Nagumo's fleet was positioned 275 miles north of Oahu. It did intercept two cipher messages from Tokyo to Kichisaburo Normura, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, that suggested an imminent attack, but Richmond Turner, in charge of evaluating and dissemination, did not pass on warnings of the proposed attack to Admiral Husband Kimmel. However, this information does not seem to have been passed onto the United States. Richard Sorge, a German journalist working as a Soviet agent in Tokyo, discovered details of the plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto's plan was eventually agreed by the Japanese Imperial Staff in the autumn and the strike force under the command of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo sailed from the Kurile Islands on 26th November, 1941. He therefore advocated a surprise attack that would destroy the US Fleet in one crushing blow. Yamamoto feared that he did not have the resources to win a long war against the United States. In January 1941, the Commander in Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto began planning for a surprise attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor. The following year eight battleships and three aircraft carriers were added to the strength of the US Navy. Congress passed the Two Oceans Navy Bill in July 1940 allowed for the building of 1,325,000 tons of new warships. The navy also retained control over specialist carrier aircraft such as the Grumman Hellcat and Douglas SBD-3.Īfter the outbreak of the Second World War the US government became concerned about the dangers posed by Japan. The Lexington and Saratoga aircraft carriers had appeared in 1927. As a result, the US Navy was the only country capable of rivaling Japan in the field of naval aviation.
Since the 1920s the US Navy was based on the view that the Japanese Navy posed the main threat to the United States. In 1939 the US Navy had 15 battleships, 5 aircraft carriers, 18 heavy cruisers and 19 light cruisers.
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