The Work of Salvage After the Pearl Harbor Attack

[PeteS in CA]

The videos below are fairly long, so I'm posting them early so interested folk can view them during the weekend.


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The basic facts of the PG attack are easily stated and grim enough: ~2400 military personnel and civilians killed; USS Arizona destroyed; USS Oklahoma sunk and too damaged to be worth repairing; two more battleships sunk; USS Utah sunk and too damaged to be worth salvaging; nearly 190 aircraft destroyed and many more damaged.

Words like "Heroic" and "Herculean" are scarcely adequate for the work that followed: raising and patching battleships well enough to send them back to the continental US for what amounted to near rebuilds; recovering the remains of the dead; moving the Oklahoma to free up her berth; rebuilding damaged and building new drydocks. At the same time, there was a war going on with ships in and out for provisioning, overhaul, upgrading, and repair.

[Smokin Joe]

Incredible work, that, and some of it pretty grim. This is something you don't see much about, so thank you for posting it.

[skeeter]

Interestingly USS Oklahoma didn't sink for good until 6 years later.

[PeteS in CA]

I already knew a lot of the top-line details, that all but Arizona and Oklahoma were returned to service and that for some, such as California, the "repair" was basically a rebuild. I didn't know that West Virginia was close to a write-of, and didn't realize how painstaking and even inventive the salvage processes were.

Oklahoma was horribly damaged. Several torpedoes breached the TDS, and then more torpedoes hit in the same area and breached the hull. Even if repaired Oklahoma was the least capable of the BBs in the Pacific. Like Nevada, she had "just" ten 14"/45s where the next newer class, the Pennsylvanias, had twelve. Unlike Nevada, she had vertical triple expansion engines, not turbine, and was a bit slower and could not maintain full speed as long. Oklahoma was basically moved out of the way and then sent to the States for scrapping, sinking while under tow.