Allan Mallinson

Day of infamy

Craig Nelson’s misleading account of the infamous attack smacks of the ‘visiting author’ marking an anniversary

On 7 December 1941, without declaration of war, 350 Japanese carrier-borne aircraft struck at the US Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii — in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ringing words, ‘a date that will live in infamy’. For the 75th anniversary, Craig Nelson, a New York Times journalist, has, says his publisher, produced ‘a definitive account’.

I disagree. Indeed, if this book were a motor car (or ‘automobile’, for it is a re-print of the US edition, with American usage and spelling), it would have to be recalled for extensive safety modifications and replacement parts. The errors, mis-understandings and omissions are markedly misleading, sowing doubt about the accuracy of the admittedly ‘gripping’ (publisher’s words again) account of the actual attack, and undermining the credibility of the analysis of cause and effect.

Some of the technical errors are trivial enough, though indicative — warships ‘cabling’ each other, for example, in the age of wireless telegraphy. Others are more egregious. In the 1930s, writes Nelson, the Japanese developed a ‘two-foot-long, oxygen-powered torpedo that could travel 24 miles and was twice as effective in speed, in distance, in targeting and explosive power as anything American-made’. Just how does the author suppose that torpedo technology could have reached such a degree of miniaturisation, especially of explosive power, even now, let alone then?

What he is almost certainly referring to is the ‘Long Lance’, which had a diameter of two feet and a length of nine metres (pretty evident in the name) and weighed nearly three tons. But it could not be air-launched, for besides the payload, the oxygen propellant was too unstable. Its range of 24 miles, in the days of unguided torpedoes, gave it no advantage except in a game of fire and hope; there was no superiority in ‘targeting’.

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