Fuel was more replaceable than the specialized pumps, tanks, cranes, communications, and repair equipment that made Pearl Harbor function as a fleet base. The roughly 4.5 million barrels in storage mattered, but fuel shipments could be replaced more readily than pumps, transfer gear, and special-order machinery for which the Navy held few spares. Headquarters communications and ciphers, Navy Yard repair capacity, and the submarine base all enabled the response to the raid and the recovery of damaged ships. Airfields were sensible first-wave targets because suppressing them reduced resistance, but follow-on waves could have shifted toward those harder-to-replace sustainment nodes. With eleven fleet oilers carrying about 750,000 barrels and the fleet consuming that scale in the first nine days of wartime steaming, even partial damage to the fuel system would create an immediate operational crisis. Another strike against these facilities appears feasible in this assessment, although much deeper destruction still would not reverse the war's industrial outcome.
Chapter · 37:24-46:37
The Pearl Harbor targets that could have delayed recovery
Fuel handling equipment, the navy yard, headquarters, and the submarine base offered Japan targets whose loss could outlast damage to ships and airfields.