Pearl Harbor, 1941 – a Navy diver's memoir * The chief diver of the
Pearl Harbor salvage operations tells the whole story of the desperate attempts
to save crewmembers caught inside their sinking ships
On 7th December 1941, as the great battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and
Utah lay paralysed and burning in the aftermath
of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a crack team of US Navy salvage divers
headed by Edward C. Raymer were hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. The divers had been given a
Herculean task; to rescue the sailors and Marines trapped below, and resurrect
the pride of the Pacific fleet.
Now for the first time, the chief diver of the Pearl Harbor salvage operations, Cmdr. Edward C. Raymer,
USN (Ret.), tells the whole story, in the only book available that describes the
raising and salvage operations of sunken battleships following the December 7th
attack.
Once Raymer and his crew of divers entered the interiors of the
sunken shipwrecks, attempting untested and potentially deadly diving techniques,
they experienced a world of total blackness, unable to see even the faceplates
of their helmets. By memorising the ships’ blueprints and using their sense of
touch, the divers groped their way hundreds of feet inside the sunken vessels to
make repairs and salvage vital war material. The divers learned how to cope with
such unseen dangers as falling objects, sharks, the eerie presence of floating
human bodies, and the constant threat of Japanese attacks from above.
Though many of these divers were killed or seriously injured during
the wartime salvage operations, on the whole they had great success performing
what seemed to be impossible jobs. Among their credits, Raymer’s crew raised the
sunken battleships West Virginia, Nevada, and California.
