Lately stuck on WW2 history.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Again, watching a documentary on WW2. I just found out that radar caught the Japanese fighters planes on radar at Pearl Harbor, BUT dismissed it as scheduled American bombers coming in....... Talk about FUCK ME! Imagine what a blow it would have been to the Japanese fleet if they had taken the radar seriously and not dismissed it and defeated the raid?

Pvts. Lockard and Elliott reported to the "biggest return we've seen" to the Air Information Center just after 7 AM. Guess when all the regular staff left for breakfast?

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The operators did report the blip up the chain of command however the officer on duty had been told of a flight of B-17's coming in that morning ( they arrived in the middle of the attack ) and assumed that was what they had detected.   

There was no officer on duty at that time. The 2nd Lt. who was there, Kermit Tyler, was just there to "familiarize" with the setup. All the pilots had to do this.

None of which excuses the failure of the Navy to have a combat air patrol up over the base or of the Army for parking the planes wing-to-wingtip to guard against saboteurs.

The Navy wasn't responsible for patrolling the area around Oahu. That was the Army's job. The Army was on Oahu to allow the Navy to stand down when in port. Gen. Short lost sight of this mission.

And yes, Roosevelt did expect a Japanese attack.  On the Philippines,  and they were tracking the Japanese invasion force heading south towards Malaya.

The War Warning message went out on the 27th of Nov., IIRC.

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Nobody is disputing that. The documentary said that FDR was expecting inevitable war and a declaration of war. But anyone saying FDR let it happen is too much of a stretch for me. Both sides expected it, just not the US and Pearl Harbor. It didn't help that the diplomats sent to give FDR Japan's declaration failed to make that clear. Thus the famous line by one of their military, "I think we've woken a sleeping Giant".

The diplomats didn't know about the attack. http://ibiblio.org/pha/pha/misc/surprise.html

And the "sleeping giant" quote was fabricated by the producers of "Tora, Tora, Tora" to give the US audience a slightly upbeat ending.