
Originally Posted by
æRLO
I don't really buy into that whole Pearl Harbor advance knowledge conspiracy. For one thing, the planes in Pearl Harbor were clustered up together, and that caused maximum losses of aircraft. If there was advanced knowledge, why would higher Naval echelon allow planes to cluster up like that if they knew Pearl Harbor would be attacked when all they needed was provocation. I mean whether the Japanese destroyed 200 grounded aircraft vs 100 aircraft, it's still an attack. Why would the Americans put themselves in a situation to lose more aircraft than they needed to. Second, assertion is, the Japanese had also made other encrypted transmissions that they would attack Wake, the Philippine Garrison, Dutch East Indies--there are plenty of targets that were more plausible to be attacked by the IJN and IJA. So the Americans knew that Japan was going to do something big, they just flat-out did not expect it in Pearl Harbor where the water is too shallow for conventional torpedoes. Third, German U-boats have been attacking neutral American ships (delivering Lend-Lease materials to Britain and USSR) and truth be told, American anti-war sentiments were on a decline because of this.
At this point, Aircraft carriers had not proven its significance in naval warfare, and Battleships were prized. I don't know how FDR or any of the upper military echelons would risk to sacrifice their entire Pacific fleet (with 8 battleships) for a provocation of war. My assertion is that the U.S. knew they had to, and wanted to, get in the war, but I'm not convinced in the revisionist theory that FDR knew ahead of time about the attack of Pearl Harbor.