Edward C. Raymer's Descent into Darkness: Pearl Harbor, 1941—A Navy Diver's PDF

On December 7, 1941, because the nice battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie paralyzed and burning within the aftermath of the japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, a crack staff of U.S. army salvage divers headed by means of Edward C. Raymer are hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. The divers were given a Herculean activity: rescue the sailors and Marines trapped under, and resurrect the delight of the Pacific fleet.

Now for the 1st time, the manager diver of the Pearl Harbor salvage operations, Cmdr. Edward C. Raymer, USN (Ret.), tells the total tale of the determined makes an attempt to avoid wasting crewmembers stuck inside of their sinking ships. Descent into Darkness is the one ebook on hand that describes the elevating and salvage operations of sunken battleships following the December seventh attack.

Once Raymer and his staff of divers entered the interiors of the sunken shipwrecks—attempting untested and in all probability lethal diving techniques—they skilled an international of overall blackness, not able to work out even the faceplates in their helmets. via memorizing the ships’ blueprints and utilizing their feel of contact, the divers groped their method thousands of ft contained in the sunken vessels to make upkeep and salvage important conflict fabric. The divers realized easy methods to focus on such unseen hazards as falling items, sharks, the eerie presence of floating human our bodies, and the consistent possibility of eastern assaults from above.

Though a lot of those divers have been killed or heavily injured throughout the wartime salvage operations, mainly they'd nice luck appearing what looked to be most unlikely jobs. between their credit, Raymer’s staff raised the sunken battleships USS West Virginia, USS Nevada, USS California, After Pearl Harbor they moved directly to different an important salvage paintings off Guadalcanal and the websites of alternative nice sea battles.