Evening star., 1946-02-19
Army Lacked Planes
10 Avert Air Attack,
Short 5 Aide Says
By Carter Brooke Jones

Army forces in Hawaii in 194l
could and did prevent sabotage
but had no way of detecting or
stopping an air attack, Col. Walter
C. Phillips, chief of staff to the
Hawaiian commander, Maj. Gen.
Walter C. Short, told the Pearl
Harbor committee today.
Col. Phillips insisted that the
Army's planning had been very
careful late that December.
I'VE knew We could prevent
sabotage, and we did" he said,
I'VE knew we could not stop an air
attack. We did not have the neces-
sary planes. The only way to do it
Is to locate the carriers more than
300 miles at sea and sank them by
plane or by naval bombardment
before they can launch their planes
and begin the attack.
THE Army could not locate the
enemy at such distance. Radar was
considered effective only to 100 miles
aid at that time provided no means
OF friend-or-foe Identification.
Explains Shorts Decision.
"The Navy had the job of long
distance scouting and patrolling and
they were doing the job with task
forces. They were doing it to the
greatest extent consistent with their
potential offensive mission to seize
the Marshall Islands. The Navy
believed there was no danger OF
an air raid. We were there to
support the Navy, defend their base
and the fleet with it."
Col. Phillips gave that explana-
tion for Gen. Shorts decision to 60
on an alert only against sabotage
his No. l alert-rather than the
No. 2, aimed at an air or submarine
attack. or No. 3, about.
Col. Phillips repeated Gen. Shorts
charge that the War Department
had failed to supply Hawaii with
vital information which might have
given some warning of an attack.
Col. Phillips was preceded on the
stand by Col. Robert E. Schukraft,
Signal Corps intelligence officer, who
was questioned about a message tele-
typed to the War Department two
or three days before the Pearl Har-
Dor attack. The message was de-
scribed yesterday by Capt. l.. F.. SAT-
ford, Navy communications expert,
as true war warning.
Not True Winds Message.
Col. Schukraft said piece Of yell
low teletype paper which appeared
to contain Tokyo's winds code did
reach the War Department two or
three days before Pearl Harbor, but
it was not the expected message dis
closing . break with the United
States.
The. message" said Col. Schu-
kraft, was obviously not true
winds execute message. 1t did not
follow the pattern of the japanese
in setting up the winds code. 1t was
transmitted in Morse code, and yet
1t was in a form to be used on
voice broadcast"
II 1t had been sent by Morse in
stead OF on a voice news broad
cast disguised as a weather report,
some means of identifying it would
have had to be devised, so that
Japanese agents abroad could have
known what it was, the witness ex-
planned.
Other material introduced today
showed Hawaii lacked enough re-
planes to search the
seas through which the Japanese
task force approached stealthily late
In 1941, but this country sent 1900
planes to other countries under
lease-lend that year.
This figure was placed In the
record by Seth W. Richardson,
counsel. OF the planes
sent abroad, 1,570 went to the Brit
ish. During the same period, 1900
anti-aircraft guns were sent to
other nations.
Gen. Short and Rear Admiral
Husband E. Kimmel, retired Hawai-
ian commanders, have testified that
they had serious shortage of anti
aircraft guns, as well as planes.
Capt. Edwin T. Layton, Pacific
fleet intelligence officer since 1910,
told the committee last night that
public disclosure that the United
States broke Japan's codes had
knocked the props" from one pillar
Of national security. This an
will put other Nations
on their toes and make it more
diff1cult to crack future codes In
case Of another war, he said.
Asked with reference to the Pearl
Harbor attack II 1t ever was possible
to prevent defending force from
being surprised, Capt. Layton said
it was, and he cited the battle of
He said the Japanese had
planned a surprise there and the
fleet knew exactly what
the enemy was going to do, because
all their orders had been intercepted
and decoded.
Pearl Harbor might have been a
far different story, Capt. Layton in
sisted, if Washington had passed
along all the information it was
getting from intercepted Japanese
sources. Some of the dispatches
which the Navy Department sat
on pointed directly to Hawaii as a
probable point of attack, he said.
Throughout the war;" the out
spoken officer told the committee,
Il was feet intelligence officer. If I
had been neglectful and faulty In
informing our forces of information
they should have had, would have
been court-martialed and shot"
H Marfin's Darieh