When the USS West Virginia was sunk, she settled upright in just 36 feet of water. Most of her superstructure was above the waterline and accessible but there still were crewmen onboard who had been trapped below the waterline by bomb damage.
She wasn’t refloated until May 17, 1942. Seventy bodies were inside. Three that bore no sign of injury were found together in a compartment that had remained airtight and dry, along with a calendar that had had the days scratched off up to the 23rd of December, 1941.
For most of those 16 days, sailors working day and night to rescue the living and clear the wreckage could hear a rhythmic hammering coming from the Wee-Vee’s hull, a reminder that there was at least one crewmember still alive, still awaiting rescue.
Sailors and Marines alike avoided going anywhere near that wreck site, especially at night, because they knew what that clanging meant. Nearby Marine guards would stand their post with their fingers in their ears.
A battleship’s hull is deliberately made as impenetrable as possible. The Wee-Vee’s belt armor was at least 8” thick, so even if they could have isolated the location of the trapped men and sent down hard hat divers to cut them out, it would have taken far too long from the time they first breached the hull until they could cut a hole big enough for a man to escape through to leave even the remotest chance of rescuing them rather than drowning them in the process.
There was no hope of rescue until she was raised, and no hope of that for some months.
The three men were:
Ronald Endicott, age 18, from Skykomish, Washington.
Clifford Olds, age 20, from Stanton, North Dakota.
Louis “Buddy” Costin, age 21, from southern Indiana.
Buddy had joined up when he was 17. They found a waterlogged ladies watch in his locker. Shipmates recalled that he’d bought it intending to give it to his mother for Christmas. When it eventually made its way to his mother, she had it repaired and wore it every day until she died in 1985 at age 92.
In time some leaned the truth through unofficial means but none of their families were told how they really died.