The Diary Behind the Raising of Pearl Harbor's Battleships

Japan sank them in one morning. The U.S. Navy raised them and sent them back to war. December 7, 1941: nineteen ships sunk or damaged, eight of them battleships, about 2,400 Americans dead. Three years later, some of those same battleships fought in Surigao Strait, the last battleship-versus-battleship battle in history. So how do you lift a battleship off the bottom of a harbor? With divers in two-hundred-pound helmets, welders, a wall of concrete, and a salvage officer who wrote down every failure in a diary. Open it with us, entry by entry. CHAPTERS 0:00 Japan sank them in one morning 1:03 The salvage team forms 1:37 20,000 hours underwater 2:29 Nevada comes up first 3:35 California rises off the bottom 6:04 West Virginia: the big one 8:20 Turning Oklahoma back over 9:31 Back in the fleet 10:10 Surigao Strait: the last battleship duel 11:57 Tokyo Bay 12:15 The man who kept them fit to fight SOURCES Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC): "Post-Attack Ship Salvage"; "Salvage and Repair of USS California / USS West Virginia"; "Salvage of USS Oklahoma"; "Fit to Fight: American Shipbuilding and Salvage Comes Through in the Wake of Pearl Harbor" Captain Homer N. Wallin's salvage diary and Pearl Harbor Salvage Report (Bureau of Ships, 1944) National Park Service, Submerged Cultural Resources Study DANFS and the National WWII Museum for ship histories and dates ARCHIVAL PHOTOS Official U.S. Navy photographs from NHHC and the National Archives (NARA), and the Furlong Collection, Hawaii State Archives. U.S. government works / public domain. Archival photos are labeled in the video. Narration uses an AI voice. Some scenes are AI-generated recreations; archival photos are labeled. Hammer & Helmet: military engineering and the people who built the impossible. Subscribe for the next one.