Daniel Madsen - Resurrection: Salvaging the Battle Fleet at Pearl Harbor

Daniel Madsen

Naval Institute Press

Annapolis, Maryland

This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Edward S. and Joyce I. Miller.

Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402

2003 by Daniel Madsen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2013.

ISBN: 978-1-61251-354-6

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Madsen, Daniel

Resurrection : salvaging the battle fleet at Pearl Harbor / Daniel Madsen.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), Attack on, 1941. 2. Damage control (Warships). I. Title.

D767.92.M33 2003

940.5425dc21

2002153479

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

To my mom and dad

And to Radarman Second-Class George Schoen, United States Navy, 19242001

It is gratifying to publicly thank the people who helped bring this book to fruition. Paul Wilderson, executive editor at the Naval Institute Press, again gave me the chance to tell a story. The advice, questions, comments, and input of manuscript editor Mary Yates were most welcome and always helpful. The book is a better one because of her. Craig Triplett was the production editor at the press and was both knowledgeable and a pleasure to work with, as was photo editor Jennifer Till. Anne Boston designed the striking book jacket.

I am grateful to Dave Genereaux, who shared photographs and articles about his uncle, Emile Genereaux. Lebbeus Curtis VII also contributed a photograph and memories of his grandfather, Lebbeus Curtis V. Tom Gillette sent me helpful information about his father, Claude Gillette, as did Vice Adm. George P. Steele, USN (Ret.), about his father, James Steele. And I had a most pleasant visit with Norm Wallin as he shared memories, photographs, tapes, and documents about his father, Homer Wallin.

The staff at the National Archives was as helpful as always. Thanks to Kathy OConnor, Lisa Miller, and Bob Glass in San Bruno, California; and Barry Zerby and Annette Williams in College Park, Maryland.

Ken Johnson at the Naval Historical Center provided the papers of Vice Adm. Homer N. Wallin, and Ed Finney researched photographs of the attack and salvage.

Im also grateful to Susan Evans of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers for permission to use illustrations from the 1944 article in Transactions on the Oklahoma salvage. Thanks also to Helen Weltin of the Schenectady Museum Archives for information from Men and Volts at War, and to Mairi Decalvo of the Petaluma Library for tracking down volumes of the congressional hearings on the attack for my extended use at home.

I had the encouragement of friends every step of the way. Kari Holmes gave me a most interesting book on marine salvage, while Gary Delagnes read parts of the manuscript for me. To them, and to all of my friends, I say thank you. Your support meant more than you could know.

My thanks and love to my mom and dad and sister for their unending support. And to my brother Scott, who also read parts of the manuscript with a helpful eye for detail.

Finally, my thanks and love to my sons Robert and Matthew and to my wife Lorrinda, who once again kept me on track and always knew I could. The book would not have been possible without her.

The attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was perhaps the defining moment of the past century for the United States. In less than two hours the country was transformed from a divided, isolationist nation still in the grip of the Great Depression into a single-minded juggernaut that developed the industrial, economic, and military might to lead the Allies to victory over the combined armed forces of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

More than six decades later, the subject of the Japanese sneak attack on Hawaii that December morning is still a seemingly inexhaustible source of debate, discussion, research, and interest. This book is concerned with one aspect of the Pearl Harbor saga: the aftermath of the attack and the salvage of the ships. Surprisingly little has been written about the salvage operation in book form. Captain (later Vice Admiral) Homer Wallin, in charge of the effort from early January to mid-July 1942, wrote an account more than twenty years later based on his official salvage report. There have been some memoirs that dealt with the aftermath. But in most works on Pearl Harbor the account of the salvage operation is little more than a postscript.

As important as it is to tell what this book is, it may be equally important to tell what it is not. It is not an examination of the events that led to the attack, or of the attack itself. That story has been told and told well. It is not a definitive summary of the damage inflicted. The salvage officers were less concerned with the number of torpedo and bomb hits than they were with the resulting damage, and then only as it pertained to the problem of salvage, so that subsequent damage analysis unknown to the salvage teams at the time has been avoided. It is not a technical report filled with weight and buoyancy calculations, engineering minutiae, and construction details.

The goal of the Salvage Organization formed in the days after the attack was simply stated in the first of the daily memoranda issued by its commanding officer: to deliver ships and equipment to the Navy Yard for disposition. The goal of this book is equally simple: to tell that story. History is, after all, a series of stories. This book is one of them, that of the officers and men at Pearl Harbor trying to bring order out of chaos in the days after the attack; prioritizing the use of scarce equipment, supplies, and men; learning what they could about what had happened; and recovering from the blow. With the benefit of time it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the outcome of the war was far from a foregone conclusion in early 1942. The very real possibility existed that America could lose the war. It was against this backdrop that the salvage team got down to work getting the damaged fleet back into the fight.

Saturday, 6 December 1941, was a typical late autumn day in Hawaii: sunny and breezy with high white clouds and bright blue skies. Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, was the home port of the United States Pacific Fleet, and over one hundred warships and auxiliary vessels, along with scores of yard craft, barges, tugs, and derricks, crowded the small anchorage on this quiet eighteenth day before Christmas. The warm wind fluttered the Stars and Stripes on the ships and snapped the signal flags strung along the halyards. Small boats plied the waters carrying liberty parties and work crews to and from the ships.

The sloping hills surrounding the harbor were green with lush tropical vegetation and sugarcane fields, and the mountain range to the north was topped with the ubiquitous white and gray clouds. The harbor water was calm, the surface disturbed only by the wind and by the occasional small boat. The glare of the tropical midday sun was gradually replaced by the sharpened features and raised relief brought out by the late-afternoon light, and before long the setting sun cast long shadows, darkening the stately gray battlewagons tied up in the center of the harbor alongside Ford Island at Battleship Row. Eight of the Pacific Fleets nine battleships were in port this weekend, one of them in dry dock.