The Second Wave: Nevada’s Run, the Shaw and the Navy Yard

At 0840 the battleship Nevada backed out of her berth and turned down the channel alone. Over the next hour the second wave wrecked the destroyers in the Navy Yard, blew the bow off the Shaw and left the Nevada aground in shallow water short of the harbor entrance. Then the Japanese went home and did not come back.

Why it mattered

The first wave, told in Chapter 4, did most of the killing. In about half an hour its torpedo planes and high-level bombers sank or crippled every battleship on the east side of Ford Island. The second wave did less damage, but it decided two questions that mattered for the rest of the war: whether Pearl Harbor would stay open as a working base, and whether the Japanese would come back.

Both answers favored the United States. The one battleship that got underway did not sink in the entrance channel, which would have shut the harbor. The dive bombers went after ships, not the dry docks, machine shops or tank farm. The Navy Yard was left with its “vital industrial facilities” essentially untouched, in the words of the Naval History and Heritage Command, and began rescue, repair and salvage work the same day (NHHC, “Attacks in the Navy Yard Area”). That day, after recovering his aircraft, Admiral Nagumo turned his carriers for home. Why he did so, and who on his flagship argued otherwise, became one of the longest-running arguments about the attack. Much of the evidence for that argument comes from one witness whose later accounts historians no longer fully trust.

The second wave also met a different defense. The ships were at general quarters, ammunition had been broken out and the guns were manned. The Japanese lost nine aircraft in the first wave and twenty in the second. The defense had a cost of its own: some of the shells fired at the attackers fell on Honolulu.

The lull, 0825 to 0840

The Navy’s own reconstruction of the morning divides the raid into five phases. Phase I, from 0755 to 0825, was the combined torpedo and dive-bombing attack. Phase II, from 0825 to 0840, was a “lull,” a word the report says applies “only by way of comparison,” because dive bombers kept attacking throughout it. Phase III, 0840 to 0915, brought the horizontal bombers back over the harbor in the heaviest bombing of the heavy ships. Phase IV, 0915 to 0945, was mostly dive bombing and strafing. In Phase V the attack died away, and by the report’s reckoning “all enemy planes had retired by 0945” (CINCPAC, report of 15 February 1942, HyperWar). Times in this chapter are Hawaii local time, then 10½ hours behind Greenwich and 5½ hours behind Washington.

The phases are a reconstruction, not a timetable. The same report estimates that 105 different aircraft made 156 attacks on the ships and Ford Island, and admits the phases overlapped by “perhaps ten minutes.” Where the times below come from a single ship’s report, they are that ship’s times.

During the lull the harbor began to move. Ships that could raise steam got ready to sortie, crews cut burning mooring lines, and the destroyers nested at their buoys in the northern part of the harbor prepared to make for the open sea. The second wave, led by Lt. Cmdr. Shigekazu Shimazaki, had no torpedo planes. Its level bombers were assigned to the air stations at Kaneohe, Ford Island and Barbers Point and to Hickam Field. Its dive bombers were to attack ships, and its fighters were to strafe the airfields. The airfield attacks are told in Chapter 5. Accounts of the wave’s exact size differ. The figure used in this collection is 167 aircraft; other tallies run as high as 171, depending on whether planes that turned back or never launched are counted.

The Monaghan and the submarine in the harbor

The first fight of the lull was with an enemy inside the harbor. At 0751 the destroyer Monaghan received an order to “proceed immediately and contact Ward,” the destroyer that had attacked a submarine off the entrance at dawn (Chapter 3). Delayed by the air attack, she did not get underway until 0827, according to her executive officer (Monaghan action report, NHHC).

At 0836 lookouts in the seaplane tender Curtiss, anchored north of Ford Island, sighted a periscope on the starboard quarter about 700 yards away. The tender’s 5-inch guns opened fire, and at 0840 her No. 3 gun hit the conning tower twice (Curtiss action report, NHHC). The minelayer Tangier was also firing. Monaghan‘s captain, W. P. Burford, saw a flag hoist from Curtiss warning of the submarine at about 0835 and ordered all engines ahead flank. His destroyer rammed the midget submarine and at about 0844 dropped two depth charges, which exploded 50 to 100 yards astern (Monaghan action report; CINCPAC report). The momentum carried Monaghan into a derrick, or dredge, near Beckoning Point, which she struck “a slight blow.” She backed clear and at about 0847 swung into the channel. She passed the entrance buoys at 0908.

The submarine was one of the five midget submarines launched from the large submarines of the Advance Expeditionary Force the night before (Chapter 2). How and when it got inside the harbor is still argued. The CINCPAC report records that the wreck was later salvaged for inspection. Monaghan reported no casualties of her own.

The Helm in the channel

One destroyer was already underway when the attack began. Helm had left her berth at 0726, bound for the deperming buoys in West Loch, where ships were demagnetized as a defense against magnetic mines (Helm action report, NHHC). Her guns opened on aircraft over the main channel at 0805. At 0817 she sighted a submarine’s conning tower to the right of the channel north of buoy No. 1 and fired on it, without observed hits. At 0915 a single plane came in from astern and two bombs burst in the water close aboard, springing seams below the waterline forward and putting her gyrocompass out of action. She stayed in the fight. The CINCPAC report’s list of sorties shows how the rest of the destroyers followed: Henley behind Monaghan, Blue beginning her sortie at 0847, Ramsay clearing her buoy at 0855, and the old destroyer-minecraft from Middle Loch between 0930 and 0943.

Nevada gets underway

USS Nevada (BB-36) was moored at berth F-8 at the northeast end of Battleship Row, directly astern of Arizona, and she was the only battleship there with no ship alongside. That gave her what the ship’s historical sketch called “a freedom of maneuver denied the other 8 battleships” (USS Nevada historical sketch, East Carolina University digital collection). Her captain, Capt. F. W. Scanland, was ashore. The senior officer aboard was Lt. Cmdr. Francis J. Thomas, a Naval Reserve officer (Wallin, Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal, p. 150). Before the attack Ens. Joseph K. Taussig Jr. had two boilers running, “barely enough power to get underway” (Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, “The Nevada’s Run”).

The ship’s report says the attack was first observed at 0801 and general quarters sounded at once. At 0802 her machine guns opened fire on torpedo planes coming in on the port beam; one fell about 100 yards off the port quarter. Another dropped a torpedo that hit the port bow at about frame 41, at the forward edge of No. 2 turret’s barbette (Nevada action report, NHHC). Wallin times that hit at about 0810 (p. 211); the museum’s account gives 0803. Either way, the bow was flooding before she moved.

Getting a battleship away from a mooring quay normally took tugs, a pilot and an hour or more of preparation. Nevada had none of these. Chief Boatswain Edwin J. Hill took a party onto the quays under strafing and bombing to cast off the mooring lines, then swam back to the ship (CMOHS, Hill citation). Thomas, with Lt. Lawrence E. Ruff acting as navigator and Chief Quartermaster R. Sedberry at the wheel, backed her clear. In Captain Scanland’s report, Thomas “got the ship underway within forty minutes and headed down channel.” The CINCPAC report records that at 0840 Nevada, “without assistance, cleared berth F-8” and stood down the South Channel. Wallin adds that Thomas judged it urgent to get the ship away from the burning Arizona (p. 150), which Scanland’s report describes as surrounded by burning oil and “afire from stem to stern.”

Inside the ship, Machinist Donald K. Ross held the electrical plant together. His station was the forward dynamo room, which supplied power to the guns, pumps and steering. As smoke, steam and heat made the space “almost untenable,” his citation says, he ordered his men out and ran the room alone until he was blinded and unconscious. Revived, he went back, secured the forward dynamo room, moved to the after dynamo room, passed out again from exhaustion, and on recovering returned to his station until he was ordered to leave it (CMOHS, Ross citation).

Medal of Honor

Machinist Donald K. Ross, USS Nevada (BB-36)

Cited for “extraordinary courage, and disregard for his own life” on 7 December 1941. When his station in the forward dynamo room became “almost untenable due to smoke, steam, and heat,” he sent his men out and kept the plant running alone until blinded and unconscious; revived, he secured the forward room, moved to the after dynamo room, lost consciousness again, and returned to his station until ordered to abandon it. Born in Beverly, Kansas, on 8 December 1910, he received the medal from Adm. Chester W. Nimitz at Pearl Harbor on 18 April 1942, retired as a captain, and died on 27 May 1992. He was buried at sea over the wreck of the Nevada.

Citation →

Down the channel

The route took Nevada past the wrecks of the morning: Arizona, the capsized Oklahoma beside Maryland, the burning West Virginia and Tennessee, and California at the southern end of the row. Then she came abreast of the Navy Yard. Her antiaircraft batteries fired almost without pause; the ship’s report says both batteries kept up continuous fire until 0908. The crew claimed several aircraft. Scanland’s report judged that “it is probable that at least five planes were destroyed in the vicinity of the Nevada,” while noting that the men’s accounts varied (Nevada action report).

A battleship moving in the channel was the best target in the harbor, and the second wave’s dive bombers went for her. NHHC’s account of the Navy Yard attack notes that some of the planes assigned to the dry dock area were diverted to Nevada as she passed (NHHC, “Attacks in the Navy Yard Area”). Wallin puts the heaviest attack near Dry Dock No. 1 (p. 150). The bombs struck the forecastle, the area forward of the port antiaircraft director, casemate 6 and the boat deck. The ship’s report counted “at least six (6) bomb hits and one torpedo hit,” and allowed that there may have been as many as ten. One hit on the boat deck, a later Battle Force report said, “wiped out most of the personnel” there (Commander Battle Force, battleship damage report, HyperWar).

The bombing times are not settled. A modern summary has at least four more bombs hitting between 0850 and 0905 (Defense Media Network, “Pearl Harbor: The Attack”). Wallin, in his salvage chapter, writes that “about 0950 five bombs hit the ship almost simultaneously” (p. 212), but every other source has Nevada aground by about 0910 and the Japanese gone by 0945, so his time is almost certainly a misprint for 0850. Wallin also writes that the destroyer Shaw was hit “by three bombs from the same dive-bombers that attacked Nevada about 0850” (p. 203).

Taussig, who was badly wounded, refused to leave his post directing the antiaircraft battery and later received the Navy Cross (Wallin, p. 151; NHHC H-Gram 001). Ensign T. H. Taylor was wounded by fragments while commanding a 5-inch battery. Boatswain’s Mate First Class A. Solar and Seaman First Class W. F. Neundorf Jr. were killed (Nevada action report).

Aground at Hospital Point

With her bow down and fires burning forward, Nevada could not safely go on. Rear Adm. William R. Furlong, the senior officer present afloat, was on the deck of his doomed flagship, the minelayer Oglala, beside 1010 Dock. Wallin writes that Furlong feared she might block the entrance channel, “especially if the enemy had dropped mines,” and sent two tugs to help her (p. 150). The Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum’s account says the ship was signaled to stop her run. Signal traffic from that morning does not survive in a form that settles who sent what, or when.

The order that mattered was carried out on the forecastle, where Chief Boatswain Hill was trying to let go the anchors so that she could be stopped and held. Several bombs burst there together. His citation records that he was “blown overboard and killed” (CMOHS, Hill citation). The ship’s report recorded that dive bombers attacked again “just before grounding off Hospital Point,” on the east side of the channel. The CINCPAC report gives about 0910 for this first grounding, describing it as a temporary grounding while negotiating a turn in the channel. The museum puts it at about 0910 and has Captain Scanland reaching his ship at 0915.

Medal of Honor · Posthumous

Chief Boatswain Edwin J. Hill, USS Nevada (BB-36)

Cited for courage and personal bravery during the attack of 7 December 1941. During the height of the strafing and bombing, “Chief Boatswain Hill led his men” of the line-handling details to the quays, cast off the lines and swam back to his ship. Later, on the forecastle trying to let go the anchors, he was blown overboard and killed by several bombs. Born in Philadelphia on 4 October 1895, he is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

Citation →

She did not stay at Hospital Point. At 1035, after the raid was over, Nevada was pulled clear, and at 1045 she “voluntarily grounded on Waipio Peninsula opposite Hospital Point,” on the west side of the channel (CINCPAC report). The tug Hoga (YT-146) and the small seaplane tender Avocet (AVP-4) are visible alongside her in Navy photographs taken there that day (NHHC photograph 80-G-33020). She went in stern first, and her starboard shaft and rudder were damaged “as the ship backed into the shore at Waipio Point” (Wallin, p. 220). The Battle Force report described her afterward as “hard aground” in water shoaling from nine fathoms (54 feet) forward to about two and a half fathoms aft. She kept settling. In Wallin’s words, “By Monday nearly the whole ship was flooded including the machinery spaces” (p. 213).

The Navy Yard: Dry Dock No. 1

The fleet flagship, USS Pennsylvania (BB-38), was in Dry Dock No. 1 at the Navy Yard, with the destroyers Cassin (DD-372) and Downes (DD-375) side by side ahead of her in the same dock. A ship in dry dock sits on keel blocks with the water pumped out; she cannot be torpedoed, but she cannot move, and much of her equipment is usually opened up for overhaul. The two destroyers were in the yard for modernization.

Pennsylvania‘s report puts the first explosions at about 0757 and the torpedo plane attack at 0802; her guns were firing by 0805 at the latest (Pennsylvania action report, NHHC). The first wave’s dive bombers attacked the dock without much effect. The second wave’s did better. At 0906, by the battleship’s report, a bomb struck her boat deck and exploded in casemate No. 9, killing, by the report’s count, about 26 men and two officers. Among the dead were the ship’s first lieutenant, Lt. Cmdr. J. E. Craig, and a medical officer, Lt. (jg) Richard R. Rall. The report estimated that the ship fired some 650 rounds of 5-inch/25 antiaircraft ammunition, 350 rounds of 3-inch and about 60,000 rounds of .50-caliber, and it claimed two aircraft hit with “fairly good proof” out of six that observers reported destroyed.

The destroyers ahead of her fared far worse. Bombs and near-misses opened their thin hulls and their fuel tanks, and burning oil spread through the dock. The yard had wanted to flood the dock as early as 0815 (Wallin, p. 208); Pennsylvania‘s report says flooding began about 0920 and the dock was sufficiently flooded by 1010. Before that, at about 0930, explosions began on the destroyers, and at 0941 the torpedo warheads in Downes blew up (Pennsylvania action report). One of her own torpedoes tore a large hole in her hull, and her pilothouse was demolished. As the dock filled, Cassin floated off her keel blocks and rolled over against Downes (NHHC, “USS Pennsylvania, Cassin and Downes during the Pearl Harbor Attack”; NHHC Online Library, Downes photographs). Burning oil on the water reached Pennsylvania‘s bow but did no more than scorch the paint (Commander Battle Force report).

Both destroyers were first written off. On inspection, the salvage officers found that their machinery, fittings and guns were in better shape than their hulls. Cassin was patched, righted on 5 February 1942 and floated out of the dock on the 18th; Downes was towed clear on 6 February. Their hulls were scrapped and the usable machinery and equipment were shipped to Mare Island Navy Yard, where new hulls were built around them (NHHC, “USS Pennsylvania, Cassin and Downes”). Cassin was recommissioned on 5 February 1944 (DANFS, Cassin II). In the Navy’s books the two ships returned to service. In practice they were almost new ships.

The Shaw

A few hundred yards away, the destroyer Shaw (DD-373) sat in the floating dry dock YFD-2, an old dock brought from New Orleans, with the yard tug Sotoyomo in the dock beside her (Shaw action report, NHHC). Dive bombers hit her three times, two bombs through the forward machine-gun platform and a third through the port wing of the bridge (DANFS, Shaw II). Her commanding officer, W. Glenn Jones, reported that all three struck at about the same time. His first report thought they were 200- to 300-pound bombs, possibly incendiary; a later report judged a 250-kilogram general-purpose bomb more likely.

Fire broke out at once and spread forward. By 0925 the crew had used up every means of fighting it, and the order to abandon ship was given. The dock was flooded deliberately to save it and the ship, but only partly succeeded. Shortly after 0930 the fire reached the forward magazine (DANFS, Shaw II). The explosion sent a fireball high above the yard and severed the bow. Jones’s report says simply: “Twenty minutes later the forward magazines blew up.” The dock sank with the bow section still in it, and Sotoyomo went down with it. The rest of the ship stayed afloat. Men who stayed with the after part of the ship kept a portable gasoline pump going to hold off flooding in the No. 2 fireroom.

A Navy photograph of the blast, 80-G-16871, is the featured image of this chapter and one of the best-known of the attack. It is sometimes captioned as the Arizona, which blew up more than an hour earlier on the other side of Ford Island.

Shaw was given a temporary bow at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and January 1942 and sailed for San Francisco on 9 February 1942. A new bow was fitted there by the end of June, and she returned to Pearl Harbor on 31 August 1942 (DANFS, Shaw II).

Curtiss, Raleigh and the ships at their moorings

The second wave’s dive bombers did not concentrate on the Navy Yard alone. The seaplane tender Curtiss (AV-4), which had helped sink the midget submarine, was attacked repeatedly north of Ford Island. At 0905 one of three planes pulling out of a dive over the island was hit, caught fire and crashed into her starboard side against the No. 1 crane. At 0912 a bomb hit the starboard side of the boat deck and exploded at main deck level in the hangar. The ship’s report lists 20 dead, two of them unidentified, one missing and 25 injured kept aboard, besides others transferred ashore, and adds that “all fatalities occurred as a result of this detonation or from fires resulting from this hit” (Curtiss action report, NHHC). The tender claimed “not less than three” enemy planes.

The light cruiser Raleigh (CL-7), moored on the northwest side of Ford Island, had taken a torpedo at about 0755 and began to heel to port. Her crew counterflooded and jettisoned everything heavy on her upper decks, including her two seaplanes, torpedoes, catapults and the cargo boom, to keep her from capsizing as Utah had nearby. “Shortly after 0900,” in the second wave, glide bombers attacked and one bomb hit the ship. Her captain, R. B. Simons, could report that “we had no dead and only a few wounded” (Raleigh action report, NHHC). How many planes she shot down depends on which report you read: the captain listed five, his executive officer three and a probable fourth.

Near misses at the piers in the northeastern part of the yard damaged the hull of the light cruiser Honolulu (NHHC, “Attacks in the Navy Yard Area”). Across the harbor, the fires on Battleship Row burned through the whole of the second wave.

Vestal and Cassin Young

The repair ship Vestal (AR-4) had been moored alongside Arizona. By her own report she was hit by two bombs at about 0805 (Vestal action report, NHHC). Her captain, Cmdr. Cassin Young, was blown overboard by the blast of Arizona‘s forward magazine. He swam back and set about getting her clear of the burning battleship. At 0845 her forward lines were cut and she got underway on both engines with no steering gear, a tug pulling her bow away from Arizona. She anchored at 0910 in 35 feet of water. At 0950 Young got underway again and ran her aground deliberately to keep her from sinking; the CINCPAC report places her off channel buoy C-4. Her report counted six identified and three unidentified dead, seven missing and nineteen hospitalized.

Like Nevada‘s grounding, Vestal‘s was a decision to save the ship by putting her where she could not sink deep, and it worked: she was later refloated and repaired.

Medal of Honor

Cmdr. Cassin Young, USS Vestal (AR-4)

Cited for “distinguished conduct in action, outstanding heroism and utter disregard of his own safety” on 7 December 1941. After being “blown overboard by the blast of the forward magazine explosion of the U.S.S. Arizona,” he swam back to his ship, moved her to an anchorage away from Arizona, and later beached her to save her. Born in Washington, D.C., on 6 March 1894, he went on to command the heavy cruiser San Francisco, earned the Navy Cross for the night battles off Guadalcanal, and was killed in action on 13 November 1942. The destroyer Cassin Young (DD-793) was named for him.

Citation →

Ships that got out

While the second wave was overhead and in the hour after it left, the ships that could move made for the open sea, as fleet doctrine required. The CINCPAC report records each sortie. The oiler Neosho, moored at Ford Island near the battleships, cleared berth F-4 at 0842, stood toward Merry Point and was secured there at 0930. The light cruiser St. Louis backed clear of the Navy Yard at 0940 and was heading down the South Channel at 0945. Phoenix began a sortie at 1010, was recalled, and completed it about 1115. Detroit began maneuvering at 1010. Destroyers kept leaving until about noon. The hospital ship Solace shifted to a less exposed berth at about 0925; her part in caring for the wounded is told in Chapter 7.

By the time the cruisers cleared the entrance, the Japanese aircraft were gone.

Timeline

The second wave in the harbor, 7 December 1941

1. 7 Dec, 0825Phase II, the “lull,” begins; dive bombers keep attacking.
2. 7 Dec, 0827Monaghan gets underway to join Ward.
3. 7 Dec, 0836Curtiss sights a periscope 700 yards off and opens fire; two hits on the conning tower at 0840.
4. 7 Dec, 0840Nevada clears berth F-8 without tugs. Phase III, the horizontal bombing, begins.
5. 7 Dec, 0844Monaghan, having rammed the midget submarine, drops two depth charges.
6. 7 Dec, 0845Vestal cuts her lines and gets away from the burning Arizona.
7. 7 Dec, about 0850Dive bombers hit Nevada off the Navy Yard and Shaw in floating dry dock YFD-2.
8. 7 Dec, 0905A burning aircraft crashes into Curtiss; a bomb hits her at 0912.
9. 7 Dec, 0906A bomb explodes in Pennsylvania’s casemate No. 9.
10. 7 Dec, about 0910Nevada grounds off Hospital Point; Chief Boatswain Hill is killed on the forecastle.
11. 7 Dec, 0915Phase IV, dive bombing and strafing. Near misses spring Helm’s seams in the channel.
12. 7 Dec, 0920Flooding of Dry Dock No. 1 begins.
13. 7 Dec, 0925Shaw abandoned; her forward magazine explodes shortly after 0930.
14. 7 Dec, 0941Torpedo warheads in Downes explode.
15. 7 Dec, 0945All Japanese aircraft gone from the harbor, by the CINCPAC reckoning.
16. 7 Dec, 0950Vestal deliberately grounded.
17. 7 Dec, 1045Nevada beached stern first at Waipio Point.

Shells on Honolulu

The defense of the harbor had a price that fell on the city. Through the morning, explosions tore into streets, houses and shops in Honolulu, several miles from the harbor. Fires broke out in residential districts at a time when many of the city’s fire companies had already been sent to Hickam Field, where three Honolulu firefighters were killed: Capt. Thomas S. Macy, Capt. John Carreira and Fireman Harry Tuck Lee Pang (National Park Service, “Civilian Casualties”).

At the time, many in Honolulu took these explosions for Japanese bombs. The National Park Service now states plainly that friendly fire was one of the most devastating aspects of the attack: “Many of the 5-inch anti-aircraft rounds fired at the Japanese aircraft failed to detonate properly in the air,” and they exploded when they came down in civilian areas around Pearl Harbor and Honolulu (NPS, “Civilian Casualties”). As a rule, a 5-inch antiaircraft shell was meant to burst at a set time after firing, near its target. A shell whose fuze had not been set, or did not work, kept going and came down miles away, where it exploded on impact. Every ship and battery in the harbor was firing such shells that morning.

Wallin, writing in 1968, was more cautious. He recorded that “several people were killed on the streets of the city or elsewhere” and that several buildings were destroyed, among them a Japanese language school, but said it was not clear whether the damage came from bombs jettisoned by Japanese planes or from “5-inch shells fired by fleet ships at Japanese planes,” and that the question would probably never be resolved (Wallin, p. 105). Most later writers, and the Park Service, attribute nearly all of the explosions in the city to American shells. No one has published a shell-by-shell reconstruction that settles every case.

The numbers are not settled either. The Park Service’s list counts 49 civilians killed and 35 wounded on Oahu, and it lists 32 dead under Honolulu; it does not say how many of them were killed by friendly fire (NPS, “Civilian Casualties”). The figure of 68 civilians killed, used in the Navy’s casualty totals and in this collection’s overall count of 2,403, is higher. The two lists have not been reconciled in the sources consulted here; they appear to differ in who is counted as a civilian casualty and in later deaths from wounds. The dead included children; the youngest on the Park Service list, killed at Pearl City, was three years old.

In their words

Several people were killed on the streets of the city or elsewhere.

The cost to the attackers

The second wave met a defense that was awake. The Japanese lost 29 aircraft in the two waves: nine fighters, fifteen dive bombers and five torpedo bombers. Nine were lost in the first wave and twenty in the second. The first wave lost three Zeros, one dive bomber and five of the torpedo planes that opened the attack; the second, which carried no torpedo planes, lost six Zeros and fourteen dive bombers. The Zero losses by wave and carrier have been traced name by name from Japanese carrier records: three in the first wave, from Akagi and Kaga, and six in the second, from Sōryū, Hiryū and Kaga (Lansdale, “The Lost Pearl Harbor Attack Aircraft”). One of the second-wave pilots, from Hiryū, crash-landed on Niihau; that story belongs to Chapter 8.

By the numbers

Japanese aircraft lost, by wave and type

Aircraft that failed to return to the carriers, 7 December 1941 (29 in all: 9 in the first wave, 20 in the second)

Second wave: dive bombers (D3A “Val”)14

Second wave: fighters (A6M Zero)6

First wave: torpedo bombers (B5N “Kate”)5

First wave: fighters (A6M Zero)3

First wave: dive bombers (D3A “Val”)1

The cost in men was 55 airmen killed, together with the nine crewmen of the midget submarines, for 64 dead; one midget submarine officer, Ens. Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured. The CINCPAC report’s own estimate in February 1942 was 28 planes destroyed “due to Navy action” and “a minimum of 68 killed,” close to the true figures. American claims at the time ran much higher, because several ships fired at the same planes and each counted what it saw fall. Nevada claimed at least five, Pennsylvania six, Raleigh three to five, Curtiss at least three, and the Army’s gunners and pilots made claims of their own.

No third strike

By the time the second wave was back aboard the carriers north of Oahu, the results were plain. The Pacific Fleet’s battle line was sunk or out of action. The American carriers had not been found. The Navy Yard, the dry docks, the submarine base and the fuel tank farm were nearly untouched. Nagumo did not launch another strike. The Kido Butai turned away for home.

For decades the standard account of that decision came from Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida, who had led the first wave and stayed over Oahu to watch the second. In his postwar writings, beginning with a 1952 article in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, and in long interviews with the historian Gordon Prange, Fuchida described landing on Akagi and urging Nagumo to attack again, this time against the tank farm and the repair facilities. In his telling, Nagumo and his staff refused. The scene became a set piece of the attack, and it was staged in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! (Parshall, “Reflecting on Fuchida,” pp. 129–130).

What the witnesses said, and when

Historians now treat Fuchida’s story with caution. The naval historian Jonathan Parshall reviewed the evidence in the Naval War College Review in 2010. When the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey interrogated Fuchida in Tokyo on 18 October 1945, he said he did not know how badly American air power on Oahu had been damaged, called the damage to the battleships a success, and said nothing about fuel tanks or a third strike. Parshall calls that first interrogation Fuchida’s “most reliable” version. The account Fuchida gave Prange in 1963 made him much more far-sighted (Parshall, pp. 130–131).

The other men on Akagi‘s bridge did not support his version. Nagumo’s chief of staff, RAdm. Ryūnosuke Kusaka, never mentioned any protest by Fuchida and dismissed the later criticism of the withdrawal as the work of “poor strategists.” Cmdr. Minoru Genda, the carrier force’s air operations officer and the planner of the raid, denied in his memoirs that the scene happened or that Fuchida proposed such an attack (Parshall, p. 130). Genda told the American naval writer Norman Polmar the same thing: “There were no hot discussions on board the Akagi.” Genda remembered only a remark by Fuchida after he landed, “If they come out, we will strike again” (Polmar, “Commentary,” Naval War College Review, 2017, p. 144).

Polmar’s correspondence with Genda also suggests the decision was not made on the bridge that afternoon at all. In Polmar’s account, Nagumo and Kusaka had decided before the attack that there would be no follow-up strike. Genda’s explanation of their reasons was that the American carriers had not been located and might fall on the Japanese force, and that surviving American aircraft on Oahu could still strike the carriers if they stayed nearby (Polmar, p. 145). The targeting plan supports this. As Parshall points out, Japanese doctrine and the attack orders put warships first, then aircraft; fuel tanks and shore facilities came last. A third strike, if there had been one, would most likely have gone after the remaining cruisers, destroyers and submarines, not the tank farm (Parshall, pp. 129–130).

Other reasons are often given, and most fit the facts on 7 December even where the sources for them are late. Recovering, refueling and rearming two waves would have taken hours, and a third wave would probably have come back after dark, with all the risk of landing on carriers at night. The second wave had lost twenty aircraft against the first wave’s nine, a sign that the defense was stiffening. The force’s fuel and its distance from Japan limited how long it could stay. Above all, Nagumo believed his main task was done and wanted his carriers intact for the operations to come. These reasons are collected by historians such as H. P. Willmott and Gordon Prange. A popular version has him asking two questions, where the American carriers were and whether the fleet was out of action for six months, and getting the answers “We don’t know” and “Yes” (Defense Media Network); but that exchange, too, comes from Fuchida.

The debate in the Naval War College Review continued with Martin Bennett’s response in 2013 and Polmar’s commentary in 2017. What the record supports is narrower than the legend: no reliable contemporary evidence that Nagumo was urged that afternoon to strike the tank farm, and good evidence that he never meant to. The fuel and shops the Japanese left alone were of great value to the United States; whether anyone on Akagi argued for attacking them is a separate question, and the evidence for it is weak.

In their words

There were no hot discussions on board the Akagi.

People

Lt. Cmdr. Francis J. Thomas, USNR, a reservist, got a battleship underway in about forty minutes without tugs, fought her down the channel and then ran damage control for two days, almost to exhaustion (Wallin, pp. 150–151). Lt. Lawrence E. Ruff was his navigator. Chief Boatswain Edwin J. Hill, forty-six, cast off the lines under fire and died on the forecastle. Machinist Donald K. Ross kept the electrical plant running until he collapsed, twice; he rose to captain and was buried at sea over the wreck of his old ship. Ens. Joseph K. Taussig Jr. stayed at his guns though badly wounded and received the Navy Cross.

Cmdr. Cassin Young swam back to Vestal and saved her by grounding her; eleven months later he was killed in action off Guadalcanal in command of the cruiser San Francisco. Rear Adm. William R. Furlong, senior officer afloat, gave orders from the deck of his sinking flagship that kept the entrance channel open. W. P. Burford took Monaghan straight at a submarine in a crowded anchorage and then out to sea. On the Japanese side, Lt. Cmdr. Shigekazu Shimazaki led the second wave; Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida watched both waves from the air and became the most influential and least reliable narrator of the day; and VAdm. Chūichi Nagumo, who made the decision to withdraw, did not survive the war to explain it himself.

Losses and uncertainty

Casualty figures for the ships in this chapter changed as the missing were found or confirmed dead and as the wounded died. The early returns compiled by Commander Battle Force in December 1941 and the later figures in the Navy’s ship histories differ, sometimes widely, and they should not be added together.

Three kinds of disagreement run through this part of the day. The first is time. Nevada‘s torpedo hit is 0803 in one account and 0810 in another; her bomb hits are 0850 to 0905 in one and a printed 0950 in Wallin. Shaw‘s hits are about 0850 in Wallin, while her own report says only that the magazines blew up twenty minutes after the hits and DANFS puts the explosion shortly after 0930.

The second is place. Nevada is almost always described as “beached at Hospital Point.” Her own report says she grounded off Hospital Point; the CINCPAC report calls that a temporary grounding and gives 1045 for a deliberate grounding on the Waipio Peninsula, across the channel; Wallin mentions only Waipio Point. Both are correct for different hours of the same day. The photographs taken later that day show her at Waipio.

The third is counting. Japanese losses are firm at 29 aircraft, but the split by wave depends on whose list you use; civilian deaths are 49 on the Park Service’s list and 68 in the Navy’s totals; and American claims of aircraft shot down far exceeded what the Japanese lost.

Questions readers ask

Was Nevada trying to escape to sea?

She was getting out of the trap she was in. Fleet doctrine called for ships to sortie, and Thomas also wanted to get away from the burning Arizona astern of her (Wallin, p. 150). Whether he expected to clear the entrance is not recorded. Once she was flooding forward and under heavy dive-bomber attack, the senior officer afloat ordered her out of the channel to keep it from being blocked.

Is the famous explosion photograph the Arizona?

No. Navy photograph 80-G-16871, the fireball over the Navy Yard, shows the forward magazine of the destroyer Shaw exploding in the floating dry dock shortly after 0930, more than an hour after Arizona blew up. The Arizona photographs show a battleship burning at Battleship Row, not the Navy Yard.

Did American shells kill civilians in Honolulu?

Yes. The National Park Service states that many 5-inch antiaircraft shells failed to burst in the air and exploded when they landed in civilian areas around Pearl Harbor and Honolulu. Wallin, in 1968, thought the cause could not be fully resolved, and no one has traced every explosion. Not every civilian death was from friendly fire; some civilians were killed by Japanese strafing and bombing at Hickam, Ewa, Waipahu and elsewhere.

Why didn’t Japan attack the fuel tanks?

They were not a priority target. The attack plan put warships and aircraft first. The best evidence suggests that Nagumo and his chief of staff never intended a third strike, because the American carriers were unlocated and their own carriers were too valuable to risk (Polmar, p. 145; Parshall, pp. 129–130). The story that Fuchida pleaded for an attack on the tanks rests chiefly on Fuchida’s own later accounts.

How many Japanese planes were shot down in the second wave?

Twenty of the 29 aircraft lost that day were from the second wave: six fighters and fourteen dive bombers by the most widely used breakdown. No one can say which ship or battery hit which plane, and the fate of some of the missing aircraft has never been fully established. The Navy’s own February 1942 estimate was 28 destroyed by naval action, close to the real total.

How it connects

This chapter picks up where Chapter 5, The Airfields, leaves the second wave’s level bombers and fighters over Kaneohe, Hickam and Ford Island, and it follows the harbor after the first wave’s torpedo attack told in Chapter 4. The composition of the second wave and the Kido Butai’s route home are in Chapter 2. Hill, Ross and Young are three of the fifteen Medals of Honor for Pearl Harbor; all fifteen, with the rescues and the men cut out of Oklahoma‘s hull, are in Chapter 7. The raising of Nevada, Cassin and Downes belongs to Chapter 9. For the whole story, return to the Pearl Harbor collection and its numbers.

What happened afterward

Nevada was refloated on 12 February 1942, patched at Pearl Harbor and later rebuilt; she was the only battleship present at both Pearl Harbor and the Normandy landings. Shaw was back in Hawaiian waters by the end of August 1942. Cassin, rebuilt around her old machinery, was recommissioned in February 1944, and Downes was rebuilt the same way. Pennsylvania, the least damaged of the battleships, Curtiss, Vestal and Raleigh were all repaired and returned to service.

The Navy Yard that the second wave left standing went straight to work. Wallin’s salvage organization, working from those undamaged shops and docks, raised or repaired all but three of the ships sunk or damaged that morning. Six months later four of the six carriers that launched the attack were sunk at Midway. Fuchida’s account of that battle has also been revised by later historians (Parshall, pp. 131–133).

Walking the ground today

Pearl Harbor is still an active naval base, part of Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, and most of the places in this chapter cannot be visited. The Navy Yard, now Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Hospital Point and Waipio Point are inside the base. The best public vantage point is the Pearl Harbor National Memorial visitor center on the harbor’s eastern shore, where the exhibits cover the attack hour by hour. The Navy-operated boat to the USS Arizona Memorial runs along Battleship Row, past the berth that Nevada backed out of, when the memorial is open. Ford Island, with the Battleship Missouri Memorial and the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, is reached only by the shuttle bus from the visitor center area. Check schedules and reservations with the National Park Service before you go.

Chief Boatswain Hill is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl Crater in Honolulu, which is open to the public. The destroyer named for Cassin Young is preserved as a museum ship at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, part of Boston National Historical Park. In Honolulu itself, nothing marks most of the places where the shells fell.

Sources and further reading

• Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, report on the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, 15 February 1942 (phases of the attack, sorties, Monaghan, Japanese losses): HyperWar text; Commander Battle Force, battleship reports: HyperWar text.
• Naval History and Heritage Command, Pearl Harbor action reports: Nevada, Pennsylvania, Shaw, Curtiss, Monaghan, Helm, Raleigh, Vestal.
• VAdm. Homer N. Wallin, Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal (Naval History Division, 1968): ch. VII, “Results of Japanese Surprise Air Raid” (HyperWar); ch. IX, ship by ship (HyperWar); ch. XIII, “Ships Sunk at Pearl Harbor” (HyperWar).
• NHHC, “Attacks in the Navy Yard Area” and “USS Pennsylvania, Cassin and Downes”; Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Shaw II, Cassin II, Cassin Young; NHHC Online Library, Nevada photographs and Downes photographs.
• Congressional Medal of Honor Society citations: Edwin J. Hill, Donald K. Ross, Cassin Young.
• Jonathan Parshall, “Reflecting on Fuchida, or ‘A Tale of Three Whoppers,’” Naval War College Review 63, no. 2 (2010): Digital Commons; Norman Polmar, “Commentary,” Naval War College Review 70, no. 3 (2017): Digital Commons.
• U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Interrogations of Japanese Officials, interrogation of Capt. Mitsuo Fuchida, 18 October 1945: HyperWar text; Jim Lansdale, “The Lost Pearl Harbor Attack Aircraft.”
• National Park Service, “Civilian Casualties” and “People,” Pearl Harbor National Memorial; Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, “The Nevada’s Run.”

Photographs: Official U.S. Navy photographs, National Archives and Naval History and Heritage Command, public domain.