I can only raise a glass of good cheer to agree with Andrew B. Wilson's article in The American Spectator today entitled "Thanks, Hirohito, We Needed That". This day in 1941 the Japanese leadership, as mad and perverse in their way as the Kaiser's Germany in 1914, made a calamitous decision born out of fear, arrogance and a total, unthinking belief in the 'wisdom of experts', in this case, military experts. They launched their attack on Pearl Harbour which was a total failure despite the apparent destruction wrought upon the American fleet - because they missed the carriers!
Naval officers round the world simply could not agree on the debate between the relative values of the carrier versus the battleship - and this despite the battle of Taranto almost exactly a year before when the British launched the first ever naval air attack on the Italian fleet and destroyed it! All doubts were settled six months after Pearl Harbour at the battle of Midway in which American naval airpower sank four out of six Japanese carriers. It was not just the loss of the ships and planes that hurt the Japanese but the irreplaceable loss of hundreds of highly experienced aircrews.
I was only 21/2 at the time of the Japanese attack but I'll swear I felt and remember the huge sigh of relief that swept across Britain when we realised that, at last, we were not alone.
