The Navy presumably has documentation on the damage to West Virginia & Oklahoma. If they’d been hit below the keel or by impact below the water line the damage would have been unmistakeable.
“The Navy presumably has documentation on the damage to West Virginia & Oklahoma. If they’d been hit below the keel or by impact below the water line the damage would have been unmistakeable.”
Not really. The Japanese used aerial torpedoes at Pearl Harbor. Telling apart the damage from a sub torpedo and an aerial one would probably prove very difficult, especially at the time, when they were far more concerned with rescuing those trapped in the bottoms of the ships and/or getting them salvaged and returned to service. Those priorities vastly exceeded the need to tell the difference.