| Forgotten Fleet:
Task Force One, Part One
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
September 2024
 When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Pacific Fleet’s primary fighting strength lay in its nine battleships. Most of them topped twenty years in service, but all had been modernized and they underwent frequent training at sea, with at least three of them at sea at all times. They operated both as a battle line (usually six ships) or with the aircraft carriers (usually the other three) in an intensive training cycle.
Two new fast battleships had been commissioned earlier in 1941, with eight more under construction. The Navy had been steadily modernizing its older battleships, and in 1939 presented a program to rebuild the five most recent ships, the Tennessee and Colorado classes, with new boilers, fire direction and anti-torpedo blisters. Future Chief of Naval Operations Ernest J. King, a naval aviator by trade, headed a special commission, the King Board, to assess the anti-aircraft defenses of all American warships. The King Board recommended a radical revision of the “Big Five’s” secondary armament, replacing the casemate-mounted single-purpose guns with the same twin dual-purpose gunhouses carried by the new battleships. The ungainly cage masts should be replaced, to clear fields of fire for the new anti-aircraft battery, and the ships would need new fire control to handle the new weapons. Because of the heightened threat of air attack, the ships needed thicker deck armor; the added weight would deepen the draft enough to submerge the armored belt, so they would also need large blisters on either side to help lift them out of the water.
The full rebuild would cost $38 million per ship, which would come out of the budget for building new battleships. A single new North Carolina-class fast battleship cost $76 million, and the Navy was not about to make that two-for-one trade. The reconstruction projects were shelved in favor of a more modest set of overhauls. But the plans remained ready to hand, just in case the situation changed.
The situation changed completely on the morning of 7 December 1941. Every American battleship present in Pearl Harbor received at least some damage. And with the needed repair work came the opportunity to vastly increase their combat potential, just as King was named Chief of Naval Operations in March 1942.
Eight battleships swung at anchor on the morning of the attack. Two of them would never be repaired:
• Arizona.
Four bombs hit Arizona, the last of which penetrated the armor of Turret II’s barbette, setting off a catastrophic magazine explosion as the ammunition stores under both forward turrets detonated, killing 1,177 of the 1,512 crewmen aboard. She would never be repaired and remains in place as a war memorial.
• Oklahoma.
Nevada’s sister ship absorbed at least eight torpedo hits, capsizing after the third of them; 429 men died aboard Oklahoma, including survivors on the overturned hull or in the water machine-gunned by Japanese fighter planes. Salvage operations continued for the next two years, and she finally entered Pearl Harbor’s Drydock Number Two on 28 December 1943. Workers repaired her hull damage so she could journey to Bremerton for re-construction, but in September 1944 the Navy ruled her not worth the effort. She would be sold for scrap after the war but sank while being towed to San Francisco, nearly taking two tugboats with her.
Three of them would eventually return to service, but only after extensive work:
• Nevada.
The only ship on Battleship Row not tied alongside another battleship, Nevada set off for the open sea, drawing the attention of dozens of Japanese planes. Hit by at least six bombs and one torpedo, the battleship was intentionally grounded before she could sink in the channel leading out of Pearl Harbor and blocked access. Sixty of her crew had been killed, and 109 wounded; her magazines had been emptied in preparation to receive new ammunition, which may have saved the ship from explosion.
Nevada makes a break for the open sea. She didn’t make it.
Temporary repairs took until 22 April 1942. She then steamed to Bremerton Navy Yard in Washington, where she would be drydocked. In addition to repairs for her heavy damage, she received new secondary armament of sixteen dual-purpose 5-inch guns in twin gunhouses, and a new suite of radars. Work took until mid-December, and she re-joined the fleet on 25 December 1942. Working up and training took up the next several months, until she was deployed to the Aleutians in May 1943 to bombard Attu. Afterwards she transferred to the Atlantic Fleet, where she escorted convoys and bombarded Normandy.
• California.
The flagship of the Pacific Fleet, the Prune Barge lay much closer to Pearl Harbor’s entrance than the other battleships. This gave her a better chance to escape, but also made her a vulnerable target. Two torpedoes struck her in the first minutes of the attack, and though her torpedo bulkheads held, her watertight doors and even portholes had been opened for an inspection. Uncontrollable flooding spread before they could be closed and the ship sank at her moorings, where two bombs hit her, one causing extensive internal damage. Ninety-eight of her crew died in the attack.
The laborious task of refloating California took until late March 1942, but a vapor explosion almost sank her again. The salvage crews had been forced to remove her forward guns and mainmast, and she remained in drydock until 7 June, the day after the Battle of Midway concluded. More work followed, and only on 10 October 1942 did she leave Pearl Harbor under own power, bound for Puget Sound Navy Yard. There, she (along with her sister Tennessee) underwent a near-total reconstruction that lasted until the last day of January 1944. After working up and crew training, she returned to action in June 1944, providing fire support for the invasion of the Marianas.
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• West Virginia.
The Colorado-class battleship lay outboard of Tennessee when the bombers came. Seven torpedoes struck her, at least one of which shot through the hole blown by a previous torpedo hit to explode inside the ship. Prompt counter-flooding ordered by the assistant fire control officer prevented her capsizing like Oklahoma, but two bomb hits followed the torpedoes, one of them detonating the five-inch ready ammunition in her portside casemate, collapsing the entire structure. A piece of Tennessee struck down and killed the ship’s captain, Mervyn Bennion, despite the heroic efforts of mess attendant Dorie Miller and others to save his life over his objections, as Bennion insisted on fighting his ship with his final breath. One hundred six men died aboard West Virginia, including her valiant captain and three men trapped in an airtight storeroom for sixteen days after the attack.
The fires burned until the next day, fed by fuel oil from the wreck of Arizona and West Virginia’s own ruptured tanks. The crew had abandoned ship as she began to sink, but a small group of volunteers returned to battle the blaze even as more ammunition cooked off.
The valiant crew of garbage scow YG-17 fight the inferno aboard West Virginia.
Chief Boatswain’s Mate Lenard M. Jensen and his tiny command, the self-propelled garbage lighter YG-17, had been alongside Nevada to pick up trash when the attack began. Seeing the fires aboard West Virginia, he steered his garbage scow alongside the stricken battleship. YG-17 had been built to convey gasoline before drawing garbage duty, and had powerful pumps aboard. Jensen tied his little ship to West Virginia even as Japanese fighters continued to strafe the bigger ship. The valiant garbagemen stayed alongside throughout the day, the night and into the following day, fighting the flames in the full knowledge that the battleship could explode like Arizona at any moment. They would later receive a “commendation” from the Commander of Battleships.
YG-17 would return to collecting trash at Pearl Harbor and later at Espiritu Santo, where she was unceremoniously dumped after the war. West Virginia, meanwhile, became the center of an enormous salvage effort. She finally floated again on 17 May 1942, and after extensive drydock work just to shore up her ravaged port side. Lack of capacity in the West Coast shipyards to fully repair her delayed her departure until 30 April 1943. She finally left for Puget Sound, where she received a total reconstruction along the same lines as California. She entered the drydock just vacated by Tennessee on 7 May 1943, and emerged again on 2 July 1944. After working up and crew training, she joined the fleet in September and saw her first action in October 1944, providing fire support for the invasion of the Philippines.
That left three ships capable of re-joining the fleet in the near-term:
• Tennessee.
Surrounded by sinking ships, Tennessee suffered two bomb hits to her forward turrets, which wrecked their guns but did not penetrate to their magazines. Her crew flooded them anyway, given the damage and the vast amounts of blazing fuel oil surrounding their ship. She had also suffered hull damage from the fires, and temporary repairs took until 20 December when she left for the West Coast along with Pennsylvania and Maryland and an escort of four destroyers. She arrived on the 29th.
Repairs at Puget Sound Navy Yard took until February, as dockyard crews worked three shifts to bring the battleship back into fighting trim. Many of her hull plates, warped by the heat, needed replacement as did much of the ship’s electrical wiring, likewise heat-fried. Tennessee had never had her main armament replaced with the re-lined and re-chambered new 14-inch guns that her sister ships had already received, so this became an opportunity to complete that work. She received a new tower bridge in place of her cage masts, new radars, and new electronics. On 25 February 1942 she set out for San Francisco alongside Maryland and Colorado. She would return to Puget Sound in August for a much more complete rebuild.
• Maryland.
Maryland had already undergone an extensive overhaul earlier in 1941 at Puget Sound, returning to the fleet in August. During the Pearl Harbor attack she was inboard of the doomed Oklahoma and suffered two bomb hits, killing three of her crew. Both bombs, modified armor-piercing battleship shells, hit and penetrated the hull, with the second causing substantial flooding. She remained trapped by the capsized Oklahoma until the 9th, when she could finally be towed out of her berth and temporary hull repairs could begin. She departed Pearl Harbor on the 20th, arriving at Puget Sound on the 29th and beginning repairs the next day.
Maryland in February 1942. She retains her cage masts and casemate-mounted guns.
Having been overhauled just four months previously, Maryland received minimal upgrades. Her 5-inch anti-aircraft guns received shields, and sixteen new 20mm light anti-aircraft weaponry increased her close-range defenses.
• Pennsylvania.
The fleet flagship had entered Pearl Harbor’s drydock for maintenance when the Japanese attacked, making her a difficult target. One bomb hit her secondary casemate, and she took some damage when the destroyer Downes sharing the drydock with her exploded. But she left the drydock on the 12th and was ready to steam for the West Coast on the 20th.
Unlike the other battleships, Pennsylvania went to San Francisco for work at the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard, recently purchased from Bethlehem Steel. She received splinter shields for her 5-inch anti-aircraft guns, and new light anti-aircraft weaponry in the form of four quadruple 1.1-inch machine cannon and sixteen single 20mm guns. She made her first training cruise on 20 February 1942, and would soon be joined by the battleships repaired at Puget Sound.
The last of the Pacific Fleet’s nine battleships missed the Pearl Harbor attack completely:
• Colorado.
Sister ship to Maryland and West Virginia, Colorado had been at Puget Sound Navy Yard undergoing an overhaul since July. The shipyard now rushed her to completion, to free space and labor for the damaged battleships. Colorado received additional radars and splinter protection, four quadruple 1.1-inch machine cannon and sixteen single 20mm guns. She would head south to San Francisco with Maryland when her sister ship had completed repairs.
Meanwhile, the Atlantic Fleet had dispatched three more battleships to the Pacific. Idaho, Mississippi and New Mexico had all received significant upgrades in the early 1930’s. Underwater protection and deck armor had been improved, new control towers patterned on the British Nelson class fitted, and new machinery provided to keep their speed above 21 knots. All three left Neutrality Patrol duties on 9 December and headed to East Coast ports for refitting. They departed Norfolk on 12 January along with an escort of seven destroyers, transiting the Panama Canal on the 17th and arriving at San Francisco by the 29th.
The three sisters of the New Mexico class, seen at Pearl Harbor, December 1943.
The three battleships at Puget Sound completed their repairs and overhauls by late February. They set out for San Francisco on the 26th, the same day that Pennsylvania returned to service, and arrived on 3 March 1942. And for the rest of the month, the seven battleships remained there on twelve-hour steaming notice, never leaving their dockside positions.
And then Ernest J. King took over as commander-in-chief of the U.S. fleet and soon after, Chief of Naval Operations as well.
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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good.
He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.
Daily Content includes no AI-generated content or third-party ads. We work hard to keep it that way, and that’s a lot of work. You can help us keep things that way with your gift through this link right here.
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