Frequently-Asked-Questions (FAQ) on
U.S.S. Arizona and the National Park Service

1. Why is U.S.S. Arizona  significant?

2. How many men were lost on the ship?

3. Why were Arizona  and Utah the only ships not salvaged
    after the attack on Pearl Harbor?

4. Is there still oil on Arizona ?

5. How long will Arizona  last?

6. Can anyone dive on Arizona ?

7. How long has the NPS been researching Arizona?
8. Who provides funding for this work?

4. Is there still oil on Arizona ?
USS Arizona contains an estimated 500,000 gallons (2,300 tons) of Bunker C fuel oil, which has been slowly escaping since its loss.  This oil, a potentially serious environmental hazard, is contained within the corroding hull.  Catastrophic oil release, although by all indications not imminent, is ultimately inevitable.  Understanding the complex and varied hull corrosion process and modeling structural changes and oil release patterns offers the most efficient method of developing a solution to this potential hazard.  Because of the particular national importance of Arizona, any solution must incorporate a minimum-impact approach, or long-term site preservation will be compromised.  Unnecessary impairment of Arizona’s hull is likely to be seen by many as more problematic than oil release.  Addressing the oil release problem within a site-preservation framework as incorporated within this project provides the best balance of competing social values, and it has the highest probability of success for arriving at the best and most defensible solution for both issues. 

5. How long will Arizona  last?
Scientific data collected during the USS Arizona Preservation Project is being used to create a predictive model of Arizona to determine its natural lifespan.  Complex computer modeling, known as a Finite Element Model, is the tool we’ve chosen to collate the data to predict the sequence of the battleship’s deterioration and give managers an idea how long we have before significant hull collapse occurs.  The Park Service has teamed up with metallurgists and engineers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in Gaithersburg, Maryland to conduct this analysis.  These NIST scientists bring experience and techniques used for analysis of Titanic and the steel from the World Trade Center to bear on the Arizona investigation.  Arizona is being reconstructed digitally in an incredibly powerful software package – we’ll start with Arizona as built on the day of the attack, then add the effects of the fatal blast and 60 years of immersion in salt water to bring us up to the present.  Next, using data we’ve collected on the battleship’s corrosion rate both inside and out, we’ll project the model into the future to see how quickly and in what way the ship disintegrates and which will be the major structural features to give way first.  This will give NPS and Navy managers the information they need to make tough decisions about when and if to intervene in Arizona’s natural deterioration.

6. Can anyone dive on Arizona ?

The National Parks are all special places, but a few are truly hallowed, either because of their historical significance or because of a unique habitat that they protect.  Some of these National Park areas are off-limits to all divers except research and protection personnel who go for official purposes.  The USS Arizona Memorial is one of these places.  Because of its status as a war grave and national memorial, only official research and monitoring dives are allowed on the site.

7. How long has the NPS been researching Arizona ?

The USS Arizona Preservation Project builds upon pioneering site documentation and research led by the National Park Service’s Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (later renamed SRC) that began in 1982.  The early SRC investigations initiated in situ documentation and study of large, submerged steel warships both in the U.S. and internationally.
 

The National Park Service took over responsibility for USS Arizona’s management in 1980.  During the years since the last Navy salvage divers worked the site in 1943, corporate memory of the vessel was gradually lost.  Park Service officials had little information about the American icon they were charged with managing.  It was generally believed, for example, that all four gun turrets had been removed from the battleship during the massive Navy salvage efforts in 1942–43 and installed as shore-based defensive batteries around Oahu.  When Larry E. Murphy (current SRC chief) and Daniel J. Lenihan (former chief of the underwater team) first dove the site in 1983 at the request of the Memorial’s first superintendent, they were astonished to find the No. 1 Turret still in place with the ghostly muzzles of its three 14-inch guns pointing mutely forward.  Live 5-inch shells littered the deck below the memorial.  To effectively manage the ship and memorial, some basic questions needed answering, beginning with “What is actually down there, resting on the floor of Pearl Harbor?” 
 

Between 1983 and 1986, Park Service and Navy divers from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One logged hundreds of hours on the site.  Despite poor visibility, archeologists made detailed drawings of the 608-foot battleship, and successfully completed archeological documentation of what was then the largest object ever mapped underwater.  Park Service illustrator Jerry Livingston compiled the results into a five-part series of line drawings, which won the prestigious John Wesley Powell Award for Historic Display and served as the basis for a detailed model of the wreck built by curator of ship models at the US Naval Academy, Robert F. Sumrall, on display in the Memorial’s visitor center.  In addition to collecting data for the detailed drawings of Arizona, the Park Service team also documented USS Utah, which still rests on the far side of Ford Island.  The Park Service team also initiated a biofouling and corrosion study of the ship to help establish its condition and deterioration rate.  The goal was to determine the hull’s life span if no action was taken and to develop measures to counter active corrosion should park managers adopt that option.  The results of the study were collected into a 1989 NPS publication about the archeology of USS Arizona and the Pearl Harbor attack.

8. Who provides funding for this work?
All work prior to 2002 was entirely funded by the National Park Service and  Arizona Memorial Museum Association and several agency and corporate partners,  Beginning in 2002, the DOD Legacy Resources Management Fund provided additional funds to augment those of NPS.