We were very fortunate that the carriers weren't in the harbor.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We managed to get underway, and I don't know to this day why we didn't get struck or take a torpedo, but we didn't. We got outside of the exit of the harbor and we started dropping depth charges.
We made air attacks on the Japanese anchorage, sinking and damaging several vessels. However, the Japanese were alerted to the fact that American carriers were nearby.
The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 completely crippled our Pacific Fleet.
I was a child of World War Two . I saw films of pilots taking off from aircraft carriers and decided that was the only thing I wanted to do. And it had to be flying from sea carriers. Airfields were not enough.
Our duty was to try and find the Japanese fleet. We never did find the Japanese fleet and I am awfully glad, because they had attacked us there with six carriers, three battleships, 10 or 15 cruisers, and about 20 destroyers.
For all the failures of naval, air and army defense, the men who died at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines would not die in vain.
Once our carrier fleet went all nuclear in 2005, we went from having two aircraft carrier homeports on the East Coast to one.
They got word that the Japanese planes were coming back, so we sunk her ourselves so the Japanese wouldn't get it. We didn't want the Japanese to get it intact.
Our military thought that they couldn't get to Pearl Harbor, that it was too long a journey from Japan to get there, and they proved us wrong.
As costly as it was in the lives of our men and women in uniform, in military assets, and in esteem and pride, Pearl Harbor was a watershed moment for America.
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