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February 13, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Howling Owl

In 1938, the Navy Shore Development Board began searching for a more secure and adequate method for storing the near 4 million barrels of fuel kept to supply the Pacific Fleet.

The intention was to move the fuel from the exposed Doheny oil tanks in the back of the Navy Yard to a series of underground horizontal tanks.

The tanks were arranged in two parallel rows, with adjacent tanks spaced by 100-feet at least. The parallel arrangement allowed access by tunnels built between them with branches to each tank. Tops and bottoms of the tanks were dome-shaped for strength.

Ninety percent of the work was done underground, below at least 110-feet of earth. Outside night work was done under blackout conditions brought on by the war. A 20-watt bulb mounted inside a tin can and suspended three feet from the ground was a typical light source.

Charlie Boerner of Maui, the civil engineer inspector of the Navy’s supervisory group, described it best. “All we’re doing is getting inside a hole that doesn’t exist and digging until it does. O.K., so the miners keep widening the hole out from the shaft, making it v-shaped so the rock will roll down.”

The sequence of operation in driving the tunnels was drill, load (dynamite), blast, muck out, timber, and repeat. Progress was hampered by the presence of cinder pockets and irregular rock stratifications.

Tunnels through softer rock required pre-fabricated arch-shaped steel ribs with heavy timbers between the ribs to make the tunnel safe for work to proceed. Tunnels through harder rock were simply coated with Gunite to consolidate any loose rock. (HAER No. HI-123)

Muck was carried by conveyor to a quarry. Eventually, all of the five million tons excavated from Red Hill was used in surfacing highways, making concrete and as landfill to connect Kuahua Island to the Pearl Harbor shoreline.

After the tanks were hollowed, the walls were lined with ¼” steel plating, much like stained-glass pieces create a Tiffany lamp shade, Gammon described. (John Bennett)

Each tank has a 300,000-barrel capacity, and all 20 can hold 252 million gallons of fuel. At its peak, the project employed 3,900 workers to build 20 cylindrical fuel tanks that are each the size of the 20-story Ala Moana Building. Two-thirds of the workers were local. (William Cole)

The first tank was completed and immediately utilized on Sept. 26, 1942; the last, on Sept. 30, 1943. The reservation was transferred to the Navy’s control upon completion of the project, and was part of the strategic fuel oil for the Pacific Fleet. Access to the complex is via a system of tunnels totaling 7.13 miles. (John Bennett)

“Snaking throughout the honeycomb are a series of tunnels. A short cross tunnel connects each pair of tanks at their bottoms, making ten cross tunnels altogether. Similarly, another ten cross tunnels connect the tanks at their springline, the base of the upper dome.”

“The lengthy harbor tunnel extends for an additional two and one-third miles before finally rising to the surface at a secluded and bombproof underground pumphouse on Pearl Harbor Naval Base.” (HAER No. Hl-123) There is a link which runs to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific’s Headquarters building located at Makalapa. (John Bennett)

To aid in the transport of materials, 13,000 linear feet of train tracks were removed from Oahu’s cane fields and laid in the lower tunnel.  (WestOfSunset)

As the miners inched their way through their subterranean passageway, gangs of track-laying crews followed at their heels. As fast as the tunnel moved forward, rail lines were laid, and the excavated rock and earth was rolled away in miniature rail cars. (HAER No. HI-123)

The only continuously-operated railroad on Oahu runs the 3½  miles from Red Hill to a pump house at Pearl Harbor. It’s 450 feet underground, transporting men and equipment. At the pump house, only four men at a time are needed to monitor the elaborate system that took thousands to build.  (Boykin, Hawaii Pacific Architecture)

The two-car train, pulled by a miniature electric-powered narrow-gauge ‘locomotive’, was named ‘Howling Owl’ that propelled the train through the underground, hauled workers and equipment to various stops along the route – it could reach 15 miles per hour at full ‘steam’. (WestOfSunset)

The train passes under Makalapa Crater, Makalapa Elementary School, Salt Lake Boulevard, and Foster Village, at which point it is nearly 100-feet below the surface.

As it snakes through the tunnel, riders could easily believe that they are in the New York subway except that no one has spray painted ‘Chico loves Gloria’ on the walls.

Leaving Foster Village, the Owl travels beneath Aliamanu Military Reservation, the freeway, and Coast Guard housing. At the last location, residents have claimed that their homes vibrate when the train passes below. (Mass Transit Exists!)

The origin of the name ‘Howling Owl’ is long lost.  One theory suggests that the train’s mournful hoot is similar to the hoot of an owl.

Another theory claims that the name stems from the Underground Railroad used by escaping slaves in the southern United States.  Slaves planning to flee were told to await the signal – a howling owl. (WestOfSunset) The 15-foot-tall lighted tunnels later accommodated electric engines Honu and Lapaki.

© 2025 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Military Tagged With: Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, Red Hill, Howling Owl, Fuel

June 23, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Red Hill Underground

Originally Top Secret, Red Hill’s hidden facility became generally known in the early-1990s, when the facility was declassified.

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor all of the Navy’s fuel was stored in unprotected above ground tanks at Pearl Harbor, next to the submarine base.

When RADM Chester Nimitz was Commander of the Bureau of Yards & Docks (in 1940) he wanted the Navy’s 2 ½-year supply of fuel oil protected from aerial attack – existing aboveground unprotected tanks next to the Submarine Base presented a vulnerable enemy target.

Standard practice was to dig a trench and bury the tanks, but this was impractical to store 255-million gallons of fuel oil; here, the Navy’s initial plan was to dig a series of tunnels and insert the tanks

Instead, consulting engineer James P Growden came up with excavating large vertical tank chambers instead of horizontal tunnels. (Nothing like this had ever been attempted before.)

This would increase the volume of material that could be excavated simultaneously and decrease the number of heavy equipment needed for hauling muck. It also decreased the unit cost for rock removal substantially.

Starting the day after Christmas 1940, 20 underground fuel storage tanks were built more that 100-feet below the surface. (The facility was designed as an impenetrable, bombproof reserve of fuel for the military.)

To determine the depth necessary to protect the fuel from Japanese aerial attack, the engineers gathered data from the Army, multiplied it four-fold and rounded the figure off to 100 feet of rock cover.

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had little effect on the work site – work on the storage facility proceeded virtually without interruption.

Each vertical tank is 100 feet in diameter and 250 feet high, roughly the size of a 20-story building, and lined with quarter-inch steel plates (it has an overall design capacity of 6-million barrels of fuel oil (9.97-billion gallons.))

Dug from the inside, the storage facility is connected with pipes (32-inch-diameter diesel pipe, and 18- and 16-inch jet fuel pipes) and tunnels down to a Pearl Harbor pumping station, more than two-and-a-half miles away.

The tanks were set up in two parallel rows with two main access tunnels, one above the other, bisecting the rows; smaller tunnels branched from these main axis tunnels to the tank cavities.

The upper dome of each fuel chamber was excavated first, starting with a ring tunnel, then working upward, towards the central shaft. They started digging in the upper portion of each tank chamber.

Upon completing the ring tunnel, the miners dug upwards in a hemisphere from all points around the ring, narrowing as they reached the central shaft. As soon as the upper hemisphere was concreted, workers were lowered down the central shaft to begin excavation of the tank chamber.

The miners continued to dig downwards in a cone until they reached the lower hemisphere of the tank chamber; tThe lining for the lower hemisphere was placed similarly to the top.

Then, they steel-lined the walls of the tank chamber. Reinforced concrete was placed against the rock and smooth continuously welded steel plates formed the inner liner. (Rogers)

Think of the scenario: with limited above ground disturbance, hollowing out twenty 20-story building-sized cavities 100-feet underground, lining each with ¼-inch steel (with concrete-backing,) testing and repairing leaks, and tunneling them together and to Pearl Harbor, 2 ½-miles away – in secrecy.

In 1995, the American Society of Civil Engineers placed the facility alongside Hoover Dam, the Eiffel Tower, Panama Canal and Statue of Liberty as a historic landmark.

In 2014, evidence of fuel leakage was noted.  The Navy and City & County, State and Federal agencies have come together to evaluate the impact to the environment and community, and to look at solutions in dealing with the leak and strategies to mitigate the impacts.

While at DLNR, I had the opportunity to visit the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility above Pearl Harbor; it’s a secured facility with no public tours or access.

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© 2016 Hoʻokuleana LLC

RedHillStorageTanks-photo_construction_inside-tank
RedHillStorageTanks-photo_construction_inside-tank
RedHillStorageTanks
RedHillStorageTanks
RedHillStorageTanks-construction
RedHillStorageTanks-construction
RedHillStorageTanks-drawing_construction_inside-tank
RedHillStorageTanks-drawing_construction_inside-tank
RedHillStorageTanks-drawing_inside-tank
RedHillStorageTanks-drawing_inside-tank
200 feet down to the bottom of an empty fuel tank-(honoluluadvertiser)
200 feet down to the bottom of an empty fuel tank-(honoluluadvertiser)
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
An intersection, about 450 feet beneath Red Hill-(honoluluadvertiser)
An intersection, about 450 feet beneath Red Hill-(honoluluadvertiser)
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Honu_in_Tunnel_(honoluluadvertiser)
Honu_in_Tunnel_(honoluluadvertiser)
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Red Hill Underground Storage Tanks
Walking_in_Tunnel_(honoluluadvertiser)
Walking_in_Tunnel_(honoluluadvertiser)
Honu_in_Tunnel-(honoluluadvertiser)
Honu_in_Tunnel-(honoluluadvertiser)
Layout-map-(honoluluadvertiser)
Layout-map-(honoluluadvertiser)
BWS Slide noting Red Hill Storage Tanks
BWS Slide noting Red Hill Storage Tanks
BWS Slide noting Red Hill Storage_Tanks
BWS Slide noting Red Hill Storage_Tanks

Filed Under: Military Tagged With: Hawaii, Oahu, Military, Red Hill

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