What bomb took the USS Arizona down?

Answer 1

One innovation the Japanese instituted for the Pearl Harbor attack was the use of torpedo bombers as "high level" bombers. These were armed with 16 inch, armor piercing battleship shells, fitted with fins and dropped as bombs. Tests showed that from several thousand feet these would smash though the thick steel of a battleship's armored deck, just as though they had been fired from a battleship's gun. Armor piercing shells have a delayed fuse of about a third of a second, to allow the shell to penetrate deep into a ship's vitals before exploding.

The lighter dive bombers could not haul the one ton "bombs" made from battleship main gun ammunition into the air. Torpedo bombers were the largest, most powerful carrier aircraft - they had to be to get aloft with a one-ton torpedo or "bomb" hanging from its belly. Torpedo bombers had a three man crew.

The "high level" bombers practiced exhaustively under the leadership of two eagle-eyed bombardiers. One of these was credited with the deadly hit on the Arizona. He did not live to get home. While the Japanese Task Force was homeward bound from Hawaii part of it was diverted for a strike on a US island, Johnson Island, and he fell in a raid there.

Like all battleships the Arizona's ammunition was housed in an armored structure called a barbette. This was actually a five story structure, with the gun turret at the top level on the weather deck. The turret sat atop the barbette, which was round and had walls of foot thick steel. The battleship's shells, and tons of propellant which exploded to hurl the shells on their way, were stored in the lower levels. Just outside the barbette of number two turret was the ship's black powder magazine. This held charges used to propel the ship's observation plane down its catapult. A bomb from one of the high level Japanese bombers penetrated deep into the Arizona and exploded the black powder magazine. This explosion flashed over through the handling scuttle in the wall of the barbette into the ship's own propellant, detonating tons of nitro-cellulose and destroying the front half of the ship.