12/7/41 1430 hours

The Pacific surface fleet now consisted of three damaged American destroyers and hundreds of life rafts and life boats carrying survivors of the battleship fleet. The destroyers were able to make repairs but it was impossible for them to pick up even a fraction of the survivors. The battleship fleet had sailed with just over 28,000 men the day before. Now six hundred of these crammed three damaged destroyers and the remainder of the survivors were on rafts or floating in the water. The best guess would place the dead at something over 6500 since both the USS Pennsylvania and the West Virginia exploded and went down with nearly all hands. Fortunately for the survivors of the other ships there had been time to launch many of the cutters, rafts and lifeboats and these were manned. They were even now being lashed together and the powered boats would begin pulling them toward Pearl as soon as the men in the water were picked up. The men in the water were certain help would come from the carrier fleet to the east. The sea battle had been fought over an area about 100 miles square and the men and boats were scattered over ten thousand square miles. Rescue would be difficult.

Gene and the other two men from the USS Pennsylvania, Harry Booth and Less Tuckey had been floating in the water for over an hour now. Less spotted a lifeboat and they began to wave and swim toward it. When they got to the boat it was full. They lashed themselves to it along with about fifty other men who had already found this questionable place of refuge. They found it was from the Arizona. At least now they had some limited amount of supplies and a lifeboat would be easier to for rescuers to find than three men floating in life jackets. They considered themselves lucky, they were not injured, unlike some of the others in the lifeboat. Just after the three of them arrived at the lifeboat a badly injured person died. The body was placed in the water and another injured person who had been in the water was given the space in the boat.

12/7/41 The carrier fleet 1400 hours

Twice in the last hour the Enterprise had been under attack by a Japanese submarine. Lt. Boise was scheduled to refuel but was waved off as he was turning on his final approach. The carrier made several sharp turns and avoided the torpedoes while he circled. A few minutes later the screening destroyers located the submarine and began depth charging it. Lt. Boise was brought down. His plane was serviced on the deck, fuel and fluids were pumped in, ammunition trays were filled, he was given a sandwich and a drink and by 1415 he was airborne again. It reminded him of an Indy Pit stop.