Did Nimitz predict Pearl Harbor

No! But Nostrodamus did.

Wouldn't surprise me too much. Just about everyone with ANY training in air warfare and/or had any imagination saw it coming. Time and again on exercise after exercise year after year commander after commander bombed the Panama canal or Pearl or San Diego and scored a 'victory' as ruled by the ref. Time and again airgroup after airgroup coming in to land pointed out how defenceless the harbor was and how easy it would have been for them to beat the c**p out of the fleet, all tied up and bottled in as it was. And time and again it was ignored, the usual answer being (stated or implied) 'Even if those yellow, short, blind, little slanty eyed b*st*r*ds COULD cross the ocean, they wouldn't dare. We'd see them coming and beat the Shhhhoes (G) out of them.'

As far as I know Nimitz did not predict an attack. It is improbable that he was going to be sent to the Pacific command before the attack. When he was sent he was promoted over the heads of dozens of officers with greater seniority which in the Peace time Navy was a no-no. Many officers did discuss the possibilities of an attack, but actual prediction, no.

There was a report written jointly by the Army and Navy several months before the Pearl Harbor attack. The 'Martin-Bellinger' report did not predict an attack really, but did say how it could be done with almost spooky accuracy. It also provided information on how to help prevent such and attack, but the necessary resources were beyond the Pearl Harbor commanders and in a couple of cases beyond the available resources of the United States. The big one was it called for 180 B-17s for maritime patrol. There were not that many in existence in the States which is where they would have been sent from.

There was a wargame a couple of years before the attack where the aggressor attacked in a manner similar to what actually happened. There was also a book written in Japan (fiction) where the central event was an attack on Pearl Harbor.

I have never heard Nimitz' name associated with any of these 'predictions'. It is not that they believed that it could not happen or that that Japanese were incapable of doing it, they just did not believe that the Japanese would do it. Admiral Pye (battleship commander of the Pacific Fleet) said shortly before the attack that we were too big and powerful.

Even Layton's book 'And I was There' does not mention that anyone, especially Nimitz, knew of the attack. Layton does go into some depth on the failings of the commanders in Washington DC to pass on the diplomatic decryptions of the Honolulu consulated to the Pacific Fleet. Those made is possible, but not at all certain, that the intelligence officers of the Pacific Fleet could have predicted the attack. But neither the Purple Analog machine or the decrypts were made available to the Hawaiian commanders during the critical time. Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner was mentioned specifically in this regard.

The Japanese carrier group kept radio silence during the period before the attack (in harbor they had cable) which meant that the U.S. Navy lost track of them. One day a few days before the attack Admiral Kimmel asked where they were and when the answer was that Layton did not know Kimmel made the observation that they could be rounding Diamond Head and we would not know. Layton replied that he hoped that they would have been spotted before that time.

Does that constitute a 'prediction'? Does the Martin-Bellinger report? Does the fiction book or the wargame?

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For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Chuck him out, the brute!' But it's 'Saviour of 'is country' when the guns begin to shoot; ******************************************************* *************

In my Fairfax County History Course, we were told it was finished in 1943. Began before the war(in '41 IIRC).

There, looked up the dates: September 41-January '43.

Chris Manteuffel