Japan Hit 8 Battleships at Pearl Harbor. 6 Came Back for Revenge

Eight American battleships were hit at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. Two never fought again. Six came back — some of them raised from the mud of the harbor floor. This is the story of the salvage of the Pacific Fleet: of Seaman Stephen Young, trapped in the dark inside the capsized USS Oklahoma, tapping SOS on the steel with a wrench, and of Julio DeCastro's crew of Navy Yard civilians who cut thirty-two men out through the bottom of the hull. Of Captain Homer Wallin's salvage organization, and the Navy and civilian divers who made thousands of dives into black, oil-filled wrecks where hydrogen sulfide gas could kill a man in minutes. Of the timber walls that brought the California up, the giant patches and underwater concrete that floated the West Virginia — and the dry storeroom deep inside her where three young sailors had crossed off the days on a calendar until December 23. And of the twenty-one winches on Ford Island that rolled the Oklahoma back upright in 1943. It is also the story of what the raised ships did next: the Nevada firing on Utah Beach on D-Day, and the night of October 25, 1944, in Surigao Strait, when a battle line made up mostly of Pearl Harbor battleships — two of them once sunk — fought the last battleship-versus-battleship action in history. CHAPTERS 00:00 Tapping in the dark 02:25 The hammer 04:38 Battleship Row 06:48 Divers in the dark 08:45 The gas 10:55 Sixteen days 13:14 Turning the Oklahoma 15:34 The ones that came back 17:21 Surigao Strait 20:12 What the harbor gave back 22:02 The reflection SOURCES & IMAGE CREDITS All photographs are in the public domain, drawn from U.S. Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command, National Archives (NARA) and Library of Congress public-domain material via Wikimedia Commons. Full per-image credits are in the pinned comment. A NOTE ON THE NARRATION This video uses a synthetic (AI-generated) narration voice. No real person's voice is imitated or cloned. #PearlHarbor #WWII #USNavy