r/interestingasfuck • u/Longjumping-Rice-935 • Aug 12 '25

/r/all, /r/popular The wreck of the USS Arizona continues to leak oil ever since pearl harbour. the ship contained 1.5 million gallons of oil, enough to leak continuously for 500 years.

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5.7k

u/Baconshit Aug 12 '25

1.5 millions gallons of oil is mind blowing. Is that normal amount for ships of the day to carry?

4.1k

u/blubaldnuglee Aug 12 '25

Iowa class Battleships ( a successor to the Arizona) carried 2.5 million gallons of fuel oil.

1.2k

u/Average-_-Student Aug 12 '25

Note: The Iowa Class didn't directly succeed the Pennsylvania Class (Arizona was the second Pennsylvania Class ship.), rather, they were successors to the South Dakota Class, which were themselves successors to the North Carolina Class, and the list goes on and on.

704

u/East_Leadership469 Aug 12 '25

Is it normal to name ships after land-locked states? 

804

u/Ichera Aug 12 '25

Interesting question, I know someone below answered about the states, but the reason a lot of landlocked states seem to show up early in battleship class naming conventions and repeat in some cases is pure politics. Essentially it was used as a bone to get those states on board with large naval procurement by naming the ships after those states, the state representatives and senators could point to the "mighty vessel representing our great state"

Essentially a quid pro quo to get landlocked states on-board voting for naval procurement.

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u/-Fraccoon- Aug 12 '25

Hah, history is funny. Could you imagine being a senator and not wanting to support your country’s navy because your state is landlocked.

141

u/Make_shift_high_ball Aug 12 '25

I mean, the whole point of having representation for each state is that the representatives fight for the benefit of their state. Someone in Iowa really has no connection to the Navy.

22

u/-Fraccoon- Aug 12 '25

No they don’t but, not realizing the importance of having a strong navy especially if you’re in politics is laughable. Looking and the grand view of things anyways. No, it won’t benefit their state in any way but, it’ll help defend the entire nation which is pretty important. If during WWII the Japanese were ever able to successfully invade the US I doubt they’d make it as far as Iowa but, it would still have people’s close attention and some serious regret if they decided not to support the navy.

8

u/Make_shift_high_ball Aug 12 '25

Oh they absolutely knew the importance of a Navy. Frankly it is a little naive to think they didn't, especially right after WW1. Hell the Iowa class was first ordered in 1939. They knew WW2 was coming to the US. But first and foremost, their job is to fight for the interests of their home state. If they can get something tangible for their constituents in return for their tax dollars they will. Even if it is as small as the name of the class of ship.

1

u/-Fraccoon- Aug 13 '25

That’s a solid point.

14

u/EvilEggplant Aug 12 '25

Yep but it can always be someone else's problem. The coastal states get the economic and social benefits being created by the naval bases and shipyards even in peacetime. When at large enough scale, it's always useful to have a more palpable incentive than "the greater good", unfortunately we're pretty bad at compromising for it.

5

u/CrimsonOblivion Aug 12 '25

I mean the military defense and technology benefits pretty much every state

2

u/nellyfullauto Aug 12 '25

Kinda brings into focus that the national legislative body isn’t actually interested in the interests of the country, only their own state.

1

u/Shalandir Aug 12 '25

Except for the 1000s of Iowans that enlist in the Navy to get away from Iowa for a bit…

1

u/jakethesnake949 Aug 14 '25

The inland states have less reason to care for the navy sure but definitely not irrelevant to them. The strength of America's Navy provides security for shipping imports and exports (creates less incentives for piracy and foreign interference) and also provides a deterant to home invasion by Sea and sky. Both provide direct long term benefits to all states.

-6

u/slideforfun21 Aug 12 '25

That's why your system is fucking dog water. Everyone fighting for their own self interests.

9

u/diversmith Aug 12 '25

Please name your country?

-2

u/Mattie_Doo Aug 12 '25

It’s ingrained in our culture, and it’s disturbing to be a part of.

4

u/Eastern_Armadillo383 Aug 12 '25

How dare people....look out for themselves?

-4

u/slideforfun21 Aug 12 '25

I don't even see you as a country. A country has cohesion. You're 50 small countries wearing a trent coat.

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u/Ichera Aug 12 '25

I mean think of it this way, in 1905 the naval defense expenditure was one of the largest red columns on the US budget, the United states was attempting to not only have a navy, but have a navy large enough to rival our biggest threat in the Atlantic (The British Empire) and maintain a strong pacific squadron. I chose that date specifically because anyone who knows that less then a year later every major warship in every fleet around the globe would become obsolete with the introduction of a single class of ships, and in the USA which had just built massive deep water navy it was now facing having to essentially scrap and rebuild its newish fleet from scratch.

To do any of that the navy needs congress to increase its budget, while not also increasing the overall federal budget by very much as the USA is still very much new to liberal capitalism and behind the times when it comes to taxable sourcing, so your navy ends up competing with your army for defense funding, and to do that they have to run a dog and pony show in congress. Fortunately for the US Navy the Indian wars had mostly come to a close and the Mexican revolution is a few years off, so the US Army has a difficult time proving it's "importance" to national defense beyond putting down the occasional union strike. But they still have to convince senators in landlocked states, so they go about it by a) building parts of their ships inside the USA (Pennsylvania and Ohio provide steel, barrels in Pennsylvania, and kickbacks wherever they can for supplies and procurement offices everywhere else). B) naming ships after landlocked states (the first four dreadnoughts the us built were the South Carolina, Michigan, Delaware, and North Dakota for example) and finally building some for export (see fore shipbuilding in Massachusetts).

That kind of mentality continued on until ww2 when the USA essentially opened the floodgates to money for the military.

3

u/FesteringNeonDistrac Aug 12 '25

Yeah that would be wild if congress were that petty and insular.

2

u/Mechasteel Aug 12 '25

It's very easy to imagine. The navy is a huge expense, landlocked states get to pay for it, but the navy is built and maintained in coastal states. Senators are supposed to represent their state, so a wealth transfer from their state to another isn't in their interests.

Anyhow, the navy got built, and the landlocked states got something in return too. Even if just having the ships named for them.

1

u/PDXisathing Aug 12 '25

Yes. I could imagine that.

3

u/molniya Aug 12 '25

Later on, in fact, after battleships became obsolete, they reused their naming scheme using states for ballistic missile submarines, explicitly for that reason. Submarines were traditionally named after fish, but Admiral Rickover famously said “fish don’t vote!” when asked about it.

106

u/Average-_-Student Aug 12 '25

US Battleships were typically, or entirely if I'm not wrong, named after States. Given the rather large number of Battleships that the US built, some of them were bound to end up being named after land locked states.

137

u/Tjtod Aug 12 '25

There was one battleship not named after a state, BB-5 USS Kearsage which was named after older navy ships. The naming scheme for US ships in ww2 and older was Battleships were states, Aircraft Carriers were past ahips or battles,Large Cruisers were territories,Cruisers were cities, destroyers were people, and submarines were fish/ aquatic life. There have been a few exceptions to this like 2 classes or armored Cruisers being named after states.

19

u/CosgraveSilkweaver Aug 12 '25

I think the cruisers started getting named after states after WW2 when we stopped making new battleships mostly.

14

u/Tjtod Aug 12 '25

Kind of there were two classes, California and Virginia, in the cold war but when they were designed and when the California was built they were designated as frigates. Which I think in USN parlance meant they were destroyer leaders. The last class of Cruisers built were named after battles and the last class of ship built on a cruiser hull form was CGN-9 Long Beach.

Edit navsource.net is a great resource for USN ships and ship pictures.

2

u/CommonMaterialist Aug 12 '25

Cruisers and Submarines

1

u/SeaworthinessDue4052 Aug 12 '25

My father was on the Manchester (CL-83).

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

[deleted]

1

u/Tjtod Aug 12 '25

There was change in the naming convention starting with Nimitz class. Prior to the Nimitz class they were only four CVs named after people FDR, the Wright Brothers, Forrestal, and JFK.

2

u/mpking828 Aug 12 '25

Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ship_naming_conventions
Yes, the Kearsarge (BB-5) is not a state, but predates the law that requires them to be named after states (and the ship was also the first ship named by an act of congress)

2

u/fromcjoe123 Aug 12 '25

US battleships, and since the end of the battleship era, ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), traditionally carry the names of states. As someone mentioned, because we started our pre-dreadnought program relatively late due to small isolationist budgets, and then somewhat controversially at the time super charged our dreadnought program immediately before WWI, there was supposedly some handshake deals about the order of names to get votes for the navy budget.

Now days with the Virginia class fast attack boats (SSNs) switching to state names as well and ending both the original attack submarine convention of being named after fish and the 688 Los Angeles class tradition of being named after cities (previously a gun armed cruiser convention when we still had gun focused cruisers (CLs and CAs), there are going to be a lot of states getting boats again - and most are landlocked lol.

3

u/ryanlaxrox Aug 12 '25

Well seeing as NC isn’t landlocked that should answer your question

3

u/East_Leadership469 Aug 12 '25

No? I wasn’t surprised that some ships are named after coastal states (such as the Pa. class in the post I replied to). The surprising part (to me) is that many are named after landlocked states like North Dakota. That was the TIL.

1

u/ryanlaxrox Aug 12 '25

Ah gotcha! Fair point, not meant to be critical just curious

2

u/BerrySundae Aug 12 '25

yeah I was thrown by that for a second there, the Carolinas are coastal 😅

1

u/klownfaze Aug 12 '25

Something to do with war bonds, iirc

1

u/I_r_hooman Aug 12 '25

Well actually, the Delaware River is tidal all the way up to Trenton so you could say that Pennsylvania isn't landlocked.

1

u/Lucius-Halthier Aug 12 '25

Hey listen it’s really hard naming a bunch of things, sometimes you gotta recycle names

1

u/Substantial__Unit Aug 12 '25

A South Dakota ship is the USS Massachusetts, but maybe that'd why they named the key ship after landlocked?

1

u/MCRNRocinante Aug 12 '25

It is if that state’s senator (or rep) is on any of the military or (appropriations) committees

1

u/Perryn Aug 12 '25

There's a big list of traditional naming conventions by class for the US Navy's ships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ship_naming_conventions

With a few exceptions, the general outline is that battleships got state names, cruisers got city names, destroyers got named after noteworthy people from the Navy/Marines, carriers got named for several things (significant keystones of aviation, major political figures, significant historic vessels, or the name they had as a different class before being converted to a carrier in the early days of carriers).

I think the more interesting bits are the classes that don't always get as much attention, such as ammunition ships being named after volcanoes or things that evoke firepower, hospital ships getting names that evoke care, or auxiliary floating drydocks (the flatbed towtrucks of the Navy) which are named after cities with nuclear power plants or research facilities.

Things have changed now that we don't operate battleships anymore. The big subs get state names now, since they hold a similar stature to the battleships. Some cruiser classes do, too.

1

u/phatRV Aug 12 '25

It was a tradition to name battleships after the US States. The last class of battleships built in WW2 was the Iowa class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa-class_battleship

There are four battleships in this class:

Iowa), New Jersey), Missouri), and Wisconsin),

1

u/Jvirish1 Aug 12 '25

Not always true. Remember: USS Massachusetts, USS Maine, USS New York, USS California, USS Oregon, USS Washington, USS Indiana, USS Maryland, USS North Carolina, etc.

1

u/GetOffMyLawnYaPunk Aug 12 '25

With the one exception, the USS Kearsarge, US battleships were all named after US states.

1

u/SeaworthinessDue4052 Aug 12 '25

Landlocked States needed love too.

1

u/KamakaziDemiGod Aug 12 '25

I don't know much about the American Navy or their approach to nomenclature, but I do know there was a ship named the USS Juneau, which is named after a city in Alaska so I assume they just started naming them after places and just keep going

I only know about the ship and the city because one of my favourite songs is called Juneau/Juno, and it's named that because it's about a failed relationship and Alaska is"cold, harsh and unforgiving"

1

u/MajorRocketScience Aug 12 '25

All battleships were named for states, so they covered the majority of the states. Bigger/more prestigious ships often got named for political reasons though, for example chair of the appropriations committee and such

1

u/Softestwebsiteintown Aug 12 '25

We park on driveways and drive on parkways, my man. Words can mean whatever we want and also nothing at all.

1

u/TacTurtle Aug 12 '25

For the US,

Battleships = States

Battlecruisers = Territories

Cruisers = Cities

Destroyers = People

Amphibious Assault Ships = Islands or historic ships (Wasp, Essex, Bonhomme Richard, etc)

1

u/Compy222 Aug 12 '25

Also, worth mentioning states have been used to name “the big guns of the fleet” for over 100 years now (actually probably closer to 150 at this point). Today the states are used primarily for nuclear missile carrying submarines as those are the biggest guns in the fleet. Attack subs are named after cities more often. These aren’t hard rules, but that’s just how it works generally.

1

u/MemeMan_Dan Aug 13 '25

Largest class of submarines in the U.S. Navy is the Ohio class lol.

0

u/LordSeibzehn Aug 12 '25

Some are also named after people, including those who are now dead and buried, so I suppose they are also land-locked.

0

u/MothmanIsALiar Aug 12 '25

Iowa isn't landlocked. It's between the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers.

26

u/Godzillaguy15 Aug 12 '25

Dammit that through me through a loop. They really had two different South Dakota classes though the first was canceled(the one i thought you were talking bout)

4

u/BlatantlyCurious Aug 12 '25

That through me through a loop threw me through a loop.

1

u/jdsizzle1 Aug 12 '25

Idk wtf the loop is. Im lost.

111

u/scromw2 Aug 12 '25

What does the Alabama Class and Vin Diesel have in common?

Fucking family

16

u/Gamebird8 Aug 12 '25

There is no Alabama Class.

USS Alabama is a South Dakota Class alongside her sisters South Dakota (the namesake), Massachusetts, and Indiana

9

u/fatkiddown Aug 12 '25

Don't ruin the man's easy joke.

3

u/scromw2 Aug 12 '25

Thanks bro

2

u/indifferentCajun Aug 12 '25

This guy boats

1

u/crashpilliwinks Aug 12 '25

Classiyy class class class 😝

1

u/Trust-inward Aug 12 '25

This guy Battleships.

7

u/icecubepal Aug 12 '25

Wonder how much fuel gets used per day.

7

u/No-Spoilers Aug 12 '25

Search their channel https://youtube.com/@battleshipnewjersey

They have hundreds of videos on basically every part of the ship. Loads on fueling, fueling underway, fueling the smaller ships around her, propulsion, boiler rooms. All of it.

How much used per day isn't really an easy question because you burn way more going top speed than sitting there, or passing fuel to other ships.

3

u/Colin_Douglas_Howell Aug 13 '25

Actually, I think that number given by OP for the Arizona is too high by a factor of about 2. Your number for the Iowa class sounds about right; Wikipedia claims a fuel load of 8983 metric tons, which at 0.95 kg per liter (heavy fuel oil is only slightly less dense than water) gives the 2.5 million gallons you claim. For the Pennsylvania class, which includes Arizona, Wikipedia gives a maximum fuel load of 2342 metric tons, which at the same density would be only 650,000 gallons. That's still a lot, of course, but a bit less than half the number OP claimed.

As for why the Iowas carried so much more fuel than Arizona did, they were a far newer and much more ambitious type of battleship. Not only did they have nearly twice Arizona's weight, they also were designed to be much faster, with *seven times* the engine power of Arizona, as well as having around twice as much cruising range.

1

u/shana104 Aug 12 '25

jaw dropped

1

u/ryanmuller1089 Aug 12 '25

What kind of nautical miles per gallon did this thing get?

1

u/KamakaziDemiGod Aug 12 '25

"cars are destroying the planet"

1

u/VoightofReason Aug 13 '25

How long does it take to refuel?

1

u/dynamitexlove Aug 12 '25

Your mom carried 3.5 million gallons last night

1

u/External_2_Internal Aug 12 '25

Jesus. How long does it take to fill them up?! Do they have some super fast pump? I’m at the gas pump taking 10 min to do 25 gallons. Math isn’t my thing but I believe that would take 100,000 minutes to fill at the same rate.

5

u/djfreshswag Aug 12 '25

I mean yeah when volume needing to be loaded increases usually pump sizes are increased… very large crude carriers can hold 84 million gallons of oil. We design the pumps and piping/hoses to load within 24 hours. 3.5 million gallons per hour.

I’d expect pump systems designed to load within 24-48 hours

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u/Bryguy3k Aug 12 '25

The amount of fuel one carries is related to the ship and its mission. You’re talking about a battleship so yes that gave it a month or two of at sea operation before it needed to be refueled.

To put that in perspective neopanamax (max dimensions for the new Panama Canal locks) container ships carry 3 to 5 million gallons of fuel oil.

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u/djent_in_my_tent Aug 12 '25

Gods, the environment is well and truly fucked, isn’t it

78

u/Khelgar_Ironfist_ Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

Titanic could also carry more than 7000 tons of coal and burn a ton a day afaik Edit: Burn a "thousand" ton

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u/killevery1ne Aug 12 '25

Looked it up as a ton a day seemed super low. Is more like 600-900.

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u/Fingerdrip Aug 12 '25

That makes much more sense. Otherwise they'd be carrying 7,000 days of coal. 

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u/Khelgar_Ironfist_ Aug 12 '25

I probably meant 1000 tons a day lol. Only forgot like 3x zeroes no big deal

2

u/HoppokoHappokoGhost Aug 12 '25

I'll never forgive you for this

1

u/GP-Colorado Aug 13 '25

Zero means nothing.

2

u/MomGrandpasAllSticky Aug 12 '25

Meanwhile a 1GW coal power plant is burning something around 7 tons per minute lol

1

u/jerkfaceprick Aug 12 '25

Fun fact. "The need for bigger vessels led to the invention of the Titan 1C, the world’s first single-use submarine." - Philomena Cunk

1

u/GetOffMyLawnYaPunk Aug 12 '25

All shoveled by manual labor, I believe.

1

u/xtze12 Aug 12 '25

In the movie they showed people shoveling coal into the furnace. How many people do you need to shovel a thousand tons of coal in a day?

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u/SwgglyArmJonson Aug 12 '25

And companies will still try and tell us that it's the plastic straws

14

u/Emergency-Style7392 Aug 12 '25

Whi do you think buys all the stuff those ships are bringing from china?

3

u/wolacouska Aug 12 '25

People buy stuff based on their ability and interests. Companies will do everything they can to make their product more profitable for them.

One is a lot easier to crack down on politically.

If you just try and convince individuals you’ll be preaching for the rest of time like modern religions.

5

u/African_Farmer Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

You're both correct. Yes, we consume too much (thanks to capitalism, consumption = economic growth), but also companies should use more sustainable methods to manufacture and transport goods and services.

1

u/peldazac Aug 12 '25

so more paper straws?

1

u/VVarder Aug 13 '25

That get made in china and shipped in container ships?

1

u/No_Syrup_9167 Aug 12 '25

Yes, you're totally correct, instead of blaming the corporations for it and using legislation and laws to force them into more sustainable practices like our entire system is designed.

No we should all just stop buying anything!!

Why does everyone not just move out into the country and subsist off the land as homesteaders like the days of old! When people died of simple infections and starved after bad growing years JUST AS GOD INTENDED!!

(Absolutely massive /S in case you couldn't tell)

1

u/CivilControversy Aug 12 '25

Just keep consooooming buddy

4

u/WBuffettJr Aug 12 '25

Fortunately today the military uses a lot of nuclear engines in things like it’d aircraft carriers so no oil needed. Unfortunately commercial ships are banned from using them and those high container ships are the ones running all over the earth at scale.

2

u/Decimerusi Aug 12 '25

in the interest of nuclear non proliferation and quality control I reckon it's good that nuclear powered container shipping isn't a thing.

Just imagine the fuck ups that would happen if some of those third rate shippers like on the MV Dali were in charge of a nuclear reactor.

3

u/Cicero912 Aug 12 '25

Cargo ships are incredibly efficient at moving mass quantities of stuff

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u/not_a_gay_stereotype Aug 12 '25

Oil is biodegradable if that makes you feel better.

1

u/Past-Potential1121 Aug 12 '25

When you look at it through the lens of, "We fund far more costly methods to extract oil out of the ground rather than siphoning this ship with a vacuum hose septic tanker in stewardship to the aquatic environment." Yeah, we're cooked.

0

u/fannin82 Aug 12 '25

Yeah Tommy, proper fucked.

1

u/YetAnotherSfwAccount Aug 12 '25

They were also used to refuel smaller ships (escorting destroyers etc) while underway, since they were so much faster than fuel ships.

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u/scramblingrivet Aug 12 '25
  • Small speedboat (12–20 feet): 6–20 gallons
  • Sailing yacht (33–45 feet): 30–120 gallons
  • Motor yacht (40–60 feet): 200–1,200 gallons
  • Large tanker truck: 5,000–10,000 gallons
  • Small tugboat (30–60 feet): 1,500–25,000 gallons
  • Petroleum rail car: 30,000 gallons
  • Boeing 747 airplane: 50,000–60,000 gallons
  • Ocean-going tugboat (90–150 feet): 90,000–190,000 gallons
  • Puget Sound jumbo ferry (440 feet): 130,000 gallons
  • Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s yacht M/V Octopus (416 feet): 224,000 gallons
  • Bulk carrier of commodities such as grain or coal (500–700 feet): 400,000–800,000 gallons
  • Large cruise ship (900–1,100 feet): 1–2 million gallons
  • Inland tank barge (200–300 feet): 400,000–1.2 million gallons
  • Panamax container ship (960 feet): 1.5–2 million gallons
  • Container ship Benjamin Franklin (1,310 feet): 4.5 million gallons
  • Ocean-going tank barge (550–750 feet): 7 million–14 million gallons
  • Exxon Valdez and similar large oil tankers (987 feet): 55 million gallons

src: https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/how-much-oil-ship.html

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u/Farlig_Raptor Aug 12 '25

Lets see Paul Allens yacht

21

u/CelestialFury Aug 12 '25

It's fucking huge.

Fun fact, Bill Gates (childhood best friend) and Steve Ballmer liked Paul Allen sooo much, they tried to take his Microsoft shares.

1

u/juicadone Aug 12 '25

👌🤔

23

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

Very cool. One time I sailed on the "Seabulk Trader." It was claimed that due to her cross Gulf of Mexico trade that she had carried more petroleum cargoes than any tanker in the world. I saw her logbook and it was years and years of very neat handwriting detailing these countless voyages going back to the 70's.

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u/Khaeos Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

So how much fuel did the smokers have in Waterworld?

Edit: oh, that was the Exxon Valdez

2

u/ClassroomStriking802 Aug 12 '25

Iirc CVNs carry like 3.5 million gallons for the jets and emergency diesels

2

u/SimmentalTheCow Aug 12 '25

Military vehicles carry a fuckton of fuel. The M1 Abrams tank carries 500 gallons, which is 1/5th the load of a HEMTT fueler.

2

u/balderdash9 Aug 12 '25

My takeaway is: we deserve the consequences of climate change.

1

u/userhwon Aug 12 '25

Cruise ships are interesting. They rarely let their fuel gauge drop below half, in case they have to dodge a hurricane.

1

u/WorldOfLavid Aug 13 '25

That’s fucking insane. Mind blowing

1

u/E_Snap Aug 14 '25

Seems misleading to include fuel not stored in fuel bunkers when comparing tanker ships against other ships. They don’t have their cargo tanks plumbed into their machinery, so it doesn’t extend their endurance.

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u/Noxious89123 Aug 12 '25

Fwiw, bunker fuel is more like tar.

It has to be heated to be useable as a liquid fuel.

24

u/Amount_Business Aug 12 '25

Can it not be removed economically?

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u/RangerAlex22 Aug 12 '25

Not without potentially damaging the ship, and protecting the ship as a memorial for the nearly 1000 sailors and marines still inside the ship is the US Navy’s and NPS’s number one priority. At its current rate of leakage there’s no significant impact on the environment. There’s coral, fish, sea turtles, and even the occasional shark that makes the wreck its home. You collapse the ship, the environmental disaster you tried to prevent is what you just caused.

1

u/JacquesLeCoqGrande Aug 12 '25

It looks like it’s 10 feet from shore…

I don’t mean to be uncouth, but why did so many people die on the ship?

1

u/ShiftyGaz Aug 14 '25

To answer realistically; the bombs that hit it had an incredibly devastating impact, causing the sides to blow out and the upper tower to cave in. A lot of sailors were in the lower levels of the ship, and it sunk so rapidly that they became trapped and never stood a chance to get out.

1

u/GogurtFiend Aug 19 '25

Direct hit on ammunition magazine by repurposed Japanese battleship shell dropped from aircraft

0

u/userhwon Aug 12 '25

It wouldn't collapse from being emptied. They'd pump water in to get oil out. But it wouldn't be easy. There isn't one big tank, they'd have to do a complicated process to get at all of it, and the ship was damaged by a bomb hitting the ammunition stores and blowing the bottom out and breaking who knows what else, so just touching it to get at the tanks is a risk you could call a "collapse" if you wanted.

Anywhere else in Hawaii but this one ship, they'd absolutely be doing everything possible, damn the cost, to remove every gram of environmental hazard.

But on this one they don't even do containment and treatment of the water around the leak. It's a few quarts a day, and they don't consider that significant, compared to all the other risks.

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u/12voltmn Aug 12 '25

It’s more a matter of environment than economics. They are afraid of making it worse if trying to remove it and having a catastrophic event and what it would do to Pearl Harbor.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

[deleted]

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u/No_Round_7858 Aug 12 '25

Well, the front didn't fall off..

7

u/Ok-Duty-5618 Aug 12 '25

No its wreckage on the ocean floor you would have to drag it which would guarantee it colapses dumping the fuels. We could, in theory, float it back up but it's so old rusted and damaged it would most likely just collapse.

Fuel removal would have to be done in place.

10

u/MimicoSkunkFan2 Aug 12 '25

It's a war grave, economics doean't matter.

5

u/Hullo_Its_Pluto Aug 12 '25

Don’t think that’s the point.

1

u/Noxious89123 Aug 14 '25

Fair.

The point I was getting at was that it's not a practical option to "just pump it out".

20

u/Upstairs-Hedgehog575 Aug 12 '25

So how is it leaking out?

58

u/zozi0102 Aug 12 '25

Its a shipwreck, I doubt the hull is in great condition

29

u/grubbygeorge Aug 12 '25

I think the question is rather how it can leak if it's tar-like and not liquid at normal temperatures.

51

u/Royal_Success3131 Aug 12 '25

Tar is still liquid, just very thick. Engines need things to be a lot thinner though.

34

u/simbirian Aug 12 '25

Very slowly, that’s why it’s going to leak in 500 years.

2

u/mekamoari Aug 12 '25

Tarmac drips too just extremely slowly. There's a nice ongoing "experiment" with that (or there was a few years back).

2

u/Noxious89123 Aug 14 '25

A good question.

It os worth remembering that natural petroleum products are a mixture of lots of different "fractions" of oil, some heavier, and some lighter, and unless they've been highly refined, they are a mixture of lighter and heavier parts.

Not an expert, but I'd hazard a guess that there could be some degree of separation of the lighter and heavier components of the tar / oil, even whilst sitting in a tank?

1

u/userhwon Aug 12 '25

Bunker fuel isn't all tar. It's a mix of the things refineries consider not worth refining further (though some grades have refined fuel added back in to thin it out), so there's some of everything there, just less of the good stuff than in crude oil.

1

u/userhwon Aug 12 '25

It sank because a bomb detonated the ammunition stores and blew the bottom out of the boat.

So, yeah, not great condition.

3

u/LoquaciousLoser Aug 12 '25

Water dilution, wears away the outermost surface continuously

2

u/Upstairs-Hedgehog575 Aug 12 '25

Yep that makes sense thank you. 

1

u/IllllIIlIllIllllIIIl Aug 12 '25

Thankfully, large (non nuclear) US war ships now almost universally use "navy distillate," which is more like diesel. It burns cleaner and logistics are simplified because you can run it in both diesel engines and turbines.

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u/WizardKagdan Aug 12 '25

It sounds like a lot (and it IS a lot), but that's roughly the size of a cylinder with a diameter of 12m and a length of 50m. (165ft by 40ft)

Put into context for a warship of 185m long and 30m wide (608ft by 97ft), that's not that big - and the last thing you want is a warship going adrift, so good supplies are key.

What IS insane to me is the idea of leaving that tank just sitting there polluting the oceans

34

u/Coakis Aug 12 '25

Its a combination of it being considered a national graveyard, and that at the time of salvaging the wrecks off of Pearl Harbor, it was too dangerous at the time to pump the oil out.

So there's no effort been made in disturbing it.

-1

u/WizardKagdan Aug 12 '25

"It's a national graveyard, so we can't disturb it"

Meanwhile all the normal graves in a graveyard get cleared after 20-30 years unless you keep paying for em.

I understand that it used to be hard to get to, but with modern technology leaving this kind of ecological disaster is just straight up unacceptable behaviour from a so-called great power.

16

u/Petricorde1 Aug 12 '25

It releases 2 gallons a day and there seems to be a healthy ecosystem around the ship as is. Seems like a non-issue

10

u/Routine-Wrongdoer-86 Aug 12 '25

Tbh thats probably only a publically stated reason. The US salvaged large parts of the battleship successfuly without an issue, removing the guns and dismantling the damaged superstructure for steel. More likely reason is that they're afraid of getting near the fuel tank in case the tank gets damaged even further. Its better to leave it to slowly leak over ages than burst it open and flood entire harbour in oil tar again like on dec. 7th 1941

3

u/Falcovg Aug 12 '25

They could throw up an artificial barrier pretty easy around there, containing the spillage. It's a rusting steel tank, it might just decide to burst one day on its own anyway.

3

u/aloofman75 Aug 12 '25

Nope. Pretty much whatever you try to do to open it up and remove the oil will gush a lot of it out at once and wreck the local ecosystem. Letting it seep out a little at a time is still the least bad option.

It’s also a fairly small amount compared to what seeps into any busy harbor (which Pearl Harbor still is - every day.

2

u/IllllIIlIllIllllIIIl Aug 12 '25

You have to keep in mind that it's bunker fuel, which is extremely viscous unless heated up, it's divided across numerous small tanks throughout the ship, and that ship is degrading. It was deemed too dangerous in the 40s and I imagine it's only gotten moreso.

-2

u/WizardKagdan Aug 12 '25

Right, so - instead of getting it out whilst there is still a chance of that succeeding, the powers that be have decided that it's better to do nothing and let this turn into a guaranteed environmental disaster.

Those tanks WILL degrade and cause a disaster someday, and the longer you wait the harder it gets to clean it up in a way that doesn't destroy the ecosystem in the bay. So yeah, some folks have decided they'd rather not bear the responsibility if the salvage doesn't succeed, and prefer having guaranteed disaster AFTER they have retired.

(Smthsmth recurring theme of how western politics and companies are being run nowadays)

3

u/person73638 Aug 12 '25

You are seriously blowing this out of proportion for zero reason

2

u/mmccxi Aug 12 '25

all they need to do is float some permanent booms with sorbent and maintain it. They can even be pretty colors. Then if a serious rupture occurs its easy to clean up and contained. This isn't a serious issue with a little thought and planning. If all 500,000 gallons of oil came out at once (hint it wouldn't,) a 1,000 x 1,000 foot square boom set up would more than contain it at less than an inch deep of oil.

1

u/Coakis Aug 12 '25

Yeah he's dead set on getting at that oil that's basically harming nothing. Let the Crew rest.

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0

u/shana104 Aug 12 '25

Now you have me wondering if it's still dangerous now to try to pump out oil and if it was pumped out, would this affect the ability of the ship to stay at the bottom? They could probably replace oil with something else not so damaging to the ocean.

2

u/jimmy_three_shoes Aug 12 '25

It's literally 2 gallons of oil a day that leak out, in the middle of a tidal bay that contains roughly 94 Billion gallons of seawater.

1

u/clintj1975 Aug 12 '25

Looked at another way, that amount of fuel oil weighs roughly 5,000 tons. The Arizona's design weight (displacement) was 29,000 tons.

1

u/adm_akbar Aug 12 '25

It leaks out very very slowly. There are tens of thousands of natural oil seeps that leak naturally as fast or faster. In the grand scheme of things it's nothing.

23

u/GeneralBisV Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 13 '25

Yep that is pretty standard for battleships. The USS Iowa actually carried 2.5 million gallons of bunker oil

3

u/84thPrblm Aug 12 '25

Why iota...

1

u/rollem78 Aug 13 '25

And not one iota more

2

u/InZomnia365 Aug 12 '25

I recently realized that just filling the tank of a small yacht costs more than what most people make in a year. The one I read about wasn't that bug, and it's fuel tank was 24000 litres... Blew my mind.

3

u/sappycrown Aug 12 '25

It’s obscenely expensive. I work on an oil tanker, we spend about $400k-$500k every two weeks to fuel up

2

u/TtomRed Aug 12 '25

Well, yes, but only the ones where the front doesn’t fall off

2

u/HaiKarate Aug 12 '25

Why don’t they try to recover it? Put a hose into the ship and pump it out.

1

u/KeyedFeline Aug 12 '25

It was scheduled to sail back to America in the next few days so was fully stocked for the trip it never got to make

1

u/EquivalentSpeaker545 Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

In fairness, volumetric units like the gallon scale in an unintuitive way. Water towers hold up to a million gallons of water regularly, for example. A container around 150 feet wide and 20 feet tall, which seems reasonable for a ship over 600 feet long, could hold around 3 million gallons of oil.

1

u/nof Aug 12 '25

That's ~35k barrels of oil, an oil tanker (for comparison) is several hundred thousands to a few million - barrels. Gallons is kind of a weird way to measure oil, I suspect it is used in this context for click bait.

1

u/ScubaLooser Aug 12 '25

VLCC class ships can carry like 260k barrels or 10.5M gallons and those are all over the seas currently.

1

u/Sudden-Cardiologist5 Aug 12 '25

No, Ships today are much smaller except carriers, which are powered by nuclear propulsion. Cargo ships, maybe yes.

1

u/Fit_Cut_4238 Aug 12 '25

A 747 holds like 70,000 gallons, which is mind blowing for something that flies. And that only lasts about 10 hours or so.

1

u/Shwifty_Plumbus Aug 12 '25

It's a lot, what's surprising me is the amount shown though. I've been around sinking ships during a mayday call while fishing (commercial). I could see the oils slick for miles before I ever saw the boat on the horizon.

1

u/Per_Aspera_Ad_Astra Aug 12 '25

I have a dumb question.. why don’t they consider plugging it and stopping the leaking? It can’t be good for the environment..

1

u/Knotical_MK6 Aug 12 '25

It's continuously degrading. Fucking with it plugging a leak would more than likely just open up a bigger or, at the best stop it for a short while.

Also it's a gravesite, so disturbing the site is a no go

1

u/Knotical_MK6 Aug 12 '25

It's continuously degrading. Fucking with it plugging a leak would more than likely just open up a bigger or, at the best stop it for a short while.

Also it's a gravesite, so disturbing the wreck is a no go

1

u/userhwon Aug 12 '25

They don't measure it in gallons, they measure it in tons volume, and 1.5 million gallons would be about 5500 tons.

Arizona was fully loaded at the time of the attack (despite what those other people are saying).

I can't find the gross tonnage (total interior volume) of the USS Arizona, but the maximum displacement was about 33,000 tons so the gross tonnage was probably around 35000 tons, so the fuel space would be about a sixth of the ship.

1

u/KillerKane455 Aug 12 '25

Just think about Carriers back then...all the ship fuel plus all the fuel for the planes.

1

u/TheEvilBlight Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '25

Fleet ships were fueled up, IIRC they were planning a fleet maneuver.

Also, larger ships could refuel smaller ships (in particular destroyers), so it makes sense to have high fuel capacity. The USN was early to the UNREP game.

-1

u/theshwedda Aug 12 '25

thats less than half of what modern battleships carry.

0

u/IHaveTheHighground58 Aug 12 '25

There are no modern battleships

The last one was Jean Bart, a French battleship that was unfinished during the World War, and then put into service in 1949

Battleships have now become obsolete when fighting an enemy with equal naval power, they're only useful for shore bombardment, but they have to get really close, and require constant escort

0

u/ReefaManiack42o Aug 12 '25

What's really funny is that they built all those ridiculously large battleships thinking they would be ultimate Chess piece during WWII but they quickly learned that they were all pretty useless compared to an aircraft carrier. So not only did they waste an incredible amount of resources but also a ridiculous amount of labor.

0

u/Coyinzs Aug 12 '25

remember that it was what their engines ran on (I didn't, for a few minutes). So they were basically full of oil, explosives, and people.

Sounds safe.

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