USS Arizona magazine explosion

[Guest]

Im wondering if anyone can tell me if Arizonas crew had time to set Zebra prior to the magazine explosion, and would have it made a diffrence? there was a delay between the bomb hitting the foc'sal deck and the explosion suggesting there was a fire that touched off the powder bags. If Zebra was set, that might have limited the spread of any fires. if anyone has any info on this, I'd love to hear it

[Tiornu]

The best analysis of the Arizona loss was printed in Warship International a few years back. You can find it in 2002 #3 and #4 and 2003 #1.

[Dreadnought]

Im wondering if anyone can tell me if Arizonas crew had time to set Zebra prior to the magazine explosion, and would have it made a diffrence? there was a delay between the bomb hitting the foc'sal deck and the explosion suggesting there was a fire that touched off the powder bags. If Zebra was set, that might have limited the spread of any fires. if anyone has any info on this, I'd love to hear it

IMO, Negative, Arizona's armor scheme was not intended to deflect a shell that came in traveling on that trajectory from which it was dropped by aircraft and if we think about it, all ships in Pearl that moring were undergoing routine maintenance and cleaning ergo they had a skeleton crew aboard with some exceptions. Even Nevada who was on hot watch was not even set at Zebra. Arizona was a sitting duck loaded with shells,powder and full load of fuel as her record shows from when she came into port the day before and tied up. A great ship. The biggest mistake the Japanese made was hitting the ships in shallow water where the USN could raise them or reuse alot of critical equipment.

[Johnny W]

Im wondering if anyone can tell me if Arizonas crew had time to set Zebra prior to the magazine explosion, and would have it made a diffrence? there was a delay between the bomb hitting the foc'sal deck and the explosion suggesting there was a fire that touched off the powder bags. If Zebra was set, that might have limited the spread of any fires. if anyone has any info on this, I'd love to hear it

IMO, with part of the crew ashore, and the ship totally unprepared for attack, I seriously doubt she had time to set Zebra throughout the ship. It was probably set in some places, not in others. But I don't think it would have made a difference.

[TopHatter]

Agree with Johnny and Dreadnought.

Arizona was struck by what was essentially "plunging fire" by a 16-inch battleship projectile converted to an aerial bomb.

There simply was no defense for a ship of her age and design, against that kind of ordnance.

[USSWisconsin]

Arizona was wide open for inspection, the converted battleship shell peirced her foward deck and exploded in a black powder magazine used to store saluting charges. The flames from the defligration traved to her forward main magazines which were also open for inspection and ventilation, as it was warm in Pearl Harbor. The detonation of her magazines detroyed the ship all the way back to the bridge area. The base was on alert for 5th column sabotage and had not been alerted to the possibility of air attack. The crew believed the attack was an exercize until it ws too late. They were taken by suprise, and it is highly unlikely that condition Zebra was ever set.

[TopHatter]

Arizona was wide open for inspection

Same was true of California. A peacetime navy in it's peacetime routines.

They say that Kimmel and Short were unfairly scapegoated.
I don't know. Perhaps they bore too much of the blame but there was plenty of blame for them to shoulder.

And just like the Captain of a ship, the CINC of a fleet is responsible above all others.

[Johnny W]

Best I can remember, it took about 10 minutes to completely set zebra onboard the Iowa (it was 19 years ago, so the number may be off a bit) when we were at sea, fully manned and with some hatches already closed. If I am not mistaken, the time between the first bomb dropped at Pearl, and the bomb that destroyed the Arizona was about 10-11 minutes. I can't see how a partial crew, inport and caught offguard could possible set Zebra.

[dundonrl]

Best I can remember, it took about 10 minutes to completely set zebra onboard the Iowa (it was 19 years ago, so the number may be off a bit) when we were at sea, fully manned and with some hatches already closed. If I am not mistaken, the time between the first bomb dropped at Pearl, and the bomb that destroyed the Arizona was about 10-11 minutes. I can't see how a partial crew, inport and caught offguard could possible set Zebra.

well.. to completely isolate the magazines would be much easier than setting zebra completely.. there's really no need to isolate your deck drains in a berthing to ensure the hatches etc are closed to isolate off the mazagines..

IF they had closed the hatches leading from the black powder magazine that was where the 16" shell hit, and isolated the main powder magazine, the Arizona would probably be just another battleship that would be sunk at Bikini Atoll by an atomic bomb after WW2..

[Maxor]

Perhaps but there is also some doubt that if the US battlefleet had not been destroyed that carrier tactics would have become so prevelant and you might have had a giant shift in focus of batle and history. There is no doubt that carriers would have played a very big role but it would be very interesting to see what the course of the war would have been had those ships of the line not been in port and the fleet elements not been destroyed.

I'm thinking that the fleets of the world would still tend toward carrier centrice but you'd see alot more armoured battle cruisers, and aviation battleships. I'm thinking it likely that really heavy guns would have been phased out much like today but armour would not have been and you'd be seeing lots heavier anti-shipping missiles and a bunch of 8 and 10 inch gunned cruisers with a very large VLS battery.


As it is the battleships were destroyed along with alot of other fleet elements and so the carriers refused to really engage the japanese (far better radar helped alot with this as well) Nothing at the time was really particularly designed to take a bomb from above (which is kinda wierd because battleships and cruisers had plunging balistic fire.). Then again had there been nothing other than a handful of cruisers and destroyers in pearl the infrastructure of the base would have been hit alot harder and who knows what that would have done to overall operations there and elsewhere.