The Pearl Harbor warning nobody was punished for ignoring
At two minutes past seven on the morning of 7 December 1941, two American privates on a radar set at the northern tip of Oahu saw the biggest echo they had ever seen, about 130 miles out and coming closer. They phoned it in, and the only officer on duty said, "Well, don't worry about it."
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Sources
Sources
- Testimony of Pvt Joseph Lockard, Pvt George Elliott, Pvt Joseph McDonald and Lt Kermit Tyler to the Roberts Commission (1941), the Army Pearl Harbor Board (1944), the Navy Court of Inquiry (1944) and the Joint Congressional Committee (1946), Pearl Harbor Attack hearings: http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/myths/radar/
- Report of the Roberts Commission (23 January 1942), the Army Pearl Harbor Board (20 October 1944) and the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack (1946): http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/
- Leatrice R. Arakaki and John R. Kuborn, "7 December 1941: The Air Force Story" (Pacific Air Forces, 1991): http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/7Dec41/
- Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 1 (on the B-17 flight): http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/I/AAF-I-6.html
- Mitsuo Fuchida, "I Led the Air Attack on Pearl Harbor", US Naval Institute Proceedings (September 1952)
- National Park Service, Pearl Harbor National Memorial: the Opana radar site and the timeline of 7 December
- War Department General Orders No. 10 (24 February 1942), Lockard's Distinguished Service Medal
Pictures
- real film of the attack shot from a ship in Pearl Harbor and Navy film of the aftermath (US National Archives, 428-NPC-1730 and 428-NPC-1733); the US Army Signal Corps training film "Radio Set SCR-270: Locating and Reporting Targets" (the same model of radar as Opana's, not Opana itself); the Japanese newsreel Nippon News No. 82 and captured Japanese photographs held by the US National Archives and the Naval History and Heritage Command; the Office of War Information's "Mission Accomplished" (1942, B-17s in flight) and Office of War Information photographs (Library of Congress); the original Opana radar plot of 7 December 1941 (US National Archives); 1941 photographs of the Fort Shafter information center, the radar crews and Pvt Joseph Lockard (US Army Museum of Hawaii, via the Pacific Air Forces history); Fuchida's map of the attack (Library of Congress); pages of the Pearl Harbor Attack hearings and reports; US Navy, US Army, Army Air Forces and Harris & Ewing (Library of Congress) photographs.