LIKE A PHOENIX: SALVAGE AND REBUILDING
A week before Christmas 1942, two men hurried to keep an appointment with the Commandant of the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard. Robert Trumbull of the New York Times and Keith Wheeler of the Chicago Times were ushered into the office of Rear Admiral William R. Furlong. After exchanging pleasantries, perhaps with a comment on Trumbull's recent piece on Admiral Halsey, the officer pulled out a "bulging manila envelope of pictures." "Look here," he began and so revealed to the correspondents one of the most extensive salvage operations in US Naval History, the raising and temporary repair of the sunken battleship West Virginia, his command back in 1936-1937.
When the great fires on the West Virginia were finally extinguished late on December 8, 1941, the 31,800 ton pride of the Pacific Battle Force was revealed as a mangled hulk. Thanks to quick counter-flooding early in the previous day's raid, the "Wee Vee" had just barely avoided capsizing, a fatal fate from which the nearby Oklahoma did not escape. Sunk nevertheless, she now lay listing some 30 degrees to port with her starboard bilge hooked into the adjacent Tennessee. The 18-year old lady, her wrinkled bottom deep in the mud, sadly showed a 50-foot draft forward and a 40-foot draft aft. Hugh gashes had been blown out of the port side above and below her armor belt by the seven Japanese "Long Lance" torpedoes. A giant gap 120 feet long was opened along that belt, "so wide(10-15) from lip to lip that two tall men could stand, one on the others shoulders, in the vent." A hit aft had destroyed the ship's steering apparatus, broken the huge steel castings holding the stern posts, and knocked off the rudder. Topside, the damage was just as severe.
A bomb, actually a converted 15-inch naval shell, had damaged 16-inch Turret Three; another had passed through the foretop and down through the boat deck leaving both shattered. An explosion abaft the bridge where Captain Mervyn Bennion had died had damaged all the upper works and pushed the main, second and third decks down so that they actually joined together some ten feet below the last named level. The entire area was opened "the way an earthquake might take away the wall of a four story building, leaving the rooms indecently exposed." Even a 5-inch gun in a rended casemate fell a full deck below, as if sprung from a trapdoor. Inside, the ship appeared "as if she had been crumpled like a paper in a giant hand" - a hand which had then applied a blowtorch to the remains. It is amazing that her casualty rate was so low.
Many of those examining the West Virginia at the close of 1941 thought her finished. The new Pacific Fleet chief Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was appalled at the damage to this and other vessels in the harbor. A few still had faith, notably Acting Captain Lt. Commander F.H. White and those "Wee Vee" ratings not transferred elsewhere. They, together with various divers and salvage experts, recognized the one important fact - she lay on an almost even keel. A shallow berth had saved her from the fate of the HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales caught on the open sea off Singapore on December 10 and sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers. Given time and resources, it might be possible to raise the Mountain State namesake.