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Taney at Pier 6 Honolulu, Hawaii during the attack - Keith Ferris
USS West Virginia lies aflame from at least 7 torpedo hits, the fires raged for over 24 hours after the attack.
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Sunday, December 7, 1941 was to be another day of peacetime Sunday routine on American Naval ships in Hawaii, including USCGC Taney (WPG-37) homeported in Honolulu. As Taney's Quarter Master First Class Willie Williams was relieved of the gangway watch at 0730, he reported, "Situation is clear." Many men were preparing to depart the ship for Liberty. All of this, however, would soon change.
At 0731, Taney received an important message from the destroyer USS Ward. The Ward had discovered and sunk an unknown submarine in the forbidden defensive zone at the entrance to Pearl Harbor. Knowing danger was imminent, the the Taney's Officer of the Deck, Lieutenant E. Pearson, quickly took action. He recalled the ship's officers from shore leave and ordered the ship's guns to be uncovered and readied. As the men, expecting a drill, brought up training ammunition; Pearson angrily told them to go back and "bring out the real stuff! This was no drill!"
Because of Lieutenant Pearson's actions, Taney was one of the first ships to return fire on Japanese planes that day. As much of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor was caught unprepared, Taney, tied up at Pier 6 in downtown Honolulu, was ready. At 0900, Taney's #4 and #5 3-inch guns opened fire on Japanese aircraft, but the planes were not within range. At 1135, Taney's guns opened up on a formation of bombers flying over Honolulu's business district. Although Taney was not credited with the kills, these planes were seen to crash into the ocean soon after.
At 1158, a formation of five planes approached Taney, intending to either destroy the ship or the power plant just behind the ship. Taney's guns put up a wall of lead so thick, the planes were forced to swerve away without dropping their bombs. For this, Taney was credited with saving the Honolulu Power Plant. If not for Taney, the city may have been without power for several days.
Survivor Accounts
2 HOURS OF HELL
Oahu was enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning December 7, 1941 when Japan started its air attack on the ships and planes at Pearl Harbor. As the bombs came raining down, the ships at Pearl soon came alive. Then a bomb plunged through the deck of the Arizona to the magazine below. The explosion that followed shook the island of Oahu and the world. Fire and smoke filled the air and was seen for miles. In the wake of the attack, five battle Wagons lay on the bottom. The USS Taney, moored at Pier 6 Honolulu, joined others in repelling the attack. With fire control selecting targets, the Taney kept up continuous fire. Her guns became hot and smoke filled the air. Hickam and Wheeler Field were a mass of destroyed planes and hangers, some 150 planes were destroyed. Still the Japanese came in bombing and striking then backing against the rising sun for another attack.
Five planes coming in from the north started their attack on the Taney. With all our guns blazing away at them, they soon turned seaward with one plane reported to be smoking. With ready boxes running low, the magazines were opened and all the boxes were soon filled.
We cleared the deck of empty casings and then we were under another attack. Three Japanese planes came roaring up the channel so close you could see a big smile on their faces, happy with success. Our 50 caliber guns opened up with some hits reported. They soon disappeared. With rifles and 30 caliber machine guns from below, the Taney was ready for more attacks.
Eighteen U.S. ships were sunk or damaged, more than 300 planes were damaged or destroyed and over 2,400 men were dead - it was over. But it wasn't. This was the start of a war that would last over three and a half years - from Pearl Harbor, Midway and Africa to the Philippines, Okinawa to Hiroshima. The USS Taney was there all the way.
Homer T. Compton, BM1c
A TANEY MAN CAN'T FORGET SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1941
"At 7:55 a.m. the alarm went off sounding general quarters and I started cursing because we had been having so many drills," recalled Chuck Sellentin, who was a 17-year-old fireman aboard the Taney on December 7, 1941. He had left his parent's small farm in Belden, NE, less than a year earlier. Sellentin recalled a shipmate sliding down the railing into the engine room and yelling, "This drill is for real. The Oklahoma is turning over! You can see the smoke coming from Pearl Harbor." Sellentin ran up the ladder to his general quarters station which was on the main deck below the bridge. "I could hear all the excitement, and about that time I saw Japanese planes flying high overhead," said Sellentin.
"The next thing I heard was the shooting of our guns. That particular moment still stands out in my mind because the reverberation shattered all the glass windows in the nearby warehouse. Some of it came tinkling down on the ship." Later that morning while manning his general quarters station, Sellentin saw Japanese planes coming toward the ship. "One of those planes came in so low I thought I saw the pilot waving," recalls Sellentin.
Preparing to execute civilians in occupied territory, the "Rape of Nanking."
Admiral Isaroku Yamamoto, architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto attended college in the US before the war.
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Why Was Pearl Harbor Attacked?
By 1941, tensions were high between Japan and the US. The Japanese were on an expansion campaign all across Asia, from China and Manchuria to the French Colony in Indochina. The island nation of Japan is extremely poor in natural resources and they were seeking to secure deposits of oil and rubber in order to supply themselves indefinitely by way of annexing territory.
Until their expansion campaign, Japan was heavily reliant on imports from other countries, chiefly the United States. With the start of Japan's war in China in 1937, followed by Japan's formal alliance with Nazi Germany and Italy in 1940, relations between the United States and the Japanese Empire were deteriorating. In July 1941, after the Japanese Army invaded French Indochina, President Franklin Roosevelt imposed a total trade embargo on Japan.
The Japanese conquest of its territories was neither legal nor peaceful. The Japanese propaganda machine used the ouster of many Western powers from Asia, hailing it as "freeing" fellow Asians from Western rule. In fact most of the people who fell under Japanese rule were treated poorly and ruled with a heavy fist. So violent and terrible was the Japanese conquest of the city of Nanking that it became known as "The Rape of Nanking". The details are not known but it is estimated that Japanese soldiers randomly slaughtered civilians in the tens of thousands for several days. The United States did take notice and took action. The United States emplaced a "Moral Embargo" against Japan in retaliation for its heavy handed and brutal expansion across the Pacific Rim. This meant that all vital exports to Japan were halted, including scrap iron and oil, both crucial to the Japanese military. Many in the US speculated that the Japanese would launch and offensive against the United States next.
The Japanese military urged the Emperor to attack the United States believing that they could reduce any American threat in the Pacific in one fell swoop. The imperial signature was merely a formality of war and was obtained after much counseling and urging. Admiral Isaroku Yamamoto was the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Scale models of Pearl Harbor and "battleship row" were constructed and pilots trained over a bay in Japan similar to that of Pearl Harbor. Military leaders in Japan felt confident of victory in the attack, but some had their doubts.
Admiral Yamamoto felt that by attacking the US Japan would "awaken a sleeping giant" and felt that victory over the United States would be impossible. However, most Japanese militarists felt that even with the superiority of numbers that the US possessed, the Samurai fighting spirit of "Bushido" would compensate. In the end, both predictions would have some truth to them. Bushido would carry the Japanese solider through suicidal "Banzai" charges and Kamikaze missions. But as Admiral Yamamoto had predicted the attack woke the sleeping dragon and in the end, the US would reign victorious.
President Roosevelt signs the formal instrument of war against the Empire of Japan.
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Consequences of the Attack
The attack plan devised by Admiral Isaroku Yamamoto worked almost flawlessly in the immediate devastation it caused. The US fleet was taken completely by surprise and the bulk of the American Pacific fleet was essentially neutralized for the time being. There were however, several flaws with the execution of the attack that would have far reaching consequences throughout the ensuing war.
One major flaw with the attack was that the Japanese did not successfully destroy the US oil reserves stored near Pearl Harbor. These oil reserves would turn out to be essential to the American offensives later in the war. Additionally, the American submarine base at Pearl Harbor was not heavily damaged and no US submarines were lost during the attack. This submarine force would later be responsible for sinking over fifty per cent of Japanese losses while only representing ten per cent of the American fleet overall.
What has come to be known as the greatest flaw of the attack on Pearl Harbor was the refusal of Admiral Nagumo to launch a third wave of attack planes. The first two strikes had done mortal damage to the battleship fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor and had destroyed the majority of American aircraft at the various locations around Pearl Harbor. By not launching a third or fourth wave of attackers, Nagumo missed a great opportunity to completely crush American forces at Pearl Harbor and attack many other strategic targets around Pearl Harbor. The lack of a third wave of attackers also allowed many of the undamaged or lightly damaged US warships to make steam and put to sea unharassed.
Possibly the most far-reaching failure of the attack stemmed from the coincidental absence of the US carrier fleet at Pearl Harbor. The carrier fleet was on maneuvers at the time of the attack and was spared any damage. As a result, this fleet was placed at the forefront of the war, and the carriers Lexington, Yorktown and Enterprise would become the foundation of the new US Pacific Fleet. Japanese carrier-based planes had decimated the American battleship fleet, killing over 3000 American servicemen in less than two hours. This reality forced the "Battleship Admiralty" to come to the conclusion that the battleship was now obsolete as the cornerstone of American Naval power. In one fell swoop, the great era of the battleship had come to an end.
For the Japanese, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the morning of December 7, 1941 accomplished a devastating and immediate blow to the American fleet. The attacking Japanese only lost 35 aircraft and several "midget" type submarines. Ultimately however, the cost of the attack would not be measured in the number of planes or men lost on December 7, but in the terrible cost of a war with the United States. It was a war that Admiral Yamamoto, himself schooled in America, knew in his heart that Japan could not win. Admiral Yamamoto feared that the attack had "...awakened a sleeping giant...", a giant that would eventually reign vengeance upon the Empire of Japan.
The Imperial cabinet had not only underestimated the potential of American industry but the American spirit, the American resolve to fight and win a war against an aggressor who had attacked them without provocation. This was to be the fatal flaw of the attack; Americans would remember and unite against those who had attacked them early that Sunday morning without warning or declaration of war. The ultimate consequence was to be defeat of the Japanese four years later.
Taney Restoration
Taney is in need of the periodic hull maintenance that, while in service, she received every 2-3 years. Taney was decommissioned by the Coast Guard because of the expense of her upkeep. She may no longer leave the pier, but the effects of salt water, time, oxidation and galvanic corrosion still take their toll. Taney has not been hauled out since 1984, two years before her decommissioning. In 1999, a professional hull survey of the ship was undertaken by the museum. This survey determined that Taney is in need of major hull maintenance to replace badly corroded steel below the waterline, and renew the sacrificial zinc anodes which have worn away over the years. Furthermore, Taney's wooden decks have rotted and the superstructure of the ship is losing the war on rust. Although ticket sales and program fees cover the basic costs of maintaining the ships and running the museum, projects as massive as having Taney repaired in dry-dock require outside assistance. If these repairs are not made soon, it may be too late.
Once in dry-dock, Taney's hull will be stripped of its paint while all of the holes as well as other potential problem spots in the hull are repaired. The hull will then be repainted using water resistant epoxy paints. Also, her rotted wooden decks will be ripped up and new wooden decks put down. This is necessary not just for aesthetic reasons, but also because the rotten wood lets water seep down to the steel substructure of the deck, causing it to rust and further compromise the integrity of the hull. Other preservation projects include rust treatment and painting on the superstructure and masts, interior painting throughout and providing archival protection for donated artifacts. The longer Taney sits, the worse the problem gets.
The challenges of preserving USCGC Taney are tremendous. Unlike other museum collections which can be placed in special climate-controlled environments, Taney and other Baltimore Maritime Museum sites are constantly exposed to the stresses of an actual marine environment. Corporate and individual donations and memberships help support vital ongoing preservation projects.
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