US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

Planning for War, 1940–1 941 193
Stark to pickup the scramble telephone used for classified messages and call
Admiral Kimmel.
It wouldn’t have done much real good at that late hour, but we might
have had the ships buttoned up tight, all the guns manned and ready
and a few planes in the air. . . . There would have been a lot of satisfaction
from the Navy’s point of view in that, and some lives might
have been saved.ss
But this did not happen. The only conclusion to be drawn is that Turner did
not appreciate the reality of the time crisis.
When Admiral Turner was asked why he did not urge Admiral Stark to
grab the scrambfe telephone and wake up Admiral Kimmel, he said:
Why weren’t I and a lot of others smarter than we were? I didn’t put
all the Two’s and Two’s together before Savo to get four. Maybe I
didn’t before” Pearl, but damned if I know just where. If Noyes had
only known that Kirrunel couldn’t read the diplomatic Magic. If Kimmel
had only sent out a few search planes. If the words ‘Pearl Harbor’ had
only survived the redrafting of the warning messages. . . . You find
out the answers and let me know.se
OP-12 DAILY SUMMARIES
The fact that there were “Daily Summaries” and evaluations of informa-
tion being prepared in various offices of the Navy Department was looked
into by the Congressional Committee for the Pearl Harbor Attack.
A check of the Daily Summaries and evaluations prepared in the War
Plans Division indicates that these were read by the Director of War Plans.
Filed next to the 22 September 1941 summary, there is an undated RKT
handwritten note addressed to Commander Walter Ansel, who was the
actual drafter in OP-12.
These are getting too long. You have drawn some premature and unwarranted
conclusions, I believe. RKT
Another summary is marked in RKT’s handwriting:
“Bad History” and again I can’t see this at all.
These comments lend credence to the thought that the evaluations appearing
in other summaries were fairly close to RKT’s opinions or they would
have been marked up.
= Turner.
MTurner.