Military Installations & Airfields

Pearl Harbor was not the only target on December 7, 1941. The Japanese first wave hit airfields across Oahu in coordinated strikes designed to ground American air power before it could respond: Hickam Field, where a precision bomb destroyed the consolidated barracks and killed dozens of airmen still in their bunks; Wheeler Field, where the P-40s of the 14th Pursuit Wing were lined up wingtip-to-wingtip on the ramp as anti-sabotage precaution and were destroyed almost as a single target; Bellows Field, on the windward side; Ford Island Naval Air Station; Kaneohe Naval Air Station, hit minutes before Pearl Harbor itself; and the Marine Corps Air Station at Ewa. Schofield Barracks, immortalized in James Jones's "From Here to Eternity," took strafing fire moments after the harbor strike began.

This collection profiles each installation: its role on the morning of the attack, the casualties it sustained, the surviving infrastructure today, and the heroism of the airmen and ground crews who got planes airborne under fire — the small handful of P-40s and P-36s that managed to engage the Japanese first wave, including the famous flights of Lts. Welch and Taylor out of Haleiwa Field.

To see the actual hangars, control towers, and bullet-scarred buildings that survived, the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum on Ford Island preserves the strike sites in situ. For a tour that combines the airfields with the harbor itself, the Battleship Missouri and Aviation Museum Passport covers both in a single ticket.

The harbor took the headlines. The airfields took the first hits.