E.05 - Burning Ships - Pearl Harbor - WW2 - 120 E - December 7, 1941

I don’t know why he’s surprised that marine didn’t budge. He was clearly weighed down by his massive balls

They do not open the door.

Arizona is still leaking up to 9 quarts of oil today, February 20, 2021, and will still leak oil for many years

Fantastic documentary series! I noticed the names of Oklahoma & Maryland were reversed in the graphic, though.

As a kid, I lived there in the late 80’s.
I don’t remember much, but I do remember going to the Arizona Memorial.
What I remember most is “looking for the dead sailors”. Drove my Mom nuts.
Apparently in some fences, the bullet holes from attacking plane are still there, and a “safe” mortar is still logged in an administration building as a memorial to that day.

I think the early 2000’s they found a still live live torpedo lodged in the mud harbor bed of Pearl.

They actually found the first Minisub sunk partially still intact in the early 2000’s to.

What absolute pandemonium. Yikes!

Why you and your work here are important to me:
In 1948 I was an Air Force daughter, and by Father's first duty station was Hawaii.
Having lived there, the images of the devastation are scary real to me. What hit home was the airplane hanger blasting apart. I knew those windows and building supports. 😂

The Light Cruiser Helena is named after the Capital of Montana. Pronounced Hel-eh-na! Bow of the ship is pronounced bow, as in bend at the waist, not like a bow on a present.

The Japanese made it so easy to hate them.

The horror. Drowning, burn to death, or a bullet.

I’d read a black cook had taken over a machine gun after seeing its gunner get gunned down. I wonder what his story was?

so many uncommon acts of valor..noticed and mostly, unnoticed..heroes all..and so many lost who never had a chance to live their potential..sad..sad..sad..

My sister married into an interesting family -- father was American, mother was Japanese, both were involved in WWII. Her father-in-law was in the US Navy. He had signed up (age 19) about four months prior to Pearl Harbor. He was on a ship that was leaving San Diego a little prior to the attacks; this was his first assignment. They got to Pearl ... and he and his crewmates spent a week simply fishing bodies out of the water. My brother-in-law always assumed this was why he took to drinking so heavily.

But he and Short were good denied every request! Cover up!

Billy Mitchell knew this would happen

Where the part about the guy shooting at the plan with pistol

Thank you for your exceptionally accurate narration. My father’s first ship in the Navy in 1941 was the USS California. I followed his path in the Navy, graduating from Annapolis and retiring as a four striper captain, always haunted and fascinated my entire life by Pearl Harbor — the operational failures that nearly killed my father and the incredible valor of the entire U.S. military services in the very dark early days of that war when final victory seemed unlikely. You captured the intense emotions of people I knew who survived that attack and cleared away the fog of war as to what actually happened on both sides.

Look at the smoke from Arizona’s explosions. They are red colored like the explosion in Beirut last year. I remember the color is indicative of nitrogen based explosives.

I wonder how the Japanese pilots felt seeing those four-engine bombers.

80 years ago today....

At the end of the intro I was waiting for Indy to say "news at 11" like the old school news broadcasters before 24 hour news channels

East Asia at the time was like a boxing club. Japan was the biggest, toughest boxer who got drunk and said “I’m gonna fight the grizzly bear from the zoo next door.”

I cannot believe these videos have only had 244,000 views. Should have millions of views in my opinion. Great job on the series.

Um, the P-40 had two .50 Caliber wing mounted machine guns. And two .30 caliber guns in the nose, firing through the propeller. I know an easy mistake to make.

In your diagrams of Pearl during the attack, you have battleships Oklahoma and Maryland reversed with Maryland outboard, not inboard of Oklahoma.

Whoever did your overhead graphics keeps mislabeling the Oklahoma and Maryland. I've noticed it several times. The Maryland was on the land side, you can even see that on the various photographs you displayed showing the capsized Oklahoma. It's not a big deal, but I've been surprised to see it repeated through multiple videos

Love that the clocks in the background are synched to the story

50mm guns? On a P-40? That's a hell of a gun on WWII fighter plane..🤔

truly excellent..thank you so much for making this

Just saw the part about everyone "not busy" helping the wounded. It reminds me of the 911 attack on the Pentagon. I wasn't there myself but I remember reports of service members doing the same thing there. I remember one firefighter saying they had a hard time keeping the service members from running back inside the burning building to get more of the wounded.

And that, children, is why we nuked Japan.

I'd bet money that when he was telling his story years later, Rasmussen did the "how the Japanese air force got into my pajamas, I'll never know" joke.

When I was in graduate school, I was assigned to do Oral History interviews with local ( to me ) Pearl Harbor Survivors. [These interviews are archived at Maag Library, Youngstown State University.] One of the sailors was assigned to the fire control center, USS Tennessee. They could hear and feel explosions, but could see nothing as they were deep in the ship. When they were released from battle stations they could finally come on deck and see the attack results. This sailor picked up Japanese bomb shrapnel off the deck of the Tennessee, which I have had the honor of holding in my own bare hand during his interview.

If I may add one point of criticism. George Marshall did not order Short to focus on sabotage. See Colonel Clausen's Report. The confusion stems from Marshall sending a war warning on the 27th of November and Short sending back that he's instituted Alert 1... the problem: Alert 1 per George Marshall was supposed to be the highest level of readiness and alert, basically ready for war (aircraft dispersed, AA batteries with ready ammo, daily patrols, manned radar stations around the clock, etc.) But Short had changed that to level 3. He didn't inform Washington of the changes he made to the alert levels. On his own authority Short had instituted Alert 1 since he thought Sabotage was the biggest threat in the event of hostilities breaking out.

Lest you think I don't appreciate the production. It is fantastic even if I have minor quibbles with some statements.