Four hours of warnings on 7 December

USS Condor reported a submarine at 03:42 and USS Ward sank another at 06:37, yet torpedo nets and a general alert did not follow. Those contacts offered about four hours and ten minutes before the air attack, enough to begin moving the base toward a war footing. Later SCR-270 operators detected the incoming formation roughly fifty minutes before the strike, but their report was dismissed and the radar schedule ended. One crew even had to use a motorcycle and a shop telephone to pass its warning, illustrating how rudimentary the reporting chain remained. Hawaii had four radar sets plus a fifth spare, yet operated them only four hours a day while the station in the Philippines worked around the clock in three shifts. Even a partial alert could have deployed nets, readied ships, launched fighters, and activated observers. Commanders hesitated because war had not been formally declared and they feared overstepping civil-military boundaries.