Pearl Harbor Archives - Flight Journal

Pearl Harbor: the Inside Story

At approximately 7:55 AM (local time), on December 7, 1941, the US Navy was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the US forces were taken completely off guard. 96 ships were stationed at Pearl Harbor, but the Japanese aircraft’s primary targets were the big battleships moored on Battleship Row at Ford Island. The Japanese aircraft […]

Pearl Harbor – Civilian Pilots Caught in History’s Path

Civilian Pilots Caught in History’s Path Six civilian aircraft were airborne during the Pearl Harbor attack. Three were students with their instructors, and three were rented by sightseeing pilots and passengers. All but one came under attack by Japanese aircraft. Two planes were shot down, and those three airmen are still missing. In Hawaii, the […]

Pearl Harbor: the Sleeping Giant Awakens

War was coming to the ocean called “Pacific.” Imperial Japan, in need of oil to feed its growing ambition, squirmed under the stricture of an American embargo (implemented because of Japan’s aggression toward China). Japan would not be denied its self-proclaimed destiny, so Tokyo’s warlords cast covetous eyes southward to the petroleum-rich Dutch East Indies, […]

Pearl Harbor images of the Aftermath – December 8 and Onward

The images of the attack on Pearl Harbor will be forever etched in the mind’s eye of Americans everywhere. As with the images of the airliners hitting the World Trade Center towers, the fire and smoke of December 7, 1941, can’t be erased from our memories. We seldom see, however, photos that portray the aftermath […]

Pearl Harbor – A Greenhorn relates his experience

Back in the mid-1930s, when I was a teenager in California, I used to spend a lot of time fishing off the municipal pier at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. I was standing on the pier one day when a flight of 16 to 20 Boeing P-26s came roaring by fast and low in tight formation. I will never forget the look of the pilots, with their heads sticking out of the cockpit and their white silk scarves billowing behind them, all looking like Eddie Rickenbacker.