The U.S.S. Arizona: Still in Harm's Way

Oil oozing into the murky brine of Pearl Harbor and bulkheads slowly eroding under the pounding of a relentless sea mark the 14-inch tur-

LAST BATTLE OF THE U.S.S. ARIZONA

ret guns of the battleship U.S.S. Arizona loomed enormously in the tea-colored salt water of Pearl Harbor. As the National Park Service divers approached, sergeant major fish darted for cover inside the muzzles.

An underwater light aimed down an open hatch, where the deck has collapsed into the forward compartments, revealed jagged bulkheads that gaped like shark's teeth among the dancing shadows. Wires that once buzzed with the desperate voices of men under attack hung limply in the still interior.

For more than four decades, the Arizona lay undisturbed beneath the oily waters of the harbor. Passing ships still dip their colors in respect. But concern about public safety prompted the park service in 1983 to order the battleship surveyed.

Divers would note every feature but would not swim inside where 1,177 sailors and marines are entombed. The job went to the park service's Submerged Cultural Research Unit at Santa Fe, New Mexico. "At the time we came into

LAST BATTLE

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 12 AND 13) "Battleship Row," by Arizona artist Robert McCall, recalls the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The 7 by 11-foot oil painting is on loan to the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

(RIGHT) Damage in the bow of the U.S.S. Arizona was so bad that divers at times bad difficulty telling whether they were still outside the ship.

(BOTTOM, PAGES 14 AND 15) Numerous 5inch naval projectiles were found in the ship area below the memorial.

(TOP, RIGHT) A broken bowl and bent fork are poignant reminders of the sailors and marines who died aboard the battleship. L. MURPHY (BELOW, RIGHT) This hatch with its cover open is just behind the No. 1 gun turret in the bow of the ship. L. MURPHY (OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP) The No. 1 turret was left with its three guns in place although others were salvaged after the attack.

"Before the picture, there was very little idea of what was down there," archeologist Daniel J. Lenihan recalls. "It was not clear that something as dramatic as the forward turret was still there."

Besides mapping the hulk, a national monument since 1962, archeologists under Lenihan's direction were to determine if the Arizona was near collapse or con-tained old munitions. Finally, they were to establish a corrosion study that continues to this day.

The Arizona proved rather well pre-served, considering it lies in warm water. Much of the teak decking is intact. Where the galley had been, a broken bowl and twisted fork provide the only trace of the men who walked these decks 50 years ago.

Marine life has established beachheads among the shattered steel plates of the ship. Fish scuttle about; sea plants bloom in the hawser pipes.

Air trapped since December 7, 1941, gives glass portholes a goggle-eyed look. For Lenihan, the air represents a tangible link to the past, and to the cataclysmic event that brought the United States into World War II.

gives glass portholes a goggle-eyed look. For Lenihan, the air represents a tangible link to the past, and to the cataclysmic event that brought the United States into World War II.

"We looked through the portholes, and you could see the havoc in there," Lenihan says. "In places it was frightening. When I saw all the twisted metal I thought, if this is conventional warfare, what would it be like if somebody dropped nuclear bombs?"

Probes were used to test temperatures and oxygen content of the water, and a camera was extended inside to photograph corrosion.

"The area around the stern was very still and quiet, and it didn't look like there was much damage," Lenihan says. No attempt was made to look for human remains. "We figured that wasn't our job," he explains. "We looked in, down the hatches, but as far as going in, no one did," adds one diver. Lenihan says the ship seemed to have overpowering presence at times and was occasionally spooky. "Sometimes, swimming around alone at the end of the day, something would come over me, and I'd get a feeling of not being alone, you know?"

The 608-foot battleship cannot be seen all at one time in the murky harbor soup. Rather, the ship unfolds from the gloom like a gigantic mosaic. Beneath the Arizona Memorial, a modern debris field has formed where the burial urns of Pearl Harbor survivors, memorial photos, and tourist flotsam have settled to the deck.

"They've taken lots of coins off," Lenihan says. “They tried to send the coins to the treasury, but it wouldn't accept them, I think because of corrosion.” Corrosion is the Arizona's final enemy. In time, the sea will finish the destruction begun by the Japanese warplanes, as corrosive brine gnaws relentlessly at the steel.

A shroud of anaerobic scum covers the ship, enclosing it in a protective low-oxygen cocoon against the salt. “We feel this biofouling is helping to preserve the ship, like a scab,” Lenihan says. “This doesn't mean we know when the ship will fall apart; we really don't know.” Efforts to clean up Pearl Harbor could spell trouble for the Arizona. “In the long run, a cleanup won't be the best thing for the preservation of the vessel,” says Lenihan.

The park service receives help monitoring corrosion aboard the Arizona from the University of Hawaii and from the Naval Oceans Systems Center at Henderson Field, Hawaii. U.S. Navy Reserve divers also provide support.

The keel of the Arizona Nevadaclass battleship No. 39 on the U.S. Navy's registry was laid in 1915, and the ship put to sea in 1916, protected against torpedoes by a thick armor belt. However, design shortcomings left it vulnerable to aerial bombs.

After a Japanese bomb struck near the bow, the Arizona exploded and quickly settled in her moorings off Ford Island in 40 feet of water. A steady seep of bunker oil bubbles to the surface, marking the wreck with a petroleum rainbow. (The battleship Utah with a formidable array of ordnance is on its side, guns and armor intact, on the other side of Ford Island. Fifty-three sailors are entombed inside.) “When I first looked at it, I knew the job was going to be tough,” Lenihan says. “We knew nobody had tried to map an underwater structure as large as that before.” Preliminary dives confirmed park service fears about munitions on board. There were five-inch shells right under the memorial, “all kinds of ordnance,” Lenihan recounts. “There were bags and bags of what appeared to be congealed black powder.” Navy explosives specialists quietly removed the shells.

Everything else was left where it was found. “We didn't even take pieces of metal as samples,” Lenihan says. “We didn't want to have any kind of impact on the vessel whatsoever.” Another objective was to discover where the oil was coming from. The source was found quickly. The oil dribbles slowly out of a seam over the engine room on the starboard side, near the turret guns.

“Steps could be taken to stop the leakage but that hasn't been done because we don't know how much oil was lost in the ship,” he says. “There is a little bit of concern about what might happen if the bulk-heads collapse.” Thick toxic oil might flood into the harbor. Prudently, the park service allows the droplets of oil to bleed away.

The Arizona underwent salvage soon after the attack. The guns, except in the No. 1 turret, were taken for shore batteries; the superstructure and deck armor were shorn away, leaving only the main deck and hull. Holes in the ship's deck, which tourists can see from the memorial, were not caused by bombs but by the removal of ship's equipment during salvage.

Approximately 20 feet of the hull has settled into the bottom. The knife-edged bow seems to slice into the muck. In the stern, part of the rudder sticks out, but the Arizona's three huge screws are buried.

“Part of our team said they saw Arizona on the stern,” Lenihan says, “but by the time I got back there, where they had been [working] with a wire brush, there was no sign.” Most accounts credit bombs with sinking the Arizona. However, some people reported seeing a torpedo headed for the

ship. The park service archeologists tried to resolve the controversy. Long rods were pushed deep into the sediment along the hull in search of a torpedo entry hole. “We could not absolutely settle that issue,” Lenihan admits. “We have been over every inch of the Arizona, excluding what’s beneath the silt. It’s possible there could be a torpedo entry hole, but we saw nothing to indicate a torpedo hit. Usually there’s a buckling effect after a torpedo explosion, and we didn’t see any of this. We think it was an aerial bomb.”That’s also the conclusion of naval experts. The enemy used naval projectiles converted into bombs for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and one of these probably exploded near an open hatch leading to the forward powder magazine. The Arizona went up like a Roman candle. Archeologists stretched a system of grids along the deck, including over the devastated forward section. As many as 60 divers at a time worked on the surveying project.“There were times when you couldn’t tell whether you were going under an overhang of metal or into the ship,” Lenihan says. “Remember, we had to be very close to the structure in that kind of low visibility. We would stop with our lights until we could figure out where we were going with our tape measures. And if it turned out we were going into the entrance of the superstructure, we stopped.” The bow area posed a special problem. “We kept coming up with measurements a couple feet wider than they were supposed to be. I thought, maybe we turned an angle wrong, and I went back and checked all the angles and lines. We had a land team come in and extend targets out of the water. We found out our string lines were right. What we didn’t see because we were in such low visibility, and so close to it, was that we had this buckling-tin-can compression effect; the ship had actually expanded in the bow area, probably the result of the magazine blowing up.” The Arizona had a normal displacement of 31,400 tons and four gun turrets. It was fitted just before the attack with additional antiaircraft defenses.

For Americans, Pearl Harbor was the most important event that led to our entering World War II. For that reason, the park service is considering expanding its archeological efforts.

As part of the exploration of the Arizona, archeologists with the help of the Navy swept the bottom of Pearl Harbor, and the sea bottom outside the harbor mouth, with side-scanning sonar in a search for downed Japanese aircraft and miniature submarines. None was found, but a new search is being conducted. The park service regards the crashed planes, and the possible sinking of mini-subs, as important to the archeological story of Pearl Harbor and the American ships that were sunk.

A 1989 report makes this point: “The remains of the U.S.S. Arizona, U.S.S. Utah, the Japanese planes and submarines that initiated the attack, and even the bullet holes in the buildings at Hickam Field and Schofield Barracks comprise a material statement that both archeologically and symbolically preserves the reality of World War II in a manner that could never be replicated by books, films, or pictures."

LAST BATTLE

The sediment around the Arizona yielded little. "The debris field is largely nonexistent," Lenihan says. "We looked around the harbor pretty well, and the only thing we found appeared to be a bumper."

Drawings and data compiled by the park service are available to researchers, and a detailed map and a scale model of the hulk built by Robert Sumrall of Annapolis, Maryland, are on display in the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial.

Scientists are not through with the Arizona. Another 10 years may be required before the rate of corrosion can be predicted. The leaking oil is a concern, too, and there is fear more munitions are on board. Swimming inside could provide answers, but that's not likely to happen.

"Sure, I'm interested in entering the wreck," a diver admits. "But we're not going to. It's a war memorial. We decided to respect that."

Small pieces of metal will be removed from the ship, so a laboratory can estimate when the vessel will lose its battle against the relentless sea. And there could be additional probes placed inside.

The Arizona's big guns stand sentinel over secrets scientists strive to unscramble. The surviving parts of the Arizona, the technology aboard, the position of the ship during the attack, offer archeologists another look at what we were as a nation, and what we thought of ourselves a half-century ago, when the chips were down."