Tour boat hits
USS Arizona

Divers are trying to determine how
badly the battleship was damaged

Star-Bulletin

Navy and National Park Service divers hoped to return to the USS Arizona Memorial today to determine the extent of damage caused when a Navy tour boat ran aground yesterday on the sunken battleship in Pearl Harbor.

Kathy Billings, National Park Service superintendent at the memorial, said divers reported minor damage yesterday in the area between a gun turret and the white monument. "But the water was so murky that the divers planned to return today and were planning to go in if the cloud cover lifted."

Billings said it looked like some metal pieces had broken off, but there wasn't major structural damage to the battleship. "Deterioration is really bad and even if you just touch the metal, pieces fall off."

A tour boat with 150 tourists was approaching the memorial's landing at 10:30 a.m. when the throttle linkages to one of its two engines developed problems. The boat pilot tried to compensate with the vessel's other engine, but when that failed, the sailor cut both engines and the wind and the current pushed the boat on to the battleship aft of turret two.

Another Navy shuttle craft picked up half of the passengers, which lightened the load of the tour boat, freeing the vessel. No one was hurt.

It was the first recorded incident since the Park Service began shuttle service to the memorial in 1980. The Navy estimates more than 130,000 trips have been made until yesterday without incident.