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"I got in a string of six or eight planes," Taylor recalled. "I was on one's tail as we went over Waialua . . . and there was one following firing at me . . . Lieut. Welch, I think, shot the other man down." Welch's version: "We took off directly into them and shot some down. I shot down one right on Lieut. Taylor's tail."
Landing only for more fuel and ammunition, the two sleepless lieutenants set off for the Marine base at Barber's Point. "We went down and got in the traffic pattern and shot down several planes there," said Taylor, who suffered a severe arm wound. "I know for certain I shot down two planes or perhaps more; I don't know." Official records credited the two of them with downing seven planes, almost one-quarter of all Japanese losses.
The great attack was really fairly short. The first bombers returned to their carriers just after 10 a.m., scarcely two hours after they descended on Battleship Row. Fuchida lingered to observe and photograph the damage and was the last to return to Nagumo's fleet. It was still only noon.
Fuchida and Genda argued fiercely for renewing the attack. The oil-storage tanks had not been hit, and the raiders had not found any of Kimmel's three carriers (the Lexington and Enterprise were at sea, the Saratoga undergoing repairs). But Admiral Nagumo, who had mistrusted the plan from the start, felt he had accomplished his mission and saw no reason to risk his fleet any further. Back in Japan, Yamamoto strongly disapproved of Nagumo's decision to withdraw but accepted the tradition that such decisions are left to the combat commander on the scene.
Long after the Japanese had left, Pearl Harbor reverberated with reports of enemy invasions, parachute landings and other nightmares. Jittery defenders fired wildly at anything that moved. A fishing boat returning with the day's catch was shot to pieces.
On the capsized hull of the Oklahoma, Commander Kenworthy strode up and down for hours listening for raps and banging from the men trapped inside. Some survivors were finally pulled to safety through holes cut in the hull, but others drowned in the water rushing through the openings. Kenworthy wouldn't leave until the last of 32 survivors had been saved. By then it was Monday afternoon. Six sailors caught inside the West Virginia died just before Christmas -- after two weeks of incarceration.
In terms of casualties and destruction, this was one of the most one-sided battles in history. The U.S. lost 2,433 killed (about half of them on the Arizona) and 1,178 wounded. The Japanese, who had expected to sacrifice as much as one-third of their force, lost 55 airmen, nine crewmen aboard five minisubs and approximately 65 on one sunken submarine. The U.S. lost 18 surface warships, sunk or seriously damaged; the Japanese none. The U.S. lost 188 planes destroyed and 159 damaged; the Japanese lost 29. Yet three of the five wrecked U.S. battleships (the California, Nevada and West Virginia) were eventually restored to service, and all the lost warplanes were eventually replaced -- more than replaced -- by the bombers that struck Tokyo and Hiroshima.