During the fading afternoon hours of 6 December 1941, Captain Robert B. Simons decided to go ashore for a walk. The warship he commanded, the USS Raleigh (CL-7), was securely tied to mooring piers on the north side of Ford Island at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet for just over a year, the growing base was crowded with ships. As the Raleigh had spent a good part of November at sea training south of Hawaii, Simons relished the prospect of a brief shore visit.
The captain was back on board ship for an 1830 dinner. He was not aware of receiving any recent dispatches indicating that the nation’s troubled relations with Japan had taken a turn for the worse. As Saturday slowly faded into night, the Raleigh stood at rest.
The aging light cruiser had been in service since the early 1920s. Built with hammocks instead of bunks, the venerable old warship was known to be the home of more than a few rats.1 She stood out in stark contrast compared with the more modern designs of some of the newer cruisers in Pearl Harbor at the time. Her four smokestacks and tall forward tripod mast made her look more like a large World War I–era destroyer than a light cruiser. An assortment of guns, two aircraft catapults, and torpedo tubes made the narrow-hulled vessel top-heavy.
Moored about a hundred yards ahead of the Raleigh stood her sister ship Detroit (CL-8). Behind were the Utah (BB-31), a once-proud battleship now reduced to a target vessel, and the seaplane tender Tangier (AV-8). Together the four ships stood in a column with their starboard sides parallel to Ford Island. Out to sea were the aircraft carriers that normally inhabited the area.
As the first rays of sun bathed Pearl Harbor in morning light, the start of 7 December appeared nothing more than a normal Sunday on board the Raleigh. The visibility was clear and unlimited. At 0520 the shore patrol returned Seaman Second Class W. Smith to the ship on the charge of staggering. Just before 0700 the vessel took aboard a delivery of 500 servings of ice cream.2 The ship’s executive officer, Commander William Wallace, left the vessel early for shore leave. With an assortment of other officers also ashore, a group of young, inexperienced junior officers was left holding key positions. “The acting gunnery officer, first lieutenant, chief engineer, and navigator were all ensigns,” Simons noted.3
A motor launch was bobbing in the water below the accommodation ladder on the port side getting ready to take aboard a load of sailors for a church service ashore. Ensign Donald Korn stood on the ship’s quarterdeck. The reserve aviation officer was completing the final minutes of his stint as officer of the deck. It was about 0755.
Just as Korn was about to turn over the deck to Ensign William Game, he noticed a group of planes approaching from the vicinity of Wheeler Army Airfield. He assumed they were part of a routine drill and called for several anti-aircraft guns to be manned. Before much else could be done a group of low-flying planes suddenly appeared northwest of the cruiser over Pearl City. Emerging from just over a cluster of trees, two planes headed directly toward the Raleigh and unleashed torpedoes about 300 yards off the ship’s port beam.
Battle Stations!
As the deadly underwater missiles sped toward the light cruiser, there was little time for her crew to react. The first torpedo missed the bow by about 25 yards before hitting Ford Island without exploding. The second one, however, found its mark, slamming into the Raleigh’s port side at 0756. The torpedo struck about 13½ feet below the waterline and just below the armor belt. Smashing through the Number 2 boiler-room bulkhead, it exploded, the blast sending a geyser of water splashing onto the quarterdeck. The sound of the explosion was muffled and no flash or flames were reported. Although no strong vibration was felt around the ship, the shock was enough to knock crewmen off their feet in various locations.4 The Raleigh lurched to starboard from the force of the blast and slowly settled back upright before immediately starting a list to port.
Captain Simons had not yet emerged. “I was in my cabin drinking a cup of coffee when I heard and felt a dull explosion in the ship,” he later wrote. “Looking out my [porthole] I saw the water boiling amidships.”5 The disturbance looked to be even with the Number 2 stack.
Simons bolted out of the cabin still dressed in a pair of blue pajamas and made his way to the open-air signal bridge.6 He was met by Lieutenant Robert Taylor. The young communications officer immediately told him that Pearl Harbor was under attack by the Japanese. The general-quarters alarm was sounded at once. “I then climbed the ladder to the anti-aircraft control station,” Simons recounted. “There I found that the anti-aircraft battery was just going into action.”7 He shouted a few words of encouragement to his gunners before moving back down to the bridge to be in a better location to direct the ship’s defenses.
From the signal bridge Simons was in a position to take stock of what was happening around him. Directly forward, the Detroit appeared undamaged. Looking aft, he saw the Utah starting to capsize. Simons then caught a brief glimpse of a horrible scene. As the Utah slowly rolled over, large wooden beams laid out topside as part of her modification to a target ship were careening into helpless crewmen as they rushed up from belowdecks. There was nothing he could do to help.
The sound of the general alarm jolted sailors out of their Sunday slumber and sent them racing to their battle stations. The crew of the waiting motor launch on the port side was tossed into the water by the torpedo blast. The drenched sailors swam back to the Raleigh and raced up the ladder.
‘The First Shot in Defense’
Two fast-paced events unfolded following the torpedo hit. One was the effort to defend the ship from the continuing air attack. The second was an increasingly difficult damage-control battle to keep her afloat.
The early call from Donald Korn allowed the Raleigh’s antiaircraft guns to get into action quickly. At exactly 0801 a single antiaircraft battery opened fire. “I believe that the Raleigh had the honor of firing the first shot in defense of Pearl Harbor,” Simons later wrote.
Some gun crews arrived amidships to find the 3-inch gun tubs covered with a canvas awning to shield the sun, a normal procedure while in port. Someone broke into the butcher’s room and returned with knives to cut down the awning. Shells were taken from nearby ready ammunition boxes, some of which were locked and had to be broken open with sledgehammers.8 All of the Raleigh’s antiaircraft guns were soon in action firing at low-flying Japanese planes.
The situation belowdecks became serious immediately after the torpedo hit. The explosion wrecked the Number 2 boiler room. One boiler was completely demolished and two others badly damaged. A host of piping ruptured, including the main and auxiliary steam lines, fire main, fuel-oil suction, and high-pressure air lines.9 The damage extended into the adjacent boiler room and forward engine room. In the latter compartment at least one of the two engines was knocked out of place and both turbo generators damaged. Breached bulkheads, buckled plating, and sprung rivets allowed an inrush of sea water that mixed with leaking fuel oil. Both boiler rooms and the forward engine room quickly flooded with a murky oil/water mixture. Water traveling through wiring trunks later spread to other compartments, including the internal communications room and central station.
The ship’s crew luckily escaped the torpedo hit with few casualties. Both boiler rooms were unmanned at the time of the explosion. Personnel in the forward engine room quickly escaped when the compartment filled with acrid smoke.
A damage-control party under the command of Ensign Herbert Cohn and Carpenter Raymond Tellin jumped into action. Having been on board the Raleigh for slightly more than two years, Cohn was the ship’s assistant first lieutenant. Fifteen minutes after the torpedo hit, he and Tellin started counterflooding two forward compartments on the starboard side. The ship’s design, however, was not conducive to a large amount of counterflooding, so this initial work probably helped little.10
The damage-control effort was soon taking place without power. The Number 3 boiler room contained the only operating boiler, which was providing steam to power the ship’s critical functions. Not affected by the torpedo hit, the machinery could not escape the effects of the ruptured supply pipes. Salt water quickly contaminated the fuel-oil supply causing the boiler to shut down. An attempt to relight it failed.
A large number of electrical circuits quickly went off-line due to a host of problems, including severed cables and short circuits resulting from flooding. Many served critical functions needed to help defend the ship, including those that supplied electrical power to the steering gear, main radio, 1.1-inch machine cannons, and the fire-control motor generators. “Sound power phones and an auxiliary radio were rigged promptly,” Captain Simons wrote. “I found, however, that the noise of our own guns made hearing difficult, and it was necessary to use messengers to transmit orders.”
Captain Simons viewed the onslaught from his position on the signal bridge. “About 9:00 am a second wave of glide bombers came in from all directions,” he later recalled. The Raleigh’s gun crews were ready. The captain watched intently as a plane under fire by the forward quad-mount 1.1-inch cannon angled down in flames north of Ford Island. “A second bomber approaching our starboard quarter was hit by our after 1.1-inch gun,” he continued. “This plane burst into flames and crashed on the aircraft tender Curtiss [AV-4] where it started a big fire.” Simons later reported that his ship shot down five Japanese planes. With antiaircraft shells flying in all directions, it is unlikely that the Raleigh’s gunners were solely responsible for that number. Five other vessels claimed responsibility for downing the plane that crashed the Curtiss.11
A Direct Hit, a Lucky Break
The gunners, however, could not stop several planes from making bombing runs on the Raleigh. As two planes dove toward his ship, Simons watched helplessly through binoculars as bombs were released. “I could also see the machine guns firing at us,” he added.
One bomb was a near-miss to port. The second scored a direct hit. At 0908 the armor-piercing projectile landed near the after deckhouse between two antiaircraft guns. In a stroke of good luck, the bomb did not explode on impact. Striking a ready ammunition box a glancing blow, it barely missed a sailor before traveling through multiple decks and a fuel-oil tank, finally exiting the hull and exploding on the harbor floor no more than 100 feet from the Raleigh. “In its path through the ship, this bomb missed our aviation gasoline tanks, containing three thousand gallons of high test gasoline, by about ten feet,” a grateful Simons later wrote. About ten minutes later, another bomb exploded harmlessly in the water between the ship and Ford Island, causing no damage.
Although spared from an explosion, the cruiser now had extensive flooding on multiple decks caused by a hole more than a foot wide. The failure of seals on several watertight hatches caused additional flooding problems.12 “The ship settled more and took a bad list to port,” Simons noted. “Our after deck was awash and it seemed probable that the ship would capsize.” The situation now seemed grave. “By 10:00 am all attacks had died down and the problem then was to keep the ship from turning over.”
The captain reasoned that all nonessential topside weight had to be removed if there was a fighting chance at keeping the Raleigh upright. The first to go were the two seaplanes. Offloaded by brute strength, the planes taxied to Ford Island followed by the aviation gang. Anything topside deemed nonessential to saving the ship was tossed overboard. “As there was no electric or steam power on the ship this work had to be done by man-power,” Simons explained. “The two plane catapults were then torn from their foundations by hand and jettisoned along with both torpedo tubes, all torpedoes, booms, ladders, boat skids, chests, stanchions, anchors, chains, etc., about sixty tons in all.” A rudimentary chart was drawn showing the location of all items thrown over the side.
Several gas-powered pumps that arrived were put to immediate use to combat the flooding. At 1325 the old tug Sunnadin (AT-28) arrived with more pumps and a barge carrying four salvage pontoons. Steel hawsers from the pontoons were lashed around the Raleigh. All available manila rope and wires were used to mount extra lines to the mooring quays. The measures helped keep the ship upright, buying valuable time for crews to pump out water and shore up leaking bulkheads.
A variety of personnel departed the Raleigh for various reasons as the day progressed. The ship’s doctor went to the hospital ship Solace (AH-5). “I sent Carpenter Tellin with an acetylene cutting outfit to the Utah where he cut a hole in the bottom rescuing one man,” Captain Simons recalled. More sailors left the ship in response to a radio report that enemy transports were off Oahu. “I sent all men to the Air Station who were not required to fight the ship or to look after damage control. These men took rifles, machine guns, pistols, and ammunition with them.” Of the ship’s five wounded sailors, three were transferred elsewhere.
The damage-control effort received a big boost at 1400 when engineers successfully relighted fires under the Number 11 boiler. The list to port soon decreased at a rapid rate thanks to the dedicated pumping effort. The Raleigh steadied before starting a list to starboard owing to the various flooded compartments. The unexpected move required the engineering spaces to again be abandoned and the lone operating boiler to be temporarily extinguished for an hour. At 1700 the minesweeper Avocet (AVP-4) moored along the cruiser’s port side to provide power for radio transmitters. By the end of the day the struggle to save the Raleigh was yielding results. The once heavy list to port steadied at seven degrees to starboard as pumping continued at a furious pace.
A Pearl Survivor
When the morning sun rose on 8 December the Raleigh was still afloat. A Navy-yard salvage party reported aboard to assist in damage control. Additional help arrived in the form of the destroyer tender Whitney (AD-4). Her divers submerged into the murky water to assess hull damage and stuff life vests into the bomb hole. The temporary fix slowed the intake of water until semipermanent patches made of underwater cement were applied to all holes in the hull on 15 December. The patches increased stability and allowed for more effective pumping work.
Repair crews took over after the Raleigh moved across Pearl Harbor to the Navy yard on 23 December. Ten days later she entered Dry Dock Number 1 for hull repairs. On 21 February 1942 the cruiser departed on one engine for the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California for additional repairs and equipment upgrades.
Captain Simons credited the heroic actions of his crew for saving the Raleigh. Whether gun crews topside, engineers working in dangerous conditions belowdecks, or deckhands laboring to jettison topside equipment, each crew member played a critical role in keeping the ship afloat. “I was particularly pleased at the gallant manner in which all hands responded to this surprise attack,” he later wrote. “A list was made of those who were exceptionally meritorious.” The list, however, grew to such length that it was too long to be submitted with the after-action report. It must also be noted that personnel from the navy yard and other vessels provided critical assistance.
The Raleigh departed San Francisco Bay on 23 July 1942. Passing under the Golden Gate Bridge signified the beginning of her journey back to war. Most of her fighting years were spent in the North Pacific participating in the Aleutian Islands campaign. The light cruiser that so many dedicated sailors had fought to save at Pearl Harbor was decommissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 2 November 1945 and sold for scrap about four months later.
1. Robert S. La Forte and Ronald E. Marcello, eds., Remembering Pearl Harbor: Eyewitness Accounts by U.S. Military Men and Women (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1992), 172.
2. Raleigh Deck Log, 7 December 1941, National Archives and Records Administration (herafter NARA), College Park, MD.
3. CO USS Raleigh to CinCPac, “Supplementary Battle Report, U.S.S. Raleigh, Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941,” 10 June 1943, 1, NARA.
4. Bureau of Ships, “U.S.S. Raleigh: Torpedo and Bomb Damage. December 7, 1941” (hereafter “Raleigh Damage Report”), n.d., 1, NARA.
5. CO USS Raleigh to CinCPac, “Report of U.S.S. Raleigh’s Participation in the Battle of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941,” 13 December 1941, 1, NARA.
6. Walter Lord, Day of Infamy (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1957), 99–100.
7. “Supplementary Battle Report,” 2.
8. La Forte and Marcello, Remembering Pearl Harbor, 174.
9. Raleigh Damage Report, 4.
10. Vice Admiral Homer N. Wallin, Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 196.
11. Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, December 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor (New York: Warner Books, 1988), 261.
12. CO USS Raleigh to Bureau of Ships, “War Damage Report,” 14 January 1942, 9.