The attack also led to the creation of the Air Force in 1947. The government realized that the former Army Air Forces needed to be under independent control, said Jeff Underwood, historian of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson.
“That was one of the lessons that the airmen took away: ‘We’ve got to be under separate control from the ground people, because they think differently than we do about the use of air power,’ ” Underwood said.
Japan launched the nearly two-hour air assault 70 years ago today on Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii. Tokyo assumed that if the base and nearby airfields were destroyed, it would remove a threat to Japan’s plans for continued armed expansion of its territory in Asia, historians have said. The plan backfired when Washington declared war on Japan the next day.
“The Japanese underestimated how incredibly angry the attack on Pearl Harbor would make the American people,” said Edward F. Haas, a Wright State University history professor who teaches a course on the American experience in World War II.
There was an underestimation on the American side as well.
“We thought of the Japanese as being what we would now call a Third World country, and underestimated their military,” Haas said.
The attack graphically illustrated the destructive power of Japan’s air force, particularly its Zero fighter, a Japanese advantage in the early years of World War II.
Most of the U.S. warplanes at military airfields on Hawaii at Pearl Harbor were destroyed or heavily damaged before they could take to the air. Warships were bombed, and in some cases sunk, where they had been docked.
It highlighted the need for better communication between U.S. armed services and the critical need for 24-hour vigilance, Underwood said.
In the years since the war, the United States has installed unified commands intended to provide direction and communication across vital military operations.
Speed in sharing fresh surveillance information has become increasingly critical, as technology has produced more potent weapons of war and greatly reduced the time needed to launch an attack.
“It doesn’t do any good if you know it and somebody else who needs to know it doesn’t,” Underwood said.
Today, military satellites, surveillance aircraft and sensor-laden unmanned airplanes provide constant visual tracking of the activities of adversaries.
The National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base analyzes information from sources ranging from satellite images to foreign news reports.
The center provides reports to senior U.S. military and government leaders on the aerospace attack capabilities of unfriendly countries. Those reports, along with those of other military intelligence sources, contribute to the president’s daily security briefings.
Modern technology also has broadened the warfront. The Air Force has added cyberspace to air and space as realms where it intends to operate and prevail over enemies.
Cyberattacks on key military and commercial networks of the United States and allies, intended to disable those networks or pry confidential information from them, have become commonplace.
The Air Force Institute of Technology, at Wright-Patterson, provides graduate-level classes in cyber warfare.
“Opposition forces are always looking for new ways,” Haas said.
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