The Salvage of Pearl Harbor Pt 3 - The First and the Last

[Music] [Music] for the final part of this series we're going to consider the two battleships which would have further extensive salvage work done to them plus a brief insight on the fascinating recovery of the destroyer shaw which we'll start with and which we'll be going into in detail for reasons that hopefully will become fairly obvious in the aftermath of the pearl harbor attacks uss shaw presented a rather sorry sight it'd been hit by three bombs set on fire and then had her forward magazines explode she was barely two-thirds of the ship she'd had once been although in the manner of strong-willed destroyers across the world she would stubbornly refuse to acknowledge this fact and instead remain defiantly afloat at least for a while albeit somewhat lower in the water and with most of the superstructure turned into confetti what was left of the bow barely held on using a few bits of the lower hull as she was partly blocking the recovery of the floating dry dock yfd2 which of course was sorely needed work on the shore had started in earnest almost immediately once the fires were out it was found that in the interim as the dry dock had settled into the water what was left of the bow had eventually torn free which actually helped the overall situation somewhat as there wasn't 150 ton deadweight attached to the front of the ship within the rest of the ship bulkheads were rapidly shored up holes were patched pontoon floats were tied on and water was pumped out before christmas 1941 she'd been towed clear and placed in the repair area of the base her remaining 5-inch guns had been removed for reuse elsewhere and repair work in earnest had begun whilst publicly listed as lost cunning mines were already at work trying to figure out how to get what was left of the ship back to the continental united states for full restoration and by the end of the year shaw was scheduled for a stay in dry dock 2 along with a submarine in order to have a full spell fitted the ragged edges of the hull were thus cut away and what was left of her bridge superstructure was likewise removed then she was cycled back out into the water to make room for other ships the full spout was lowered into place while she was still in the water and then spot welded to the ship a large tripod mast was dropped in in replacement of the superstructure plus a single five-inch gun rescued from the uss cassin was placed in her midship's position work could now commence on finishing the weld of the temporary bow and making the part ship watertight again for this she awaited the return to service of yfd2 the floating dry dock that her detonation had helped to sink not even a couple of months earlier shaw entered the dock toward the end of january 1942 and in the second week of february the men hard at work on the battleships across the channel were treated to the bizarre site of a pint-sized half-destroyer with an oversized mast being guided from an old school crow's nest a top said mast and armed with a single midship's deck gun come motoring around the harbour having failed to either sink or arouse the wrath of an offended sea god who had possessed a sense of aesthetics shaw would birth alongside the uss ward overnight casting off after lunch the next day and heading off out to sea destination mayor island the first ship of the salvage unit's long list to leave pearl harbor she'd be back at the end of august fully fighting fit and despite sustaining damage repeatedly throughout the war she would see the conflict through to the end so with a brief telling of the first chip the salvage unit managed to get back into service what about the last two that they worked on well oklahoma as we covered in part one ended up almost upside down the only thing preventing her from going fully over was that the superstructure had hit firmer layers beneath the mud that made up the harbour bottom which illustrated just how shallow the anchorage actually was no one knew exactly how badly she'd been hit other than several reports that told of torpedoes not only blowing holes in her side below the waterline but further weapons ripping apart the upper hull above the protective system as the ship healed over there was also the matter of a lot of heavy components on the ship that had never been intended to be upside down and had no doubt broken free and caused all sorts of internal damage whilst she was a standard battleship and thus potentially useful if recoverable it was obvious that she'd need a lot more time to salvage and so priority in the early days was given largely to the ships for which a path back into service was far more obvious and indeed far quicker several months would go by without any work occurring on the ship wallen justified this as follows my reason for not indicating the oklahoma in the near term program is that writing her is likely to prove a very extensive job and i question whether the salvaging of the vessel warrants the diversion of engineering talents working forces and material which would be required to do the job after she is righted there would be a big job of further salvage work and reconditioning to get her into service i do not question that this can be done but would require a year or more of time in addition to the talent of working forces mentioned however oklahoma had sunk in a position that not only blocked out or disrupted a number of very valuable births but she had rolled partially into the main channel which was proving to be most irritating for shipping coming in and out of the base as they were forced to give the wreck a fair margin to avoid damage to both parties it would have to be moved at some point for this the pacific bridge company whose men had been providing significant support to the us navy during the various salvage efforts was brought into the effort in a major way in late february divers had found the time to start examining the hull for damage and found at least four torpedo impact sites and a number of either bomb hits or near misses caveating their report that there was a lot of mud that had been pushed up so that portions of the ship were completely obscured based on this rear admiral furlong drew up a plan to right the ship but it was quite clear that no combination of floating cranes patches or pumps would move the ship in its current state this was a job that called for either a significant makeover of the ship to lighten it or for sheer brute force he wrote a letter in which he described his proposed method based on the way that some of the german vessels of the high seas fleet had been salvaged from scapa flow stating that it consists essentially of removing masts turrets and other top side weights by mechanical means or by blasting and then to float the vessel upside down by blowing out water with compressed air it may be found that the depth of water is not adequate for this method but if it is then this is probably the cheapest and quickest method of getting oklahoma cleared following flotation the vessel could be towed out to sea and sunk or as in the case of the german vessels she could be placed in a dry dock if one were available for scrapping if upon docking it's found that the vessel is in good enough condition to recondition arrangements could be made to right the vessel this would also permit the removal of valuable material in case reconditioning is not worthwhile needless to say the amount of explosive needed to blow the gun turrets clean off a nevada class battleship would probably render the ship rather unsalvageable from an operational perspective but nevertheless the cost of doing so may be less compared to the more direct methods however as a clearer idea of the state of the ship was reached the other option became much more realistic this was far more brutally direct simply attach dozens of thick steel cables find a bunch of extremely heavy duty winches and just haul all 27 000 tons plus who knew how much mud and water upright but with the diver's reports painting an increasingly bleak picture of the damage to the ship and the fact that she was the second oldest standard battleship in the fleet second only to nevada herself furlong also acknowledged the labor and material necessary to float these vessels would constitute a diversion from the war effort that should be concentrated on new and vital construction and repair the manufacture of enormous quantities of special steel cable blocks steel forgings and winches required for this work and the employment of labour and skilled engineers for a year or more to raise and rehabilitate these vessels is not warranted at this time they are much better left as post-war employment of labor this letter covered the oklahoma utah and arizona generally but by late april with work on the other battleships going impressively well a new impetus was given to the idea of at least getting oklahoma upright again and by may the winch option was further developed into a working plan draft contracts were drawn up materials gathered and with west virginia in drydock more skilled labor was available by mid-july the salvage division was ready to make a start the first of this new work to access and empty the accessible fuel tanks began on the 12th of july whilst the winch system looked more likely it was still hoped that perhaps by filling up part of the ship with air the differential buoyancy could be used to get her to write herself and maybe even stay afloat as this would be faster even if the winch option was going to be used getting an air bubble into the ship would help induce a rotational movement to the ship as opposed to simply bodily hauling the hull towards ford island and would of course make the strain on the cables and winches somewhat less it wasn't quite as simple as that though exactly how the ship would behave under these forces was a matter for intense and complex calculation as well as further physical investigation work to provide the needed data divers began more intense work on and in the ship itself as well as taking samples of the harbour bottom around the ship to see what kind of resistance the seabed might offer both in terms of releasing its hold on the upper works and what it might do when the ship started to rotate the results were mixed most of the forward part of the ship was sitting in the same near liquid mud that had tried to swallow the california but further along the conditions changed to a mix of clay and coral that was keeping the ship from going down any further and more crucially should also provide a good amount of friction which would mean that any cables hauling on the ship from ford island would be more likely to pull the ship over as it dragged on the bottom and thus hopefully get the ship upright as opposed to simply hauling the ship across the seabed towards them there was one major risk though if the writing of the ship was not smooth and even movement and the bow dipped down then the ship might slide off the clay and coral shelf and sink irretrievably into the softer liquid mud to its fore with the majority of the salvage work to ships that could be returned to service in good time completed wallen was sent on to other duties at the end of july having brought most of the pacific fleet's battleships back to the surface and safely into dock after a few quick changes responsibility was eventually invested in commander whitaker who took things forward from this point divers began long dangerous journeys into the ship to open and close various hatches reconfiguring the ship's internal structure so that a number of the undamaged areas were effectively turned into large receiving volumes for air bubbles that would be pumped in whilst ashore the bases for numerous winches began to be installed and additional pontoon tanks were prepared to be attached to the ship to aid in creating buoyancy the hatch and door configuration was particularly vital no hatches or doors that accessed damaged areas of the ship could be left open as otherwise air would simply escape through the cracks and rents in the hull but on the other hand any hatches bulkheads or doorways left shut within the designated air pocket volumes would inhibit the spread of the air and could leave single compartments or multiple compartments full of water which would reduce the efficacy of the air blowing effort this work would all take a considerable amount of time the winch bases wouldn't be complete until november and in the interim a hunt began for machinery to attach to them it had to be powerful ideally run on direct current which was available in large amounts on ford island and it needed to deliver as much of its power in the form of high torque at low rotational speed as adding complex gearing to step down a high speed motor would take a lot more time and money as well as causing energy inefficiencies which would mean that even more winches would be needed the solution was eventually found in the motors used by the electric streetcars or trams that had served honolulu for several decades at this point the motors were duly brought up and installed along with a complex block and tackle system which would reduce the strain on the cables enough to allow them to do their job without snapping and cutting apart anything and anyone in a roughly 600 foot radius the one downside to the block and tackle system was that with a fairly significant reduction ratio there would be an awful lot of cable that would accumulate on the spindles and spools of the system and thus have to be cleared every so often it wouldn't be one continuous movement frames were also attached to the ship both to receive the cables and to increase their effect as the turning moment would be greater with the frame sticking up away from the hull thus again improving the efficiency of the winches by december the winches were almost ready and with a control station established with equipment that allowed the speed of every single winch to be independently controlled the first anniversary of the attack passed and time was rapidly approaching for oklahoma to be brought back upright accessible weights like the screws were taken off the ship and january 1943 saw the last of the arrays on shore and aboard the ship complete february saw the wires beginning to run from the ship to the shore and by the 8th of march everything was ready and correct that morning the winches began to wind under the watchful gaze of admiral nimitz who'd come over to observe the work slowly ever so slowly the ship began to move inevitably under the strain various parts began to give way and after more than half a day of hauling the winding was halted to allow for repairs and for silt and mud that had been pushed up by the movement of the ship's hull to be dredged the next day the winding began again and then once more bolts began to fail and so the work was paused after a few hours for further repairs and reinforcement with all of the cables under strain this was a particularly delicate operation and so it wasn't until the 17th that this work was complete and another day's hauling would see the ship almost around to being just about on its side and then over the next couple of days as the wire that had been hauled in was cleared off the spindles and the motors restarted the ship came past 90 degrees eventually stabilizing at a list of 70 degrees here work would pause once more whilst water jets were used to clear mud off of the exposed portions of the ship and much of the framework supporting the wires which had been attached to the side of the ship had to be removed as what had been needed to provide the large turning moment before was now almost forcing the wires underwater since the ship had now rotated and these frames were practically at horizontal by the 20th the ship had passed 45 degrees and now a more delicate process of the final writing could begin wires had to be relocated to areas higher on the ship one by one as the rest of them took the strain pumps were brought in to clear out more of the ship and more loose material both parts of the ship and mud were taken off small pools would continue over the next seven weeks with the west virginia sailing off for puget sound midway through the process until finally by mid-june the ship sat with a mere two degree list now the true extent of the horrific damage the port side could be seen and the well-practiced men of the salvage team prepared to install massive patches the job was now pretty similar to that which had been done for the west virginia the pumps were started up in december to begin clearing the ship which of course meant yet another round of cleaning out the muck and debris deck by deck as the water level dropped on the one hand knowing that the ship would not be returning to service at this point the cleaning didn't have to be quite as complete and painstaking as it had been on the california west virginia tennessee and other ships on the other hand after a year and a half underwater it meant that recovering the 400 men who'd gone down with the ship was no longer a matter of recovering distinct bodies but rather fishing out random scattered bones from the sludge as the pumping continued more small leaks would be identified and patched and eventually on the 3rd of november 1943 the ship was afloat once more tentative preparations were now made to bring her into dry dock 4 which was now complete despite having been only a future scheme when the ship had gone down although a series of tragedies ended up costing the lives of three men and two divers in a matter of weeks more than tripling the number of salvage-related deaths in the entire operation at a stroke after careful work to make the way clear for the fragile hull the oklahoma was shepherded down the channel on the 28th of december 1943 with only two and a half feet clearance from the bottom touching down safely for the patching work that would be needed to make her watertight and thus able to be stored out of the way until she could be sold for scrap heading over to the utah the situation back in january 1942 was even less urgent than oklahoma while she had occupied a useful birthing spot it wasn't quite as critical as the ones on battleship row and she wasn't blocking quite as many in and so aside from salvaging some of the anti-aircraft ammunition aboard there was little beyond scrap value in the hull now that it had been sunk as a result none of the valuable divers that had been working on the other ships had even gone down to work out what the damage was or even how the ship was laying on the harbour bottom this work would eventually begin in mid-january with the main aim to ensure that the ship was stable enough for the aforementioned salvage of 5-inch ammunition as mentioned in the previous videos they found that the ship was resting quite firmly on solid sea bed and access work to get to the magazines could begin throughout most of 1942 the utah's main contribution to the salvage work was actually done through her ordnance group tasked with looking after the five-inch anti-aircraft guns on the ship before the attack they'd proved to be a remarkably efficient and well-drilled team when it came to salvage-related work on the secondary guns ammunition and fire control equipment of the various other ships that were in the process of being salvaged shortages of manpower prevented these small salvage parties assigned to the utah from getting much deeper into the ship to recover more ammunition as more turns in the hull more flooding more warped and closed bulkheads and more hydrogen sulfide was encountered by the end of february 1942 salvage work on the ship itself was ceased with just over two and a half thousand rounds of five-inch ammunition for the three kinds of five-inch gun then in service in the u.s navy having been recovered the last men leaving the ship on the 14th no one would return to the utah for about a year by the time 1943 arrived and the main salvage efforts were complete the utah would see new visitors as with only work on oklahoma left some divers were now spared for an investigation of the old target ship as well due to her lesser displacement and somewhat better position it was viewed that despite the damage she'd taken the work on utah would likely be similar to that on oklahoma just somewhat easier if somewhat less urgent as a result more detailed survey work was undertaken as men became available from the oklahoma finding that the ship was somewhat further over towards vertical than oklahoma and somewhat more down by the stern since the same methods were to be used work could begin on working out what elements of the ship could be removed or had already broken off in order to lighten the ship and a pontoon pier was built to facilitate easier access to the hull as the winches on the other side of ford island began to haul the oklahoma slowly upright the teams who'd built the winches foundations and frames headed across the island to replicate the process next to the utah calculations on exactly what forces needed to be applied and where were begun and the process of locking down the interior of the ship to allow the formation of air bubbles also began unlike all the other battleships however utah's much older design was not actually sufficiently partitioned and airlocks had to be installed in various places to ensure that there were actually multiple separated air pocket areas 1943 turned into 1944 and it was looking like many of the men of the salvage unit would spend the entire war at pearl harbor and with the fleet so much larger and the pace of war intensifying transfers of men out to the fleet as well as demands for equipment to assist active service ships slowly whittled down the workforce even as air was pumped into the utah ready for the final haul due to these delays it wasn't until february 1944 that with winches and cables transferred the ship began to be hauled over whilst initially she rotated much more easily than oklahoma taking only three days from to go from virtually upside down to a 68 degree list it turned out that whilst the c bid had been strong enough to support her in her initial position with the greater weight associated with her much more upright but still negatively buoyant orientation she was actually beginning to sink into the mud to such a degree that the cable frames had partially sunk into the mud and the cables had to be blown off of them since they were likewise buried these cables were then reattached to the upper portions of the ship and the winches hauled away again but the more upright utah became the further into the mud she sank it was a race between rotation and settling that would come to an end with a ship at a 37 degree list and completely firmly wedged into the seabed the winch is strained but she was not going anywhere still she was at least somewhat more out of the way and a lot more stable than she had been and so with that work ceased and salvage related operations that had begun whilst japanese bullets and bombs were still flying through the air on the 7th of december 1941 would end with the calendar marking the 15th of march 1944. with no work having been done to dewater the ship and thus none of the remains of the trapped crew recovered utah's hulk was designated a war grave the ship was formally decommissioned and the hull left in place where she remains to this day to be clear this series has not covered the full extent of all the salvage related work that occurred at pearl harbor which itself had grown around the salvage team's work from a forward base capable of repair and refits into a full-on naval facility with half a dozen dry docks if you included the floating ones massive stores areas fuel farms machine shops and the like capable of supporting a fleet of unparalleled size on its way to and from the war that was progressing further to the west the salvage unit worked on many other ships during their tenure the saga of the uss oglala which must have left many of the officers in charge lacking significant portions of their hair the work first of salvaging what was still useful on the uss arizona and then later the first stages of turning into a memorial the efforts to get the uss plunger back into service after it rather inconsiderately fell over halfway through the main body of work blocking up valuable dock space the application of the story of the ship of theseus to the cassin and downs and several other efforts are all part of the full story of the salvage unit so what overall did they accomplish in short a huge amount ships thought completely unsalvageable like west virginia were brought back into service west virginia herself was later to wreak her revenge on the japanese navy at the battle of surigao strait alongside fellow pearl harbor survivors maryland tennessee california and pennsylvania with the uss mississippi tagging along for the ride vital space had been reclaimed at pearl harbor which would see an influx of new ships this photo of one of the iowas moored alongside the hulk of the oklahoma illustrates just how far the u.s navy had advanced over the course of the war years they also managed to give a final resting place to most of those who were missing in action in the aftermath of the 7th of december attacks whether that be recovered to graves or forever aboard their ships as with the arizona and the utah the work of the salvage unit also saved councillors lives their detailed and meticulous notes on where the protection systems of destroyers cruisers and battleships had failed and how this could be avoided in future designs as well as the huge amount of work calculating exactly how to safely seal off parts of a ship to secure against flooding all fed into the rapidly growing body of knowledge that was the us navy's damage control training efforts which would in turn see many ships return to pearl harbor battered yes heavily burnt and listing certainly large parts missing and having gone their own way into the middle of the pacific ocean absolutely but still the ships or at least what was left of them returned often to be patched up turned round and sent right back into the fight with many of their crews thus making it home with hilarious stories like sailing halfway across the pacific backwards or patching the ship up with coconut trees instead of leaving a handful of surviving officers with the task of writing hundreds of letters to grieving relatives outside of a few awards here and there however relatively little recognition was given to these hard-working men at the time or indeed since but hopefully this little series has done a small part in raising their profile somewhat as they no doubt deeply deserve and if you'd like to learn more about some of those other salvage efforts that i mentioned or indeed more detail about the salvage efforts on the battleships then i would highly recommend the three books that have formed the core of the source material for this video alongside the us navy's official reports into the mata which are of course publicly available so the three books are descent into darkness by edward c ramer he was one of the many navy divers who spent an awful lot of time down in the remains of various battleships and i wouldn't necessarily recommend it as bed nightside reading unless you particularly like nightmares about being chased through uh sunken battleships by floating bodies but um as a bit of afternoon reading it's definitely very very insightful there's also resurrection salvaging the battle fleet at pearl harbor by daniel madston which goes over the salvage efforts on all of the various ships and various reasons why that certain ships were salvaged before others and is certainly an excellent read and then you've also got pearl harbor why how fleet salvage and final appraisal are by the at the time of writing vice admiral homer n wallin and uh well i hardly needs any further introduction as to who he was and why he was very qualified to write that book descent into darkness is also available as an audio book if you happen to want to go down that route and so ladies and gentlemen i shall conclude this little series by saying razor glass to the men of the pearl harbor salvage unit who went out of their way to prove the saying that you just can't keep a good ship down that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 1,348,543

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Pearl Harbour, December 7th, USN, USS Arizona, USS California, USS Maryland, USS Utah, USS Oklahoma, USS West Virginia, USS Tennessee, USS Nevada, USS Pennsylvania, Pearl Harbor

Id: eibt2gYuFD4

Length: 30min 57sec (1857 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020