Pigging the Diesel Pipeline Between Hawaii's Red hill Facility and Pearl Harbor

摘要

Years before the Japanese attacked the Pearl Harbor fleet in 1941, the U.S. Navy recognized that the aboveground fuel storage tanks near the harbor were a vulnerable enemy target. Searching for a way to replace them, the Navy devised a plan to create an underground fuel storage facility that would serve as an invisible lifeline for battleships during World War II. The Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility is considered a modern engineering marvel. It is hidden several hundred feet below Red Hill, a mountain of volcanic rock located 7.5 miles (12 km) north of Honolulu between the Moanalua and Halawa valleys. Built between 1940 and 1943, the facility is made up of 20 huge, capsule-shaped tanks situated vertically underground. To construct the complex, the Navy used advanced mining techniques and employed thousands of laborers to carve the tank farm's intricate series of shafts, domes, and tunnels out of the volcanic rock. (See "Landmark Facility Was Once Top Secret," p. 17.)