I did a paper on the Pearl Harbor attack eons ago in college and have forgotten almost all the details. What sticks in my mind, though, is that there was much confusion between Washington and Pearl Harbor over what various stages of alert constituted -- i.e., Washington thought that its warning would put Pearl Harbor in a *high* degree of readiness, but the Pearl Harbor command believed that Washington wanted the base at a *lower* degree of readiness. Also, as I recall, there was misinterpretation of what the Japanese fleet's radio silence signifified. Typically, the Japanese maintained such silence when they were in *home* waters and could use (more secure) shore-based telegraph signals instead of radio transmissions; previously, they had not maintained radio silence on the high seas.
Carl ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com