Why couldn’t they raise the USS Arizona?
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Unlike the other recovered ships at Pearl Harbor, the USS Arizona suffered severe damage. The most important structural element of a ship is its keel, the part that’s under the water. Think of it as the ship’s spine, which supports the rest of the vessel. When the Arizona was sunk, the number 2 turret was hit with a bomb, setting off the forward magazines. That basically shattered the forward third of the ship and cracked its keel. With the bow blown off and the keel cracked, it couldn’t be salvaged – there would be so much work it would effectively be rebuilding the ship from scratch.
The ships that were refloated and repaired were often sunk by torpedoes. Those ships sank because there were holes punched into them under the waterline. So it was a relatively straightforward job to patch the holes and refloat them.
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