From;
Navy Times
darn the torpedoes!: Pearl Harbor shattered conventional thinking
By Charles Jones
Special to the Times
Three U.S. events led to the development of naval aviation — the weapon Japan used so effectively Dec. 7, 1941 — and all three shared a connection with Hampton Roads, Va.
The first: The 1862 battle in Hampton Roads between the ironclads CSS Virginia and USS Monitor marked the end of the wooden warship.
The second: The 1910 flight from the cruiser Birmingham, anchored in Hampton Roads — the first flight from a ship — marked the end of the gun as the deadliest naval weapon.
Combining the ironclad and the airplane resulted in naval aviation, which would make aircraft carriers and airplanes, not battleships and guns, the most dangerous naval weapons.
The third event would determine whether naval aviation was effective — i.e., could aircraft in fact sink ships? The answer came in tests in the 1920s conducted by the aircraft of Army Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell. His aircraft — operating from Langley Field near Hampton Roads and from a primitive airfield on North Carolina’s Outer Banks — sank old ships.
Conventional thinking, however, persisted through Dec. 6, 1941: Battleships and guns were the main naval weapons, and ships in shallow harbors — such as Pearl Harbor — were safe from aerial torpedo attacks, since torpedoes dropped from airplanes traveled downward several hundred feet upon hitting water before leveling off and running toward targets.
Two men who noticed changes in naval weapons and believed in air power’s supremacy over battleships were Japanese naval officers Minoru Genda, who planned the Pearl Harbor attack in detail, and Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack’s first wave.
Three types of Japanese aircraft inflicted an excruciating deathblow on conventional thinking, proving dramatically that carriers, not battleships, were now the premier combat ships: • Mitsubishi Zero fighter-bombers protected other Japanese aircraft, strafed ground targets and engaged U.S. fighters.
• Aichi Val vertical bombers dive-bombed and strafed ships and installations.
• Nakajima Kate carrier-borne horizontal bombers attacked ships, particularly battleships, with torpedoes and bombs.
Because of Pearl Harbor’s shallow depth, Japanese torpedoes were fitted with special wooden fins, limiting how far they sank before leveling out.
While conventional torpedoes would have hit bottom, these torpedoes hit American ships moored in Pearl Harbor with deadly results.
Some Kates carried 16-inch naval shells converted into armor-piercing bombs that could penetrate the deck armor of ships moored between Ford Island and another ship.
The effectiveness of the Japanese weapons is still seen in Pearl Harbor, where the battleships Arizona, hit by aerial bombs, and Utah, hit by aerial torpedoes, rest peacefully as graves and memorials at the same berths they occupied Dec. 7.
The writer, a Marine Corps Reserve colonel, is a writer and lawyer in Norfolk, Va. His e-mail address is
cajones@earthlink.net.
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Thought this to be interesting, as tomorrow will be 65 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor. My father would always reflect that on that morning he was in Macon Georgia playing a game of "Archery Golf" (whatever that was), when someone came running out of the clubhouse yelling about the attack. I have always heard that folks from that era always could recall exactly where they were, & what they were doing when they heard news of the attack.
Robbie
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Willful ignorance based on the Not Invented Here syndrome's not a good idea. 
