Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

Air Raid, Pearl Harbor! This is No Drill! 319
an air attack.” 30 But on Saturday, December 6, the Signal Corps
“obtained permission of the control offi cer to have all stations
operate from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. only on Sunday, December 7.” 31
However, on that morning Opana radar station actually happened
to stay open a little longer. Private Joseph L. Lockard, out
of personal interest and a desire for experience, and Sergeant
George E. Elliott, who wanted to learn plotting, had volunteered
to experiment overtime.
Shortly after 7 a.m., Lockard detected on the radar screen a
large fl ight of aircraft bearing north at a distance of about 136
miles. He was “confused” by what he saw. A few minutes after 7,
when it got down to about 132 miles, he called the information
center, but no one was around.
[I]t was the largest group [he] had ever seen on the oscilloscope.
. . . Th en we continued to follow the fl ight and to plot it,
till it got within about 22 miles—20 to 22 miles of the Island,
at which time we lost it in this blacked-out area. 32
At that time radar was still rather primitive, basically experimental;
there was no proper identifi cation system to determine
friend from foe, so these planes could not be identifi ed. 33
At 7:20 Lockard reached Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler on duty
at Aircraft Warning Center and reported his sightings. Tyler discounted
the report for several reasons. Th e planes sighted could be
from our own two task forces at sea; they could be from Army’s
30 Wallin, Pearl Harbor, p. 49.
31 Joint Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack, part 7, p. 2951, Short statement
prepared for the Joint Committee.
32 Ibid., part 27, pp. 531–33, Lockard testimony before the APHB.
33 Ibid., part 7, pp. 2951–52, Short statement prepared for the Joint Committee.
Th ere is a good description of the radar installations and December 7 sightings
in George Raynor Th ompson, et al., Th e Signal Corps: Th e Test (December
1941 to July 1943) (Washington, D.C.: Offi ce of the Chief of Military History,
Department of the Army, 1957), pp. 3–5.