Transcription
In 1941, the USS Oklahoma capsized at Pearl Harbor with 429 men trapped inside. The US Navy spent two years raising the battleship. Then six years later, they lost it again.
>> [music] >>
Today, nobody knows exactly where the USS Oklahoma is. Not because nobody cared, not because nobody tried, but because somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 27,000 tons of steel simply disappeared.
[music]
And nearly 80 years later, it is still one of the hardest American warships
[music]
to find. Before I go any further, I am genuinely curious. Where in the world are you watching this from right now? And do you have any personal connection to the USS Oklahoma or to any of the ships at Pearl Harbor that morning? A family member, a relative, anyone? Let me know in the comments below.
The USS Oklahoma was a Nevada-class battleship commissioned in 1916, 583 ft long, 27,000 tons of steel. The USS Oklahoma had survived World War I, a hurricane, a broken propeller shaft, and three decades of service across two oceans.
On the morning of December the 7th, 1941, the USS Oklahoma was moored on Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor. The hatches were open. The guns had been broken down for cleaning. The next morning, an admiral's inspection was scheduled. That inspection never happened.
At 7:57 in the morning, Japanese torpedo bombers hit the USS Oklahoma. Then they hit the battleship again and again. The USS Oklahoma took at least five torpedoes in the first 12 minutes. With the hatches open, water poured straight through the hole. There was no time to counter flood, no time to fight back. The USS Oklahoma began to roll. Commander Jesse Kenworthy gave the order to abandon ship. Men jumped 50 ft into water covered in burning oil. Others crawled across mooring lines to reach the USS Maryland moored alongside. Some men never made it off at all.
Within 20 minutes of the first torpedo hit, the USS Oklahoma had capsized completely. Her hull was upturned, her mast digging into the harbor floor, her keel pointing at the sky. 429 men were dead or trapped inside. For witnesses on the shore that morning, one historian recorded that the sight of the USS Oklahoma rolling over was the crowning horror of the day.
Because here is where the story gets strange. The US Navy decided to raise the USS Oklahoma, not to return the battleship to service. The damage was too severe for that. But because the capsized hole was blocking the harbor channel, what followed was the largest and most difficult salvage operation in Pearl Harbor history.
21 massive winches were bolted to Ford Island. Hundreds of cables were rigged from the island directly to the hull of the USS Oklahoma. Over months, the cables were slowly tightened, 1° at a time. The USS Oklahoma was hauled upright. By the end of 1943, 2 years after the attack, the USS Oklahoma finally floated again.
Inside the hull, salvage crews found what they'd been dreading. The remains of most of the 429 men were still there, in the dark, exactly where they'd been since December 7th, 1941. Because identification was nearly impossible after 2 years underwater, most were buried as unknowns. Only 35 of the 429 were ever identified in the years immediately after the war. The rest went into mass graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. For most families, there was no grave with a name on it. No confirmation, no closure. It would take DNA technology and another 70 years before families finally got answers. By 2021, 361 of the 429 had finally been identified. The last 51 never will be.
The US Navy examined the USS Oklahoma and confirmed what they already suspected. The USS Oklahoma was too old, too damaged, and too expensive to repair. The battleship was decommissioned on September 1st, 1944, stripped of every gun, every piece of equipment, every usable part, then sold. The price the US Navy accepted for the USS Oklahoma was $46,127. A battleship that had cost nearly $6 million to build sold for less than the price of a house.
Here is the part I had to read twice. In May 1947, two tugboats, the Hercules and the Monarch, left Pearl Harbor towing what remained of the USS Oklahoma. The destination was a scrapyard in San Francisco Bay. The USS Oklahoma would be broken up for metal. The voyage should have taken around 2 weeks. It never arrived.
On May the 17th, 540 miles from Hawaii, the two tugs sailed into a storm. The searchlight on the Hercules swung onto the hull of the USS Oklahoma. The battleship was listing heavily to one side. Both tugs radioed Pearl Harbor and were ordered to turn back. Then without warning, the Hercules was pulled backwards through the water. The USS Oklahoma was sinking straight down. The weight of 27,000 tons was dragging both tugs with it. Both captains desperately released their tow cables. The Monarch got free. The Hercules was dragged backwards, stern first, until the very last moment before the cables finally released. The crew of the Hercules later said it was the closest they'd ever come to going down with the ship. The USS Oklahoma sank into 3,000 ft of Pacific Ocean in minutes.
And here is the detail nobody talks about. No coordinates were recorded. The tug crews were fighting for their lives. Nobody wrote down exactly where the USS Oklahoma went down. And that is exactly why finding the USS Oklahoma today is so difficult. Because losing a battleship is one thing. Trying to locate one in the Pacific Ocean nearly 80 years later is something else entirely.
Think about what any search team is actually up against. The USS Oklahoma is somewhere in 3,000 ft of water. Deep enough that standard
[snorts]
diving equipment cannot reach it. The storm hit in the middle of the night. The tug crews gave only an approximate position, somewhere around 540 mi northeast of Hawaii. That is not a location. That is an area the size of a small contra country. Any search would need specialist deep water sonar equipment, weeks at sea, and a budget that no government or private team has yet committed to the USS Oklahoma specifically. And even if a search team found something on the ocean floor at that depth, confirming it is the USS Oklahoma rather than another wreck would require remotely operated vehicles, detailed inspection, and time. The wreck has never been conclusively found. No expedition has ever confirmed it. The USS Oklahoma is down there, but where exactly nobody knows.
The Arizona memorial draws over 1 million visitors every year. Boats run to it every 15 minutes. The USS Oklahoma has a memorial, too. 429 white marble posts, one for each man lost, standing on Ford Island near the spot where the USS Oklahoma was moored on that morning. Most
[music]
visitors never see it, and the USS Oklahoma itself is somewhere on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, not in a museum, not marked on a chart, not even found, still waiting.
The Japanese failed to destroy the USS Oklahoma. United States Navy raised it from the bottom of Pearl Harbor by 2 years of salvage work,
[music]
then 6 years later, on a journey to the scrapyard, it vanished again. And nearly 80 years later, one of America's most famous Pearl Harbor battleships is still
[music]
somewhere beneath the Pacific Ocean. The Japanese could not destroy it.
>> [music] >>
The journey to the scrapyard did.