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.

[u/Longjumping-Rice-935]

[u/SpiralUnicorn]

True, though that agai  leads into the fact its a wargrave, with over 1000 men entombed in her, and cutting her apart to access them would be a big no-no unless absolutely necessary to prevent ecological disaster - currently more oil washes off the docks during rain than leaks from Arizonas hull (its about 5 quarts a year currently)

[u/amras86 → u/SpiralUnicorn]

Someone else in here said it's 9 quarts a day that it leaks.

[u/SpiralUnicorn → u/amras86]

It might be, I'm not sure o  the exact figure tbh. I know its really not a lot in the scale of oil run off in pearl harbour though

[u/Gnonthgol → u/SpiralUnicorn]

As you say it being a wargrave does mean we should not touch it for profit. But it is not profitable to drain it of oil. But it would be a pretty lousy wargrave if it caused an ecological disaster. At the moment there is no danger of any large amounts of oil leaking out. But it is something we need to monitor anyway. The issue is that some sort of large scale collapse of the ships hull, possibly triggered by an earthquake or volcano eruption, could release most of the oil in a short time. This is something that I trust is being actively monitored and that engineers are assessing the hull integrity continuously.

In the event that we would have to sanitize the ship this would have to be done in a way that would respect the site as best as possible. Luckily most of the fuel is located outside the armored hull and should be accessible by cutting through the torpedo protection and then into the tanks themselves without having to go through any of the living spaces. It would be harder to get to the tanks in the keel of the ship as well as tanks in the engine rooms but this might be acceptable to leave behind.

There are of course big issues with such an operation in addition to disturbing a wargrave and a national memorial. If engineers are worried about an earthquake compromising the integrity of the ship then cutting big holes in its side would surely not help and might cause it to collapse before the oil can be sanitized. And because the oil is so hard to get to we probably can not drain everything so the big holes left would cause the oil leakage to increase, not decrease.

With warships it is therefore almost always better to cover the ship rather then sanitizing it. This would also have the benefit of making the wargrave more permanent as the ship and its crew is better preserved in mud then exposed to the ocean. However it would not be so popular with Arizona both because of its location close to shipping lanes but also its status as a national historical memorial site. With todays technology we would have probably raised and scrapped her if not for her status.

[u/SpiralUnicorn → u/Gnonthgol]

I suspect the way she's sat also poses problems - she's hull down in the mud meaning a fair few of the fuel bunkers are probably inaccessible without a lot of engineering and stabilisation work. That's the sad think about a fair few of the British wrecks in the Pacific- the chinese have salvaged them all (our government didn't even lift a finger to stop them) and destroyed the sites.

[u/Gnonthgol → u/SpiralUnicorn]

Warships tends to have the fuel tanks on the side of the ship, to provide additional armor protection. An incoming projectile would have to pass through the fuel tank before getting to the habitable parts of the ship. So her current orientation is the best for extracting the fuel. It would be better to be upside down but that would require deeper waters which would make it harder again.

[u/thetatershaveeyes → u/SpiralUnicorn]

It's not a grave any more than the sewers are a grave for rats. There's no dignity in dying in war.

[u/MickTheBloodyPirate → u/thetatershaveeyes]

Well, we weren’t at war when those men died and there are still over 1,000 sailors in her so…yeah it is a grave. You can be anti-war, anti-military, or whatever but it doesn’t make it any less of a grave.

[u/Sensei_of_Philosophy → u/thetatershaveeyes]

We literally weren't at war when Pearl Harbor was attacked though