[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

Actually, they were specifically targetting America's aircraft carriers, which were not in the harbour at the time.

I don't believe so. Take it for what it is, but this is what Wikipedia says:

To maximise the effect on morale, battleships were chosen as the main target, since they were the prestige ships of any navy at the time.

Whatever was intended, there was other targets at pearl Harbour, had they been targeted, that would have crippled the American fleet.

Looking further down the wiki article it says that the tragets were the large ships that happened to be there (whether it happened to be Battleships or Carriers)