General Discussion

In the “Grand Joint Exercise Four” war games of early 1932, Admiral Frank Schofield led the attacking force. Approaching Hawaii from the north, he ordered 150 aircraft from the USS Saratoga and USS Lexington carriers to attack defending Navy and Army forces on Oahu.

Referees ruled the engagement a victory for the attacking forces. Denoted in part by sacks of flour dropped from the attacking aircraft onto ships at anchor and airfield runways on land, the Navy planes destroyed the island’s Army Air Force bases and sank all the battleships at anchor in Pearl Harbor.

Admiral Schofield’s force then escaped northward unscathed, journalists and biographers report. The admiral retired a few months afterward. Many of his colleagues considered the success of the attack a “fluke” and did not appreciate the potential of naval air power, preferring battleships on the surface, and when necessary, submarines underwater.

The concept of surprise attack by naval aviation, however, demonstrated in war games became reality in battle nine years later. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt termed December 7, 1941, “a day of infamy” — Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.