Site Ed. Note: We note, incidentally, from Saturday the curious notion that the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, pictured on the front page undertaking that grueling 115-mile, three-day junket through Georgia, claimed to be the initial regiment which captured the “Eagle’s Nest” on Kehlstein in May, 1945. We find "Little Songs" on Saturday’s editorial page, therefore, serendipitously curious for many reasons. Whether the 506th was the first regiment to top the mountain or not, there they were, having been among the paratroops of the 101st Airborne Division deployed initially in Europe on June 6, 1944 at Normandy. They had also fought in the Battle of the Bulge between late 1944 and early 1945.

If you puzzle a little about which little songs the editorialist meant by his title at the time of the writing, then try this page for a little insight. We assume that the editorialist was referring to the Volkslieder. Perhaps, the editorial's second vignette is vaguely suggestive of the melodic strains of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, with a little part of "Brown-eyed Handsome Man" thrown in for a good measure of additional wheat, even if not that at all, from which to draw the grains of orient pearl. Anyway, that is what the tungsten tells us of the moment.

But, if so, it would have been the result of an idle hope that even Hitler might ultimately have some stroke of compunction regarding the millions he had already sent to death, thus inducing him to face the world with admission of his manifold cardinal sins. In the end, it would not be so.

But, given the consistent editorial stance of The News in detestation of Hitler--even if not so viscerally pronounced on so regular a basis during the year and a half since Cash had left--we tend to doubt that the editorial column would have, even in a veiled moment of attempted appeal to the better lights of this utterly unredeemable monster, this Iago to end all Iagos, loaned to him thereby any, even vaguely, penetrable human trait, such as would avail him of actual, as opposed to fanciful, appreciation of art, that for which he so jealously strove to acquire by emulation but, by equal strokes, of which he so woefully fell incomprehensibly short, so tenuously unstudied in the freedom of his brush, that he finally stumbled into the chasm, missing the bridge altogether, no matter how long he sought by the physical presence of the original artwork he stole to absorb from it some magical incantation by which he might find finally the thing for which he so longed, his only love which proved elusive to the end, talent.

So, just wherein, precisely, reside the turnkeys which break the lock of specificity as to what were the clinking echoes resounding in the mind of the editorialist when this cryptic piece was set down, we could not tell you at this juncture, at least not with any degree of certitude. Perhaps it would help to be German, or, at least, Lutheran.

We tend to go on what we have at hand in such matters, even if we certainly do not discount or disparage at all the zen of the exploratory process seeking a more precise answer for its contextual time. But, for now, as that answer does not make itself easily or serendipitously evident, and as neither of the principal editors of The News is around to enlighten us further, we instead hearken back to this little song, in addition to the Wagner and, as we referenced Saturday, the one by Mr. Kipling, along with those other little hors d’oeuvres the poets set down after 1942.

The report on Pearl Harbor, to which the front page refers, released this date by the Navy Department, is set forth below. It recapitulates the key events of December 7 and updates information on losses of ships and personnel released during the first three months after the event, while providing report on the successful efforts to repair and refloat all of the ships, save the Arizona and the Oklahoma, the latter in the process of being refloated. This condition was somewhat exaggerated, no doubt for purposes of deluding the enemy: only thirteen of the ships were repaired and refloated, four, in addition to the Arizona, having been completely lost. The Oklahoma would be refloated later, but would never again see service.

The number of planes attributed to the Japanese in the attack by contemporaneous U. S. reports apparently was incorrect, the estimate of 105 being less than a third of the actual 350 planes in the two waves, 183 in the first and 167 in the second, 321 returning from the attack--assuming, that is, the accuracy of the Japanese post-war figures. The Navy report’s ostensibly low number had been carried over from estimates made by witnesses on the ground at the time of the attack. The number of Japanese planes claimed by the report to have been shot down, 28 by the Navy and another 20 by the Army, appears also to be an exaggeration--although the number provided by the Japanese, 29, likewise assumes, improbably in this instance, the accuracy of post-war Japanese reports of their own losses.

Again, the accuracy of that sort of data can never be determined for a certainty and really makes little or no difference in any event at this juncture of history.

The report stated the number of dead as 2,117 from the Navy and Marine Corps and 226 from the Army, 2,343 total military personnel. Adding the 49 civilians killed to this number provides a final total of 2,392, two more than the official government number provided subsequently, 2,390, and three more than that which the President had announced in his fireside chat of February 23, as underscored in the note accompanying February 27.

In addition, the Navy reported that 960 Naval personnel remained missing, exactly twenty more than the number given by the President in February as wounded. According to the Navy report, there were 1,272 wounded. But, as the claimed 960 missing have never been added to the official number of dead, we tend to discount its accuracy; more probably, it is the result of a miscommunication at the time.

Obviously, the dead had families and, by now, the other 960 families would have surely come forward if their sons, husbands, and fathers were not listed among the dead and yet never returned home. A researcher short on insight might be tempted to posit, as some have, that it simply might have been the case that the "missing" 960 men were eventually reported as dead, but from other battle duty, not the attack on Pearl Harbor, in order to minimize the appearance of loss from the day. That, however, becomes a reductio ad absurdum, begging then the question why the Navy would have stated publicly just a year later that there were 960 missing if the desire had been to delude the enemy on this point. The President’s figures were probably correct.

On the editorial page, Fletcher Pratt provides a summary of the year’s battle action in the Pacific, in North Africa, and in Russia.

Herblock provides perhaps an even better summary in his own inimitable manner.

The News finally reports on a story which was killed a year earlier on December 13, a "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column from Drew Pearson and Robert Allen, reporting the actual losses at Pearl Harbor, far more devastating than provided by the press at the time. The story had already been killed by The News even before New York had asked that it be done, the point being that voluntary censorship by the responsible press was effective, both at its source and at its receipt.

For the second column in succession, Raymond Clapper provides an update on the former automobile plants’ production of war machinery since the full conversion went into effect in February. The prognoses for Chrysler, G.M., Ford, Studebaker, Packard, and Budd Wheel were all good. The Fisher plant, formerly G.M.’s body maker, was churning out anti-aircraft guns and belly turret guns for the Flying Fortresses.

And, though in jest goes the little squib mocking the "expert" who had predicted in 1941 that the Nazis had only six weeks of oil remaining, that expert was none other than the collectivity of estimates of the Russians, the British, and the American military leaders, as provided Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, by sheer coincidence delivered by him to President Roosevelt on December 6, 1941. The report gave varying estimates, but on average, suggested no more than about five months of normal oil supply remaining to the Reich. It was obviously one prime reason why Hitler had made the decision a year before, on December 18, 1940, to forge ahead against Russia, to obtain the Caucasus oil. So, if the figures were at all correct in December, 1941, why hadn’t the Nazi war machine run out of oil by sometime during the summer of 1942? The answer is a mix: Hitler had used synthetic oil, various ersatz materials to run his gasoline engines, had severely cut back on the availability of oil for heat to his herrenvolk, the Dead Peasants Society, as what oil he was still able to obtain came primarily from Rumanian sources. Perhaps, he had been able to tap some of the Caucasus reserve, but that is somewhat doubtful given the Russians’ penchant for slash and burn as they retreated back into the Caucasus mountains during the summer, amid reports that they had destroyed all critical industry and oil wells and oil delivery systems in their wake. Perhaps, simply, the estimates were wrong.

But, perhaps, also, one of the reasons that the Wehrmacht was suffering so badly in Russia in both the winter campaign of 1941-42 and at the beginning of this second winter campaign was, in addition to the harsh winter conditions to which they were not accustomed, precisely that Hitler had ordered conservation of fuel for the spring and summer offensives when he knew his armies would be most effective.

It may also aid in explaination of why Rommel, just as his offensive had become seemingly most fiercely resistless in its forward progress in June, had suddenly and incongruously been forced in early July to a stop as the aperture of the passage greatly narrowed before El Alamein, between Qatarra and the deep blue sea.

It may also explain why, in the face of repeated RAF attacks on various German, French, and Italian cities, the Luftwaffe, preoccupied in Russia, could respond with but impotent limited retaliatory strikes, usually of one or two planes' worth of bombs at a go, dropped on defenseless small towns and villages along the English countryside.

As to the renascence forecasting sub-line of "W, P & A", a eulogy of sorts, though not a fond one, to the demise of the Works Progress Administration (which, you will note, was not accomplished by a "conservative" Congress but rather at the beck of President Roosevelt), we shall let you read the sub-header and the piece for yourself and, in light of the quote of the day Saturday, consider what the implications of these juxtaposed pieces and images were then in 1942 and what they might have conveyed later, originally having been published at a time, a year after Pearl Harbor, when someone might have taken special notice of them, either then or later, say, circa 1962 or early 1963.

Whatever the case, again we assure you that we do not peek ahead at pieces or pages unless we tell you that we have, and we have not done so with regard to these editorials, only having retrieved them and looked at the whizzing microfilm as it passed our eyes for the first time in July, 2009, and ever so briefly then as to each day’s print--for we retrieve typically three to four months’ worth of pages per hour.

We admit to having on a few occasions in the first half of the 1970’s entered Wilson Library in Chapel Hill, but that is as close as we ever got to the microfilm of The Charlotte News until we started this project in 1998. Nor do we have any special library of our own on reserve. We have collected the pages sporadically over the last eleven years; so if your theory is that we read ahead and align everything accordingly, you are simply wrong. And, should you think about it a little, though we would greatly like to claim such profound and splendid abilities, it would be likely somewhat a superhuman chore to achieve such organization deliberately, given the wealth of material here, spanning daily newspapers now spread over five continuous years, some 1,875 editions so far having been read assiduously by us and presented to you. Nor do we keep quaint little 3 x 5 cards or any other form of notes other than mental ones, just what you see and read yourself. That’s it. Some days tend to be somewhat sui generis, unto themselves, and without shedding much light even then on matters not previously elucidated, sometimes even a little boring.

On other days, however, it all just eerily falls together. We remind again, incidentally, that Oswald was born three days after that last one, on October 18, 1939. And, as we have commented before several times, John F. Kennedy, at age 22, received his first national publicity, from Time, as, at the behest of his father, he met with the very disgruntled surviving hundred or so passengers of the Athenia in September, 1939 at Glasgow.

As we have said many times herein, murder will out…

Speaking of which, we ran across today this film which we had never seen before, except as short snippets and stills. We think it both poignant and informative.

Mrs. Kennedy, a week afterward, noted in an interview with Theodore White that she found it at the time a little odd that she had been presented red roses upon arrival in Dallas when she had received thrice before on the Texas trip, presumably in Houston and Fort Worth, yellow roses. Mrs. Connally was provided yellow roses on the occasion.

Here, the report of the Navy, issued December 7, 1942:

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft temporarily disabled every battleship and most of the aircraft in the Hawaiian area. Other naval vessels, both combatant and auxiliary, were put out of action, and certain shore facilities, especially at the Army air bases, Hickam and Wheeler Fields, and the Naval air stations, Ford Island and Kaneohe Bay, were damaged. Most of these ships are now back with the Fleet. The aircraft were all replaced within a few days, and interference with facilities was generally limited to a matter of hours.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, two surface ship task forces of the Pacific Fleet were carrying out assigned missions at sea, and two such task forces were at their main base following extensive operations at sea. Discounting small craft, eighty-six ships of the Pacific Fleet were moored at Pearl Harbor. Included in this force were eight battleships, seven cruisers, twenty-eight destroyers and five submarines. No United States aircraft carriers were present.

As a result of the Japanese attack five battleships, the Arizona, Oklahoma, California, Nevada and West Virginia; three destroyers, the Shaw, Cassin and Downes; the minelayer Oglala; the target ship Utah and a large floating drydock were either sunk or damaged so severely that they would serve no military purposes for some time. In addition, three battleships, the Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee; three cruisers, the Helena, Honolulu and Raleigh, the seaplane tender Curtiss and the repair ship Vestal were damaged.

Of the nineteen naval vessels listed above as sunk or damaged, the twenty-six-year-old battleship Arizona will be the only one permanently and totally lost. Preparations for the righting of the Oklahoma are now in process, although final decision as to the wisdom of accomplishing this work at this time has not been made. The main and auxiliary machinery, approximately 50 per cent of the value, of the Cassin and Downes were saved.

The other fifteen vessels either have been or will be salvaged and repaired.

The eight vessels described in the second sentence of paragraph three returned to the Fleet months ago. A number of the vessels described in the first sentence of paragraph three are now in full service, but certain others, which required extensive machinery and intricate electrical overhauling as well as refloating and hull repairing, are not yet ready for battle action. Naval repair yards are taking advantage of these inherent delays to install numerous modernization features and improvements. To designate these vessels by name now would give the enemy information vital to his war plans; similar information regarding enemy ships which our forces have subsequently damaged but not destroyed is denied to us.

On Dec. 15, 1941 only eight days after the Japanese attack and at a time when there was an immediate possibility of the enemy's coming back, the Secretary of the Navy announced that the Arizona, Shaw, Cassin, Downes, Utah and Oglala had been lost, that the Oklahoma had capsized and that other vessels had been damaged. Fortunately, the salvage and repair accomplishments at Pearl Harbor have exceeded the most hopeful expectations.

Eighty naval aircraft of all types were destroyed by the enemy. In addition, the Army lost ninety-seven planes on Hickam and Wheeler Fields. Of these twenty-three were bombers, sixty-six were fighters and eight were other types.

The most serious American losses were in personnel. As a result of the raid on Dec. 7, 1941, 2,117 officers and enlisted men of the Navy and Marine Corps were killed, 960 are still reported as missing and 876 were wounded but survived. The Army casualties were as follows: 226 officers and enlisted men were killed or later died of wounds; 396 were wounded, most of whom have now recovered and have returned to duty.

At 7:55 A.M. on Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese dive-bombers swarmed over the Army Air Base, Hickam Field, and the Naval Air Station on Ford Island. A few minutes earlier the Japanese had struck the Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay. Bare seconds later enemy torpedo planes and dive-bombers swung in from various sectors to concentrate their attack on the heavy ships at Pearl Harbor. The enemy attack, aided by the element of surprise and based on exact information, was very successful.

Torpedo planes, assisted effectively by dive-bombers, constituted the major threat of the first phase of the Japanese attack, lasting approximately a half hour. Twenty-one torpedo planes made four attacks, and thirty dive-bombers came in in eight waves during this period. Fifteen horizontal bombers also participated in this phase of the raid.

Although the Japanese launched their initial attack as a surprise, battleship ready machine guns opened fire at once and were progressively augmented by the remaining anti-aircraft batteries as all hands promptly were called to general quarters. Machine guns brought down two and damaged others of the first wave of torpedo planes. Practically all battleship anti-aircraft batteries were firing within five minutes; cruisers, within an average time of four minutes, and destroyers, opening up machine guns almost immediately, averaged seven minutes in bringing all anti-aircraft guns into action.

From 8:25 to 8:40 A.M. there was a comparative lull in the raid, although air activity continued with sporadic attack by dive and horizontal bombers. This respite was terminated by the appearance of horizontal bombers, which crossed and recrossed their targets from various directions and caused serious damage. While the horizontal bombers were continuing their raids, Japanese divebombers reappeared, probably being the same ones that had participated in earlier attacks; this phase, lasting about a half hour, was devoted largely to strafing. All enemy aircraft retired by 9:45 A.M.

Prior to the Japanese attack 202 United States naval aircraft of all types on the Island of Oahu were in flying condition, but 150 of these were permanently or temporarily disabled by the enemy's concentrated assault, most of them in the first few minutes of the raid. Of the fifty-two remaining naval aircraft, thirty-eight took to the air on Dec. 7, 1941, the other fourteen being ready too late in the day or being blocked from take-off positions. Of necessity, therefore, the Navy was compelled to depend on anti-aircraft fire for its primary defensive weapon, and this condition exposed the Fleet to continuous air attack.

By coincidence, eighteen scout bombing planes from a United States aircraft carrier en route arrived at Pearl Harbor during the raid. These are included in the foregoing figures. Four of these scout bombers were shot down, thirteen of the remaining fourteen taking off again in search of the enemy. Seven patrol planes were in the air when the attack started.

There was a total of 273 Army planes on the Island of Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941. Very few of these were able to take off because of the damage to the runways at Hickam and Wheeler Fields.

It is difficult to determine the total number of enemy aircraft participating in the raid, but careful analysis of all reports makes it possible to estimate the number of twenty-one torpedo planes, forty-eight dive-bombers and thirty-six horizontal bombers, totaling 105 of all types. Undoubtedly certain fighter planes also were present, but these are not distinguished by types and are included in the above figures.

The enemy lost twenty-eight aircraft due to Navy action, and the Army pursuit planes that were able to take off shot down more than twenty Japanese planes. In addition, three submarines, of forty-five tons each, were accounted for.

The damage suffered by the United States Pacific Fleet as result of the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, was most serious, but the repair job now is nearly completed, and thanks to the inspired and unceasing efforts of the naval and civilian personnel attached to the various repair yards, especially at Pearl Harbor itself, this initial handicap soon will be erased forever.

...the Joint Chiefs and Curt LeMay...

Framed Edition

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