Krepinevich - 7 deadly scenarios: a military futurist explores war in the 21st century

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

DAWN WAS BREAKING ON SUNDAY MORNING, THE SEVENTH DAY OF the month, on the island of Oahu. Aside from its status as a tourist mecca, the island was home to several major American military facilities, including the huge naval base at Pearl Harbor and the Armys Hickam airfield. For the soldiers and sailors, the day began like any other Sunday, with a skeleton crew on duty while many others slept off their Saturday nights revelries.

But this was no ordinary Sunday.

For over a week, unknown to the islands commanders, a large fleet had been steaming toward the Hawaiian Islands, operating under strict radio silence and without running lights to avoid detection. The fleet sailed to the north of the islands, far beyond the normal shipping lanes, to reduce the chances of being detected by U.S. naval patrols or commercial ships. This time of year found the northern Pacific storm-tossed, and as the fleet pressed on toward its target, it adjusted its course to sail inside rain squalls.

Early that Sunday, following a high-speed run, the fleets aircraft carriers came within one hundred miles of Pearl Harbor, their principal target. An hour before daybreak pilots scrambled into their planes. Shortly thereafter the carriers launched their strike aircraft, more than 150 in all, a mix of fighters, dive-bombers, and torpedo planes, which quickly moved into formation and headed through the night sky for Oahu. Their mission: execute Raid Plan No. 1. As the aircraft approached Pearl Harbor, the weather cleared, as if on cue. This enabled the strike formations to use the battery of searchlights at Kahuku Point as a navigation aid to guide them toward their targets.

Dawn was now breaking. As sunlight streamed over the horizon, the airborne strike force pressed home its attack over Pearl Harbor, achieving complete surprise. Dive-bombers and torpedo planes went to work on the ships lying at anchor along Battleship Row, where the U.S. Navys capital ships were berthed. Fighter aircraft peeled off and strafed the airfield, hitting parked planes, fuel storage tanks, and hangars. Army Air Corps pilots rushed to take off after the attacking force, but by the time they were aloft, the attackers had completed their strikes and vanished. Failing to locate the attackers, the Army aircraft returned to base, whereupon a second wave of carrier strike aircraft hit them. A New York Times reporter on the scene reported that the attacks were unopposed by the defense, which was caught virtually napping.

Surveying the results, the American defenders were filled with angerand relief. The attack, executed on the morning of Sunday, February 7, 1932, occurred at the outset of a U.S. Army-Navy war game called Grand Joint Exercise 4. Rear Admiral Harry Yarnell, commander of the newly commissioned American aircraft carriers Saratoga and Lexington, had launched the attacking planes. The bombs dropped were flour bags, which could be found splattered on the Navys ships still sitting at anchor.

Red-faced, the Army Air Corps commanders sought to minimize the attacks results. They argued that the damage incurred to Hickam Field was minimal, and asserted that they had found and attacked Yarnells carriers. Finally, they protested the attack on legal groundsit was improper to begin a war on Sunday!

The war games umpires sided with the Army. Their report made no mention of Yarnells attack but concluded that it is doubtful if air attacks can be launched against Oahu in the face of strong defensive aviation without subjecting the attacking carriers to the danger of material damage and consequent great loss in the attacking] air force.

Nearly ten years later carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy, attacking Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941, proved that Admiral Yarnell, not the umpires or the Army, had gauged the future correctly. The admiral had been willing to confront uncomfortable possibilities, whereas others had not. Although America was shocked by the Japanese attack, many in the Navy were not. As Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the architect of the Navys victorious campaign against Japan, ruefully admitted, Nothing that happened in the Pacific was strange or unexpected.

NEARLY SIX YEARS AFTER ADMIRAL YARNELLS SURPRISE ATTACK on Pearl Harbor, in the fall of 1937 the world witnessed by far the largest field exercises held in Germany since the Great War that had led to its humiliation at Versailles. These maneuvers were conducted on the North German Plain. Some eight infantry divisions took part. (The entire U.S. Army today comprises only ten divisions.) But the size of the enterprise was not its only notable aspect: appearing for the first time in these exercises was the Wehrmachts Third Panzer Division and the First Panzer Divisions First Panzer Brigade. These formations had not existed during the Great War. Indeed, they had only just been formed. The two novel units were unusual in several respects. Most conspicuous was their emphasis on mechanization. They boasted a massive number of tanks, some eight hundred in all. Their appearance in the exercise produced a heightened sense of expectation, which extended all the way up the armys chain of command to the German General Staff. Rather than the two-day length typical of most annual exercises, these maneuvers were to span a full week.

The Third Panzers attack plan involved using its infantry forces to engage enemy troops defending a bridgehead, while its armored forces attacked the defenders left flank. The objective was for the Panzers the German word for armor, or tanksto break through the enemy lines. The attack was everything the Wehrmachts most ardent Panzer advocates could have hoped for. After a hundred-kilometer approach march, the division went into the attack, quickly forcing the enemy to commit its reserves. Even these proved insufficient to arrest the Panzers. The following day the Third Panzer not only broke through the enemy front but penetrated deep into its rear area. Confronted with armored forces prowling behind its shattered lines, the enemys position quickly unraveled. What had been planned as a week-long exercise was decided in only four days.