Pinned post for Q&A :)

The most important part of repairing a ship? Replacing all the binoculars the admiral threw overboard

The long awaited sequel to "Survival at Sea - Oh Lord the ship is on fire/sinking/exploding/disagreeable"

My employer's late father-in-law was an officer on USS New Orleans (CA-32) during the Battle of Tassaforanga. After the entire front quarter of the cruiser's length was blown off by a Type 93 torpedo and subsequent magazine explosion, the ship had to lay to Tulagi the next morning.

While the crippled ship was laid up in Tulagi for more than a week, the captain ordered the ship camouflaged with netting and coconut palms. The story passed on to me is that the hard-pressed crew had little confidence in the ruse, convinced that Japanese aircraft would appear at any moment to finish off what little was left after the destroyer's aggressions. So the captain sent up their floatplane to circle the ship from above. Upon return, the aircrew confirmed to the captain that the New Orleans did indeed appear to be an immobile target covered in palm branches amidst a slick of oil.

Then the captain took to the ship's PA to confidently declare to the crew: "Our efforts have been a complete success; we are now invisible to the Japanese."

The crew then famously jury-rigged the missing bow with coconut logs just to limp to Sydney, before eventually sailing stern-first all the way back to Puget Sound.

Early step in the triage process: "Is there any unexploded ordinance on the ship?" No body wants to start draining the drydock only to find an armed torpedo or 14 inch shell sticking out of the hull.

Don't forget the cleaning out of the damaged spaces... including bits and pieces of people, sludge/oil/grease buildup, grey water, etc. As a Navy Veteran of the 90's ... I cannot fathom the experience sailors had during the world wars... truly the greatest generation

Honestly there are an awful lot of photos there which show just what a Herculean task the crews did with their damage-control procedures. With a lot of them it's a case of "how the hell did it survive THAT???". Some of those chuffing great holes look way too wide to have survived.... but still they did.  My respect for the sailors of various navies has gone up several points.

This was actually my grandfather's job during WW2. He was the foreman of a repair crew at a naval shipyard in the San Francisco area that the ships damaged vs the Japanese in the Pacific would be sent to. He worked there before the war, actually. After Pearl Harbor he went to enlist but the military turned him down flat. They said that he was in an absolutely war-critical role, and he could contribute FAR more to the war effort by staying right where he was than he could by enlisting.

Yorktown & Enterprise: That's enough repairs. I'm going back to sinking ships.

Lets not forget the clearing of the dead, some that could only be removed when a ship got into dock. My father had a gruesome conversation when I was young and unaware I was in hearing, with a  friend who had served during WWII, about how to decide which body part to put into what bag when clearing a below water space sometime later of several bodies! Sometimes we forget a damaged ship was a nightmare of a place and the clear-up leaves many people damaged and not able to sleep without bad nightmares for the rest of their lives.

I watched your video on the salvaging/raising of the ships at Pearl Harbor. We always hear about the attack, that was the first time I realized the scope of the horrors that were faced and overcome by the men and women in the aftermath. My heart simultaneously swelled with pride and died at the same time. I hope that made sense.
On a lighter note as an US Navy veteran I enjoy your content, Thanks for your continuing efforts.

A note re: avoiding splicing wires.  I can confirm, at least in a mining environment, when re-building equipment we ALWAYS re-cable.  Any splice, no matter how carefully done, will quickly corrode and cause problems.  I can imagine this is much worse in saltwater spray environments.

I would very much like to see a video  on the salvaged ship's of pearl harbor and what repairs/ modernization were done to them

For an example of how dangerous small holes can be:

RMS Britannic sunk not because of the mine, but because the hospital staff onboard left portholes open for water to enter the ship.

Had that not happened, the Britannic would likely have survived hitting the mine.

I'd be interested in any damage report compiled after the first Tallboy hit on the Tirptz. Damage, at her bow, left her confined to Norwegian coastal water. There must have been an appreciation that this was no normal weapon but bigger, a major step up in risk.

Descent into Darkness by Edward Raymer is a first-person account of a salvage diver at Pearl Harbor. He was the first to dive the USS Arizona only a few days after it sank. He and others mention men dying from hydrogen sulfide gas generated by decaying biomass  when entering dewatered compartments (aside from bodies, the larger ships had what were essentially meat processing plants). His account is very interesting, as was your series on salvage operations at Pearl (especially the Oklahoma) and a follow up on the subsequent repair of those or other ships would help flesh put this outline.

An interesting future video would be design, development and deployment of the Advance Base Sectional Docks (ABSD), the moveable dry docks which were used in the Pacific conflict to allow repairs at sea or in those instances where proper repair and refit facilities didn’t exist at a nearby port. The first ship of the class was the USS Artisian ABSD-1 which was used to repair damaged US Navy ships initially at Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides Islands.

Would definitely love to hear the full story of repairing the West Virginia. Seems like a special case of essentially making a new ship on top of an existing ship in almost a ship of Theseus sort of way.

I have to say I saw that first drawing and was like "Why have you been watching me play warships... because this was me last battle... holes everyplace and on all the fires..."

Instances of temporary repairs done by crews are surprising, ingenious, great examples of "thinking outside the box".  Bows made from coconut tree logs, patches of said logs; ideas unimaginable during peacetime.  "Heeling" an aircraft carrier, as was done after SARATOGA took her second torpedo so that temp repairs could be made to get her to Pearl.  Such tales and stories  would make fascinating reading and fill volumes, I'm sure.  And then there are the words of the people faced with the actual repairs and wondering, "Why the blasted blazes did those idiots do that?!"