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Originally Posted by Subnuts
Just about to finish up Alan Zimm's The Attack On Pearl Harbor.
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I've just read it off Kindle PC. The author makes some good points but others are too ... theoretical.
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Really, it's amazing how much the Japanese dropped the ball at Pearl Harbor. The author includes a "laundry list" of Japanese failures near the end, such as Fuchida's flare-gun fumble,
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OK, he sold me on that one.
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the 60% dud rate attributed to the 800-kg AP bumbs,
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That's not a tactical failure.
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the utter lack of combined-arms tactics or operational flexibility built into the plan, the lack of SEAD tactics and poor use of the A6Ms,
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As far as I can see, he proposes that once intelligence is received, the planes committed to the carriers should be redirected to attack battleships. He has a point there, but a counterpoint is that if the carriers do turn out to be there after all (as he admits, the possibility does exist), similar confusion will ensue as they try to reorient against the carriers, if it can be done at all. It might be worth accepting some inefficiency in the other department.
His SEAD and escort plan basically draws on the fighters and dive bombers that were tasked in the real attack. In his "perfect attack", he attempts a TOT attack (good as a aim, not a precondition) and tasks the A6Ms with two missions (SEAD and OCA) separated by time. It reeks of the kind of "textbook solution" so loved by staff theoreticians and so hated by combat vets. One can easily see friction and fog of war turn his neat TOT strike into a prolonged affair (the real attack also became more prolonged), in which case without the suppressive effect of the fighters and VBs it is not hard to figure that many more fighters will get to take off and strike his bomber formations. Though they will be escorted in such a case, they will also likely be outnumbered and given that Zimms assesses a high effectiveness for American aircraft, the overall Japanese losses to fighters will be much higher. Zimm's doesn't even attempt to (as far as I can see) wargame this possibility - he just seems to assume his TOT attack will work.