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

380 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
that to patrol 360 degrees continually would have required 200-
300 planes. 31 “On paper,” Bloch testifi ed,
[he] had been given 108 patrol planes for that specifi c purpose
[distant reconnaissance], none of which had ever arrived; not
one of them. 32 . . . We had a plane-building program, and on
that plane-building program the assignment of the 14th Naval
District was nine squadrons of patrol planes and two squadrons
of observation planes, and they were the District forces that
were supposed to do this reconnaissance, but there were none
of them ever delivered here because they hadn’t been built. 33
Twenty-four of Oahu’s 72 patrol bombers were then out with
the task forces Kimmel had sent to reinforce the bases on Wake
and Midway. Only 36 planes were still at Oahu, 12 of which were
under overhaul. Th ere were nowhere nearly enough planes in
Hawaii to carry out any distant reconnaissance. 34 Bloch related
his experience in 1938, when he had been commander-in-chief of
the U.S. Fleet. “Th ey endeavored to make the 360-degree search
with the planes they had, and we had a tremendous number of
casualties.” In a few days they “lost something like four or fi ve
planes, and two of them lost all the crews.” Th ey lost the other
planes that went down, but recovered the personnel. Th e lesson
from this maneuver was that
to conduct a search effi ciently and to maintain it required a
large number of planes, and they had to be operated more or
less day on and day off , so that one day they [the crews] would
go out; the next day they could rest. In other words the strain
on the personnel was greater than it was on the matériel. 35
31Ibid., part 23, pp. 1134, 1183. Kimmel testimony.
32Ibid., part 22, p. 460. Bloch testimony.
33Ibid., pp. 469–70. Bloch testimony.
34Ibid., p. 487. Kimmel testimony.
35Ibid., p. 466. Bloch testimony.