II — The Atlantic Operation
Twenty-one hours in real time after the Japanese had launched their first attack, at first light on 12th December, the German battleship Tirpitz, having eluded the vigilance of the Royal Navy in slipping out of European cover and crossing the Atlantic, commenced bombardment of the city of New York.
At 41,700 tons and with eight 16-inch guns as primary armament, Tirpitz was clearly a ship on a rather smaller scale than the mighty Yamato, and hers was a solitary adventure; nevertheless the damage and loss of life she inflicted were considerable and bore closely upon events.
Tirpitz concentrated her fire on the island borough of Manhattan, though she caused some damage to the US Navy Yard on the farther side of the East River. Her shells destroyed or severely damaged several of the city’s loftier buildings, including the 102-storey Empire State Building. Two considerable fires were started. At a later stage, making up in boldness for what she lacked in firepower, Tirpitz actually sailed some distance up the Hudson, bombarding the shore at point-blank range with every gun available. A salvo from her secondary armament of 5.9-inch guns reduced the famous Statue of Liberty to fragments.
Amid growing but still largely ineffectual signs of resistance, Tirpitz discontinued the action just before 09.00 hours and retired. Out in the North Atlantic once again she turned southward, her mission in that ocean not yet accomplished. While in transit she successively launched from her catapult the four aircraft she carried, each of them an Arado 196A-3 twin-float seaplane carrying two 110-pound bombs. The two-man crews had been carefully selected and intensively trained for what was perhaps the most important part of the entire Western operational sector.
It had been decided with some reluctance that a regular naval attack on Washington, DC, though infinitely tempting, must be ruled out as too hazardous. Approach via the Potomac River or the Chesapeake Bay was finally rejected as too difficult and remote, with a risk that the encroaching force might be trapped and destroyed before it could withdraw. Such an outcome was unacceptable in view of the necessity that the enemy be denied any countervailing success, however small in proportion, on this day of his humiliation.
Accordingly, the four seaplanes delivered a short-range, low-level and deadly accurate attack on the White House on the late afternoon of a day that had filled it with Service and civilian chiefs of every description. No one who witnessed it would ever forget the unheralded approach at nearly one hundred yards per second of a warplane flaunting the insignia of a distant but hostile Power and firing a machine gun as it came. The story goes that one such round, penetrating a conference room by its shattered window, struck the wheelchair in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt sat and, ricocheting, hit and killed an air-force general standing behind him. Whether literally true or not, the supposed incident has great metaphorical force.
After completing a number of strafing runs at their target, and having dropped on it their collective bomb-load, amounting to something not far short of half a ton of explosive, the seaplanes rendezvoused with the Tirpitz. Two airmen were lost. Those killed in and around the White House ran into scores, but the moral effect of such a daring stroke was incalculable.
Now, by an assiduously reconnoitred route, Tirpitz continued her long journey to the south. Round the tip of Florida she steamed, through the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico, then down the Caribbean to her third and final objective.
III — The Combined Operation
During the night of 16th/17th December, Yamato and Tirpitz took up their stations off the two ends of the Panama Canal, each vessel out of range of the shore defences. At a previously agreed time close to first light, both commenced bombardment of the sections of canal nearest them. After two hours the Tirpitz, whose primary ammunition had started to run low, discontinued fire, and a little later Yamato followed suit.
There were altogether six double locks in the canal system, each of great mass and strength. All lock walls rested on rock foundations and were over 80 feet in height. In the case of the outermost locks, the walls contained over two million cubic yards of concrete. Nevertheless the concentrated broadsides of the two great battleships caused multiple breaches in both. What with severe consequential flooding and damage to permanent installations, it was estimated from reports reaching the Washington office of the canal that, even under normal conditions, repair and reopening could be expected in months rather than weeks.
Before the preliminary investigations were complete, Yamato and Tirpitz had reached home and safety, having accomplished their part in the shaping of history.
IV — The Sequel
The Empire of Japan had declared war on the United States of America in a proclamation date-timed 11.30 p.m. on 11th December, but unfortunately delayed for some hours before it reached the US Government. At two o’clock that afternoon Joachim von Ribbentrop, as Foreign Minister, had read out to the American chargé d’affaires in Berlin the text of Germany’s declaration of war.
The combatant Powers continued in a state of war seven full days. At 11.00 a.m. on 18th December, President Roosevelt delivered an address to both Houses of Congress and, by simultaneous radio broadcast, to the nation at large. The text ran, in part:
It is with a heavy heart, my fellow Americans, that I stand before you this day. You will all share my feelings of shock, sorrow and indignation at the appalling carnage that resulted from the Japanese surprise attack on the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The German raids on the East Coast cities of New York and Washington, DC, though smaller in scale, were no less dreadful and demoralizing. In the nation’s capital I myself came under enemy fire, for a single instant only, but long enough to kindle in me a special sympathy with those men, women and children who really suffered.
America was still reeling from these heavy blows when the news arrived of the virtual destruction of the Panama Canal. That canal… is in a very real sense America’s lifeline. Denied it, my Service heads advise me that the possibility of one day defeating in war two such powerful and such implacable adversaries as Imperial Japan and the German Third Reich is not non-existent but is hopelessly small, far too small for the substantial risk of total defeat to be run. Therefore, as your Commander-in-Chief, I hereby order all American forces to lay down their arms totally, finally and forthwith, pending the signing of a peace treaty. My fellow Americans, the war is over!
Now, I call upon you all to join with me, at this late hour, in returning henceforth to our traditional path of neutrality amid foreign conflict. Let us forgo any thought of revenge and pursue the proud role of beacon of liberty and democracy, by whose light other nations may in the end return to the paths of peace and goodwill.
Necessary adjustments in the status of certain of our overseas territories, and in some of our domestic arrangements, are in the process of being settled and agreed. As soon as the details shall be finalized…