America's World War II Readiness

One of the reasons I have been posting information about the early months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is to examine that aspect of the "standard narrative" that claims the United States was "unprepared" for war.

I'm not even sure what someone might mean by that claim. Unprepared in what way? Unprepared by service? Unprepared across all military platforms or only some of them? Inadequate logistics? Inadequate training? Poor morale?

Years ago, reading details of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, I was struck by the fact that on a peaceful Sunday morning in a tropical paradise, when attacked without warning, the sailors on those ships during holiday routine manned their battle stations and managed to fire their antiaircraft weapons during an attack that lasted only five minutes. Their defensive fire during the second attack wave was so improved that Admiral Nagumo considered that as one reason not to launch a third wave.

Those sailors were prepared. During the cold war era, I would have been satisfied if all stations reported manned and ready within five minutes after sounding general quarters.

There were specific shortcomings in intelligence and weapons. The most notorious was the failure of our Mark 14 submarine torpedoes to perform as designed. It was clearly penny wise and pound foolish to build marvelous fleet submarines at great expense and then scrimp on testing their principal weapon.

But for the most part our ships and planes were superbly designed and built and their crews well trained.

A really good area for comparison between the United States and Japan is to look at their respective pilot training programs. Here is a very illuminating article on that subject. In brief, though Japan started the war with superb, experienced pilots, our pilots were very good and flew well-designed, rugged airplanes. The zeros were more maneuverable than their US Navy and Army counterparts at the outset, but they were also flimsier.

My conclusion is that we were quite well prepared for WWII.