Pearl Harbor: Into The Arizona Page #2

steel float, you know.

- [Narrator] Stratton's battle station,

the sky control platform,

one deck above the bridge.

75 years later, Don

Stratton returns to his ship

to be a part of the exploration.

- At this moment, I would

like to let everybody know

to be aware of the fact that we do have

Mr. Donald Stratton with us.

He is an Arizona memorial survivor.

(crowd applauding)

- Kind of interesting

to see what all the time

and the sea has done with our old home.

It'd be like a homecoming, I guess maybe,

after all these years.

(crowd applauding)

- You know, to have Don back here

and be able to participate in our project,

in our research, it really means a lot

having him be able to

experience the ship again,

like he's never experienced it

since he was there 75 year ago.

- [Narrator] As one of the few

Arizona sailors still alive,

to this day he wonders why he was spared.

- Some of the personnel did

survive, and I was one of them.

I think about it every

day, how many people

didn't make it that day.

Why the Good Lord saved us but, who knows.

- [Narrator] After weeks of

preparation, the team is ready

to field test their custom-built ROV.

- There's a certain amount of anxiety.

We have this narrow timeline

that we need to hit,

in time for the anniversary.

Plus, we have Don Stratton coming.

So there's a fair amount of pressure,

to make sure that the ROV works.

That's our entry point, we're

going to drop down in there.

Dave will feed the ROV, and

we'll take the second back,

make sure everything works, that you guys

have control, cameras, all that.

- Cool.

- They created this really cool solution,

which is essentially a big spool

that pays out the cable as you go in,

and then picks the cable

back up as you go out,

and the advantage there

is you're not always

pulling on the cable to get

it further into the vessel.

- Oh, I'm sorry, dude.

- [Narrator] The new self-spooling tether

is designed to prevent the ROV

from getting snagged inside the ship,

a problem that has plagued

previous Arizona expeditions.

- You'll handle the ROV.

- Okay.

- I'm going to do some in-water filming.

- [Narrator] The team

hopes the new tether system

will allow them to look deeper

inside the ship than ever before.

- We're going to go slow,

first dive, first day.

We're going to go in an area where we know

we can get it out, should

we have any problems,

it's pretty accessible.

So we're going to take it slow.

We're going to head in

there and see what we get.

So, yeah, I'm psyched, we're ready to go.

- The mission does rest

on the ability of the ROV

and the tether system to work.

When we go in there, we

need to be effective,

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