Originally Posted by TimS

Mistake number one:
The Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of
those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea
and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Mistake number two:
When the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so
carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks
opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had
to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired.

As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can
pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by
the time we could have towed them to America . And I already have crews
ashore anxious to man those ships.

Mistake number three:
Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in top of the ground
storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have
strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. That's why I say the
Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make,
or God was taking care of America.