Anybody notice the similarities between the Zapruder video and Haakenson videos?

What I see is no answers from you? There were thousands of men within a ships length of the explosion. Anybody say they saw anything other than a massive explosion? If you are referring to Ensign J D Miller, try again. According to his statement, he was at his battle station, Turret III control station, when the explosion occurred. He saw nothing. A battle damage survey was done, what did it say? The NPS archeological survey of the '80's, scrutinize every foot of the ship. Dan Lenihan, I think I spelled it right, produced a drawing showing every item found laying on the deck, every opening, and yet made no mention of a bomb entry point, a hole, where the official version said it should be? Go figure.

All I'm asking for is answers, not the official koolaid. Anyone, anyone, Bueller?

 

What's your theory? FDR and his war-mongering minions rigged the Arizona for demolition and set the timer to correspond wit the Japanese air attack?

 

There was at least one statement that the bomb glanced off the the turret. The impact could easily have left a mark that was visible even after the conflagration. The explosion by the way occurred at least 10's of seconds after the bomb hit. One would hardly expect the bomb hole to show up as such either. The explosion would naturally vent out that hole and both enlarging and distorting it. So far I've seen nothing you have produced to that really brings the official report(s) into question although they usually mention that they are reporting likely events rather than the only possible ones. The official reports I've seen from that period have held up very well why would you expect Arizona's to be any different?

 

Actual experts have looked at the Zapruder film and other evidence and made the airtight case that the shots came from Oswald's window. The Warren report got the order of the shots wrong (the first shot was the miss) and that has led to all of the hare-brained theories that greedy writers have jumped on to sell books to the gullible. With the order of the shots corrected by enhancing the film and corroborating that with accounts and other data that have come to light, there is no mystery, not that there was much of one to begin with.

As for the Arizona, it has been reported that Japanese airplanes were dropping bombs on all those ships. Many people saw those airplanes. Many people saw them dropping bombs. Many people saw those bombs exploding. I mean, what the hell?

 

Thomas Hone laid out the evidence first in Proceedings in 1977, then was followed up by John De Vergilio's more exhaustive study 20 years later, based upon the NPS survey. Not sure what else there is to say.

http://www.navalhistory.org/2012/12/07/december-7-1941-the-destruction-of-the-battle-line-at-pearl-harbor

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1997-12/seven-seconds-infamy

 

Thanks for those links. I hadn't really looked into the details of this, interesting where it differs from the reports of the individuals involved. Amazing what stress, adrenalin, and such can do to your memory.

 

Nope. I'm not a conspiracy nut but I would like the truth, if it is possible to have it. The explosion could have happened exactly like the official version suggested. But there are some things that, to my uneducated eye, just don't match. For instance, there is a picture showing the Arizona being hit by a high level bomb on the starboard side aft. Why does that same bomb, which penetrated the upper deck and lord knows what else, produce a rising debris cloud, and yet a bomb that supposedly set off tons of explosives resulting in ungodly amounts of pressure seeking the easy way to escape, didn't produce anything back through the ready made escape tunnel to the open air? Then you see the third explosion, which is nowhere near the size of the main blast, rip through the deck. Why the smaller explosion and not the bigger? Then there is the still picture, which was taken from the color version of the video, which to me clearly shows the explosion originating under the superstructure. Couple that with the video also showing the foremast being blown upwards and couple that with the picture of the foremast laying down on top of the superstructure, which is laying down on the armored conning tower, suggests to me that the whole superstructure was blown into the air taking the foremast with it and then the whole mess came crashing down on the conning tower. That makes me wonder, which magazine exploded since the only magazines under the superstructure were the 5" port and Starboard, which were the only magazines feeding live ammo to the 5" aa guns. Makes me wonder, what about you?

 

How much debris is produced is dependent on quite a few factors. What did it hit, how much material was around the blast, if it was interior how much open space was available to expand into, how many layers did the bomb penetrate? It's far from a simple process. If you don't know the internal structure and have a good idea where the bomb went of and what the ship status was then basing anything off the debris visible in an explosion is rather questionable. The same is true of subsequent explosions note the linked report talks about how the overpressure from one explosion affects the blast patterns of subsequent ones. The explosion may or may not be originating under the superstructure what you are seeing in that photo is where the blast is exiting the ship a different thing. I would assume that the experts considered the effects of the 5" magazines when producing the report(s). From a quick look at navweapons it looks like Arizona carried about a ton of propellant for each 5"/25 and she had 8. I'm not sure how many magazines she had feeding these guns or how much propellant was actually in them (ready rooms, turrets, and already consume rounds would account for some). For her main battery on the other hand she carried about 20 tons per gun and had 12. What's more she hadn't fired any of them and the bursters in the shells were proportionally larger as well. This suggest to me that even a complete conflagration of the AA magazines isn't going to be confused with the primary magazines experiencing the same.

 

Did you not bother to read De Vergilio's analysis? The second Type 80 that hit Arizona struck the number four turret and glanced off hitting the deck and penetrating to a pantry where it exploded. We don't need to ask the Lord to tell us what damage it did, because we know from the survey of the mostly intact rear of Arizona what damage it did. The "rising debris cloud" was from the detonation of the Type 80's small HE charge and likely included flour and various crockery.

What "third explosion" do you think you see?

 

These kind of things just get silly. First of all nobody really knows the size or type of bombs that made each hit. There were 550 pound bombs and 130 pound bombs being dropped at different velocities and trajectories from dive bombing Vals and cruising Zeroes. Nobody knows how the fuses were set on the various planes dropping these. Nobody knows what interior structures each bomb encountered or how that may have changed the direction or depth of the explosion inside the vessel. Nobody knows which compartments were open or closed to funnel the blast within the vessel. Nobody know which magazine doors were open or closed while they fed the guns.

The people who knew the answers to some of those questions are dead. The rest is lost amid the chaos of all such events.

Japanese planes dropped different types of bombs from different types of planes which struck at various angles and velocities with various fuse settings that struck a variety of structural components on and within the vessel. The blasts were directed in various ways depending on where and how deep they detonated and by which passages and compartments were open or closed and intensified or not by which which magazines were open or closed and/or how much ammunition not actually in the magazines was caught in that blast wave while being moved up to the guns.

If anybody thinks that can all be reconstructed by some fuzzy amateur film... well, good luck on that.

 

From the timing they are pretty certain that the bombs that hit the Arizona were the Type 80's from the level bombers. Otherwise I think you are spot on. A few inches can mean the difference between hitting a deck over a bulkhead and either penetrating or not or being massively deflected possibly even breaking up the bomb. Even with modern computers reconstructing explosive events in much simpler cases is problematic.

 

There were not 550lb bombs being dropped on Battleship Row at the time Arizona was hit. In the first wave, those - actually 533lb general purpose bombs - were carried only by the D3As from Shokaku and Zuikaku bombing airfields. There were no 130lb bombs in the first wave at all. In the second wave, S&Z's B5Ns carried one 533lb and six 132lb each and again were targeted at airfields. The dive bombers from Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu carried armor-piecring 550-pounders in the second wave. No Zeros carried bombs on Dec 7.

 

The NG link I pulled up says each Zero carried two 60 kg bombs. Maybe that's incorrect, I don't know. The Vals were carrying 60 and 550 KG bombs.


http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pearlharbor/history/pearlharbor_facts.html

 

Nope, but thanks for making me look up the man Abraham Zapruder. ..He received the equivalent of 1.16 million in todays dollars for the film...he almost didn't film the motorcade that day, due to it raining. His assistant at work made him go home for the camera because the weather cleared...He suffered from vertigo, and needed help while filming from a small abutment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Zapruder

 

Richto90's question, "what third explosion," is exactly what I mean about what really happened. When you watch the video, you will see the main explosion, followed by the explosion thru the funnel, and then watch the bow where you will see the third explosion tear thru the deck. Also, watch the upper deck for the puffs of smoke along the length of the superstructure. To me it looks like pressure is blasting out almost to Turret IV. Remember the story of Ensign Miller. He was in Turret III and described seeing fire through the overhang.

back to work.

 

The NG link is incorrect, there is no evidence I recall that the Zeroes carried an external ordnance. The bombs carrried by the Vals were 250-KG general purpose (land-attack in Japanese parlance). Only the Type 80 800-KG bombs were true AP bombs, since they were adapted from 40 cm/45 3rd Year Type AP projectiles

 

When you finish work, try reading De Vergilio's analysis and diagram's. The expanding gases had various densities to push against as they filled the voids. Part of the expansion vented via the engine uptakes, producing the smoke plume from the funnels. The next stage caused the framing around the magazines to fail, which is what dropped the turrets and produced the forward plume as it vented. In the final stage all spaces forward were filled with gases, forcing the forward sides to fail, collapsing them and generating the final massive fireball as it all vented up...since air is compressable, but water is not.

 

The JAPANESE MILITARY - PLANES section describes what each aircraft is capable of carrying. Further down are sections showing what they were actually loaded with at Pearl Harbor.

 

Another example is the explosion of HMS Hood's aft magazines. Observers like Captain Leach of Prince of Wales saw the initial blast burst upwards in the vicinity of the mainmast, a bit forward of the aft turrets, suggesting that the explosion initially vented via the engine rooms.

 

I don't know how many times that I have started to write this post but ,at some point, I have stopped because there is just too much information out there to sort through. I would start opening up other websites, going off on other tangents, and then, overload. But, what the hell, let's give it another try. One of the other tangents was the obscure fact, that the only battleship that was able to sortie, the USS Nevada, was heading out with empty main battery magazines. According to Don Green, a crewmember onboard the USS Pyro, which was docked at the magazine dock, the Pyro was to have made a delivery of projectile and powder to the USS Nevada the next day.

I was looking for any eye witness stories as to what may have happened on the forward deck of the Arizona prior to the main explosion. There is one story, by an officer on the Tennessee or the West Virginia, who was aft fighting a fire, when he noticed a brief flame somewhere forward on the Arizona, which was followed seconds later by the main explosion. In an Article from 1997, John F De Virgilio writes about " a large visible flame fronting Turret I.I finally saw it, on the you tube video Death of the Arizona, by Adorablekogi. You really have to play with the start and stop button to find it but it's like a smoky area then a compact pressurized flame from a welding torch. It couldn't have lasted more than a tenth of a second but then you can see more smoke and then the massive blast. The problem is you can't tell whether it originated from the Port or Starboard side. RichTO90 suggested two articles from the Naval Institute press. The first was by T C Hone, 1977, and the second was from John De Virgilio, 1997. To me , Mr. Hone believes that the magazines did detonate, which caused the massive explosion, but he didn't think much of the theories that a bomb penetrated and caused the explosion of the magazines or the black powder magazine. I agree with some points of Mr. De Virgilio's article but I do have some doubts about his bomb overlay theory.

back in a minute.