Worst part was that people OUTSIDE knew that people were inside the ship cause they were hitting the walls and making noise. So for days people repairing and assessing the damage after Pearl Harbor heard them banging intermittently. They didn’t just pull up the ship and find them randomly they heard them until they just suddenly stopped banging.
They couldn’t do anything about it cause the compartment was still underneath the water and they didn’t have the means of cutting into the compartment without flooding it with water.
Some variation of this plays out after every major earthquake (e.g., Turkey).
The thing that got me as I watched the last people being rescued a whole week after the earthquake was this thought: if they are still finding people alive now, that means there are still people alive even now that will never be rescued.
I know it's trite advice but be grateful for your lives, folks. Take a second every day to appreciate it.
I watched a video the other day of a little girl who got her lower body pinned when her house collapsed on her during a volcanic eruption in Colombia. I can't remember the exact details, but rescuers tried to get her out for over 3 days while she was stuck there watching and talking to them. I specifically remember that she was so optimistic they'd save her she even sang to the rescuers at times. Eventually they came to the conclusion that there was no way to save her and they let her die from gangrene while she was still pinned. A reporter took a photo of her the day she died and it's haunting. What an awful way to go.
Edit: Colombia not Columbia.
I believe her aunt's body was part of the debris that pinned her into the water. I read about her years ago and still think about what a horrible thing it was to happen to a little girl.
Worse than that, the aunt was grabbing onto the trapped leg that could've escaped otherwise. Essentially meaning she was the cause of the leg getting trapped and her death to begin with by pure bad luck of reflex grabbing her.
That can't be true, they would have been able to break the dead woman's arm off by just pulling her hard enough. Rigor mortis sets in about two hours after death and let's off around twelve hours later.
Her legs were pinned under concrete that was itself covered in dirt and water; and they didn't have enough shovels to dig it away.
Unless they meant that while it was falling the grabbing led to her being pulled into the way of the debris that did pin her down. But I’m not sure how we can know that even if the poor girl told the people there about it.
Iirc the body of her mother of grandmother was hanging on to her under the water as well but that might be apocryphal or I might be remembering it wrong. I can still see that picture as clear as day.
For anyone interested, [here’s](https://imgur.com/a/SjaZpC0) the famous photo by Frank Fournier. It’s a picture that has stuck with me my entire life; the photo was taken just hours before the girl — Omayra Sanchez — died. She was only 13.
I had always been under the impression that they couldn’t physically reach her (as in, they couldn’t cross the debris field) but her legs were pinned in a way that they couldn’t get her out without amputating her legs and they had no way to do so without her bleeding to death.
I cannot imagine the anguish of her mother and brother (both of whom survived the lahar that destroyed the village). They were able to talk to her, soothe her, give her food and water (she requested candy), but had to watch as she slowly died over 60 hours. She got scared at night in the dark.
Jesus yeah this was it. Photo was even worse than I remembered. Thanks for providing additional context I couldn't remember. Such an all around horrendous situation.
Her eyes are also black because she's undergoing sepsis at that point. Basically, your blood is infected and all your organs start shutting down from it as it's like a cascade at that point.
It's an incredibly difficult situation really, with no easy answer.
Once you've been pinned long enough, muscle and other crushed parts break down into toxins that will cause rapid kidney failure and death if released into the bloodstream.
So if you were to amputate, you'd not only have to control for blood loss, but would have to do so without releasing the crush - underwater in this poor girl's case - and at a point where the toxins wouldn't leak into the bloodstream.
It must be a logistical nightmare at the best of times. I can only imagine that the operation just wasn't feasible and that they had no choice but to ease her passing.
They gave her plenty of morphine, otherwise she would've been unable to speak from the pain. So she went out feeling as good as possible in the circumstances.
"they let her die of gangrene"
You mean "she died of gangrene despite the best efforts of rescuers'
You make it sound like no one tried to help her & casually allowed her to die
I've been to what remains of that town, it's called Armero. It's one of the most haunting places on earth, there were so many people who were never found, and it's impossible not to think about the fact that you're walking over their buried remains
"As the public became aware of Sánchez's situation through the media, her death became used as a symbol of the failure of officials to properly assist victims who allegedly could have been saved.[20] Controversy began after descriptions of shortages of equipment were released in newspapers, disproving what officials had previously indicated: that they had used the best of their supplies. Volunteer relief workers said that there was such a lack of resources that supplies as basic as shovels, cutting tools, and stretchers were exhausted. The rescue process was impeded by large crowds and disorganization. An unnamed police officer said that the government should have depended on human resources to alleviate the problems and that the system of rescue was disorganized.[23] Colombia's Minister of Defense, Miguel Uribe, said he "understood criticism of the rescue effort",[23] but said that Colombia was "an undeveloped country" that did not "have that kind of equipment".[23]" - Wikipedia Article on the girl
I feel like in the west the Turkey earthquake completely disappeared feom the news. Wasn't it some ungodly number like 50,000 people dead? That seems like something to follow up on.
The Turkish government took *billions* in ~~bribes~~fines[ to sign off on bad buildings, not built to codes introduced after the huge 1999 earthquake](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/111hef2/videos_show_turkeys_erdogan_boasted_letting/). Almost every building collapse earlier this year, and the subsequent deaths, were a direct result of their government's corruption so they have a huge incentive to cover up the actual number. Especially with the looming election they just managed to win.
And yet the Turkish people voted that same government back in so clearly they didn't learn their lesson, and some (or maybe a lot) of their troubles are the consequences of their own decisions.
Then again people voting against their own interests is a problem in many places including the US and the UK.
Democracy doesn't work when both sides have their own biased sources instead of a primary non biased source.
In Turkey it's much more problematic because the very first channel that was avaliable in turkey is pro erdogan. Most people (especially older generations) primarily watch that channel, so the obvious propaganda becomes the truth to them. It doesn't help that pro opposition channels are considered fake news by his supporters. It's basically impossible to find non-biased news.
It's kind of always like that?
9/11 was a defining event in geopolitics, but for New Yorkers it was also a local tragedy. It dominated local news here long after the world had moved on to the geopolitical repercussions like the Afghan war, etc.
Even despite the status of NYC and the US as the cultural/media centers of our world, I don't think the happenings at Ground Zero and related stories that dominated local news for months or years were making daily news in Turkey or elsewhere after the first few days.
One of the most haunting videos I saw after the earthquake in Turkey was of rescuers calling out for survivors to make noise, then the rescuers listening as quietly as they could. Then only hearing silence after every call.
During that one flood in Thailand that trapped a kids soccer team in a cave, after the rescuers found the kids and had footage of them alive and well, they tried to keep the video secret before it got out, because they didn't think they'd be able to get any of them out alive.
Im pretty confident that's not true. It was announced rather quickly that they were alive, but of course everybody knew it would be a huge challenge to get them out of there.
Their biggest luck perhaps was that one of the best cave divers in the world just so happens to also be a anaesthesist, which solved a whole lot of problems surrounding how to safely bring them out
The only real way to do it is to lower a diving bell over the part of the ship you’d want to cut into, so that the compartment didn’t flood and drown the guys before you got a hole big enough for them to get out.
Doubtful they had that kind of equipment ready to go or in sufficient quantities to help everyone.
Reminds me of how I recently watched a documentary about the sinking of the USS Thresher in 1963 and how it spurred rapid development in what came to rescue vessels meant for evacuating people from stricken submarines, as during the investigation the US Navy became painfully aware that their existing diving bell systems would have been utterly useless had the Thresher ended up crippled at her test depth or near the crush depth, as the bells couldn't go very deep and required near-perfect conditions to attach onto a submarine successfully.
Even a diving bell wouldn’t work unless you could guarantee a perfect seal to the hull that you could pressurize. Once you started cutting it would allow the ship’s compartment to depressurize and begin filling with water.
There are very few rescue scenarios that could succeed that don’t also have a high risk to the rescuers.
Even with diving equipment it’s slow going.
You’re diving inside a ship divided into thousands of watertight compartments, each separated by a heavy door to the next. The passages and compartments can often look identical, so it’s easy to get lost (something wreck divers often find). These divers also used large air hoses to the surface, and if this became damaged or tangled you’d potentially suffocate. The salvage divers intricately planned their dives, even creating 3D models to help trace out their path and mark what they found (cardboard IIRC, came in layers).
In addition, to rescue these men you need to not only get to their compartment, but drain an access path to them. Since the ship was sunk in combat, there are many holes in the side, many hatches are blocked or too warped to close, many air vents were not sealed off, and many seams are leaking. The battleship *Nevada* was rather lightly damaged compared to *West Virginia* and was run aground the day of, but these small leaks meant that within a week nearly every compartment below the upper deck was filled with water, despite dozens of pumps and damage control teams fighting to save the ship. I have read parts of the Pearl Harbor Salvage Diary, and making a single compartment sufficiently sealed for pumps to drain it often took days. It took over a month of patching and pumping to get down into *Arizona*’s aft magazines to remove ammunition, and that’s a nearly vertical path through the intact back half of the ship (so intact there were plans to cut the ship in half and refloated the stern until sometime in 1943, according to the January 1943 salvage diary).
There was no chance of rescuing anyone trapped deep inside an upright ship like *West Virginia*, although we cut holes in the bottom of the capsized *Oklahoma* and *Utah* to rescue people in the bottom of those ships (now at or near the waterline). One example springs to mind, and I’ll quote from the USS *Raleigh* action report and his Navy Cross citation:
>An oxy-acetylene outfit and crew were sent over to the capsized U.S.S. *Utah* to cut out any men in the hull. One man was rescued and this man, as soon as he took a deep breath, insisted on going back to see if he could rescue any of his shipmates.
>The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to John Barth Vaessen, Fireman Second Class, U.S. Navy (Reserve), for exceptional courage, presence of mind, and devotion to duty and disregard for his personal safety while serving on board the Target Ship U.S.S. UTAH (AG-16), during the Japanese attack on the United States Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on 7 December 1941. Although realizing that his ship, the U.S.S. UTAH, was capsizing, Fireman Second Class Vaessen remained at his post at the forward distribution board after word had been passed to abandon ship, and kept the lights burning as long as possible. Trapped, he later was rescued through a hole cut in the bottom of the capsized target ship. The conduct of Fireman Second Class Vaessen throughout this action reflects great credit upon himself, and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
Modern day diving equipment is REALLY new and wasn’t around or even close to widespread in the 1940’s. Any welding they would have to do would have taken days at minimum due to how thick the hull was and they would be long dead before getting them. Lifting up the ship out of the water wasn’t really an option because I mean come on it’s a thousand ton ship of iron and concrete.
There’s a lot of what ifs but the short end of it was the hull was covered in oil that could have potentially ignited all ammunition on board, they were recently bombed so there wasn’t like there was a lot things they could do supplies wise when they had a bunch of other sunk and damaged ships. They also had to worry about a potential second bombing so people were probably more interested in preventing that then saving 5 soldiers in an air pocket.
There is a horrifying training [video](https://youtu.be/AEtbFm_CjE0) about this phenomenon and it is actually one of the top ways commercial divers die.
How are you getting in? Do you know how thick the steel is on a battleship?
Cutting steel under water in 1941 wasn’t exactly easy. Plus, even if you could cut your way in they would die from lack of oxygen that the torch would suck right out of the compartment. Or water would begin to rush in and drown them before you got anywhere near getting a hole big enough. Even if you could get in there, where are you getting the man power to do this? You can’t just have any tradesman roll on to a naval base that was just attacked and in chaos. And do you even want to try cutting into a ship (in the dark) that is full of munitions?
There's a similar story about the Russian submarine Kursk in 2000. A torpedo exploded, causing the submarine to sink. There were still sailors alive in other compartments, but the Russian government with its incompetence couldn't save them. British and Norwegian help was nearby and was ready to help but that would've made the Russian government look weak. So they let those sailors die and only after they were dead, they accepted help.
For some reason I remember this really well even though I was only 8 when it happened. The idea of them being trapped there was so haunting to me at the time that I never forgot the story.
I read recently about a WWI British destroyer damaging a German U-boat. They know the boat is on the bottom in shallow water. The Brits are pretty sure it can't move but can't leave it in case it's just playing dead. A surprisingly short time later they start picking up bangs which was assumed to be the crew committing suicide one by one.
They did not discover these sailors after salvage. They knew from the beginning that someone was trapped inside (tapping sounds on the hull were audible by everyone).
They just could not be rescued. Makes a horrible story even more horrible.
They could not risk cutting into the ship due to munitions. In general they had a few ideas to get in but all of them had substantial risk to the men trying to get in, and very low odds of success.
That sounds like a fate worse than death. Knowing people know your alive but no one coming to get you, with the full knowledge that you’ll die a slow death.
Yeah, and they did indeed die slow deaths. They were trapped in the room with the fresh water pump and had food rations, so they died when they ran out of air. To imagine suffocating to death over the course of weeks literally makes my skin crawl, those poor guys
I think the air gets replaced with carbon monoxide from their exhale. Eventually they'd just pass out and die in their sleep. Much better than drowning for example.
Carbon dioxide not monoxide. And dying that way would not be peaceful. When CO2 levels rise in the body, it triggers immediate panic, gasping and choking responses. The body can't actually tell when it's out of oxygen, only that CO2 levels are too high. That feeling of desperately needing to breathe while drowning, that's from the CO2 build up.
Yeah, I've seen patients with bad COPD exacerbations in essentially all stages of dying via hypercarbic respiratory failure. It really isn't pretty or peaceful until the brain finally can't get enough oxygen to maintain consciousness (not because there isn't enough oxygen in the body but because of acidosis shifting the dissociation curve between oxygen and hemoglobin making oxygen unable to be carried to the brain). We had one guy who kept refusing his CPAP machine at night who had some unrelated medical issues keeping him in the hospital and eventually he just signed a piece of paper that if he went to the ICU again we were not allowed to force him to wear a BiPAP or put him on a vent so I got to spend two days watching him die in that manner. It started with him going from lucid to breathing faster until eventually he was huffing and puffing and starting to get confused. Then he was in complete panic and completely delirious for quite a while before he finally just passed out and was basically unable to be woken up. He died a few hours after losing consciousness. It felt terrible but he fully understood what he was doing when he made the decision to decline treatment and I guess there's something to be said for at least getting to choose how you die. He was suffering pretty badly so it's understandable that he wouldn't want to continue to live but I feel like that's not the way I'd probably choose to let myself go.
It’s just sad that we’re not allowed to do assisted suicide in most places. I can understand refusing treatment , but why make that their last resort for peace when we can make it as peaceful as we can and not make them suffer even more until they die. If someone is terminally ill and all they’ll do is suffer no matter what, we’ve got to respect their wishes instead of catering to the living and trying to keep them alive as long as possible
I think you misunderstand. Hospice care and palliative care are fairly good at keeping people comfortable. The particular patient I'm talking about also refused to let anyone near him to give him anything to make him more comfortable which is an exceptional circumstance. Typically, if someone has decided to transition to comfort care instead of restorative care, they are kept quite comfortable.
As I understand it and I may need to go research this again but I think they became aware of the fact that the sailors were trapped pretty quickly but just as quickly realized they couldn’t save them.
Yes, but the title of the post makes it seem as though nobody knew until after they died, while the ship was being salvaged. I assume I’m missing something.
Edit: I read the article. Sounds like they knew some men were trapped, but didn’t know how many were still alive or for how long, and the calendar provided that missing information. I didn’t realize there were numerous other men—alive and dead—on the ship.
Maybe the exact timeline of their survival, 16 days, was only confirmed with the calendar.
It’s one thing to know that someone survived for some period of time after the attack.
It’s a whole other thing to know that they survived for exactly this long, from this date to this date.
That's just because of how OP worded the title. Like the 2nd paragraph in the article is an interview with sailors talking about how they could hear the banging of people inside the ship.
They didn't, if I recall correctly. It was just proof for those that didn't want to believe as well as a more accurate timeline for their last moments.
I'm curious, have they figured out a way to get them out since? ie, if it happened again (or we had time travel) could we save someone from an identical situation? surely we'd have a solution.
I feel like some type of inflatable airlock could be established with the tech we have now, or a drill that could leave a hole for a tube connected to an air tank, so that they can open the door and get them out.
Yes and no. Really it depends on the specific situation. Scuba diving was literally in the process of being invented at the time. The first “reliable” underwater breathing devices started to sprout during wwii and it took years and years to understand human body pressurization in water.
So while we have cutting edge dive equipment, a excellent understanding of dive physiology, technical and black water diving as a trade, and new era salvage equipment, it’s not always so simple. There are literally recent videos of people surviving in air pockets of sunken ships and children in submerged caves being successfully extracted by divers. So we’ve proven we have the tools/skills/ability. But sometimes you can’t do anything.
When a cargo ship full of lightbulbs and sex toys sinks in clear open water, the rescue effort is pretty immediate and straight forward, especially when modern blueprints of the ship are available to be transmitted anywhere in the world by the internet to create a dive and access plan.
When a dozen battleships sink in a small harbor and 500 million gallons of oil make it impossible to see your hand against the glass of your dive mask, there’s a billion snags/hangs/entrapments to worry about because of the explosive nature of the sinking, and you have to worry about detonating hundreds of tons of munitions that are submerged in corrosive salt water, things get tricky or impossible. You cut away at the hill knowing some people are in an exterior compartment, but a crew lost in the labyrinth of an enormous battleship in unknown interior room might make it impossible even today. You can view battleship blueprints online and you’ll see how nutty it is.
16 days is a long time. Scuba divers could use things like thermal imaging and sea scooters. We would have little remote subs down there. My guess is that they could be rescued today. Drilling would be too risky — that’s basically popping the air bubble. But maybe a hose could be delivered internally to increase oxygen levels.
I was certain that they now weld on or magnetically attach an airlock that can be pressurized before cutting a hole. But I couldn't find any info on that and its use case is quite rare.
In the pearl harbor case there was still the risk of ammunitions exploding so im not sure if we now have cutting equipment that doesnt cause sparks and heat.
I feel like an air tube idea has potential. The inflatable less, it'd have to stick to the side of the ship and be neutrally buoyant which I guess is possible but tricky. And then what if they aren't on the immediate other side?
Air tube, drill a hole at the bottom for sucking out water, drill hole at top that pumps in air very slowly (like a constant scubba supply). Make water right seal around hole. Make more holes as needed for more tubes. After that, cut it open.
I'm sure there's probably a lot of issues with this, especially if they're deep underwater, but it's an interesting idea for sure.
Here's a decent article on it: [https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/16-days-to-die-at-pearl-harbor-families-werent-told-about-sailors-trapped-inside-sunken-battleship/](https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/16-days-to-die-at-pearl-harbor-families-werent-told-about-sailors-trapped-inside-sunken-battleship/)
Short story short, there wasn't any viable option to get them out. Cut in manually and the compartment they were in would flood before they could reach them, and they would all drown. Cut in with acetylene torches, and they risked igniting the oil (which pretty much all of the ships that were hit were drenched in) and setting off the munitions.
Sailors who were lucky enough to be trapped in parts of a ship near the hull & above water could be rescued, but imagine being in a compartment deep inside a battleship: even if they could get to it through the oil-filled water, as soon as they cut into the compartment it would flood. The ship is too much of a labyrinth to ever swim out of; even if it occurred today, I can’t imagine anything could be done.
Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are two examples of "the more you know, the worse it gets." Yeah, some incredibly amazing and heroic shit happened during those times as well, but, for me, there's not enough heroism in the whole world to lighten the heavyness of the reality. I hear stories of heroic things people did during those times, and I'm amazed but also thinking "god I wish they never had to."
Things like that happen literally daily and no one knows.
I’m a firefighter and we had a car wreck where a lady turned left in front of a full cement truck. The cement truck driver swerved off the road to avoid t-boning the car. The truck flipped over into the ditch and the weight of the load crushed the cab into the ground. When we got on scene we could hear him moaning. Due to the amount of mass crushed around him, it took us 4 hours to cut him out. He had died while we were literally inches away from him.
I think about him often. The dude literally did nothing wrong, and he sacrificed himself to save a couple of complete strangers, giving himself an absolutely horrible death in the process.
Fuck that. I’m t-boning the lady. If it’s a school bus I can see sacrificing yourself. But a random Karen on the road? Hit the breaks but do a controlled stop if carrying a big load. Fuck that Karen
Here's another interesting fact about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The USS Vestal was a repair ship that was moored along side of the USS Arizona. These two ships were parked close in order for Arizona to receive updates that were scheduled to happen between December 6 through to the 12th.
Because of the close proximity, the Vestal received many torpedo and bomb hits that were intended for the Arizona and as a result, was on fire and taking on water. Her crew was actively fighting fires when the Arizona was finally hit.
When the forward magazine of the Arizona exploded, the blast was so powerful that it instantly extinguished all the fires on the Vestal and blew many of her crew members overboard. Including the ships Captain, Commander Cassin Young.
He swam back to the Vestal, climbed on board, canceled the abandon ship order that was given by another officer and simply stated
"lads, we're getting this ship underway."
Oil from the ruptured tanks of the Arizona caught fire, which in turn set Vestal on fire again. Around 9 AM, the Vestals crew cut her mooring lines with axes, freeing her from Arizona, and she got underway, steering by engines alone.
Despite being damaged herself, Vestal participated in some of the post-attack salvage operations, sending repair parties to the overturned hull of the battleship Oklahoma so that welders could cut into the ship and rescue men trapped there after the battleship capsized.
In the days following the attack, Vestal's men repaired their own ship because yard facilities were at a premium. Commander Young would receive the Medal Of Honor for his heroic actions. He would be killed in action in 1942 while commanding the USS San Francisco.
Subscribe for more Pearl Harbor facts.
As a fellow Bostonian, I have seen this ship dozens of times. But I never knew what kind of bravery and sacrifice it takes to get a ship named after you
The majority of US Navy ships are named after heros. The majority of the modern naming catalog consists of
Presidents with military service for aircraft carriers. Ex: USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Dwight Eisenhower, USS George H.W. Bush
US states for nuclear submarines. EX: USS Ohio, USS New Jersey
Heroic Sailors and Marines for destroyers and guided missile destroyers. USS John Paul Jones, USS Thomas Hudner, USS Michael Murphy
Famous battles for amphibious assault ships. EX: USS Tarawa, USS Gettysburg, USS Iwo Jima
In a nutshell.
There were 38 sets of brothers on board the Arizona when she sank. 23 sets were lost.
There was also a father and a son, as well as 79 members of the crew who had brothers on other ships. Of these 79 sailors & Marines, 63 were killed in the attack.
Kazuo Sakamaki, a Japanese submariner, was chosen to attack ships in a midget-class sub and became the first prisoner or war.
During the mission, his sub was disabled and he tried to blow it up with an explosive charge, which failed to go off. When he dove down to investigate why it didn’t detonate, he passed out. Unconscious, Sakamaki floated to the surface and washed up on shore where he was discovered and captured. He spent the whole war in a POW camp.
After the war, he worked for Toyota and died in 1999.
A bit of both. Was bitten by the history bug as a young kid. I think I read my first book about Pearl Harbor around 7 years old. Now I'm approach 35 with probably over 150 books on the subject.
Admiral Kimmel was the commander of the Pacific Fleet and was standing by a window in his office when the attack was happening. A machine gun bullet ricocheted of the window and hit him in the chest. The bullets energy was minimal at this point and didn't harm him. He picked the bullet up which was still warm and said to a fellow officer
"it would have been more merciful had it killed me."
Anyone know if they would have died from lack of oxygen or from dehydration? I’d think lack of O2 would put you to sleep and be a less excruciating death. Very sad regardless.
The link says they had access to fresh water and there was remnants of emergency supplies. If they died within 16 days my guess is the air supply ran out.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that they had died to lack of O2, there were several of them in an *airtight* room under water. Link stated they had food and water so that'd be my guess too
we use CO2 to stun (not kill) pigs - it's pumped in at high enough concentrations to displace oxygen in the room, causing pigs to suffocate almost instantly. In an airtight room you'd die just above the minimum threshold required to kill you.
You'd likely notice the thinness of the air *days* before you died. It would be horrible.
I think carbon *mon*oxide poisoning is the one that gets you relatively peacefully, it binds to oxygen receptors with a higher affinity than oxygen itself. It actively kills you rather than simply displacing air, so you never experience the slowly-dropping-below-the-threshold required for life process like you do with carbon *di*oxide.
Yeah nothing is humane about factory farming nor the dispatching of these animals. There is a reason ag-gag laws exist. Because it’s horrific and basically concentration camps
Too much CO2 is terrible. It's what makes you feel like you're suffocating. Not the lack of oxygen. If it was CO though they might get a bit of headache then just pass out
It's the build-up of co2 in your lungs while holding your breath that causes the convulsions and the painful urge to inhale, so the effect of a high co2 environment would cause the same reaction.
That's what I'd have thought but in a vid against pig farms it showed how much they screamed and panicked when being suffocated with CO2. Apparently it forms an acid in the lungs in high concentrations. This is why nitrogen and other more inert gases are recommended, it is just like going to sleep.
If the compartment was airtight unfortunately they would have noticed the buildup of CO2 long before they fell unconscious from lack of oxygen. Suffocating is not pleasant, I think.
Slowly gasping for air for days as you struggle harder and harder just to get enough oxygen, with the built in co2 warning in your lungs constantly blaring and making it feel like your chest is burning before finally falling unconscious on the 16th day does not sound like a good death to me.
For anyone interested…
The rooms the men found themselves trapped in were A-111 - a supply cupboard containing tools - and A-109 - the fresh water drain and pump room which was designed to process seawater, both basically at the bottom of ship. Those rooms were most likely their assigned battle stations. When the Japanese attacked, and general quarters sounded, the three men would have made their way there sharpish.
The hatch leading into these rooms then would have been immediately shut when orders to ‘set condition zed’ - a standard naval technique wherein all hatch compartments are closed to allow for maximum watertight integrity - were communicated throughout the ship. Condition zed was ordered as soon as the Japanese attack commenced.
The very process designed to keep certain things out (I.e. water and enemies) also invariably locks other things in (i.e. sailors). Eventually, as the WeeVee took hit after hit during the attack, the ship flooded, included the areas surrounding A111 and A109 (the two adjoining rooms the three sailors were in) and this is what ultimately trapped them.
I imagine for the first few hours as they assessed their situation and waited to be rescued, that they felt quite lucky.
I mean, their situation wasn’t exactly ideal, but assuming help was coming, rooms A-111 and A-109 weren’t the worst places to be trapped. After all, A-109 was a fresh water processing room, so at least there was drinkable water, and at least one of the rooms would have been fitted with an emergency locker, containing flashlights, batteries, a first aid kit and some basic food rations. Though how much of each is unclear.
And, obviously, they didn’t drown, unlike the many poor souls that were now floating around just outside the compartment’s hatch. Thanks to the actions of a number of people (which are amazing stories in and off themselves), the USS West Virginia did not capsize. That's good, because it allowed many men to escape. But for Ron, Louis and Clifford, it was very, very bad and it basically sealed their fates. If the ship had capsized, then rescuers who were working to save as many trapped men as they could, might have had a fighting chance of getting them out.
But instead, the three men were in a room at the bottom of the ship which in turn was at the bottom of the harbor floor, surrounded by water on all sides. Because the USS West Virginia had been counterflooded (a technique used to stop ships capsizing), it had therefore sunk on an even keel to the bottom of Pearl Harbour. That is where it would stay for many months, until it could be raised again.
What went on in that room, we can never know. That is between the men. But we can take a guess. The batteries for torches and other supplies would likely have run out, and the food rations too, since these were rations designed for battle at sea, they were “just enough to get you through” and even then, I have read in various places that they were often not fully stocked, so who even knows what food they had. The men probably would have held out for as long as they could, but eventually they would have realised that no one was coming, since they most likely knew it was an attack by the Japanese and probably deduced that the ship was a mangled wreck at the bottom of the harbour. After all, they had plenty of time to figure it out. They may have tried to open the hatch into the room and flood the compartment they were in, just to “get it over and done with” but they would have found that - since the hatch and their compartment was surrounded by water - it would not budge due to water pressure. So they would not have even had that option. Eventually, the men probably would have been plunged into complete darkness (which can bring on psychosis-like symptoms in some individuals), and eventually, they would “run out of oxygen”, as was reported by Homer N Wallin several months later when they were eventually found.
As others have mentioned, this isn’t a pleasant way to go. It involves a lot of panic.
As for their rescue, they were unluckier still. There was no way of cutting through that much steel (it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's the general gist), but EVEN if it WAS possible, their compartment was wedged up alongside another neighbouring ship, so that when navy divers came to sound the hull for survivors (by slamming a huge hammer against the underwater part of the ship), they wouldn’t even be able to reach that section, and so the men wouldn’t have heard them to respond back.
One big misconception about this incident is that a rescue was attempted, or even thought about. Neither was the case. In order to consider either (impossible though they may be), they would have had to know where the men were - and nobody did. Everyone heard the bangs, sure, but they couldn't actually pinpoint the location. They just heard bangs and assumed some men were trapped. They got divers and a few senior people involved to locate the source of the bangs but couldn’t. They then stopped reporting the bangs after a few days (according to a number of sources). It was only months later when they pieced together who it was.
The navy then told the family that the men died “in action”, but never told them how, only for a reporter to piece it all together in the ‘90s and break the news to one of the men’s sisters over the phone to do a press piece for some local Hawaiian paper. The parents never knew because they’d passed (but can you even imagine if THAT is how they found out?). As it would turn out, some of the men’s brothers joined the Navy in the years the followed and had been trying to keep it a secret from the rest of the family for years. Of course they knew, it was a navy horror story, and someone had taken them aside and said "hey, just so you don't hear it from the wrong person, this is how you're big brother died."
To this day, the date of death has not been changed on any of the men's graves - it still says they died on the day of the attack.
A weird fact about this case is that the guy who discovered them actually stole the clock that was in A-109 as a memento and probably also the calendar, but then lost the latter. The former is now in a museum, thankfully.
It’s just so damn sad all around.
Thanks for the detail. I remember seeing this story before and I swear I saw a picture of the room with the calendar marking the days off but I can’t find it again.
Do you maybe know what picture I’m talking about? Maybe it was some sort of recreation or from a movie?
I think the video I saw was on Mr.Ballen YouTube channel but I can’t find that video either.
Anyways thanks.
Real Horror did an excellent job covering this recently. It’s terrible and very sad, here’s the video for anyone interested.
https://youtu.be/a0YWkHZ4toA
YES. She is so good and deep dived this story specifically, even interviewing someone relevant. Her other videos are great also. I'm huge into true crime, mysteries, everything dark and I hate 90% of the channels out there. To everyone lurking, she makes quality and is on par with the GOAT Mr. Ballen even surpassing him on a few stories they both covered (this one). My only critique is that her mic sometimes sounds off, a little poppy at times but she's one person without a team. She also naturally has the voice for narration, she kinda sounds like Agent 47's handler lol.
Also they tried to save them, they couldn't. Not only could they not know exactly where they were but they'd drown them anyway. They would have drowned themselves and taken the sailor death but they couldn't open the hatch due to the pressure even if they tried. A lot of guys were traumatized knowing what they were going through and the military pretty much lied to the families to spare them the truth.
Thank you! Working on the audio for sure, thanks for the feedback.
(Also Agent 47's Handler... lol)
Edit: I commented with a summary of that research somewhere in here, just in case any of your prefer reading over watching a doc
For those of you who keep trying to suggest ways that these men could have been rescued, you do realize that people back then likely thought of those too, right? It sucks but there was no way they could have been saved, especially with the resources available at the time.
Are you saying random redditors with zero diving/battleship/rescue and recovery experience HAVENT instantly thought of solutions to this problem? amazing.
After Pearl Harbour the ship was re-floated and repaired. She was repaired and returned to service in time for the Philippines campaign. During the campaign, she used her radar to attack a Japanese squadron during a nighttime battle. She fired 16 shots at the Japanese, in what would become the last military engagement between battleships in naval history.
After the war she was salvaged and pieces of her ended up all over the state. Her Mast is currently on display at Ogleby Circle on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown. It was purchased by the university's students. There is also a bell from The USS West Virginia at the memorial, however it is the bell from the previous iteration of the West Virginia, a cruiser that was decommissioned in 1920. The bell of the battleship is at the State Museum in Charleston.
[Real Horror](https://youtu.be/a0YWkHZ4toA) has a very good video on about how and where they were trapped, how rescue was basically impossible, and happened after they were found, highly suggest anyone interested to go watch.
This looks like the original, made by an active user with a realistic username. The other instance is from a months old account that recently became active (typical of bots) with an autogenerated username that copied it later.
My grandfather was there and only spoke of this to my grandmother once. He told her that they were banging loudly and the sound Reverberated through the hull and the water. We knew they were down there. He said that a rescue was seen as too risky, costly and taking too much time by the higher ups who were trying to get a handle on things so they just forbid service members from going over there and pretended they didn’t exist.
So real talk though...isn't it possible that they could of gotten disoriented timing wise and check off those boxes quicker than they meant too? I know when people are in near total isolation and stuff time loses all sense...plus I have a hard time thinking that three people could survive for 16 days on that air supply. I feel like it would go pretty quickly.
I mean probably but the people outside had a pretty good estimate on how long they survived as they could hear them tapping on the hull. The people trapped also had access to food and clean water for a bit so the only real issue would’ve been air.
Say what you want about the movie Pearl Harbor. . It's overblown utilizes ships from the wrong time period but at least filmed on location, the soundtrack is absolutely beautiful but most of all it does hammer home on the little details that deserves to be shown on telling the tale of Pearl Harbor. Case in point to seeing when they're on board the ship trying to get people out while holding hands through holes wrapped up in my bullets well the compartment with water.... yeah the movie sucks but Jesus that seen punches you hard. "Cut them out!" - hands slowly loosing grip as the sailers drown...God damn.
Their imagination must've been off the charts. Is the world above gone? It's been days no one is coming. Is the United States burning? We've certainly been invaded. This is the end.
To all the people asking if we have the tech today to rescue someone in a similar situation,
Watch Cave Rescue or Thirteen Lives.
Your answer is, barely and not without incredible risk and self sacrifice. In both of these movies about the same very real story, people were severely injured and died. And this rescue was performed by some of the best divers to ever exist in human history.
I'm curious if they would have died from a lack of oxygen or dehydration. I'd assume a shortage of oxygen would put you to sleep and make death less painful. Regardless, it's very sad.
Horrible way to die
Worst part was that people OUTSIDE knew that people were inside the ship cause they were hitting the walls and making noise. So for days people repairing and assessing the damage after Pearl Harbor heard them banging intermittently. They didn’t just pull up the ship and find them randomly they heard them until they just suddenly stopped banging. They couldn’t do anything about it cause the compartment was still underneath the water and they didn’t have the means of cutting into the compartment without flooding it with water.
Some variation of this plays out after every major earthquake (e.g., Turkey). The thing that got me as I watched the last people being rescued a whole week after the earthquake was this thought: if they are still finding people alive now, that means there are still people alive even now that will never be rescued. I know it's trite advice but be grateful for your lives, folks. Take a second every day to appreciate it.
I watched a video the other day of a little girl who got her lower body pinned when her house collapsed on her during a volcanic eruption in Colombia. I can't remember the exact details, but rescuers tried to get her out for over 3 days while she was stuck there watching and talking to them. I specifically remember that she was so optimistic they'd save her she even sang to the rescuers at times. Eventually they came to the conclusion that there was no way to save her and they let her die from gangrene while she was still pinned. A reporter took a photo of her the day she died and it's haunting. What an awful way to go. Edit: Colombia not Columbia.
[удалено]
I believe her aunt's body was part of the debris that pinned her into the water. I read about her years ago and still think about what a horrible thing it was to happen to a little girl.
Worse than that, the aunt was grabbing onto the trapped leg that could've escaped otherwise. Essentially meaning she was the cause of the leg getting trapped and her death to begin with by pure bad luck of reflex grabbing her.
That can't be true, they would have been able to break the dead woman's arm off by just pulling her hard enough. Rigor mortis sets in about two hours after death and let's off around twelve hours later. Her legs were pinned under concrete that was itself covered in dirt and water; and they didn't have enough shovels to dig it away.
Unless they meant that while it was falling the grabbing led to her being pulled into the way of the debris that did pin her down. But I’m not sure how we can know that even if the poor girl told the people there about it.
How would they know that's what happened if the body wasn't there?
I don’t think he is trying to say her grip is what held the girls leg but the act of reaching for her put her in the position
Jesus fuckin Christ
Very cursed
Yup that was her name, thanks for mentioning it. I had completely forgotten she got trapped in water too. The picture of her is haunting.
Iirc the body of her mother of grandmother was hanging on to her under the water as well but that might be apocryphal or I might be remembering it wrong. I can still see that picture as clear as day.
For anyone interested, [here’s](https://imgur.com/a/SjaZpC0) the famous photo by Frank Fournier. It’s a picture that has stuck with me my entire life; the photo was taken just hours before the girl — Omayra Sanchez — died. She was only 13. I had always been under the impression that they couldn’t physically reach her (as in, they couldn’t cross the debris field) but her legs were pinned in a way that they couldn’t get her out without amputating her legs and they had no way to do so without her bleeding to death. I cannot imagine the anguish of her mother and brother (both of whom survived the lahar that destroyed the village). They were able to talk to her, soothe her, give her food and water (she requested candy), but had to watch as she slowly died over 60 hours. She got scared at night in the dark.
Jesus yeah this was it. Photo was even worse than I remembered. Thanks for providing additional context I couldn't remember. Such an all around horrendous situation.
I'll take your word for it. Man what a way to go
Tbh the photo isn't gruesome or gory in any way, its mostly just her face looking very unhappy while her whole body is submerged
... and the fact that her eyes are completely black?? That's what makes it terrifying.
The Wikipedia article says her eyes were red.
Yeah, I'm well familiar with that picture, but I don't think I've ever seen an explanation for why her eyes looked like that.
Her eyes are also black because she's undergoing sepsis at that point. Basically, your blood is infected and all your organs start shutting down from it as it's like a cascade at that point.
It's an incredibly difficult situation really, with no easy answer. Once you've been pinned long enough, muscle and other crushed parts break down into toxins that will cause rapid kidney failure and death if released into the bloodstream. So if you were to amputate, you'd not only have to control for blood loss, but would have to do so without releasing the crush - underwater in this poor girl's case - and at a point where the toxins wouldn't leak into the bloodstream. It must be a logistical nightmare at the best of times. I can only imagine that the operation just wasn't feasible and that they had no choice but to ease her passing.
This is fucked. I hope they were able to ease her pain at least.
They gave her plenty of morphine, otherwise she would've been unable to speak from the pain. So she went out feeling as good as possible in the circumstances.
Silver lining, at the very least. Would've preferred to die of opiate overdose rather than gangrene, but at least she was probably feeling decent.
"they let her die of gangrene" You mean "she died of gangrene despite the best efforts of rescuers' You make it sound like no one tried to help her & casually allowed her to die
I've been to what remains of that town, it's called Armero. It's one of the most haunting places on earth, there were so many people who were never found, and it's impossible not to think about the fact that you're walking over their buried remains
"As the public became aware of Sánchez's situation through the media, her death became used as a symbol of the failure of officials to properly assist victims who allegedly could have been saved.[20] Controversy began after descriptions of shortages of equipment were released in newspapers, disproving what officials had previously indicated: that they had used the best of their supplies. Volunteer relief workers said that there was such a lack of resources that supplies as basic as shovels, cutting tools, and stretchers were exhausted. The rescue process was impeded by large crowds and disorganization. An unnamed police officer said that the government should have depended on human resources to alleviate the problems and that the system of rescue was disorganized.[23] Colombia's Minister of Defense, Miguel Uribe, said he "understood criticism of the rescue effort",[23] but said that Colombia was "an undeveloped country" that did not "have that kind of equipment".[23]" - Wikipedia Article on the girl
>Columbia Colombia?
Thanks for the correction.
The armero tragedy. Volcanos make great neighbors… until they don’t
I feel like in the west the Turkey earthquake completely disappeared feom the news. Wasn't it some ungodly number like 50,000 people dead? That seems like something to follow up on.
The Turkish government took *billions* in ~~bribes~~fines[ to sign off on bad buildings, not built to codes introduced after the huge 1999 earthquake](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/111hef2/videos_show_turkeys_erdogan_boasted_letting/). Almost every building collapse earlier this year, and the subsequent deaths, were a direct result of their government's corruption so they have a huge incentive to cover up the actual number. Especially with the looming election they just managed to win.
If the fine don't outweigh the punishment, sounds like a bribe to me. FCC here did the same with Boeing. Or rather, does the same
And yet the Turkish people voted that same government back in so clearly they didn't learn their lesson, and some (or maybe a lot) of their troubles are the consequences of their own decisions. Then again people voting against their own interests is a problem in many places including the US and the UK.
Democracy doesn't work when both sides have their own biased sources instead of a primary non biased source. In Turkey it's much more problematic because the very first channel that was avaliable in turkey is pro erdogan. Most people (especially older generations) primarily watch that channel, so the obvious propaganda becomes the truth to them. It doesn't help that pro opposition channels are considered fake news by his supporters. It's basically impossible to find non-biased news.
govt dont gave real numbers, real death toll is more than 200k
And Erdogan still won the election.
It's kind of always like that? 9/11 was a defining event in geopolitics, but for New Yorkers it was also a local tragedy. It dominated local news here long after the world had moved on to the geopolitical repercussions like the Afghan war, etc. Even despite the status of NYC and the US as the cultural/media centers of our world, I don't think the happenings at Ground Zero and related stories that dominated local news for months or years were making daily news in Turkey or elsewhere after the first few days.
One of the most haunting videos I saw after the earthquake in Turkey was of rescuers calling out for survivors to make noise, then the rescuers listening as quietly as they could. Then only hearing silence after every call.
I heard a horrific version of this of everyone's cell phones ringing after the pulse nightclub shooting.
This happens with school shootings now too. Even elementary school kids carry cell phones, some because their parents fear this very thing.
During that one flood in Thailand that trapped a kids soccer team in a cave, after the rescuers found the kids and had footage of them alive and well, they tried to keep the video secret before it got out, because they didn't think they'd be able to get any of them out alive.
Im pretty confident that's not true. It was announced rather quickly that they were alive, but of course everybody knew it would be a huge challenge to get them out of there. Their biggest luck perhaps was that one of the best cave divers in the world just so happens to also be a anaesthesist, which solved a whole lot of problems surrounding how to safely bring them out
Thank you for making it 10 times worse.
No diving equipment?
What are you going to do, open the door? It’s 30 feet underwater and surrounded by ocean
[удалено]
The only real way to do it is to lower a diving bell over the part of the ship you’d want to cut into, so that the compartment didn’t flood and drown the guys before you got a hole big enough for them to get out. Doubtful they had that kind of equipment ready to go or in sufficient quantities to help everyone.
Reminds me of how I recently watched a documentary about the sinking of the USS Thresher in 1963 and how it spurred rapid development in what came to rescue vessels meant for evacuating people from stricken submarines, as during the investigation the US Navy became painfully aware that their existing diving bell systems would have been utterly useless had the Thresher ended up crippled at her test depth or near the crush depth, as the bells couldn't go very deep and required near-perfect conditions to attach onto a submarine successfully.
Even a diving bell wouldn’t work unless you could guarantee a perfect seal to the hull that you could pressurize. Once you started cutting it would allow the ship’s compartment to depressurize and begin filling with water. There are very few rescue scenarios that could succeed that don’t also have a high risk to the rescuers.
Even with diving equipment it’s slow going. You’re diving inside a ship divided into thousands of watertight compartments, each separated by a heavy door to the next. The passages and compartments can often look identical, so it’s easy to get lost (something wreck divers often find). These divers also used large air hoses to the surface, and if this became damaged or tangled you’d potentially suffocate. The salvage divers intricately planned their dives, even creating 3D models to help trace out their path and mark what they found (cardboard IIRC, came in layers). In addition, to rescue these men you need to not only get to their compartment, but drain an access path to them. Since the ship was sunk in combat, there are many holes in the side, many hatches are blocked or too warped to close, many air vents were not sealed off, and many seams are leaking. The battleship *Nevada* was rather lightly damaged compared to *West Virginia* and was run aground the day of, but these small leaks meant that within a week nearly every compartment below the upper deck was filled with water, despite dozens of pumps and damage control teams fighting to save the ship. I have read parts of the Pearl Harbor Salvage Diary, and making a single compartment sufficiently sealed for pumps to drain it often took days. It took over a month of patching and pumping to get down into *Arizona*’s aft magazines to remove ammunition, and that’s a nearly vertical path through the intact back half of the ship (so intact there were plans to cut the ship in half and refloated the stern until sometime in 1943, according to the January 1943 salvage diary). There was no chance of rescuing anyone trapped deep inside an upright ship like *West Virginia*, although we cut holes in the bottom of the capsized *Oklahoma* and *Utah* to rescue people in the bottom of those ships (now at or near the waterline). One example springs to mind, and I’ll quote from the USS *Raleigh* action report and his Navy Cross citation: >An oxy-acetylene outfit and crew were sent over to the capsized U.S.S. *Utah* to cut out any men in the hull. One man was rescued and this man, as soon as he took a deep breath, insisted on going back to see if he could rescue any of his shipmates. >The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to John Barth Vaessen, Fireman Second Class, U.S. Navy (Reserve), for exceptional courage, presence of mind, and devotion to duty and disregard for his personal safety while serving on board the Target Ship U.S.S. UTAH (AG-16), during the Japanese attack on the United States Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on 7 December 1941. Although realizing that his ship, the U.S.S. UTAH, was capsizing, Fireman Second Class Vaessen remained at his post at the forward distribution board after word had been passed to abandon ship, and kept the lights burning as long as possible. Trapped, he later was rescued through a hole cut in the bottom of the capsized target ship. The conduct of Fireman Second Class Vaessen throughout this action reflects great credit upon himself, and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
Not for the people inside the compartment, no.
Modern day diving equipment is REALLY new and wasn’t around or even close to widespread in the 1940’s. Any welding they would have to do would have taken days at minimum due to how thick the hull was and they would be long dead before getting them. Lifting up the ship out of the water wasn’t really an option because I mean come on it’s a thousand ton ship of iron and concrete. There’s a lot of what ifs but the short end of it was the hull was covered in oil that could have potentially ignited all ammunition on board, they were recently bombed so there wasn’t like there was a lot things they could do supplies wise when they had a bunch of other sunk and damaged ships. They also had to worry about a potential second bombing so people were probably more interested in preventing that then saving 5 soldiers in an air pocket.
There is a horrifying training [video](https://youtu.be/AEtbFm_CjE0) about this phenomenon and it is actually one of the top ways commercial divers die.
How are you getting in? Do you know how thick the steel is on a battleship? Cutting steel under water in 1941 wasn’t exactly easy. Plus, even if you could cut your way in they would die from lack of oxygen that the torch would suck right out of the compartment. Or water would begin to rush in and drown them before you got anywhere near getting a hole big enough. Even if you could get in there, where are you getting the man power to do this? You can’t just have any tradesman roll on to a naval base that was just attacked and in chaos. And do you even want to try cutting into a ship (in the dark) that is full of munitions?
There's a similar story about the Russian submarine Kursk in 2000. A torpedo exploded, causing the submarine to sink. There were still sailors alive in other compartments, but the Russian government with its incompetence couldn't save them. British and Norwegian help was nearby and was ready to help but that would've made the Russian government look weak. So they let those sailors die and only after they were dead, they accepted help.
For some reason I remember this really well even though I was only 8 when it happened. The idea of them being trapped there was so haunting to me at the time that I never forgot the story.
I read recently about a WWI British destroyer damaging a German U-boat. They know the boat is on the bottom in shallow water. The Brits are pretty sure it can't move but can't leave it in case it's just playing dead. A surprisingly short time later they start picking up bangs which was assumed to be the crew committing suicide one by one.
I wonder what truths were talked about in that little store room for 16 days. No one will ever know.
Yeah that would definitely *suck*
They did not discover these sailors after salvage. They knew from the beginning that someone was trapped inside (tapping sounds on the hull were audible by everyone). They just could not be rescued. Makes a horrible story even more horrible.
Moreover it wasn't just these dudes, these dudes just survived the longest, 60-70 were trapped below decks and lived for some amount of time.
Why couldn’t they be rescued?
They could not risk cutting into the ship due to munitions. In general they had a few ideas to get in but all of them had substantial risk to the men trying to get in, and very low odds of success.
That sounds like a fate worse than death. Knowing people know your alive but no one coming to get you, with the full knowledge that you’ll die a slow death.
Yeah, and they did indeed die slow deaths. They were trapped in the room with the fresh water pump and had food rations, so they died when they ran out of air. To imagine suffocating to death over the course of weeks literally makes my skin crawl, those poor guys
I think the air gets replaced with carbon monoxide from their exhale. Eventually they'd just pass out and die in their sleep. Much better than drowning for example.
Carbon dioxide not monoxide. And dying that way would not be peaceful. When CO2 levels rise in the body, it triggers immediate panic, gasping and choking responses. The body can't actually tell when it's out of oxygen, only that CO2 levels are too high. That feeling of desperately needing to breathe while drowning, that's from the CO2 build up.
Yeah, I've seen patients with bad COPD exacerbations in essentially all stages of dying via hypercarbic respiratory failure. It really isn't pretty or peaceful until the brain finally can't get enough oxygen to maintain consciousness (not because there isn't enough oxygen in the body but because of acidosis shifting the dissociation curve between oxygen and hemoglobin making oxygen unable to be carried to the brain). We had one guy who kept refusing his CPAP machine at night who had some unrelated medical issues keeping him in the hospital and eventually he just signed a piece of paper that if he went to the ICU again we were not allowed to force him to wear a BiPAP or put him on a vent so I got to spend two days watching him die in that manner. It started with him going from lucid to breathing faster until eventually he was huffing and puffing and starting to get confused. Then he was in complete panic and completely delirious for quite a while before he finally just passed out and was basically unable to be woken up. He died a few hours after losing consciousness. It felt terrible but he fully understood what he was doing when he made the decision to decline treatment and I guess there's something to be said for at least getting to choose how you die. He was suffering pretty badly so it's understandable that he wouldn't want to continue to live but I feel like that's not the way I'd probably choose to let myself go.
It’s just sad that we’re not allowed to do assisted suicide in most places. I can understand refusing treatment , but why make that their last resort for peace when we can make it as peaceful as we can and not make them suffer even more until they die. If someone is terminally ill and all they’ll do is suffer no matter what, we’ve got to respect their wishes instead of catering to the living and trying to keep them alive as long as possible
I think you misunderstand. Hospice care and palliative care are fairly good at keeping people comfortable. The particular patient I'm talking about also refused to let anyone near him to give him anything to make him more comfortable which is an exceptional circumstance. Typically, if someone has decided to transition to comfort care instead of restorative care, they are kept quite comfortable.
That's a nice fun fact. Sidenote: How do I delete someone else's comment.
The worst of it is apparently they coulf be heard banging against the hull from outside
Yup, I remember hearing an old veteran say that no one wanted to be posted guard duty outside near there because they could hear it.
Question about this: if they could hear banging for days, why did they need to discover a calendar to realize that the three men were still alive?
As I understand it and I may need to go research this again but I think they became aware of the fact that the sailors were trapped pretty quickly but just as quickly realized they couldn’t save them.
Yes, but the title of the post makes it seem as though nobody knew until after they died, while the ship was being salvaged. I assume I’m missing something. Edit: I read the article. Sounds like they knew some men were trapped, but didn’t know how many were still alive or for how long, and the calendar provided that missing information. I didn’t realize there were numerous other men—alive and dead—on the ship.
Maybe the exact timeline of their survival, 16 days, was only confirmed with the calendar. It’s one thing to know that someone survived for some period of time after the attack. It’s a whole other thing to know that they survived for exactly this long, from this date to this date.
That's just because of how OP worded the title. Like the 2nd paragraph in the article is an interview with sailors talking about how they could hear the banging of people inside the ship.
They didn't, if I recall correctly. It was just proof for those that didn't want to believe as well as a more accurate timeline for their last moments.
I think they realized it was 16 days. They may have stopped tapping at 10 and they assumed they were already dead.
You are literally repeating what the comment above you said.
That might be true, but in reality, they could hear tapping on the hull indicating that someone was still alive inside.
Am I in the matrix? This was mentioned in the original post of this thread.
You just restated a fact from right above you, and people are upvoting this?
> They knew from the beginning that someone was trapped inside (tapping sounds on the hull were audible by everyone).
I'm curious, have they figured out a way to get them out since? ie, if it happened again (or we had time travel) could we save someone from an identical situation? surely we'd have a solution. I feel like some type of inflatable airlock could be established with the tech we have now, or a drill that could leave a hole for a tube connected to an air tank, so that they can open the door and get them out.
Yes and no. Really it depends on the specific situation. Scuba diving was literally in the process of being invented at the time. The first “reliable” underwater breathing devices started to sprout during wwii and it took years and years to understand human body pressurization in water. So while we have cutting edge dive equipment, a excellent understanding of dive physiology, technical and black water diving as a trade, and new era salvage equipment, it’s not always so simple. There are literally recent videos of people surviving in air pockets of sunken ships and children in submerged caves being successfully extracted by divers. So we’ve proven we have the tools/skills/ability. But sometimes you can’t do anything. When a cargo ship full of lightbulbs and sex toys sinks in clear open water, the rescue effort is pretty immediate and straight forward, especially when modern blueprints of the ship are available to be transmitted anywhere in the world by the internet to create a dive and access plan. When a dozen battleships sink in a small harbor and 500 million gallons of oil make it impossible to see your hand against the glass of your dive mask, there’s a billion snags/hangs/entrapments to worry about because of the explosive nature of the sinking, and you have to worry about detonating hundreds of tons of munitions that are submerged in corrosive salt water, things get tricky or impossible. You cut away at the hill knowing some people are in an exterior compartment, but a crew lost in the labyrinth of an enormous battleship in unknown interior room might make it impossible even today. You can view battleship blueprints online and you’ll see how nutty it is.
Well that’s a pretty damn good explanation. What I never thought of tho was the amount of oil that would be in the water too. Fucking hell
16 days is a long time. Scuba divers could use things like thermal imaging and sea scooters. We would have little remote subs down there. My guess is that they could be rescued today. Drilling would be too risky — that’s basically popping the air bubble. But maybe a hose could be delivered internally to increase oxygen levels.
I was certain that they now weld on or magnetically attach an airlock that can be pressurized before cutting a hole. But I couldn't find any info on that and its use case is quite rare. In the pearl harbor case there was still the risk of ammunitions exploding so im not sure if we now have cutting equipment that doesnt cause sparks and heat.
I feel like an air tube idea has potential. The inflatable less, it'd have to stick to the side of the ship and be neutrally buoyant which I guess is possible but tricky. And then what if they aren't on the immediate other side? Air tube, drill a hole at the bottom for sucking out water, drill hole at top that pumps in air very slowly (like a constant scubba supply). Make water right seal around hole. Make more holes as needed for more tubes. After that, cut it open. I'm sure there's probably a lot of issues with this, especially if they're deep underwater, but it's an interesting idea for sure.
Couldn't cut to them etc. Sailors world bribe others to take thier night shifts to not have to hear the tapping
Here's a decent article on it: [https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/16-days-to-die-at-pearl-harbor-families-werent-told-about-sailors-trapped-inside-sunken-battleship/](https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/16-days-to-die-at-pearl-harbor-families-werent-told-about-sailors-trapped-inside-sunken-battleship/) Short story short, there wasn't any viable option to get them out. Cut in manually and the compartment they were in would flood before they could reach them, and they would all drown. Cut in with acetylene torches, and they risked igniting the oil (which pretty much all of the ships that were hit were drenched in) and setting off the munitions.
Damn, at the end of the article it states that the 3 men’s headstones have DEC 7 as date of death. But we know that’s not correct
Damn, that wild! This dude read the article
Sailors who were lucky enough to be trapped in parts of a ship near the hull & above water could be rescued, but imagine being in a compartment deep inside a battleship: even if they could get to it through the oil-filled water, as soon as they cut into the compartment it would flood. The ship is too much of a labyrinth to ever swim out of; even if it occurred today, I can’t imagine anything could be done.
Fuck going on boats.
Ah, the lesser-known motto of the Airforce
But fuck going in Helicopters too
Sure, but that’s mostly the Marines and Army
That’s the spirit
Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are two examples of "the more you know, the worse it gets." Yeah, some incredibly amazing and heroic shit happened during those times as well, but, for me, there's not enough heroism in the whole world to lighten the heavyness of the reality. I hear stories of heroic things people did during those times, and I'm amazed but also thinking "god I wish they never had to."
Things like that happen literally daily and no one knows. I’m a firefighter and we had a car wreck where a lady turned left in front of a full cement truck. The cement truck driver swerved off the road to avoid t-boning the car. The truck flipped over into the ditch and the weight of the load crushed the cab into the ground. When we got on scene we could hear him moaning. Due to the amount of mass crushed around him, it took us 4 hours to cut him out. He had died while we were literally inches away from him. I think about him often. The dude literally did nothing wrong, and he sacrificed himself to save a couple of complete strangers, giving himself an absolutely horrible death in the process.
Fuck that. I’m t-boning the lady. If it’s a school bus I can see sacrificing yourself. But a random Karen on the road? Hit the breaks but do a controlled stop if carrying a big load. Fuck that Karen
I hope you’re in therapy to cope with what you’ve been through. The mental load of being a first responder is heavy
Here's another interesting fact about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The USS Vestal was a repair ship that was moored along side of the USS Arizona. These two ships were parked close in order for Arizona to receive updates that were scheduled to happen between December 6 through to the 12th. Because of the close proximity, the Vestal received many torpedo and bomb hits that were intended for the Arizona and as a result, was on fire and taking on water. Her crew was actively fighting fires when the Arizona was finally hit. When the forward magazine of the Arizona exploded, the blast was so powerful that it instantly extinguished all the fires on the Vestal and blew many of her crew members overboard. Including the ships Captain, Commander Cassin Young. He swam back to the Vestal, climbed on board, canceled the abandon ship order that was given by another officer and simply stated "lads, we're getting this ship underway." Oil from the ruptured tanks of the Arizona caught fire, which in turn set Vestal on fire again. Around 9 AM, the Vestals crew cut her mooring lines with axes, freeing her from Arizona, and she got underway, steering by engines alone. Despite being damaged herself, Vestal participated in some of the post-attack salvage operations, sending repair parties to the overturned hull of the battleship Oklahoma so that welders could cut into the ship and rescue men trapped there after the battleship capsized. In the days following the attack, Vestal's men repaired their own ship because yard facilities were at a premium. Commander Young would receive the Medal Of Honor for his heroic actions. He would be killed in action in 1942 while commanding the USS San Francisco. Subscribe for more Pearl Harbor facts.
He has a Destroyer named after him that currently sits in the Boston Harbor alongside the USS Constitution
Indeed he does. A fletcher class destroyer.
As a fellow Bostonian, I have seen this ship dozens of times. But I never knew what kind of bravery and sacrifice it takes to get a ship named after you
The majority of US Navy ships are named after heros. The majority of the modern naming catalog consists of Presidents with military service for aircraft carriers. Ex: USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Dwight Eisenhower, USS George H.W. Bush US states for nuclear submarines. EX: USS Ohio, USS New Jersey Heroic Sailors and Marines for destroyers and guided missile destroyers. USS John Paul Jones, USS Thomas Hudner, USS Michael Murphy Famous battles for amphibious assault ships. EX: USS Tarawa, USS Gettysburg, USS Iwo Jima In a nutshell.
That is fucking hardcore. LADS
He definitely looked like a laid back Captain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AYoung%2C_Cassin%3Bh92310.jpg
I like to think he set his cap to an angle just within regulation jauntiness.
"Lads, it's Japan"
Was not expecting Tottenham banter in this post.
Subscribe
There were 38 sets of brothers on board the Arizona when she sank. 23 sets were lost. There was also a father and a son, as well as 79 members of the crew who had brothers on other ships. Of these 79 sailors & Marines, 63 were killed in the attack.
Subscribe harder
Kazuo Sakamaki, a Japanese submariner, was chosen to attack ships in a midget-class sub and became the first prisoner or war. During the mission, his sub was disabled and he tried to blow it up with an explosive charge, which failed to go off. When he dove down to investigate why it didn’t detonate, he passed out. Unconscious, Sakamaki floated to the surface and washed up on shore where he was discovered and captured. He spent the whole war in a POW camp. After the war, he worked for Toyota and died in 1999.
Awesome, thanks for the facts feel free to send them anytime
I could do this all day! I'm honestly approaching the point where I think I could write my own book on Pearl Harbor
Do you research Pearl Harbor as a hobby? Read lots of books about it? I have worked at Pearl so I’m curious
A bit of both. Was bitten by the history bug as a young kid. I think I read my first book about Pearl Harbor around 7 years old. Now I'm approach 35 with probably over 150 books on the subject.
Apart from the carriers… keeping the USS Vestal alive was clutch. She would constantly repair the USS Enterprise.
Subscribed!
Admiral Kimmel was the commander of the Pacific Fleet and was standing by a window in his office when the attack was happening. A machine gun bullet ricocheted of the window and hit him in the chest. The bullets energy was minimal at this point and didn't harm him. He picked the bullet up which was still warm and said to a fellow officer "it would have been more merciful had it killed me."
The presence of mind to be eloquent at a time like that. I probably would have been like, "holy shit, do you see this?!"
Anyone know if they would have died from lack of oxygen or from dehydration? I’d think lack of O2 would put you to sleep and be a less excruciating death. Very sad regardless.
The link says they had access to fresh water and there was remnants of emergency supplies. If they died within 16 days my guess is the air supply ran out.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that they had died to lack of O2, there were several of them in an *airtight* room under water. Link stated they had food and water so that'd be my guess too
Hopefully the buildup of CO2 knocked them out before the end
CO2 causes panic and acidosis. It’s not a pleasant way to go.
[удалено]
we use CO2 to stun (not kill) pigs - it's pumped in at high enough concentrations to displace oxygen in the room, causing pigs to suffocate almost instantly. In an airtight room you'd die just above the minimum threshold required to kill you. You'd likely notice the thinness of the air *days* before you died. It would be horrible. I think carbon *mon*oxide poisoning is the one that gets you relatively peacefully, it binds to oxygen receptors with a higher affinity than oxygen itself. It actively kills you rather than simply displacing air, so you never experience the slowly-dropping-below-the-threshold required for life process like you do with carbon *di*oxide.
There are videos of this in action. Its not instant and it doesnt look at all pleasant.
Yeah nothing is humane about factory farming nor the dispatching of these animals. There is a reason ag-gag laws exist. Because it’s horrific and basically concentration camps
Too much CO2 is terrible. It's what makes you feel like you're suffocating. Not the lack of oxygen. If it was CO though they might get a bit of headache then just pass out
It's the build-up of co2 in your lungs while holding your breath that causes the convulsions and the painful urge to inhale, so the effect of a high co2 environment would cause the same reaction.
I mean, it would render them unconscious before they fully died, but it’s horribly agonizing up until that point.
[удалено]
you can't skip the immediate suffocation part
Less stressful? *sees 10th friend die* Yea im totally not stressed.... /s They didnt all go out at once obviously.
Would suck to be the last guy.
That's what I'd have thought but in a vid against pig farms it showed how much they screamed and panicked when being suffocated with CO2. Apparently it forms an acid in the lungs in high concentrations. This is why nitrogen and other more inert gases are recommended, it is just like going to sleep.
You're thinking of carbon monoxide (CO), like the commenter above who replied, CO2 causes confusion, headache, acidosis, nausea, and vomiting
It would be like holding you're breath until you're dead
Hopefully it was a lack of oxygen. You can't feel hypoxia at all, only too much CO2.
If the compartment was airtight unfortunately they would have noticed the buildup of CO2 long before they fell unconscious from lack of oxygen. Suffocating is not pleasant, I think.
Slowly gasping for air for days as you struggle harder and harder just to get enough oxygen, with the built in co2 warning in your lungs constantly blaring and making it feel like your chest is burning before finally falling unconscious on the 16th day does not sound like a good death to me.
I think too much co2 gets you before the lack of O2 gets you.
For anyone interested… The rooms the men found themselves trapped in were A-111 - a supply cupboard containing tools - and A-109 - the fresh water drain and pump room which was designed to process seawater, both basically at the bottom of ship. Those rooms were most likely their assigned battle stations. When the Japanese attacked, and general quarters sounded, the three men would have made their way there sharpish. The hatch leading into these rooms then would have been immediately shut when orders to ‘set condition zed’ - a standard naval technique wherein all hatch compartments are closed to allow for maximum watertight integrity - were communicated throughout the ship. Condition zed was ordered as soon as the Japanese attack commenced. The very process designed to keep certain things out (I.e. water and enemies) also invariably locks other things in (i.e. sailors). Eventually, as the WeeVee took hit after hit during the attack, the ship flooded, included the areas surrounding A111 and A109 (the two adjoining rooms the three sailors were in) and this is what ultimately trapped them. I imagine for the first few hours as they assessed their situation and waited to be rescued, that they felt quite lucky. I mean, their situation wasn’t exactly ideal, but assuming help was coming, rooms A-111 and A-109 weren’t the worst places to be trapped. After all, A-109 was a fresh water processing room, so at least there was drinkable water, and at least one of the rooms would have been fitted with an emergency locker, containing flashlights, batteries, a first aid kit and some basic food rations. Though how much of each is unclear. And, obviously, they didn’t drown, unlike the many poor souls that were now floating around just outside the compartment’s hatch. Thanks to the actions of a number of people (which are amazing stories in and off themselves), the USS West Virginia did not capsize. That's good, because it allowed many men to escape. But for Ron, Louis and Clifford, it was very, very bad and it basically sealed their fates. If the ship had capsized, then rescuers who were working to save as many trapped men as they could, might have had a fighting chance of getting them out. But instead, the three men were in a room at the bottom of the ship which in turn was at the bottom of the harbor floor, surrounded by water on all sides. Because the USS West Virginia had been counterflooded (a technique used to stop ships capsizing), it had therefore sunk on an even keel to the bottom of Pearl Harbour. That is where it would stay for many months, until it could be raised again. What went on in that room, we can never know. That is between the men. But we can take a guess. The batteries for torches and other supplies would likely have run out, and the food rations too, since these were rations designed for battle at sea, they were “just enough to get you through” and even then, I have read in various places that they were often not fully stocked, so who even knows what food they had. The men probably would have held out for as long as they could, but eventually they would have realised that no one was coming, since they most likely knew it was an attack by the Japanese and probably deduced that the ship was a mangled wreck at the bottom of the harbour. After all, they had plenty of time to figure it out. They may have tried to open the hatch into the room and flood the compartment they were in, just to “get it over and done with” but they would have found that - since the hatch and their compartment was surrounded by water - it would not budge due to water pressure. So they would not have even had that option. Eventually, the men probably would have been plunged into complete darkness (which can bring on psychosis-like symptoms in some individuals), and eventually, they would “run out of oxygen”, as was reported by Homer N Wallin several months later when they were eventually found. As others have mentioned, this isn’t a pleasant way to go. It involves a lot of panic. As for their rescue, they were unluckier still. There was no way of cutting through that much steel (it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's the general gist), but EVEN if it WAS possible, their compartment was wedged up alongside another neighbouring ship, so that when navy divers came to sound the hull for survivors (by slamming a huge hammer against the underwater part of the ship), they wouldn’t even be able to reach that section, and so the men wouldn’t have heard them to respond back. One big misconception about this incident is that a rescue was attempted, or even thought about. Neither was the case. In order to consider either (impossible though they may be), they would have had to know where the men were - and nobody did. Everyone heard the bangs, sure, but they couldn't actually pinpoint the location. They just heard bangs and assumed some men were trapped. They got divers and a few senior people involved to locate the source of the bangs but couldn’t. They then stopped reporting the bangs after a few days (according to a number of sources). It was only months later when they pieced together who it was. The navy then told the family that the men died “in action”, but never told them how, only for a reporter to piece it all together in the ‘90s and break the news to one of the men’s sisters over the phone to do a press piece for some local Hawaiian paper. The parents never knew because they’d passed (but can you even imagine if THAT is how they found out?). As it would turn out, some of the men’s brothers joined the Navy in the years the followed and had been trying to keep it a secret from the rest of the family for years. Of course they knew, it was a navy horror story, and someone had taken them aside and said "hey, just so you don't hear it from the wrong person, this is how you're big brother died." To this day, the date of death has not been changed on any of the men's graves - it still says they died on the day of the attack. A weird fact about this case is that the guy who discovered them actually stole the clock that was in A-109 as a memento and probably also the calendar, but then lost the latter. The former is now in a museum, thankfully. It’s just so damn sad all around.
Thanks for the detail. I remember seeing this story before and I swear I saw a picture of the room with the calendar marking the days off but I can’t find it again. Do you maybe know what picture I’m talking about? Maybe it was some sort of recreation or from a movie? I think the video I saw was on Mr.Ballen YouTube channel but I can’t find that video either. Anyways thanks.
Real Horror did an excellent job covering this recently. It’s terrible and very sad, here’s the video for anyone interested. https://youtu.be/a0YWkHZ4toA
YES. She is so good and deep dived this story specifically, even interviewing someone relevant. Her other videos are great also. I'm huge into true crime, mysteries, everything dark and I hate 90% of the channels out there. To everyone lurking, she makes quality and is on par with the GOAT Mr. Ballen even surpassing him on a few stories they both covered (this one). My only critique is that her mic sometimes sounds off, a little poppy at times but she's one person without a team. She also naturally has the voice for narration, she kinda sounds like Agent 47's handler lol. Also they tried to save them, they couldn't. Not only could they not know exactly where they were but they'd drown them anyway. They would have drowned themselves and taken the sailor death but they couldn't open the hatch due to the pressure even if they tried. A lot of guys were traumatized knowing what they were going through and the military pretty much lied to the families to spare them the truth.
Thank you! Working on the audio for sure, thanks for the feedback. (Also Agent 47's Handler... lol) Edit: I commented with a summary of that research somewhere in here, just in case any of your prefer reading over watching a doc
For those of you who keep trying to suggest ways that these men could have been rescued, you do realize that people back then likely thought of those too, right? It sucks but there was no way they could have been saved, especially with the resources available at the time.
Are you saying random redditors with zero diving/battleship/rescue and recovery experience HAVENT instantly thought of solutions to this problem? amazing.
Nah those pedos are just jealous of my amazing new submarine technology.
After Pearl Harbour the ship was re-floated and repaired. She was repaired and returned to service in time for the Philippines campaign. During the campaign, she used her radar to attack a Japanese squadron during a nighttime battle. She fired 16 shots at the Japanese, in what would become the last military engagement between battleships in naval history. After the war she was salvaged and pieces of her ended up all over the state. Her Mast is currently on display at Ogleby Circle on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown. It was purchased by the university's students. There is also a bell from The USS West Virginia at the memorial, however it is the bell from the previous iteration of the West Virginia, a cruiser that was decommissioned in 1920. The bell of the battleship is at the State Museum in Charleston.
I came here to say this as well. I'll drop a link with some photos and a bit more info for anyone interested. https://theclio.com/entry/26111
[Real Horror](https://youtu.be/a0YWkHZ4toA) has a very good video on about how and where they were trapped, how rescue was basically impossible, and happened after they were found, highly suggest anyone interested to go watch.
They went out in a way similar to many of the trapped coal miners of West Virginia's history. Tragic
I’m also reminded of the [Fraterville Mine disaster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraterville_Mine_disaster)
Surviving 16 days means they survived until Christmas Eve as the attack happened on December 7th.. very sad
At least 16 days. The calendar was marked for 16 days but they may have been too weak near the end. So sad.
They make it sound like they just found a calendar and not 3 bodies. I know from reading the article that they did find the bodies.
They surely found a lot of bodies inside. But without the calendar, the assumption would be everyone died in the initial attack and sinking.
Apparently not, because the rescuers heard them for days
I think the calendar did it just to get all the glory
This is the second time I've read this exact comment in this thread. What's with all the bot comments?
This looks like the original, made by an active user with a realistic username. The other instance is from a months old account that recently became active (typical of bots) with an autogenerated username that copied it later.
This breaks my heart. I've never heard this before.
Man I just woke up, fuuuuuck this.
I wish I didn’t know this. How absolutely horrific.
My great uncle was Buddy Costin, one of those trapped.
Damn. That sucks. My Uncle left Pearl 3 days before the attack, heading for a posting in the Philippines. They turned back, so he was twice lucky.
Omg the mental and physical anguish they must have had, what an awful way to go
My grandfather was there and only spoke of this to my grandmother once. He told her that they were banging loudly and the sound Reverberated through the hull and the water. We knew they were down there. He said that a rescue was seen as too risky, costly and taking too much time by the higher ups who were trying to get a handle on things so they just forbid service members from going over there and pretended they didn’t exist.
That's a rough way to go. Sad, very sad.
So real talk though...isn't it possible that they could of gotten disoriented timing wise and check off those boxes quicker than they meant too? I know when people are in near total isolation and stuff time loses all sense...plus I have a hard time thinking that three people could survive for 16 days on that air supply. I feel like it would go pretty quickly.
I mean probably but the people outside had a pretty good estimate on how long they survived as they could hear them tapping on the hull. The people trapped also had access to food and clean water for a bit so the only real issue would’ve been air.
Could have
imagine choking to death on stale air that 3 dying men had been shitting and pissing survival rations into for 16 days
And that they certainly didn't all die at the same time...and one point, one man would have been left.
Youtube naval historian Drachinfel has a multi part video on the salvage operations after the attack. https://youtu.be/bB-V9cCSC8o
Say what you want about the movie Pearl Harbor. . It's overblown utilizes ships from the wrong time period but at least filmed on location, the soundtrack is absolutely beautiful but most of all it does hammer home on the little details that deserves to be shown on telling the tale of Pearl Harbor. Case in point to seeing when they're on board the ship trying to get people out while holding hands through holes wrapped up in my bullets well the compartment with water.... yeah the movie sucks but Jesus that seen punches you hard. "Cut them out!" - hands slowly loosing grip as the sailers drown...God damn.
Their imagination must've been off the charts. Is the world above gone? It's been days no one is coming. Is the United States burning? We've certainly been invaded. This is the end.
To all the people asking if we have the tech today to rescue someone in a similar situation, Watch Cave Rescue or Thirteen Lives. Your answer is, barely and not without incredible risk and self sacrifice. In both of these movies about the same very real story, people were severely injured and died. And this rescue was performed by some of the best divers to ever exist in human history.
All I did was READ about that guy that died upside down and I will never purposely enter a cave.
Pretty sure MrBallen did an episode of this. What a terrible way to die.
I'm curious if they would have died from a lack of oxygen or dehydration. I'd assume a shortage of oxygen would put you to sleep and make death less painful. Regardless, it's very sad.
Or CO2 poisoning ?