USS OKlahoma

Elias Graves

Elias Graves

Common misfit
She took torpedo hits on December 7, 1941, capsized immediately and went down in Pearl Harbor.
One of her screws is on display at the Omniplex science museum here.

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EG
 
A good friend of mine as a boy is related to Husband E Kimmel, who was in command of the Pacific fleet at the time. He stood in his office and watched the battle unfold.
Key information was witheld from him that might have minimized the damage of the attack, but he was made the scapegoat. Stripped of his rank, he took an early retirement.

EG
 
During the ensuing repairs, workers located 66 bodies of West Virginia sailors who had been trapped below when the ship sank.[8] Several bodies were found lying on top of steam pipes within the air bubble existing in flooded areas.[8] Three bodies were found in a store room compartment where the sailors had lived on emergency rations and fresh water from a battle station.[8] A calendar found with them indicated they had lived through 23 December.[9] The task confronting the nucleus crew and shipyard workers was a monumental one, so great was the damage on the battleship's port side. Ultimately, however, West Virginia departed Pearl Harbor on 7 May 1943 for the west coast and a complete rebuilding at the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington.[10]
 
Amazingly, a third wave af attacks was planned that day, but the commander of the Japanese force thought they had done their job and skedaddled when he realized the carriers were not in port. He feared the time it would take to launch a third attack would give the US carrier fleet time to intercept his task force.
In the end, it was the carrier fleet that won the war. The days of the battleships had come to an end.

EG
 
Elias Graves said:
Amazingly, a third wave af attacks was planned that day, but the commander of the Japanese force thought they had done their job and skedaddled when he realized the carriers were not in port. He feared the time it would take to launch a third attack would give the US carrier fleet time to intercept his task force.
In the end, it was the carrier fleet that won the war. The days of the battleships had come to an end.

EG
Click to expand...

If they had launched a third wave and destroyed dry docks and fuel supplies the impact of the attack would have been far worse.

Many of those ships were salvaged and returned to action.

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Unimaginably horrific.

On a side note: Transporting that giant prop (screw) to a landlocked museum must have been one Hell of an undertaking.
 
Those battleships look so top-heavy compared with modern warships. I guess looking at the designs, it's not surprising that they capsized rather easily...
 
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