 During the next few weeks, the Navy set up twenty-one large winches on the island to turn the Oklahoma upright so it could be re-floated and patched before being scrapped. Coral was piled between the ship and the island so the ship would roll upright, instead of sliding toward the shore. Oklahoma sank during a mid-Pacific storm while it was being towed to the scrapyard. Nevada, California, West Virginia and the minelayer USS Oglala were re-floated and salvaged by the Navy. The entire salvage operation took 20,000 man-hours underwater and 5,000 dives to recover human remains, weapons, ammunition and artifacts of historic or military importance.
