06/08/2026
This photograph captures the final moments of USS Arizona (BB-39) as she collapses into the waters of Pearl Harbor. Her superstructure tilts at a fatal angle, engulfed in smoke and fire, her masts still reaching skyward as the ship disappears beneath the surface.
Arizona was struck by a modified 16-inch armor-piercing shell dropped by Japanese aircraft at approximately 8:06 a.m. The bomb penetrated her forward deck and detonated inside the forward ammunition magazine. The resulting explosion was catastrophic — nearly instantaneous, and visible across the entire harbor.
Of her crew of 1,512 men, 1,177 were killed. Most of them never had a chance to reach a lifeboat or even a ladder. Many were entombed below decks as the ship sank in less than nine minutes.
Arizona was never raised. She remains where she fell, still leaking oil into the harbor to this day — what survivors call "the tears of Arizona." The USS Arizona Memorial was dedicated above her hull in 1962, marking the final resting place of 900 of her crew who were never recovered.
She did not sink as a warship. She was murdered at anchor, on a quiet Sunday morning, before the war had even begun.
