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In December 1939, the U.S. military established an Aircraft Warning Service (AWS) using radar to defend American territory. It employed the SCR-270 radar, the first United States long-range search radar created at the Signal Corps laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, circa 1937. The radar’s operating frequency was 106 megahertz and it had a maximum […]

Each shotai (for this attack, increased to four aircraft instead of the normal three) would normally remain together, but each plane commander (who could be the pilot, navigator, or radioman/gunner, depending upon who was senior) had the authority to alter the target. Some overruled the decision of their shotai leaders. Matsumura and his radioman searched […]

Success The torpedo bombers quickly achieved the planners’ hopes to sink at least one battleship. Oklahoma capsized. West Virginia, with a more advanced internal torpedo defense system and benefiting from prompt counterflooding by alert junior officers and petty officers, was saved from a similar fate, eventually settling on the bottom on an even keel. California’s […]