Countdown to Pearl Harbor by Steve Twomey

The mobile units would detect them and plot their locations. Often with the coming of first light and then into the morning, Army and Navy planes would rise from inland bases to train or scout. “I mean, it was more practice than anything else,” George would recall. The two privates had been ordered out there for training. George and Joe had no idea why that window of time was significant. to 7 a.m., sit inside the monitoring van as the antenna scanned for planes. The order of the day was to keep vandals and the curious away from the equipment during a 24-hour shift and, from 4 a.m. An Army general called it the “vacant sea.” But between the privates and Alaska, 2,000 miles away, there was nothing but wavy liquid, a place of few shipping lanes and no islands. Army headquarters was on the other side of the island, as was the Navy base at Pearl Harbor, the most important American base in the Pacific. It sat at Opana, 532 feet above a coast whose waves were enticing enough to surf, which is what many a tourist would do there in years to come. George and Joe’s, the most reliable of the bunch, was emplaced farthest north. Half a dozen mobile units-generator truck, monitoring truck, antenna and trailer-had been scattered around the island in recent weeks. Radar was still in its infancy, far from what it would become, but the privates could still spot things farther out than anyone ever had with mere binoculars or telescope. Lockard had awakened in their tent at 3:45 in the caressing warmth of an Oahu night and gotten their radar fired up and scanning 30 minutes later.

The dawn watch had been as pacific as the ocean at their feet.

Countdown to Pearl Harbor by Steve Twomey