Pearl Harbor: The Strike That Was Never Ordered, 7 December 1941

In October 1945, the officer who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor was asked why it was not repeated. His answer gave the decision to the task force, and recorded no recommendation of his own. The attack order, as reconstructed after the war, already provided for another attack once both waves were back aboard, on one condition: that American air power had been destroyed. That was a count nobody could make from a cockpit. The demand for a third strike, with the fuel tanks named as its object, belongs to accounts from 1948 onward, and each can be dated: Gordon Prange's interview notes of 1948 and 1963, as reported by the historians who have read them, and Fuchida's own article of 1952. The target list annexed to the operation order, as one historian reads it, never named the tanks. Twenty-six of them stood beside the Submarine Base, photographed from the air eight weeks before the attack. Full sources, the claims that are contested, and any corrections made after publication: https://actionreporthistory.com/video... CHAPTERS 0:00 The Story of the Third Strike 2:34 The Plan Already Had Another Attack in It 5:28 The Count They Could Not Make 7:45 The Answer of October 1945 10:37 The Account That Grew 15:30 What a Return Would Have Found 17:05 The Conclusion SOURCES Photographs: Naval History and Heritage Command, NH series, and the National Archives, 80-G series, each identified on screen by accession. Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Report of Japanese Raid on Pearl Harbor, serial 0479, 15 February 1942, with the Arizona's report, Lt. Comdr. S. G. Fuqua's statement and her Chart I among its enclosures. NARA naId 133881705. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/13388... Interrogations of Japanese Officials, USSBS Naval Analysis Division: Nav No. 29 (Captain Fuchida Mitsuo, 10 October 1945) with Plates 29-1 and 29-2, Nav No. 13 (Captain Watanabe Y.), and Nav No. 6 (Captain Fuchida Mitsuo, 18 October 1945). National Diet Library PID 8821719. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/8821719 Mitsuo Fuchida, "I Led the Air Attack on Pearl Harbor," ed. Roger Pineau, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 78/9/595, September 1952. Read as the text at usni.org. Japanese Monograph No. 97, Pearl Harbor Operations: General Outline of Orders and Plans, 1953, a reconstruction written from notes and memory. Read as the transcription at ibiblio.org/pha. Jonathan Parshall, rebuttal of Martin Bennett, combinedfleet.com/BennettRebuttal.htm, reporting J. Michael Wenger's reading of Gordon Prange's interview notes of 4 March 1948 and 11 December 1963. Martin Bennett, "Parshall's Whoppers Examined," Naval War College Review 66:1, Winter 2013. Jonathan Parshall, "Reflecting on Fuchida," Naval War College Review 63:2, Spring 2010. USS Ward, report of 13 December 1941. Read as the transcription at history.navy.mil. Norman Polmar, "Commentary," Naval War College Review 70:3, Summer 2017, quoting Minoru Genda's letter of September 1965. H. P. Willmott, Pearl Harbor, 2001, as Parshall cites it for the target list annexed to the operation order. WHAT THE RECORD DOES NOT SETTLE Whether Fuchida pressed for a further attack on Akagi's bridge. His October 1945 interrogation records no such demand. Historians split on what that silence means, and both readings have documents behind them. What the attack order said. Every copy was destroyed before the war ended, and what survives is a 1953 reconstruction from notes and memory. What Genda saw. His 1965 letter recalls no hot discussions aboard Akagi, and he did not know whether Fuchida had given an opinion. Which aircraft destroyed the Arizona. The record disputes it within itself. When Fuchida learned the target. In 1945 he said he had expected to be going to Singapore, and was told on 3 December. His later accounts tell it otherwise. What would settle more. Prange's notes of 1948 and 1963 survive with his papers. The Ward's own report is not among the enclosures to the Pacific Fleet's report, and the original would be in the Navy's records at the National Archives. ABOUT THE NARRATION The narration is synthetic, generated from a written script using a text to speech voice. Nothing in this video is a recording of a person speaking, and the voice is not a person, real or invented. The script, the research and the editorial judgments are human work, and so are any errors. No generated imagery appears anywhere in this video. Every document is the scan, every photograph is the print, and every chart is the sheet as drawn. Plate 29-2 is turned upright because the volume prints it sideways, and 80-G-182252 is shown mirrored because the Naval History and Heritage Command records the print as reversed.