It's total bullshit. The US did prepare for an impending attack, though they believed the target would be Singapore. The United States believed Japan would attack Singapore, forcing the US to declare war (a war in which would have been politically unpopular given the US population's stance in isolationism, and since they weren't directly attacked) and come to the aid of the British colony. They were under the impression that Japan was banking on a Pacific version of a "Belgian rescue" (where the French and British forces rushed in after Germany invaded Belgium, in which Germany waited several days to tighten the noose, then launched an attack slashing behind the Allied lines and raced through France, cutting the Allied forces off and leading to their annhilation).Kashluk wrote:That thing you mentioned about Pearl Harbor there, Menno...
I saw this British document, which described how the US navy had gained information of the upcoming attack to the naval base and decided to withdraw all the important warships on to some exercise far away from Pearl Harbor. So, that when the japs attack they would have a reason to join the war but they wouldn't have lost any important ships. I think this was on Discovery.
Is it total bullshit? I mean most of the stuff that comes from Discovery is highly patriotic, things describing the Gulf War, WTC towers etc. so this one caught my eye.
Anyway, that's what most of the US high command was banking on, and at the time it was completely plausible. There were preliminary signs/movements that were picked up by Radar operators, but they were pushed aside as diversionary tactics from the real target...Singapore. Of course, Japan's target wasn't Singapore but instead Pearl Harbor, and we know how that all went down. What sparked the whole conspiracy theory of the US intentionally allowing their Pacific Fleet to be destroyed was over the fact that three Aircraft Carriers (you could say the most important naval vessels at that time) were not present at Pearl Harbor the day of the attack.
However, this theory has been debunked on many occassions. Of the three Aircraft Carriers that were missing that day, the Saratoga was in overhaul on the west coast, the Lexington was delivering aircraft to Midway, and the Enterprise was on a similiar mission to Wake island. So they weren't conducting some secret manuever to be away at the day of the attack. This theory is also ridiculous because it resulted in virtually the entire loss of their Pacific Fleet. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, US Navy campaigns were extremely limited in scope, and it took a major gamble at Midway, where 3 US carriers and a variety of ships met a much larger Japanese force (with over 8 carriers and even more war vessels) and defeated it, changing the tide in the Pacific. The victory, aside from the carrier pilots guts and bravery, was for the most part complete luck for the United States. The victory was so dependent upon luck and bravery, that for many years students at the Naval War Academy in Rhode Island could not replicate a US victory at the Battle of Midway (though I'm not sure if that record still stands).
This theory that the United States would let its Pacific Fleet be virtually completely decimated, as well as their primary naval base, is just bizzare in logic. To top that off, Singapore fell a day later to the Japanese (I'm pretty sure the British didn't want to lose their garrison at the colony just to get the US involved in a war). To say that the US purposely allowed it's fleet to be scuttled is like going into a fight with your legs and one arm chopped off. The US didn't want to go to war with Japan, at least at that point. They instead wanted to get involved with the war in Europe; the bombing of Pearl Harbor was the last thing they wanted because it brought them into a war with Japan instead of with Nazi Germany (but Hitler made his blunder soon afterwards and declared war on the US). It took a major gamble at Midway to turn the tide of the war in the Pacific, a battle in which by all accounts the US "should" not have won.
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= lose?
