairly new information that was acquired which wasn't previously available, especially the awesome footage of the bombing runs. There is film of bombs being dropped from a perfect birds eye view from directly (12 noon) overhead. Awesome footage. This was a new documentary on the history channel, I think. Chime in if you've seen it as well.

But the targeting of the ballfields, where they thought storage tanks were buried, was based on a folder of targets recovered from a plane downed during the Pearl Harbor attacks. That folder of targets had the ballfields marked at fuel storage, and the ball fields were bombed.

Similarly that folder had base operations building identified as the officer's club (which presumably is why the operations building wasn't bombed).


People's recollection is a funny thing, especially after almost 75 years; so I'd tend to side with the contemporary hard evidence (the target list recovered at the time) over recent recollections. Now I don't remember which wave attacked the ballfields; so maybe the Japanese had briefed the pilots not to attack during the first wave so they could get photo recon of the initial attacks; over time I speculate that may have been remembered as an order to never hit them, even if it was just an order to hit them in a subsequent wave.

Edit: Actually doing some quick research to refresh my memory I now think the fuel tanks that were originally planed to be where the ballfields were for Hickam Field (and so presumably high octane aviation gasoline); not the main fuel-oil tanks for the USN ships. The risk / reward trade-off for hitting the avgas tanks was likely quite different that the naval fuel oil - as a successful strike against the avgas storage might prevent, or at least hamper, attempts to search for/bomb that Japanese ships or to mount a fighter defense against the follow-up waves.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:The information that I gave came straight out of the mouths of several Japanese officers and a few who flew the planes. The pilots were specifically ordered not to target the storage tanks for the reasons I gave -- tanks that were so large you could see them from miles away. Especially from the air.

This is all fairly new information that was acquired which wasn't previously available, especially the awesome footage of the bombing runs. There is film of bombs being dropped from a perfect birds eye view from directly (12 noon) overhead. Awesome footage. This was a new documentary on the history channel, I think. Chime in if you've seen it as well.

But the targeting of the ballfields, where they thought storage tanks were buried, was based on a folder of targets recovered from a plane downed during the Pearl Harbor attacks. That folder of targets had the ballfields marked at fuel storage, and the ball fields were bombed.

Similarly that folder had base operations building identified as the officer's club (which presumably is why the operations building wasn't bombed).


People's recollection is a funny thing, especially after almost 75 years; so I'd tend to side with the contemporary hard evidence (the target list recovered at the time) over recent recollections. Now I don't remember which wave attacked the ballfields; so maybe the Japanese had briefed the pilots not to attack during the first wave so they could get photo recon of the initial attacks; over time I speculate that may have been remembered as an order to never hit them, even if it was just an order to hit them in a subsequent wave.

Edit: Actually doing some quick research to refresh my memory I now think the fuel tanks that were originally planed to be where the ballfields were for Hickam Field (and so presumably high octane aviation gasoline); not the main fuel-oil tanks for the USN ships. The risk / reward trade-off for hitting the avgas tanks was likely quite different that the naval fuel oil - as a successful strike against the avgas storage might prevent, or at least hamper, attempts to search for/bomb that Japanese ships or to mount a fighter defense against the follow-up waves.

Ok, because I would lean towards the testimonies of the horses' mouths -- since there were several of them from both the officers and the pilots groups. And because any documents found could be considered circumstantial evidence.

Were the fuel locations marked on the maps acquired, meant to be secondary targets of contingency plans should the attack on Pearl failed? Etc., etc. And were they maps from a wave completely separate from the wave that hit Pearl?

I would tend to believe the officers and pilots, because the Japanese had good intel. They knew the tanks were there. Those things are huge. Remember my post regarding Cushing, Oklahoma? If you've ever seen those storage tanks up close and personal, you'd know there was no way the Japanese could have visually missed them. They are plain and clear in most footage. So failing to target them being intentional, seems reasonable.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:This discussion makes me want to look more closely at Grayson's storage habits for missiles. Grayson didn't produce its own missiles did they?

IIRC, the loss of Grayson's missile production at Blackbird Yards is explicitly mentioned when the missile shortage is discussed.

Thanks.

I didn't think Grayson produced the Apollo birds.

cthia wrote:I didn't think Grayson produced the Apollo birds.

They got a full set of toolsets the week before someone blew up their entire manufacturing site.

David said that the IAN did not have any capability to produce them either, but they got a full technical package and a liaison team from BuWep to help them build production capabilities right after that very bad day.

cthia wrote:I can't rightly recollect, were very many or any stockpile of missiles destroyed with Oyster Bay as well? Perhaps representing more Manty eggs all in one space basket?

Certainly all of a missile stockpile shouldn't be kept in one place. Regardless of any perceived outside threat. Freak accidents on your own side can wipe you out if they are all kept at a single location such as a space station.

IIRC, we Americans somewhat got lucky at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese chose not to destroy the stockpile of fuel in the many tanks at Pearl Harbor. They had determined that the smoke plumes could hinder their vision.

A mistake, as that same fuel was later used against them.

That [fuel farm] and the sub pens were the third wave targets - only Nagumo got cold feet and canx the third wave.

Loosing the Hawaii fuel farm would have significantly changed the war in the Pacific...

PS The below ground fuel storage facilities were not completed until July 1942 - the fuel tanks were above ground prior to that.

cthia wrote:

Theemile wrote:[quote="cthia"]<snip>
Also targeted in an infrastructure trashing would be a system's fuel -- in the Honorverse that would be a system's hydrogen production plants. Which meant that fuel would also be at an all time low until facilities were rebuilt, from most infrastructure raids. Hydrogen fuel storage was probably the only assault on infrastructure that the Yawata strike did not include because of time.

Well, David did base OB on the Pearl Harbor strike, and one of the 3 big strategic "misses" of the strike, and potentially the most achievable one, was the destruction of the Fuel storage facility at Hawaii. The complex was completely missed in the strikes, and the fuel kept here fueled the Pacific fleet for the next year or so.

So if it survived, I doubt it was a mistake on David's part.

Not a fair parallel. The Japanese intentionally missed the fuel tanks at Pearl Harbor for strategic reasons that would not have been relevant in the Honorverse. Their thinking was that the plumes of smoke from the resulting explosions would cloud their ability to effectively target the ships. I mentioned that upwind.[/quote]
I also read somewhere that they were debating occupying Hawaii and so thought that they might capture the fuel.

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Annachie wrote:]
I also read somewhere that they were debating occupying Hawaii and so thought that they might capture the fuel.

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I'm would be surprised if the Japanese naval planners hadn't looked at what it would take to invade and occupy Hawaii. But I don't think they ever had a serious thought of doing so. Freeing up the shipping to transport the troops would have meant canceling every other pacific invasion; Malaysia (Singapore), Philippines, Wake, etc. And I'm not sure they really could have gotten the troops without convincing the Japanese Army to pull units out of China.

Plus even after wrecking the naval base the coast defenses and troop concentrations on the main island were no joke. And the Japanese didn't have a good set of tactics for opposed amphibious landings. It would have been a major tactical and strategic overreach.

And if they'd managed it the islands weren't self sufficient so they have to run freighter in regularly to supply their occupation forces. Given their deficient convoy and anti-submarine tactics and equipment that's just asking to get the troops starved out by a submarine blockade out of the West Coast ports (though the USN would still need to solve their torpedo problems before the subs were fully effective)

While the historical debate about the Pearl Harbour stuff is great, I can't quite picture a direct parallel between PH and OB and hydrogen bunkers being targetted.

There's going to be a pretty large farm in nearly anywhere with bases, and the Junction would have a pretty big store I'd imagine. Every major military base Manticore owns has big hydrogen farms, and nearly any big gas giant could be turned into a hydrogen farm, because as far as we know, Honorverse doesn't rely on He-3 isotopes.

So rebuilding a fuel farm, there surely must be "field expedient refueling equipment" aboard most warships. Something that it might takes weeks and weeks, but they can refuel. Although, to take my own devils advocate, I suppose the discussion of how Harvest Joy had a maximum cruising radius unless they could get into grav waves to turn off their fusion cores debunks the possibility of field expedient refueling.