An American pilot who dismissed initial reports of what turned out to be the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has died at age 96. Kermit Tyler was the Army Air Forces' first lieutenant on temporary duty at Ft. Shafter's radar information center in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, when two privates reporting seeing an unusually large blip on their radar screen, indicating a large number of aircraft about 132 miles away and fast approaching. “Don't worry about it,” Tyler famously replied, thinking it was a flight of US B-17 bombers that was due in from the mainland. The aircraft were the first wave of more than 180 Japanese fighters, and bombers whose surprise attack on Pearl Harbor shortly before 8 A.M. plunged the United States into World War II.
