For the history/WWII phobes amongst us, just a reminder that today, the 7th December, marks the 68th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the end result of which was America’s belated entry into WWII as a combatant nation.
Perhaps a lesser-known fact of this famous event was the salvage operation that took place in the wake of the attack. Despite the horrific conditions and the rudimentary gear in use, US Navy salvage teams worked for 22000 hours in over 5000 separate, hard-hat dives to patch sunken ships and refloat them, remove armament and ordnance from sunken ships and repatriate human remains and other important items from the hulls of sunken ships.
The success of this operation, which took over a year to complete was that, despite the huge losses that the Navy had suffered in the attack, all but a handful of sunken ships were raised, refloated, repaired and returned for duty in the war against Japan, most within a calendar year of the day of the attack.
You can read more about this fascinating story here and in many other web sites that can be found with a quick “google”.
Thanks for reading, I hope you find this little-known historical gem as interesting as I did when I first discovered it.
