The USS Arizona

Things are quiet around the asylum today. No news worth repeating. I have been reading a book about the USS Arizona. I bought it at the local flea market www.ashtreeantiques.com/and when I bought it I was not sure if I would enjoy the book; it was a hard-cover and just $2 and it was navy, so I bought it. I had seen the memorial in Pearl Harbor and have read several books with mentions of the December 7, 1941 attack. The book has turned out to be fantastic with first person accounts of life aboard the ship prior to and up to its sinking.

The fact that 355 survived out of 1500 aboard is a miracle. The Arizona had 1million pounds of ammunition onboard and had just been refueled with 1.5 million gallons of fuel the day before the attack. The ship was due to sail for California on the day after the attack for refitting and Christmas leave for the crew. War was inevitable, the crew had been training extensively on gunnery and wartime drills. The navy knew a Japanese attack was imminent, they knew the ships on battleship row were sitting ducks and trapped in a small harbor with one narrow entrance/exit. The navy knew the fleet was safer anchored at sea near Lahaina Roads and they knew there would be an attack by the Japanese navy between November 25 1941 and January 1 1942. On December 7, 1941 when general quarters was sounded, Arizona gun crews ran for their battle stations and were at the ready, but the problem was the ammunition lockers were locked up, the Boson’s mates had the only keys to the ammunition lockers and most of  them were killed before they got to their stations to release ammo. Gunner’s mates were at their battle stations manning their anti-aircraft guns but they had no ammunition. The 50 caliber anti-aircraft machine guns were water cooled guns, but the water hoses were never connected, so the guns were useless. The Arizona was the main target in the Japanese attack plan. A 1700 pound bomb dropped from high altitude went right through the Arizona’s teak wood deck and hit the forward magazine and blowing the ship in half. The fuel tanks erupted, spewing flaming oil inches thick around the ship. Crewmen not killed by the blasts were burned in the oil-filled waters or strafed and killed by Japanese Zeros.

The peace time navy before WWII was a five day a week outfit. Ships went out on Monday morning and came home to port Friday afternoon. That was a perfect situation for the Japanese attack planners. It could have been worse for the US navy but on that fateful weekend the navy’s only three aircraft carriers in the Pacific were not in Pearl Harbor, one was sent to Midway with planes for the Marines there and the other two were sent to Wake Island ostensibly to add defensive planes there. The Japanese in their frenzy to knock out the US navy made three key mistakes, one, they did not destroy the dry dock facilities, enabling the navy to immediately begin repairs on the fleet. Two, they did not attempt to destroy the vast above ground fuel supplies on Oahu. It would have taken 3-6 months for the US navy to begin to get back in the war at all with no oil left in Hawaii. Third, the Japanese failed to attack the US submarines and docking facilities in Pearl Harbor. That allowed the US to immediately begin unrestricted warfare operations against the Japanese merchant marine. Had the Japanese done those three things the war would still have been won by the US, but it would have taken much longer.

The Arizona today, still leaking oil 70 years later. There are an estimated 500000 gallons of oil leaking at the rate of 9 quarts a day.