Rescue attempts were made in response to tapping sounds by cutting through the ship's hull. Many sailors were trapped in the lower spaces when the ship capsized. Salvage of the USS Oklahoma, which capsized after several bomb and topedo hits on 7 Dec, was particularly compelling. This was a nasty, deadly, unheralded job. Interesting story of the salvage of the ships sunk at Pearl Harbor. I also would have liked more background on the salvage techniques used such as cofferdams, etc.Ī book that nicely covers an important, interesting element of WW2 in the Pacific (and pairs nicely with Edward Raymer's memoir Descent into Darkness.) One drawback for me is that it often felt like Madsen skipped around too much - here are 2 pages on the West Virginia, now a page on the Utah, now 2 pages on the Arizona, etc. He gives visibility into the challenges of organizing and prioritizing - how, for instance, do you feed and house the men you need to do this work? He describes the efforts that enabled the raising and/or repair of a number of battleships such as the California and West Virginia so that they could fight again, describing the challenges and setbacks faced along the way. Madsen lays out the process of how the US Navy sorted through these missions, all the while maintaining Pearl Harbor as an important base for the US Pacific fleet. Often the author will casually refer to "damage at such-and-such a frame number" and it's not clear to a non-expert where that is.Īs the Japanese planes were leaving Pearl Harbor, there were a number of challenges that had to be solved - a rescue mission for possible trapped survivors, dealing with the wreckage and bodies, clearing the facilities around Pearl Harbor (including dry docks and berths), determining what to try to salvage, and salvaging ships. The prose is competent but at a few points I was wishing for more explanation. He avoids describing the raid itself, and likewise avoids becoming a broader history of the war or the ships in question. The conditions during the salvage were horrendous and the author includes just the right amount of detail to let the reader imagine it in its misery and horror.
Raising a sunk ship is always a big job - and it's a an awful job when the ships were sunk with fuel and supplies on board, dead crew on board, and so forth. The salvage is quite interesting as an engineering story, and the context - what was Pearl Harbor like just after the raid, and during the war - was even more so. Of the smaller ships damaged or sunk, all but one were returned to service. Of those five wrecked ships, four were raised, and three were eventually returned to service. The Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor sunk three battleships, and left two more serious damaged and sinking. Wallin, head of Pearl Harbor salvage operation. "It is well for Salvage Officers to remember that ships are designed to float, and they will float if given half a chance" - Homer N. His book is based almost entirely on primary sources, including the records of the fleet salvage unit and the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Madsen explains how a salvage organization was first set up, how priorities were scheduled, what specific plans were made and how they worked or, in many cases, did not work. Numerous photographs, many never before published in books for the general public, give readers a real appreciation for the momentous task involved, from the raising of the USS Oglala in 1942 and the USS Oklahoma in 1943 to the eventual dismantling of the above-water portions of the USS Arizona. But rather than writing a dry operational report, Dan Madsen describes the Navy's dramatic race to clear the harbor and repair as many ships as possible so they could return to the fleet ready for war.
The author tells the story in a narrative style, moving from activity to activity as the days and months wore on, in what proved to be an incredibly difficult and complex endeavor.
Navy, the book looks at the massive salvage effort that followed the attack, beginning with the damage control efforts aboard the sinking and damaged ships in the harbor on 7 December 1941 and ending in March 1944 when salvage efforts on the USS Utah were finally abandoned. Aimed at the general reader with an interest in World War II and the U.S. This work takes an entirely new perspective. The attack on Pearl Harbor is a topic of perennial interest to the American public, and a long line of popular books and movies have focused on the attack or events leading up to it.
0 kommentar(er)
