The morning of December 7, 1941 found Pearl Harbor under a brilliant blue sky and bathed in sunlight and warm breezes. Church bells ringing in the Sunday mass could be heard by the sailors of the forenoon watch taking their breakfast, and sailors on the battleship U.S.S. Nevada hoisted the morning colors while the band on the fantail piped the national anthem. At 7:55am, Rear Admiral William Furlong, skipper of the U.S.S. Oglala, spotted a plane descending on the runway of Ford Island diving too steeply to be coming in for a landing, and saw it drop a bomb on the seaplane ramp. When the plane turned about, he saw the red-orange insignia on the fuselage and knew in that moment that Pearl Harbor was being attacked by the Japanese. He sounded general quarters, and hoisted the signal â??All Ships in Harbor Sortie.â?
The situation in the harbor now was hellish. Men on deck being strafed and bombed tried desperately to man the AA guns to fend off the attackers, ships shook and roared fire from the explosions, lights went dark, and crew members below deck milled about in confusion. The Japanese plastered the heavily armored USS Arizona with four armor-piercing incendiaries, the fourth of which detonated the forward magazine like a massive hand grenade, sending armor plate, debris, and bodies all mushrooming two-hundred feet into the sky, instantly killing 1177 of the 1400 Arizona crewmen who died in the attack.
Below the decks of the other ships, mattresses and shores plugged holes from bombs and torpedoes against the oil-drenched water. Surgeons with bloody scalpels bent above the wounded, the acrid odor of cordite smoke filled the dank air, and burned men screamed in agony. Crippled by explosions, and hopelessly blanketed with holes and fire, ships like the U.S.S. California, the U.S.S. Nevada, and others either sank, capsized, or were run aground.
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