The US carriers were hustled out of port just before the attack, to "save" them for a war that FDR already knew would be dominated by the flattop.

The two carriers then operating from Pearl Harbor, ENTERPRISE and LEXINGTON, were on missions to deliver additional fighters to Wake and Midway. These assignments sent the carriers west, toward Japan and the Imperial Japanese Navy, widely separated and lightly escorted.

True, they were both still out of port, but ENTERPRISE was doing her best to get back into Pearl. Her first ETA was Saturday evening, but a storm delayed her. The next time set was 7 AM, 55 minutes before the attack started, but that proved too optimistic as well. She was, however, close enough to Pearl to send her aircraft ahead to land at Ford Island, and some of them were shot down by "friendly fire."

Pearl Harbor was not sent an urgent message on the morning of Dec. 7th so as to prevent the fleet from being alerted. Variations include using commercial telegraph instead of military radio to transmit the message so as to delay arrival of the message.

Atmospheric conditions prevented radio communications between D.C. and Pearl Harbor. The choice of commercial telegram, while possibly not the best means of communication, was chosen for reasons given to the investigations. The Army Board was rather more critical of the choices made.

The U.S.N. thought that the harbor at Pearl Harbor was too shallow to allow a torpedo attack.

There is a communiqué from the Chief Of Naval Operations which states that no harbor is to be considered safe from torpedo attack. The consideration at Pearl Harbor, however, was that the fleet should be ready to sortie on short notice and removing anti-torpedo netting would slow the units' exit from the harbor.

The "fourteen-part message", which the Japanese ambassador was supposed to deliver to the U.S. Secretary of State thirty minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor began, was a declaration of war, or at least a breaking off of negotiations which would have signaled war.

The message is not a declaration of war, and did not even break off negotiations. Beyond a recapitulation of Japanese grievances against the U.S., and the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, there doesn't seem to be any real point to the message at all.

So when did the Japanese government prepare the declaration of war? Was it just not delivered on time? The record from Japanese sources shows that the meeting called to write it didn't convene until 12:44 pm, Dec. 7th, Pearl Harbor time.

The Captain of USS Ward, on anti-submarine patrol outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor, sent a message that he had sunk a submarine over an hour before the aerial attack began.

Captain Outerbridge reports attacking a sub, but not sinking it. Decoding the message and encoding a reply took time and by the time it was ready, bombs were already falling.

The Opana Point Radar reported the Japanese attack 1 hour before the planes arrived over the harbor, but Adm. Kimmel refused to do anything about it.

Lt. Kermit Tyler, having ending his first tour of training at the newly established Fighter Control Center, received the report and, thinking it was a flight of B-17s due in from the mainland, told the operators to "forget it." The report went no higher than that. Interestingly enough, the new radar's tracked the planes coming and going, but the Army did not tell the Navy about this pointer to the Japanese carriers until the 8th, a fact which quite possibly saved our carriers.