About what more that could have been done within the availabler resources?

Short and Kimmel;

1. Army and Navy were not talking to each other in Hawaii. Joint means joint. A combined staff would have helped. Since it was a Navy problem in Hawaii, put Kimmel in charge and have Short report to him directly.

2. I know that Admiral Ghormley was an idiot as he would prove at Guadalcanal, but he had been the USN observer during the Battle of Britain. He was at Pearl. Put him in charge of a combined  Army/Navy air defense staff and have them work out a unified air defense plan for Oahu.

3. Run air patrols with the PBYs. I know that they were just about worn out with ASW training, but as long as your burning out enegines  and using up fatigue life in the airframes you might as well as combine air reconnaissance potential wartime exercises  within the unit training

4. Demand aviation gas, radars and fighters  from CONUS. First hit gets first call on anything and everything from beans to fuel to weapons. Why Ghormley didn't bring RADAR to Kimmel's attention always puzzled me. He saw it work during the BoB.

5. With war coming like a freight train, why are you using fleet carriers to freight in fighters? Either hold them back as a mobile reserve at San Diego, or keep them at sea together as a possible counter-ambush force for a possible Japanese strike. It would have also helped if in the last two months to war the carriers had practiced their trade in simulated wargames. It must be remembered that on December 7th, the only battle experienced naval aviation that had fought an enemy fleet was BRITISH. Why wasn't PACFLT sending officers to Britain to absorb lessons learned?

Future debacles like losing carriers to submarine torpedoes [Wasp, Yorktown, sunk; Saratoga laid up] might have been avoided.

6. On the political leadership front, it might have helped if Roosevelt paid less attention to his feelings and more attention to his generals and admirals. King and Marshall weren't incompetent. They knew how to crunch the numbers. The US wouldn't be ready to even begin shooting until February/March 1942. Reining in that fanatic, Cordell Hull, and easing the China sanctions for three or four months would have meant a better Philippine defense(For one thing Wainwright would have replaced that bungler MacArthur) and the fleet training program to wartime standards and manning levels of all the new Navy recruits which had begun in April 1940 might have finally borne fruit by then. Plus the US tanker shortage, fuel crunch, and aircraft shortfalls might be made good. For example the Lightning was just coming into squadron service. 200  P-38Lightnings at Oahu instead of 200  P-40s would have made a difference if the raid had come March 7th, 1942 instead of December 7th, 1941.   

Herald

 Finally got the holidays behind me and more exciting yet, my trip down to see the Fiesta Bowl.  It was great to participate in what some are calling the greatest college football game ever played.  How bout them Broncos!

1.      Defense of Hawaii was the responsibility of the Army/Short hence his focus on preventing sabotage. The deployment of the fleet was done without an adequate number of B-17’s. Of course there were fewer 17’s in existence than were required to do the job, but that gets back to the ill advised decision to move the fleet. The B-17 was partly designed for this coastal protection role – hence the name Flying Fortress.

2.      This action should have been taken back in Washington.

3.     

“Long thread, same points.
Bottom line is that it's a mistake to miss the forest for the trees.
The problem at Pearl Harbor was local and tactical. The basic decision
to rebase the Pacific Fleet was not militarily bad. The position was defensible
with the resources actually available against the forces actually brought to bear
had the defenses been properly deployed. There would have been heavy damage,”

What is never answered is what was the reason for the rebasing of the fleet. In the case of an actual state of war, the Pacific fleet could have steamed out to meet the Japanese for the Jutland type battle that had been anticipated and war gamed by both sides. Battleships did not patrol out of Hawaii and were not suited for that purpose. If the rebasing was to dissuade the Japanese from further expansion, then the embargoes and diplomatic pressure from the U.S. could have been eased to allow the Japanese to obtain the raw materials denied them by the U.S. 

Roosevelt realized he did not have the backing of the population and congress to start a war. Moving the fleet was the next best thing as it was bound to be provocative to the Japanese. The actual attack provided the optimal propaganda value that Roosevelt desired. In fact, if more effective defense measures were enacted at Pearl Harbor and were successful in discouraging a Japanese attack, then the Roosevelt plan would be at risk of failure. Orders were given to defend against sabotage. That was done. The Carriers were out making deliveries and appropriately conducting reconnaissance in their sphere of influence. 

Again, is there some other historical reason given for the rebasing of the fleet?