PROCEEDINGS OF NAVY COURT OF INQUIRY 341
A witness called by the judge advocate entered. was duly sworn, and was informed of the subject matter of the inquiry.
Examined by the judge advocate:
1. Q. Will you state your name, rank, and present station.
A. Kermit A. Tyler.
2. Q. Rank?
A. Lieutenant Colonel, Air Corps, Army Air Force Board, Orlando, Florida.
3. Q. What was your rank and duty on 7 December 1941?
A. I was assigned as Executive Officer in the 8th Pursuit Squadron. I was a first lieutenant in the air corps at that time.
4. Q. What particular duties were you performing at about 0755 on the morning of 7 December 1941?
A. I was assigned as pursuit officer with a duty as Assistant to the Controller, at the information center at Fort Shafter.
5. Q. Fort Shafter, Territory of Hawaii?
342 CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION PEARL HARBOR ATTACK
6. Q Will you tell the court in a brief way what these [447] duties consisted of that you were performing on this particular morning?
A. The duties of a pursuit officer was to assist the Controller in ordering planes to intercept enemy planes or supposed enemy planes, after the planes got in the air.
7. Q. Your duty, then, was in connection with a pursuit squadron, and not in some capacity such as the aircraft warning center?
A. That is correct. I was sent down there for training. Inasmuch as this was just being started, it was necessary to detail certain officers who had some background in order to get the thing going.
8. Q. This duty was actually performed in the, shall we say in the Command Post of your pursuit squadron? I am not familiar with your terminology, and I would ask you to explain just exactly the nature of the post of duty at which you were stationed.
A. The information center was a post from which fighter squadrons on the alert would be ordered to take to the air; in fact, my task at this information center had involved a small switchboard which would reach fighter squadrons.
9. Q. What I am trying to get at now, were you in a branch of an information center, or at an information center, or what?
A. I was at the one information center for all of the islands.
10. Q. At the one information center of all the islands. Now you were in contact at such station with all radar stations?
A. Yes, sir, they had direct lines.
11. Q. Now on long had you been assigned these duties that you were performing that morning?
A. I had one previous tour on the preceding Wednesday, at which time there was only myself and the telephone operator at the information center. This was my second assignment of that nature.
12. Q. Now this particular station or post at which you were then stationed was in what locality in the island of Oahu?
A. It was at Fort Shafter.
13. Q. Fort Shafter is where with reference to Pearl Harbor?
A. I would say it is about eight miles east of Pearl Harbor.
14. Q. How many officers and men were on duty with you in this particular post or station on this morning of 7 December 1941?
A. Approximately seven or eight enlisted men, and I [448] was the only officer present.
15. Q. Now what duties in general did they perform? Were they assistants to you, or what were they doing?
A. There were five or six spotters whose duty was to display arrows on the information center board to indicate radar plots of aircraft. There was one man on the telephone exchange, and one man on the historical record-which keep a historical record of all plots that are made by the radar.
16. Q. Now these plots that you were making-the information upon when they were based, where did you get that?
A. They came by direct lines to each plotter from one radar station which pave him the information.
17. Q. Could you give an example as to about what sort of data would come in from a telephone from one radar station when a plane or group of planes were sighted?
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A. Simply be a bearing of so many degrees and range, certain number of miles.
18. Q. And then as I understand it, somebody plotting in the center where you were located put that down in the form of a record, a graphic record?
A. It was plotted with a replaceable arrow on the table, and also there was a system of recording it on this sheet of paper which was an overlay of the Hawaiian Islands and surrounding waters. I might say probably they included in the report of the radar station the number of planes expected in the plot, but that wasn't at the time conveyed in each plot.
19. Q. In other words, that was not always done?
A. No.
20. Q. Now, were you the Senior Officer Present in this central station where you were on post?
A. I was the only officer present
21. Q. And it is my understanding that you were the officer in charge of this particular station or post?
A. Yes sir.
20. Q. Was there a Naval officer present at this post on the morning of 7 December 1941?
A. There was after the attack started, sir.
23. Q. Was there an officer present before the attack?
A. No, sir.
24. Q. Did you receive, while you were on duty on the morning of the 7th December 1941, any report of interest?
A. How do you mean by that, sir?
25. Q. Did you receive any information or any report that [449] you considered of any importance?
A. Well, I received a call from one of the radar stations, I believe it is called Opana, which indicated that they had a larger number of planes than he had seen before on his scope; that is, the original report.
26. Q. Can you recall at about what time this report was received in the station?
A. I would estimate it was around 7:15.
27. Q. Now where is Opana station located from where you say you got this report?
A. It was the north side of the island.
28. Q. And it was about how many miles from Fort Shafter, where you were?
A. I would say thirty-five miles in a direct line, perhaps.
29. Q. Now is this station on top of a mountain, on seashore, or can you tell how it was located?
A. I had never been there, and I don't know.
30. Q. Can you remember the language of the report?
A. I can't remember the exact language. As I said before, the radar operator reported that he had a larger plot than he had previously seen: that is about all there was to it.
31. Q. Did you have any abnormal reaction to this report at that time?
A. No, sir. I thought about it for a minute, and then told him, "Thanks for calling in the report."
344 CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION PEARL HARBOR ATTACK
32. Q. Had you any information during your tour of duty on this morning of 7 December 1941, as to the movements of any friendly planes in the Hawaiian area?
A. I had no official information. However, I had very good reason to believe that there was a flight of B-17's en route to the Islands from the mainland. I had a friend who was in the bomber command who told me that any time the radio stations were playing this Hawaiian music all night, I could be certain that a flight of our bombers was coming over, and when I had gotten up at 4:00 a. m., to report for duty, I listened to this music all the way to the station, so I was looking for a flight of B-17's.
33. Q. Now when you went on watch, or duty shall I say, that morning, were you given any information by the officer stationing you or the officer whom you relieved, if you did relieve anybody were you given any special instructions as to what to be on the lookout for?
A. No, sir.
34. Q. Did you actually relieve anybody that morning?
A. No, sir.
[450]
35. Q. How did you happen to come to go on duty? Was that in response to a detail that went on duty at that time every morning?
A. Yes, sir. There was a roster of various fighter pilots. My tour of duty was from 4:00 to 8:00 a. m. on that morning, sir.
36. Q. Did you have any instructions for your post?
A. No, sir.
37. Q. And you say the only previous experience you had had with that post of duty was the time, several days before, when you did a tour of duty there?
A. Yes, sir.
38. Q. Did you have any familiarity with the mechanics of radar interceptors? That is, how they functioned mechanically or electrically?
A. I understood the principle of radar, yes, sir.
39. Q. What information did the radar show to the operator? For example. when he sighted a flight of planes?
A. Well, I understood that it showed a way they call a "blip or "pip", or something like that on the scope. Beyond that, I don't know.
40. Q. You don't have any idea how this so-called scope indicated the number of planes in a flight?
A. No, I hadn't ever seen one in operation, so I didn't know.
41. Q. And you wouldn't know how they determined the bearing of the flight, or the distance?
A. I understand that, yes, sir.
42. Q. Now exactly, again, Colonel, what information did this radar operator give you when he made the report?
A. He said that at a distance of around 130 miles, he had a larger plot than he had seen on his scope.
43. Q. Did he give you any subsequent reports, after this initial report, as to what these planes were doing, or did he amplify this original report in any way?
A. No, he didn't give any subsequent report.
PROCEEDINGS OF NAVY COURT OF INQUIRY 345
44. Q. Did you call up and ask him for any subsequent information-amplifying information?
A. No, sir.
45. Q. Did you know whether or not the particular type of radar that was then in use, had any means of distinguishing a friendly plane from an unfriendly one?
A. Oh, I knew that there was no way of distinguishing by radar.
46. Q. And the only information of friendly planes that you [451] had on this morning was the deduction you made when you heard a Honolulu radio station playing Hawaiian music at a very early hour; is that correct?
A. That is the only definite indication I had. I think I was equally divided between the thought that it could be the B-17's, or a carrier force.
47. Q. You mean, by "carrier force", U. S. Naval carrier force, or enemy?
A. Friendly force, U. S. Naval airplanes.
48. Q. Had it occurred to you to identify with the Navy whether or not they had any planes in flight at this time?
A. No, sir.
49. Q. I don't suppose, from the information you had, that you had any idea at that time of the course on which these B-17's would approach Oahu?
A. Only the rough idea, sir.
50. Q. What was this rough idea?
A. Well, somewhere from the northeast.
51. Q. And why do you say somewhere from the northeast?
A. Well, that would be the course from San Francisco.
52. Q. Did you have any special information on the morning of 7 December 1941, as to international developments, especially those between the Japanese and the United States, which would indicate any imminence of war?
A. The only special information was what I read in the papers, and that was that a friendly relations-or that some agreement-had been reached approximately a week before, or thereabouts.
53. Q. Well, had you or had you not been put in some sort of a frame of mind of being on the alert against any possible enemy action when you went on duty that morning?
A. No, sir; in fact, just the opposite, because we had been on alert about a week before, and the alert had been called off.
54. Q. Now do you know whether or not there was actually an airplane attack on the Pearl Harbor Naval Base that morning by Japanese planes?
A. Yes, sir.
55. Q. When did you first become aware of this attack?
A. It was about five minutes after 8:00 when the telephone operator received a call from some source, which I don't know right now, that there was an attack on.
[452]
56. Q. You don't recall the language of the report that you heard?
A. No, sir, the operator was very excited; and so I told him to call in all information center personnel who had gone off duty at 7:00 o'clock. There was just the operator and myself there at the time.
346 CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION PEARL HARBOR ATTACK
57. Q. Did he tell you the kind of attack, whether it was a naval surface ship attack, aircraft attack, or what?
A. He didn't say, but, however, I knew that it was an air attack, because at 8:00 o'clock I had just stepped outside for a breath of air and I saw the attack in progress, but at that time I thought it was the Navy practicing dive bombing.
58. Q. Do you recall what action you took when you received this report?
A. I called in the information center personnel, who had all gone off duty at 7:00 o'clock, except the operator and myself, and in a very few minutes, Major Tindall, who was one of the controllers, arrived from Hickam Field, and took charge of operations.
59. Q. Did you go off duty then, or what was your status after Major Tindall arrived?
A. I remained on duty as assistant to him and to Major Berquist who also arrived soon thereafter, for approximately thirty-six hours.
60. Q. Now can you remember whether or not you received any further reports from any of your radar stations, after the attack was reported, or after it became known?
A. The plotting board was very much confused, due to the number of airplanes flying around, and I don't think there was; I doubt if any definite information could be obtained from it.
61. Q. Do you recall whether or not any attempt was made by the officers in the information center to ascertain from your radar stations whether there were any more planes coming in or not?
A. I don't know that that was done, sir.
62. Q. Do you know whether or not there was any directives given as to plotting planes in any area other than the Pearl Harbor area? What I am trying to get at, Colonel-was any attempt made to plot planes when they retired from the attack?
A. I don't know whether that attempt was made or not; I was busy with the squadrons then.
63. Q. Whose duty would it have been to have directed such a plot, in your opinion?
A. The controller's duty.
64. Q. And that was Major Tindall?
A. Or Major Berquist, who were both there at that time.
65. Q. But so far as you know, of your own knowledge, that [453] direction may or may not have been given?
A. That's right. I don't know sir.
66. Q. Now you say a naval officer reported shortly after the attack became known to you; is that correct?
A. Well, how shortly I couldn't say.
67. Q. But so far as your recollection serves you now, you are not able to say whether he reported before or after the attack was announced?
A. He definitely reported after the attack was announced.
68. Q. Now do you know this officer, what his name was?
A. No. sir, I don't.
The interested party, Admiral Harold R. Stark, U. S. Navy, did not desire to cross-examine this witness.
Cross-examined by the interested party, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, U. S. Navy (Ret.):
PROCEEDINGS OF NAVY COURT OF INQUIRY 347
69. Q. What were your duties, Colonel, when you reported at 4:00 o'clock on that Sunday morning.
A. My duties, I believe, were chiefly for training, inasmuch as it was the first morning I had ever been there on such duty when the information center was even manned in any degree at all. I had no specified duties, either written or oral-just to report there for duty.
70. Q. Well, did you have any instructions to report information that came from different radars to any superior officer?
A. No, sir.
71. Q. Would you have reported it to a superior officer, if you had information that alarmed you?
A. Certainly, if I had been warned that there was any possibility of attack I would have. However, at that time, there being no means of identifying plots, there was not much that one man could do, without having a liaison officer from both the Navy, bombers, and civilian airways, to give you identification between friendly and enemy plots.
72. Q. Did you get any reports between 4:00 and 7:00 a. m. that morning?
A. There were a number of plots in and around the Islands. I believe they started sometime before 7:00 o'clock; the actual time I am not certain of.
73. Q. At 7:00 o'clock, did you get a report of a plot northerly? I mean as distinguished from 7:15.
A. At around very close on 7:00 o'clock, it might have been a little after-I don't know-I walked over to where [454] the boy was working on his historical record, and didn't know what he was doing, so I asked him what his duties were, and so forth. Incidentally, he noted this plot, which was 130 miles somewhere north of the island, I don't know what bearing.
74. Q. Did the plot indicate the number of planes in the air?
A. No, Sir.
75. Q. Might have been one, or might have been fifty?
A. Yes, sir.
76. Q. When did that plot come into the center where you were?
A. It was right about 7:00 o'clock, Sir.
77. Q. Which station did that come from?
A. I don't remember, sir; probably it was the same one, but I wouldn't say for sure.
78. Q. Did you do anything about that?
A. No, sir.
79. Q. That report came to the man and not to you or to your subordinates?
A. That's right.
80. Q. Well, now what happened at 7:15?
A. That was when I received a call from this radar operator. You see, at 7:00 o'clock, all the plotters folded up their equipment and left the information center.
81. Q. What did you do after 7:00 o'clock, then?
A. There was nothing. I didn't do anything. I was just waiting for my tour to be finished.
82. Q. What did your tour consist of between 7:00 and 8:00? What were you supposed to do after 7:00 until your tour was completed?
348 CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION PEARL HARBOR ATTACK
A. I had no particular duties to perform, except to learn all I could at the information center.
83. Q. Now what happened at 7:15?
A. This radar operator called the telephone operator and said he wanted to report that he had seen this large indication on his scope, and wanted to report to whoever was in charge. The call was relayed to me, and he made his report.
84. Q. At that time the operator at Opana thought the object reflected in the diagram was a large object?
A. Yes, sir that's right.
[455]
85. Q. The object reported at 7:00 wasn't a large object?
A. There was no indication of that at 7:00 o'clock, sir.
86. Q. Did you talk with the man yourself?
A. Yes, sir.
87. Q. On the telephone?
Frank L. Middleton, yeoman second class, U. S. Naval Reserve. reporter, entered. Frank M. Sickles, yeoman first class, U. S. Naval Reserve, withdrew.
[456]
88. Q. Before the 7:15 call came in, had the activity the you had seen reported as of 7:00, increased?
A. I think it was on a slight increase all the time.
89. Q. How did you get the indications of reports of the increase between 7. 00 and 7:15?
A. I had no indication then. It increased from the time it started up to 7:00 o'clock, and then all the keys were removed from the board and I had no means of receiving further information.
90. Q. Oh, there had been an increase up to 7:00 o'clock?
A. Yes, sir.
91. Q. When were the first indications of the reflections which were culminated in the report at 7:00?
A. You mean the large report?
92. Q. The one at 7:00?
A. The one at 7:00 o'clock would be the first indication.
93. Q. I understood you to say the activity had increased.
A. Up until 7:00 these local plots were on the increase.
94. Q. This wasn't the northern plot that increased, up to 7:00?
A. You mean the number of plots?
95. Q. I understood you to say that you had a report at 7:00 o'clock of something around 130 miles to the north?
A. Yes.
96. Q. Had that reflection been shown at all before 7:00?
A. Yes, sir. It was shown on the historical record right at 7:00 o'clock.
97. Q. Had it been shown before 7:00 on the historical record?
A. If it was, it would have been a minute or two.
98. Q. Very shortly?
A. Yes, sir.
99. Q. Now, will you relate to the court precisely what you were told on the telephone at 7:15. hen you got the call? I am now talking about the second one at 7:15?
A. Whether the operator said "a large number of planes" or "a larger indication" or "a large blip" on his radar, I couldn't say, but he gave
PROCEEDINGS OF NAVY COURT OF INQUIRY 349
me information of that nature, that the distance was around 130 miles in a northerly direction.
[457]
100. Q. Who was the individual with whom you talked at that time?
A. I believe he was a private, Lockhart.
101. Q. And what did you say to him?
A. I deliberated for a minute and told him not to worry about it, or something to that effect. I don't know exactly.
102. Q. And then nothing more happened until the attack?
A. That's right, sir.
103. Q. Do I understand that you stayed there in that center the rest of the day?
A. Yes, sir.
104. Q. Were you familiar with what was reported into the center after 8:00 o'clock?
A. Well, things were so confused and there were so many plots on the board that I couldn't give any detailed information on that, sir. The historical record, however, should show the information.
The interested party, Admiral Claude C. Bloch, U. S. Navy, (Ret.) stated that he did not desire to cross-examine this witness.
Examined by the court:
105. Q. Colonel, when you went on duty at this post at 4:00 a. m., on 7 December, had you ever had any instructions whatsoever as to what you were to do or why you were there?
A. On the previous Wednesday when I went on duty, there was just myself and the telephone operator there, and not having any instructions, I called the operations officer, then Major Berquist.
106. Q. You heard my question, didn't you?
A. Yes, sir. And I asked him why I was there and what my duties were. He told me that they were trying to get the information center set up and that we were leading off by furnishing personnel to man it. I got the idea that I was there for training, and he said if any ships went down, if any of our planes went down we might, by radar reports, be able to tell where they went down and I would be able to assist in that.
107. Q. But prior to 4:00 o'clock when you went on duty, you had no instructions as to what you were to do in reporting in any large number of planes or anything else in the air?
A. That is right, sir.
[458]
108. Q. You had no instructions?
A. I had no instructions.
109. Q. And was this the first time you were on duty there, or the second?
A. That was the second time.
110. Q. And there were no further instructions given you as to what you were to do while you were on duty from 4:00 to 7:00 a. m., of that morning?
A. That is right, sir.
111. Q. Do you know how many radar stations were in operation on that morning?
A. Because I had about 5 plotters, I gathered there were about 5 in operation.
112. Q. Did you know their locations?
A. I knew the exact location of just one radar, sir.
350 CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION PEARL HARBOR ATTACK
113. Q. You had no information from anyone to look out for large plot of planes, did you, or did you have?
A. I had no warning, sir.
114. Q. You spoke of Hawaiian music playing all night. Will you please explain that?
A. Well the conventional Hawaiian music, guitars and so forth.
115. Q. But you mentioned that as an indication of planes coming in.
A. Because they would play this music without interruption and even without announcement, and it had been standard practice to do so for homing for the planes coming in.
116. Q. Did anyone tell them to play this music for homing for planes to come in, to your knowledge?
A. From the information I had from this bomber pilot friend of mine, it was that someone, probably in the Air Force or the Bomber Command, apparently had arranged for such homing, you see, because it didn't play on other nights.
117. Q. But you don't know what arrangement they had?
A. No, I don't know, definitely.
118. Q. The instant you saw or became aware of enemy planes over Oahu, what did you do?
A. I instructed the operator to call the information center plotters back in. They arrived very shortly and Major Tindall also arrived almost simultaneously.
[459]
119. Q. Did it ever occur to you at that time to report immediately to your senior, or the officer who would like to have that information?
A. Yes, sir. I'm not certain whether I called Major Berquist, or whether I told the operator to call Wheeler Field and tell them of the events, or just what happened then. It was really quite confusing for a while, sir.
120. Q. About what time was this?
A. About 8:10, I would say, sir. As a matter of fact, Major Tindall arrived so soon and took over that there was hardly time to do anything there. He apparently started on the way as soon as the first bombs hit Hickam Field.
121. Q. No effort was made to pass this information along that you first got about 7:00 o'clock?
A. No, sir; that is right.
122. Q. Or at 7:15?
A. That is right sir.
123. Q. Well, did it occur to you at all that it might be an attack and that it should be passed along?
A. No, sir; it did not.
124. Q. Well, did you make any effort from any source to find out whether this flight was foreign, or local?
A. No, sir.
Cross-examined by the interested party, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel U. S. Navy, (Ret.):
125. Q. The report that came in at 7:15 wasn't plotted historically was it?
A. That was the same report that was plotted, I'm quite sure, sir, 7:00 o'clock.
PROCEEDINGS OF NAVY COURT OF INQUIRY 351
126. Q. Well, the one that you got at 7:10 wasn't recorded other than by telephone call to you?
A. Well, only if it could have been plotted at 7:00 o'clock. I gathered that it was the same plot, sir.
127 Q. Well, if it were a different one at 7:15, it was not recorded?
A. That is right, sir.
128. Q. Did you report to your superior or to anyone else about the 7:15 incident?
A. No, sir.
[460]
Examined by the court:
129. Q. Did the Opana station have any place they could have reported to except through your station?
A. No sir.
Cross-examination by the interested party, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel U. S. Navy (Ret.) (continued):
1:30. Q. Do you now believe that the planes indicated at 7:15 were the Japanese planes or were the B-17s?
A. I believe now that they were Japanese planes, sir.
Reexamined by the judge advocate:
131. Q. Was the post at which you were stationed on the morning of 7 December in the Air Command, or was it in some other part of the Hawaiian Command, the infantry or something like that? In other words, did you come directly under the Commanding Officer of the Army Air Forces in your station, or did you come under some other department, or do you know?
A. I'm not certain of that. I was working under orders of the operations officer of the 14th Wing, which was the Air Force Command. However, the information center was manned mostly by Signal Corps troops.
Re-cross examined by the interested party, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, U. S. Navy, (Ret.):
132. Q. What makes you now think the flight you had reported at 7:15 was Japanese planes?
A. Because, sir, I have learned about radar since then and it would take a large plot, a large number of planes to make a plot at that distance, and I don't think that B-17s coming over as they did, that it would have been possible to pick them up at that range.
133. Q. When did you first reach that conclusion?
A. That would be hard to say. It was in the weeks following, somewhere in the weeks following Pearl Harbor. I learned quite a bit about radar very soon after that, sir.
None of the parties to the inquiry desired further to examine this witness.
The court informed the witness that he was privileged to make any further statement covering anything relating to the subject matter of the inquiry which he thought should be a matter of record in connection therewith, which had not [461] been fully brought out by the previous questioning.
The witness stated that he had nothing further to say.
The witness was duly warned and withdrew.