A timeline of the attack on Pearl Harbor

5:30 a.m. – If you were a subscriber of The Spokesman-Review, the top headlines in the morning paper on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, were the German attack on Moscow and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt writing the Emperor of Japan about troop movements in the Far East. Meanwhile, the top story in the sports section was Washington State College’s loss to Texas A & M in the Evergreen Bowl.
6:10 a.m. – Imperial Japanese Navy Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who was the airborne commander in charge of the Pearl Harbor attack, watches the fleet’s carriers turn into the wind to prepare to launch the strike.
6:45 a.m. – The destroyer USS Ward engages a midget sub outside Pearl Harbor. Ward hits the sub, which heels over and sinks.
6:53 a.m. – USS Ward message to Pearl Harbor: “We have dropped depth charges upon sub operating in defensive sea area.”
7:02 a.m. – Two Army privates manning a brand new radar site at Opana see 50 or more aircraft bearing for Oahu and call their headquarters at Ft. Shafter. An Army lieutenant at Ft. Shafter, knowing a B-17 flight is inbound from the mainland, tells the radar operators not to worry about it.
7:49 a.m. – CDR Fuchida, looking down at the harbor, orders his telegraph operator to tap out: Tora Tora Tora, which was code for “Attack, Surprise achieved.”
7:55 a.m. – Shortly after the attack begins, the battleship USS West Virginia is hit by seven torpedoes and several bombs. The crew’s counter-flooding of compartments help save the ship.
On Ford Island, Navy Commander Logan Ramsey rushes to get a message sent to the mainland by telegraph: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL
7:58 a.m. – The battleship USS Oklahoma, moored outboard from USS Maryland, is hit by several torpedoes and capsizes in 12 minutes.
8:08 a.m. – Oklahoma survivors climb aboard USS Maryland to help fight the ship. Japan claimed Maryland was sunk in the attack; Maryland was repaired and back in action by June 1942.
8:10 a.m. – An armor-piercing bomb strikes the forward deck of USS Arizona, setting off a million pounds of gunpowder. There were 1,177 men killed in the explosion.
8:12 a.m. – The first torpedoes struck USS Utah at 8:01. The ship begins to list, and by 8:12, the ship rolls onto its side and capsizes.
8:50 a.m. – USS Nevada attempts to head for open water. Struck during the second wave, her captain intentionally grounds her at Hospital Point to avoid blocking the channel out to the sea.
8:54 a.m. – The second strike attacks USS Pennsylvania, which is in dry dock. Destroyers Cassin, Downes and the light cruiser Raleigh are also damaged.
9:30 a.m. – A bomb blows off the bow of USS Shaw. Pieces of the ship rain down half a mile away.
9:45 a.m. – The air attack ends. In the aftermath, the tally of U.S. forces lost were 2,400 dead, 1,178 wounded, eight damaged and five sunk battleships, and more than 300 aircraft destroyed on the ground.
Six months later, over a three-day period in early June 1942, air crews from carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown sink Soryu, Hiryu, Kaga and Akagi – four of the six Imperial Japanese Navy carriers involved in the Pearl Harbor attack – at Midway.