Pearl Harbor By The Numbers
A day that does indeed live in infamy
President Franklin Roosevelt prophetically said that December 7th, 1941 was a day that would live in infamy. And to this day, it still does. The attack at Pearl Harbor was equal parts brutal and effective. The surprise attack shocked the United States and plunged the other half of the globe into a new phase of a devastating war.
That attack took place exactly eighty years ago and it still is seared in global memory. It took nearly four years to end the war that was started on a clear day in Hawai’i all of those years ago.
The effectiveness of the carrier-based Japanese planes cannot be overstated. This was a surgical strike and it worked extremely well.
Here is exactly how fruitful the attack truly was.
Naval losses
The main target of the Japanese attack was the battleships that called Pearl Harbor home. The Japanese military planners hoped that by wiping out enough large surface ships the power balance in the Pacific would be tipped permanently in their favor. Battleships were extremely large, expensive, and took forever to build…
