A previous colleague of mine was a young ensign who was assigned to the rock on Pearl at the start of the war to work for Nimitz. He told us at lunch one day that they did not know where Halsey’s carrier was. He said that Spruence had a nervous breakdown before Midway. He said that a lot of the officers were drunks but Jim is a bit of prude that way. But I know from reading that the prewar Navy had a lot of officers who were not pyschologically prepared for war. For them Pearl was a pleasant resort.
Another colleague, a genius of sorts, said that the Japanese should have led with their battleships, whose guns outgunned our battleships and who targeting and gunnery was better than ours. If they had not attacked Pearl but instead let us give battle in in the Philipine Sea they would have defeated out battle group.
Our subs were designed to have long legs to keep up with the battle groups. Same for the Japanese. The German subs were initially designed for coastal action.
The Japanese had a superior torpedo, the Long Lance that ran on liquid oxygen. The US Naval torpedo “experts” decided that that fuel was too dangerous.
We only learned about that torpedo after the war.