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The plan for the Pearl Harbor attack is criticised because the Japanese did not attack the oil storage facilities (as well as other potential targets I believe).

What I would be really interested to know is, what would have been the effect on the US ability to put ships and men to sea had these facilities been completely taken out? Could the raids against Japanese held islands that followed the attack on Pearl have been possible? Would the Doolittle raid have been possible or even the putting of the carrier task force into the Coral Sea?

How quickly would the navy have been able to repair the tanks and replenish oil stocks at Hawaii?

Did not Nimitz claim it would set back US operations in the Pacific about a year or was it two??)?

Terje

Interesting question, Warspite. I'll be interested in responses you receive from knowledgeable folks.

The Doolittle Raid departed from Alameda, California, on April 1, 1942 (IIRC). So I think that particular little adventure would not have been seriously affected by the situation at Pearl Harbor. In fact, a fuel shortage at Pearl might have resulted in more raids from West Coast ports with fuel.

The USN did have a fuel shortage in SoPac that limited use of the big, slow battlewagons. So the destruction of the fuel stores at Pearl might have hampered things there, but I'm not positive.

ORIGINAL: terje439

Did not Nimitz claim it would set back US operations in the Pacific about a year or was it two??)?

Terje

Warspite1

Yes, but what I am hoping is that the chaps on this forum will be able to quantify that.

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel


The Doolittle Raid departed from Alameda, California, on April 1, 1942 (IIRC). So I think that particular little adventure would not have been seriously affected by the situation at Pearl Harbor. In fact, a fuel shortage at Pearl might have resulted in more raids from West Coast ports with fuel.

Warspite1

Good point. This is one of the reasons I would be interested in having Nimitz statements qualified. Some operations would be possible using oilers, but presumably this would depend upon the availability of oilers and the range of operations.

Another question would it be the loss of the fuel or the loss of the storage containers that would be the biggest problem? How fast could you rebuild the storage tanks? How fast would they be re-built if the Secretary of the Navy went to Henry Kaiser or Howard Hughes and asked them to fix the problem?

Could you create enough storage with parked oilers as a temporary fix?

I found these quotes from Nimitz, and two quotes from the congressional inquiry:

Fleet Admiral Nimitz wrote, "as bad as our losses were at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941–-they could have been devastatingly worse–-had the Japanese returned for more strikes against our naval installations, surface oil storage and our submarine base installations. Such attacks could have been made with impunity as we had little left to oppose them." Japanese superiority in the Pacific combined with their element of surprise could have given them an even greater victory if they had continued their assault on Pearl Harbor.

As quoted from Admiral Nimitz: "At a time of great petroleum shortage, they failed to destroy our surface tanks containing 4.5 million barrels of oil, our major reserve for the Pacific. Fifty-caliber incendiary machine gun bullets could have wiped them out.
Had these two things been done our fleet would have been forced back to the West Coast. Underground storage tanks at Red Hill were still months from completion. Nimitz worried every day until they were."

You can read the entire transcript of the Hart inquiry which, dating from 1944 via the www at http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha/invest.html You'll have to scroll down to page 101 to find questions #31 & #32.

The sworn testimony below was provided by one US Admiral Claude C. Bloch, Commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District (Hawaii) at the time of the Pearl Harbor attacks. Working directly under Admiral Kimmel, he was THE man responsible for the day-to-day functioning of Pearl Harbor and the one most "in the know" about all conditions there.

"31. Q. A somewhat hypothetical question: Could the carrier raid of 7 December have damaged us more effectively and more lastingly if the objective of the attack had been directed against installations other than those which were attacked?

A. In my opinion, yes, we would have been damaged infinitely more than we were. At Pearl Harbor, on December 7, the objectives of the Japanese were, first, the air fields, and then capital ships of the Fleet. In my opinion, with a different method of attack, the Japanese might have caused our entire Fleet to sortie, to seek them out. We know accurately now what force was brought on the attack against Pearl Harbor. Had our ships been effective in making a concentration outside of Pearl Harbor, a serious question is in my mind as to whether or not the entire Fleet would not have been destroyed, in view of the powerful force that the Japanese had in the area. But even assuming that the form of attack that was made had been pursued vigorously against our oil supply, which was all above ground, against our drydocks, repair shops, barracks and other facilities, storehouses, I feel that insofar as the prosecution of the war was concerned, that we would have been very much worse hurt than we were by the attack on capital ships, even though we did have a tragic loss of life.

32. Q. Will you enlarge a little upon that statement as regards the oil tanks?

A. The oil storage, fuel and diesel at Oahu, amounted to approximately 4,000,000 barrels. All of this oil was stored in tanks above the ground, metal tanks, with the exception of one concrete tank embedded in the ground but visible from the air. These tanks were located in two groups of tanks known as the "Upper Farm" and "Lower Farm." They were immediately adjacent to the submarine base, industrial navy yard, hospital, and Hickam Field. Struck by bombs and set on fire, not only the reserve oil would have been destroyed but the burning oil would have flowed over the dykes and caused wide conflagration in the yard and general area. Ships desiring oil would have been unable to obtain it. Submarines desiring diesel oil would have been unable to obtain it. We had one drydock with a battleship in it, and two destroyers, on December 7. If the caisson had been breached, the dock would have been partially destroyed and the ships in it would have been wrecked; a serious casualty would have been the loss of our machine shops and the tools, our storehouses with the spare parts, spare torpedoes, storehouses with our food supply for 50,000 men for a hundred days and all the various elements that went [95] to make up the requirements of the base. An attack on the ammunition depot at Lualualei certainly would have destroyed our radio transmitting stations which were located there and might have destroyed some of the ammunition storage. "

Hope this helps with what you were looking for,

Tran ET1(SS)

The US lacked sufficient numbers of ships in the AO and general cargo tanker category to keep US ships operational and at sea for long intervals in the PTO through the end of 1942. The loss of large fuel tanks at PH would (assuming complete destruction) have forced the US to rely on smaller numbers of ships. Without those tanks, I'd say the US would never have fielded in 1942 a CVTF of more than 2 CVs. One possible consequence might have been more emphasis on submarines, and therefore a quicker recognition of the torpedo problems.

That said, nothing in Kido Butai's inventory was sufficient to destroy the tanks at PH. First of all, there weren't merely a couple of them, but rather about forty of them. Each was a double-walled tank surrounded by its own individual 16 foot high berm. The catchement for each berm was sufficient to hold all the fuel in each tank in the event of a total rupture. So the idea of starting some conflagration that would spread from tank to tank with chains of explosions a la Hollywood is a complete fantasy. The Japs would have to hit EACH tank. Kates would not have been very useful for the job because they were about as accurate at level bombing as a badly-flown B-17. Vals a little more useful but still not great.

The other problem is that starting the tanks on fire and destroying the fuel was the sort of thing that would require several hits. A couple of high explosive to sufficiently rupture the fuel tank. Some incendiary WP to start it burning. The contents of those tanks would be almost impossible to alight using HE. At usual atmospheric temperature, bunker oil has the consistency of thick caramel, and the burnability of wet wood. Each of those tanks had their own coil heater to make the fuel pumpable because of the viscosity. Each also had its own irrigation system, so getting it alight and getting it to STAY alight would have been problematic.

Could the Japanese have done it? IMO, with a carful study of the problem, the right mix of ordnance (most of which KB never carried operationally) and singular dedication to that ONE purpose, they might have been able to destroy half the fuel in the PH Pacific Fleet fuel reserve.

PH "Upper Farm" near submarine base October 1941.

I have read (possibly here), that the vulnerability of the tanks at Pearl wasn't actually considered by the US until some time after the attack.  It didn't occur to the Japanese because they didn't tend to think about vulnerabilities to infrastructure.  The US didn't really either until the strategic bombing campaign in Europe.

On a slight tangent, the latest issue of World War II magazine has an article analyzing the Japanese attack on Pearl and concluded that rather than being the wild success it has often been claimed to be, it failed in many ways.  The IJN got far fewer hits than they had assumed in planning, there were operational glitches, many bombs and torpedoes were wasted on low quality or already crippled targets.

The seeming success covered over the flaws and as a result the Japanese didn't learn from them.  When Japan finally started learning the lessons they needed to learn, it was too late to do anything effective about it.

It's an interesting article.

Bill

Zimm's book included a computer study on a third wave Japanese attack. Though he rates the results on the "high" end, the model predicted that the Japanese (with available bombers minus a reserve kept back for AS missions) might destroy up to 50% of the tanks with a focused attack on the storage farms. A good portion of the spilled oil could probably have been recouped but the real issue would be repair and re-storage of the oil and to build back up the base's reserve capacity. Given that the bulk of the main battlefleet was already immobilized, the "immediate" effect is hard to determine (even the author admits its "hard to estimate the immediate effect of this loss on PacFleet ops").

My thoughts are that it would not have caused a major impact because the attack already put the fleet on a defensive posture and defensive ops could have certainly been sustained with emergency tanker runs + the remaining intact storage containers. By the time the US was ready to move over to the offensive, much of this would have been repaired and the same issues of creating/building up forward bases for fuel and logistics are little changed. With the big BB's largely static during the first six-seven months of the PacWar thats a major easing on the fuel guzzling.

lol...topics like this always make me think of the sheer amount of oil that was lost in general during that war. I wonder if anyone's ever calcuated the total amount and what it would mean to today's reserves?

What was lost was fairly high, but it probably wouldn't make much of a dent in current world reserves. The US uses 18.6 million barrels a day and the world uses 82.7 million a day.

The Allies consumed 7 billion barrels during the war (6 billion of which came from the US).  That's 84 days at current world consumption.

When you start running the numbers for oil, the figures get astronomical very quickly. 

Bill

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

That said, nothing in Kido Butai's inventory was sufficient to destroy the tanks at PH.

[&:] There's not many targets easier to wreck havoc on than stored petroleum.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
First of all, there weren't merely a couple of them, but rather about forty of them. Each was a double-walled tank surrounded by its own individual 16 foot high berm. The catchement for each berm was sufficient to hold all the fuel in each tank in the event of a total rupture. So the idea of starting some conflagration that would spread from tank to tank with chains of explosions a la Hollywood is a complete fantasy. The Japs would have to hit EACH tank.

Despite the concerns Admiral Bloch had about spillage, that would not be the problem at all. The issue is heat. With so much fuel, eventually any fire will become so hot it can't be put out. The heat will build up and it will spread the fire to a completely untouched tank, building, forest, etc. Look at the Puerto Rico tank farm fire. Tanks separated by berms. Doesn't matter when is so hot its melting the steel of the adjacent tank. Even with very modern fire fighting equipment and lots of support you still basically have to let it burn itself out while doing your best to cool anything that is near by. With some help from mother nature and lots of cooling, it should burn itself out in a few days. Assuming just one tank got hit, you probably would still lose half the farm and that's with a lot of support trying to keep stuff cool. You hit a couple, there would be no hope of containment. Just too much heat.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
Kates would not have been very useful for the job because they were about as accurate at level bombing as a badly-flown B-17. Vals a little more useful but still not great.

[X(]. I'm not sure you and I are on the same page when it comes to bombing. Hitting moving ships from altitude can be challenging. Hitting stationary ships when they are trying to kill isn't quite as challenging. But hitting or even coming within a lethal 1500-2000 feet on something the size of a fuel tank and any practical altitude, [&:]. And its not even like there would be much AA for very obvious reasons. I simply can't understand how you could reach that conclusion. Even the Dutch air force at Batavia could hit a tank farm through a cloud layer.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
The other problem is that starting the tanks on fire and destroying the fuel was the sort of thing that would require several hits. A couple of high explosive to sufficiently rupture the fuel tank. Some incendiary WP to start it burning. The contents of those tanks would be almost impossible to alight using HE. At usual atmospheric temperature, bunker oil has the consistency of thick caramel, and the burnability of wet wood. Each of those tanks had their own coil heater to make the fuel pumpable because of the viscosity. Each also had its own irrigation system, so getting it alight and getting it to STAY alight would have been problematic.

[&:] I think your understanding about HE not being able to ignite bunker fuel might be the reason why you see things differently. May I be so bold as to refer you the the wiki page on bombs? Ever wonder why ships catch fire after getting hit by a bomb? It's not like they are getting hit with napalm. Bomb explodes and all of a sudden there's smoke, everytime. It's all about what happens when you have 3000-5000F confined to an enclosed area. It's enough to make metal burn, let alone dried paint, chairs, humans or if you are real unlucky explosives or fuel. And don't think that 3000F magically goes away. Just think how long it takes your chicken pot pie to cool off from 165F?

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
Could the Japanese have done it? IMO, with a carful study of the problem, the right mix of ordnance (most of which KB never carried operationally) and singular dedication to that ONE purpose, they might have been able to destroy half the fuel in the PH Pacific Fleet fuel reserve.

On this remark, I'm simply going to quote that USN veteran who spent some 40 years studying the combat capabilities of pretty much everything. "Fifty-caliber incendiary machine gun bullets could have wiped them out. "

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Zimm's book included a computer study on a third wave Japanese attack. Though he rates the results on the "high" end, the model predicted that the Japanese (with available bombers minus a reserve kept back for AS missions) might destroy up to 50% of the tanks with a focused attack on the storage farms. A good portion of the spilled oil could probably have been recouped but the real issue would be repair and re-storage of the oil and to build back up the base's reserve capacity. Given that the bulk of the main battlefleet was already immobilized, the "immediate" effect is hard to determine (even the author admits its "hard to estimate the immediate effect of this loss on PacFleet ops").

My thoughts are that it would not have caused a major impact because the attack already put the fleet on a defensive posture and defensive ops could have certainly been sustained with emergency tanker runs + the remaining intact storage containers. By the time the US was ready to move over to the offensive, much of this would have been repaired and the same issues of creating/building up forward bases for fuel and logistics are little changed. With the big BB's largely static during the first six-seven months of the PacWar thats a major easing on the fuel guzzling.

lol...topics like this always make me think of the sheer amount of oil that was lost in general during that war. I wonder if anyone's ever calcuated the total amount and what it would mean to today's reserves?

I remember us talking about very same thing about 5 years ago (and with same participants and same argument)... [:D]


BTW, were there any similar incident during WWII Pacific where similar large oil tanks were targeted / attacked?


IMHO that would be the best answer we need... [;)]


Leo "Apollo11"

Hi all,

BTW, here are those old threads from WitP days... 7+ and 6+ years old... [:)]


Throwing gasoline on the fire

tm.asp?m=594516&mpage=5


Operationally - Why Japan lost...

tm.asp?m=1011557&mpage=5



Leo "Apollo11"

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

... I remember us talking about very same thing about 5 years ago (and with same participants and same argument)... [:D]


Leo "Apollo11"

Sigh.[>:]

Oh so true, Apollo11. Pick a topic, just about any topic and your comments almost invariably are equally applicable.

Alfred

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

BTW, here are those old threads from WitP days... 7+ and 6+ years old... [:)]


Throwing gasoline on the fire

tm.asp?m=594516&mpage=5


Operationally - Why Japan lost...

tm.asp?m=1011557&mpage=5



Leo "Apollo11"

Interesting discussion! I guess that renders the topic about covered. [;)]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

BTW, here are those old threads from WitP days... 7+ and 6+ years old... [:)]


Throwing gasoline on the fire

tm.asp?m=594516&mpage=5


Operationally - Why Japan lost...

tm.asp?m=1011557&mpage=5

Interesting discussion! I guess that renders the topic about covered. [;)]

Might be... but still I don't recall anyone mentioning any similar attack on similar fuel farms in WWII Pacific with same type of fuel stored...


Leo "Apollo11"

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

I remember us talking about very same thing about 5 years ago (and with same participants and same argument)... [:D]

Almost but not quite all the same folks, [:'(]. And I didn't see Admiral Nimitz's comments. Guys, I'm no expert on tank farms and lord knows I'm no firefighter. Heck I've only been to 2-3 weeks of ship board fire fighting classes. However, Nimitz was there, and he knew a little about blowing stuff up. If he said it could be done, well I'm going to take the 5-star at his word.

ORIGINAL: Apollo11
BTW, were there any similar incident during WWII Pacific where similar large oil tanks were targeted / attacked?


IMHO that would be the best answer we need... [;)]

Well you could just look at almost any port attack really. The only difference is that you really can't compare to the volume stored. PH was kind of big. As for carrier aircraft versus a oil storage facility: Dutch Harbor is all I can think of. Two attacks from a couple of light carriers hitting all kinds of targets at the base. A handful of bombers targeted the oil storage facility which was relatively small. It was set ablaze and it burned for quite some time.

ORIGINAL: sandman455

And don't think that 3000F magically goes away. Just think how long it takes your chicken pot pie to cool off from 165F?

[:D]