It was Sunday, December 7th, 1941, and Admiral Chester Nimitz who was attending a concert in Washington D.C. was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the phone. He told Admiral Nimitz that Nimitz would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.
Admiral Nimitz took the train across the U.S. and then flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat--you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war. The next day Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters every where you looked.
As his boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked,
"Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?" Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said,
"The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make."
Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean that the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force could make?" Nimitz explained,
Mistake Number One: The Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore. We could have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.
Mistake Number Two: When the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.
Mistake Number Three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater is in storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our entrie fuel supply. That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make.
Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredricksburg, Texas. He was a born optimist. Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism.
America desperately needed a leader that could see silver linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.
President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job.
~ Author Unknown ~
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CLY Pearl Harbour is a lagoon harbour. It is just like a big lake or marina with a small outlet to the sea. So all the ships were like sitting ducks. That could be the reason why the Japanese were attracted to all the ships in the lagoon rather that other more strategic targets. It like shooting fish in a barrel, the ships were very attractive targets, too good to pass. Plus the Japanese knew that the the men would be attending service on a Sunday and not at their battle stations. If there were more men shooting at shooting at the plane and more pilots flying the plane, the attack could have turned out differently.
Well Admiral Nimitz did a good job rallying his people after a devastating attack. He was a Texan of German origin, born in Fredericksburg, Texas near to where I was studying back in the 90's.