Pearl Harbor Betrayed (2 page)

Nine of the twelve torpedoes launched against
Oklahoma
at berth F-5 hit their mark, the initial strikes opening holes portside about twenty feet below the water's surface at frames 64 and 47.5. The ship immediately took on water and began to list to port. Succeeding strikes were made at other frames from 42 to 70. As the ship's list increased, four of the last five torpedoes exploded high on the hull's armor belt, and the last, the most damaging of all, hit at the level of the main deck.
Oklahoma
was now listing 35 to 40 degrees.
4
Damage to the forward generator compartment cut off power and light throughout the ship. Tumbling officers and men made their way about with hand lanterns and flashlights. As many as possible of the crew of 1,200 slid down the ship's side into the water. When, finally, the ship turned turtle, having rolled through an angle of about 135 degrees to port, many crewmen, trapped in interior compartments, suffocated or drowned. Thirty-two others were reached by civilian workers from the Yard who made an opening in the bottom of the hull with cutting torches and released those fortunate survivors around noon on the following day. Altogether, 415 men died on
Oklahoma
.

At the time of the attack the ship above the third deck was in Condition Xray of material readiness. That is, she was in cruising condition, the lowest level of watertight integrity. All double bottoms and lower compartments were closed, but living compartments were open and intercommunicating passageways were open to permit free passage. On the third deck and below she had made additional closings as mandated by an intermediate level of readiness called Yoke. In the highest level of material readiness on board a ship, Condition Zed, all compartments, passageways, and access openings were closed except those necessary to fight the ship. We know that at the outset of the attack Boatswain Adolph Marcus Bothne passed the word on loudspeaker for general quarters and set Condition Zed.
5
That condition apparently was set in some spaces—the ship's log was lost in the sinking—but the rapid flooding and capsizing of the ship prevented her personnel from making proper closures throughout.

Nine torpedoes also struck
West Virginia
at berth F-6, outboard of
Tennessee,
port side to stream. The “Weavy,” as she was affectionately known in the fleet, was luckier than
Oklahoma
in that all but one of the torpedoes dropped on her ran at a more shallow depth and thus expended their explosive strength on the armor belt. The one deep-running missile (twenty feet) struck the rudder at frame 145.
6
At the date of this writing, Howard Huseman still remembers vividly those moments. An aviation radioman in shipborne Vought-Sikorsky OS2U Kingfisher observation planes, Huseman was getting ready to go into Honolulu on liberty, when the fire alarm and horn went off. He went up to the quarterdeck to find that one of the ship's two OS2Us had been blasted off its catapult and was barely hanging over the side; the other was on fire. General quarters sounded. His auxiliary station in drills was in the damage control center in the post office compartment on the port side, but he found no one there. He then went looking for a place where he could be of help. While he was searching, seven torpedoes in quick succession blasted against the port side. He decided to go back to the post office compartment. It was gone!

Simultaneously,
West Virginia
was hit from above by dive-bombers. One bomb passed through the firetop and the boat deck before exploding near the port side on the main, or second deck. This bomb may have accounted for the disappearance of the post office compartment. The explosion led to a fierce powder and oil fire that extended to the foremast structure up to and including the bridge. A second bomb passed through the six-inch top of turret 3 but did not explode.

Huseman caught only a brief glimpse of the attacking aircraft. His chief concern was that the ship was sinking. But thanks to expert counterflooding by crewmen below, she sank on an even keel. As
West Virginia
reached bottom, her top deck still above water, Huseman took refuge on a gun turret until picked up by a motor launch and taken ashore. He recalls that the battleship's antiaircraft guns were in action only a few minutes after the first torpedo hit, and that, apparently, they gave a good account of themselves.
7
One hundred and six men died on
West Virginia
.

Astern, though not directly because she was inboard of the repair ship
Vestal,
stood the proud 33,100-ton
Arizona,
constructed in 1915 as the second and last of the
Pennsylvania
class. Moored to quay F-7, headed down channel,
Arizona
's bow was very close to
Tennessee
's stern and her stern to
Nevada
's bow, the distance in each case being two hundred feet. Not targeted by the torpedo bombers, she was still vulnerable to dive-bombers and to high-level (or horizontal) bombers that crisscrossed the sky above with 1,760-pound armor-piercing bombs. One-fourth of her AA battery was manned with ammunition available in ready boxes at the start of the attack.
8
Eyewitnesses later reported that all Xray doors and fittings were closed with very few exceptions. Many Yoke doors and fittings were also closed from the previous night. And many engineering spaces, including the shaft alleys, engine rooms, and firerooms, were in Condition Zed and locked. A gravity bomb attack on the ship was so sudden, however, that little time was allowed for setting Zed throughout the rest of the ship. Probably most of the third deck armored hatches were still open.

No fewer than eight bombs descended on
Arizona
during the middle of the torpedo launches against other vessels. (Bombs were also dropped on
West Virginia, Maryland,
and
Tennessee,
as well as on the repair ship
Vestal,
at the same time.) All fell between 0815 and 0820, causing damage of varying severity.
9
In one major action a bomb hit and detonated close to the port leg of the tripod of the foremast structure, causing its collapse. But by far the most severe damage—cataclysmic by comparison with anything else that winged death brought that day—was caused by a bomb dropped on the forecastle deck in the vicinity of either turret 1 or 2 that caused an intense fire that quickly engulfed the entire ship forward of the mainmast. Approximately
seven seconds
after the start of the fire—the time interval was determined by Navy analysts in 1944 on the basis of a motion picture film of the bomb hit and fire that ran at a rate of twenty-four frames per second—the ship forward of the mainmast erupted in a massive orange-black fireball that destroyed the ship forward of frame 70 and cast debris as far as
West Virginia, Tennessee, Nevada
astern, and Ford Island. Observers reported that the ship shuddered and jumped up in the water.

Arizona
had on board her full allowance of smokeless powder arranged forward in six magazines to supply gun turrets 1 and 2. These surrounded 1,075 pounds of black powder in magazines on the centerline between frames 37 and 39. It was clear to the Navy analysts who in 1944 investigated the cause of
Arizona
's horrific explosion that both the smokeless and black powder detonated. But it was difficult to detonate smokeless powder with fire—and time-consuming, taking certainly more than seven seconds—whereas the ignition of black powder almost always resulted in an instantaneous explosion. That fact led investigators to theorize that a modified 16-inch (1,760-pound) armor-piercing projectile used as a bomb by the Japanese high-level bombing aircraft penetrated the armored deck and ignited the black powder, which in turn detonated the smokeless powder. But the theory proved “improbable.”
*
“More probable” was that the fire passed down through the five armored hatches left open on the third deck, one of which was almost directly over the black powder magazine.

The analysts dismissed a popular myth that the ship blew up because a bomb passed down its stack. The myth originated with the observation by some, and with frames 46 through 208 of the film, that a jet of black smoke rose from the stack. But the navy yard at Pearl could find no damage to the insides of the stack. “The smoke issuing from the stack,” the analysts concluded, “was quite obviously the result of incomplete combustion rather than an explosion of fire.”
10
As an officer on
Nevada
wrote thirty-one years later,
Arizona
would have been lucky if the bomb in question
had
gone down the stack. Wrote then Captain Joseph K. Taussig, Jr., USN (Ret.): “The stack of the
Arizona
was shaped like an inverted Y, with the upstakes angled radically from the top of the stack to the boiler rooms. A bomb dropping down the stack would have exploded in the ‘uptakes' and in the spaces below.”
11

Still flying her big Sunday ensign from the stern, the twenty-six-year-old battleship slowly settled into the muck.

Four of her officers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Altogether, 1,177 Navy and Marine personnel died on
Arizona
—nearly half the total number of fatal casualties suffered at Pearl Harbor that day. The number included her captain, Franklin Van Valkenburgh, and Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, commander of Battleship Division 1, who was on the signal bridge. It was the largest fatal casualty list from any warship in the history of the U.S. Navy. Most of the dead are still entombed in the wrecked vessel, whose top deck is clearly seen from the arched white USS
Arizona
Memorial. Droplets of fuel oil still seep to the surface from her bunkers.

Two of the three torpedoes launched against
California
detonated twenty feet below the waterline where the ship's 13.5-inch armor plating gave way to thin shell plating. The explosions tore holes thirty by eighteen feet at frames 53 and 97.5. Flooding of the hull was compounded by human error. Neither Yoke nor Zed had been set. Ten inner and outboard voids had been left open below the third deck for maintenance. Her watertight integrity compromised,
California
began listing to port. Timely counterflooding directed by a young ensign prevented her from capsizing, but salt water got into the fuel system and light and power flickered off. Then, at 0825, a bomb hit the AA ammunition magazine, taking the lives of about fifty men. It was followed shortly afterward by a second bomb that damaged the bow plates. The captain and crew made valiant efforts to douse fires, control flooding, and get up steam.
California
responded briefly. But her holes were too large. The water finally claimed her, though it was not until late Wednesday that her keel finally embedded itself in mud. Ninety-eight of her men were dead.
12

In 1945 the Navy Department stated: “According to the best available analysis in the Navy Department, the USS
California
is the only ship that might have been saved from sinking by the closing of manhole covers that had been left open for maintenance.”
13

Oklahoma
's sister ship
Nevada
was moored singly to quay F-8, at the end of Battleship Row. Though plainly exposed, she was targeted by just one of the torpedo bombers. The explosion ripped open a hole forty-eight by thirty-three feet twenty feet below the waterline well forward at frame 41. A severe dive-bombing attack beginning about 0825 made up for any additional torpedoes that might have been launched at her. One bomb hit near the foremast, wrecking the vertical area extending from the second deck to the bridge. Several bombs damaged the forecastle from side to side forward of turret 1 and down to the second deck. A bomb amidships sent fragments against the mainmast and stack, and caused many casualties to the 5-inch AA gun crews, who had been answering the Japanese since within four minutes of the torpedo explosion. Two near misses ruptured the hull on the port and starboard bows. While many of
Nevada
's compartments were flooded, her power plant was not harmed, and Lieutenant Commander Francis J. Thomas, USNR, the senior officer on board at the time, decided to stand out. Chief Boatswain Edwin J. Hill, who would receive the Medal of Honor posthumously for his action, leaped onto the mooring quay, cast off the lines while strafing fire from fighters encircled him, and swam back to the ship as she got under way. He would be killed by a bomb blast later as his ship made for the sea. The story of
Nevada
's gallant dash is told later, in chapter 9. Sixty of her men were killed that morning, and 109 were wounded, including Ensign Joe Taussig.
14

Before the Japanese withdrew, four battleships,
Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona, California,
a target ship,
Utah,
a minecraft,
Oglala,
and an auxiliary,
Sotoyomo
(YT-9), would be in a capsized or sinking condition. Battleships
Pennsylvania,
which was in drydock,
Nevada, Maryland,
and
Tennessee
were damaged. Light cruisers
Raleigh, Helena,
and
Honolulu
(CL-48) were damaged. Destroyers
Cassin, Downes,
and
Shaw
were damaged. Repair ship
Vestal
and numerous small craft were damaged. Eighty naval aircraft were destroyed, 167 damaged. Naval airfields and installations at Ford Island, Kaneohe Bay, and Ewa were damaged. And those were just naval material losses. The United States Army aircraft, airfields, forts, and barracks on Oahu would also be heavily hit, as will be described in chapter 9. And the greatest losses would be human: 2,403 dead, 1,178 wounded.

Though totally surprised, the AA gunners on all ships except
Oklahoma,
whose men never had a chance, gave back what fire their weapons allowed. The overall Japanese commander of the attacking force, Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, wrote later that “the enemy's antiaircraft fire reaction had been so prompt as virtually to nullify the advantage of surprise.”
West Virginia
returned fire “immediately” with ready machine guns, and in fewer than five minutes with all guns. No log remains to say what gun action took place on
Arizona,
but her two ready 5-inch 25 AA guns could have commenced firing within one minute, and the remaining guns of her AA battery within about five minutes.
California
's ready machine guns at the conning tower, manned and armed, could have commenced firing upon first identification of the enemy; her machine guns in the foretop and maintop in three to four minutes; and her 5-inch 25 AA guns in about two minutes.
Nevada
estimated that both .50-caliber machine guns and 5-inch 25 AA guns opened fire within four minutes. Other estimates provided by commanding officers after the battle were:
Pennsylvania,
five to eight minutes, all batteries;
Tennessee,
three to five minutes from the sounding of the general alarm; and
Maryland,
from ten to fifteen minutes, all batteries.
15
In the attack twenty-nine of the Japanese air fleet of 354 planes were shot down, most of them by Navy gunners.