(The five aircraft carriers that normally called Pearl Harbor their home station were either on maneuvers far out to sea or in port in California, or had been transferred to the Atlantic).Įlsewhere, chaplains were preparing for their weekly church services, and cooks in shipboard messes and in mess halls on land were frying eggs and bacon and brewing gallons of coffee. Aboard the two dozen ships anchored in the shallow waters, hundreds of sailors were still in their racks, sleeping off a little too much drinking and carousing in Oahu’s bars and houses of ill repute on Hotel Street the night before. To most of the military personnel in the Hawaiian Islands, the early-morning sinking of the midget submarine, however, passed unnoticed. 2 or 3, because a submarine snooping near Pearl Harbor could scarcely have been charged up to local saboteurs.” The incident might have provided just the added weight needed to move the Hawaiian Department from the No. Goldstein wrote in At Dawn We Slept, arguably the most detailed and comprehensive account of the attack, “The Navy’s most serious error in this pre-attack submarine chapter of the Pearl Harbor story was its failure to advise the Army that a destroyer had sunk an obviously hostile submarine in the Defensive Sea Area.
Japanese crewmen aboard the aircraft carrier Shokaku cheer as a Nakajima B5N2 “Kate” torpedo bomber takes off for Pearl Harbor at about 7:00 am. It was, in fact, the precursor of a world-changing event, but no one at the time could appreciate just how momentous it was about to become. This time, as events would soon prove, this sighting and sinking was anything but nothing. He threw on some clothes and was chauffeured to CinCPac headquarters, wondering if this was just another false alarm there had been several “sightings” of Japanese ships, planes, and subs in the previous months, but they had all turned out to be nothing. Army’s Hawaiian Department Kimmel was commander in chief of the U.S. Kimmel’s quarters on shore, where the admiral was preparing for a round of golf with Lt. The report caused a stir, and soon it seemed that everyone was trying to get in touch with someone at a higher level who could decide what the sighting and sinking meant and what to do next.Ī call went to Admiral Husband E. Harold Kaminski, who passed it along to higher headquarters. Outerbridge sent a message detailing his actions to the 14th Naval District watch officer, Lt. It popped to the surface momentarily, then went under for good. As the sub passed beneath Ward’s hull, depth charges were dropped on it.
The first salvo of four-inch shells missed, but then a round struck the conning tower at the waterline and the boat keeled over. There was no reason why a submarine should be lurking in that area, especially one that appeared to be trying to sneak into the harbor behind Antares during the brief minutes when the narrow channel’s antisubmarine nets would be open.Ĭlosing quickly on the submarine, which was now about five miles from the harbor’s entrance, Ward’s skipper, Captain William Outerbridge, brought the destroyer to within 50 yards of the unidentified craft and gave the order to fire. Its mission was to enter the harbor, lie in wait, and torpedo whatever ships it could find once the general attack was underway.Īs Antares was unarmed, Grannis radioed the nearby destroyer Ward of his finding officers aboard Ward confirmed the sighting and at 6:40 went to general quarters. It was one of five brought from Japan by five I-class mother submarines and launched five or six hours before the planned 8:00 am aerial attack was set to begin. The conning tower belonged to a 46-ton, 78-foot-long Type A Japanese midget submarine that carried two torpedoes and a two-man crew. He suddenly noticed an unexpected object about 1,500 yards off the starboard quarter, something that looked suspiciously like the conning tower of a submarine. On the bridge of Antares was her skipper, Commander Lawrence C. Navy stores and supply ship of more than 11,000 tons, was approaching the mouth of the inlet leading into Pearl Harbor towing a steel barge. naval base at Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, was just beginning to stir.Īt 6:30 am, USS Antares (AKS-3), a U.S. As the sun rose above the Pacific in the clear, cloudless sky east of the Hawaiian Islands, on December 7, 1941, the giant U.S. It was, as the phrase goes, another perfect day in paradise.
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