Mid-Summer Musings (7/28/2023)

Riddleblog and Blessed Hope Podcast news:

  • I will be taking a short break at the blog and the pod—the mountains are calling.

  • I’ve begun a new Riddleblog series, A Primer on Reformed Liturgics (with two installments posted so far). Once completed, I’ll compile them as a single document under Riddleblog publications.

  • I’ve completed my series on 1 Peter, and will tackle 2 Peter next.

  • Lord willing, the next up in the Blessed Hope Podcast series, “The Future,” is “The Returning King and His Kingdom.” Look for it upon my return.

  • Did I mention how much I hate endnotes in books?

Recently Read: Avenging Pearl Harbor

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked a sleeping Pacific Fleet moored in a line near Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. Battleships were the main target of the attack (since no American aircraft carriers were present). America’s battleship fleet was composed of World War One vintage warships, named for states. They had been modernized over time, but none had sufficient modern anti-aircraft weapons or torpedo protection.

Like many of you, in my youth I built several of Revell’s model of the USS Arizona. It was a rite of passage. Getting those tripod masts to fit was a real challenge. Painting the waterline red and getting it perfectly straight was even harder. So the fate of these ships has long been of interest to me.

The Arizona suffered a magazine explosion and was destroyed beyond repair. Many of you have visited the memorial. One thousand, one hundred and seventy-seven sailors died in the conflagration. The Battleship Utah (which had been demoted to a target ship) was anchored on the other side of the harbor, was sunk, and still remains at its berth as a war grave to this day (though few visit it). The Oklahoma took a number of torpedoes, and capsized in the shallow water with hundreds of men trapped inside. Four hundred and twenty-nine men died. Many survived within the ship for some time before dying from lack of oxygen—a more terrible manner of death is hard to imagine. But thirty-two of those trapped below decks were eventually rescued—an amazing ordeal and a heroic effort to cut through the hull to rescue them. The California sunk upright at the end of the line. The Nevada got underway but was run aground by its captain to keep his ship from sinking in the channel, so as not to block it. The Pennsylvania was in dry dock and suffered relatively minor damage. The Tennessee, West Virginia, and Maryland all sank at their moorings and were badly damaged.

What to do with the five salvageable warships? This is the subject of Avenging Pearl Harbor: America's Battleships Raised from the Dead. The author recounts what is truly a herculean effort by engineers and scores of tradesman, raising the ships out of the mud and muck, getting them seaworthy enough so they could return to ports in the American mainland so that they could be repaired and modernized and eventually return to the fight. It took a year or more to complete the work on most of them, but return to fight they did, including the Battle of Suriago Strait on October 24-25, 1944, when the Pennsylvania, California, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee turned their guns on a Japanese fleet attempting to sneak through the straits at night (a part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf). The large Japanese fleet (with multiple capital ships) was utterly destroyed.

That story is well-known and often told (The Battle of Leyte Gulf). What Keith Warren Lloyd does in his book is describe the salvage operations in Pearl Harbor in conditions beyond human imagination. Each of these sunken battleships had thousands of pounds of meat, dairy, and produce in their freezers, human remains throughout, tons of petroleum products and toxic chemicals, along with tons of gunpowder and explosive shells in their magazines. We associate heroism with combat—rightly so. But I dare say it took very brave men to don primitive diving gear to go into these ships where toxic fumes filled the spaces below that had not flooded and which would kill them immediately if exposed.

All in all, it is a remarkable story of how tradesmen, divers, welders, carpenters and others did something thought impossible—raise giant warships from the dead to live and fight again. This is a well-told look at a triumph of good ole American know how and tenacity.

Currently Reading: Stacy Schiff's, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

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Links to Well . . . Some Interesting Stuff:

Video: The “goat man” — Newsreaders lose it!

MusingsKim RiddlebargerPearl Harbor, The Five Cities of David, Goat man, What Is Narual Law?, Machen on Christian doctrineComment