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UNDERGROUND STORAGE TANKS Red Hill Storage Vaults - 1943 When the Japanese air fleet attacked and destroyed the U.S. battleships in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, their terrific bombing and strafing assault was heard, a short distance away, by construction men in underground caverns who were building subterranean storage for oil to supply those ships. Long afterward, one of the tunnel superintendents was asked, "What did you do when you heard the Pearl Harbor attack?" His answer: "Just kept right on working. We were safe underground." The Hawaiian project, then shrouded in secrecy, was the con- struction, all entirely underground, of 20 vertical storage vaults — or tanks each higher than 20-story building and 100 feet in concrete- lined diameter, for impregnable storage of 6,000,000 barrels of diesel and fuel oil for vessels of the Pacific fleet. Under a contract with the U.S. Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks, Morrison-Knudsen Company, Inc., was in charge, of the design and construction as sponsor for the joint venture of eight contractors operating under the name, Contractors, Pacific Naval Air Bases - abbreviated CP NAB . The project was known only as Red Kill, from its location within a ridge of red volcanic lava extending from the shore of Pearl Harbor to a. summit of about 400 feet. The ridge afforded ample cover for the hollowed-out vaults, as well as ample elevation for gravity flow of liquid fuel through pipes to the harbor. No precedent had been found for the design of these enormous vaults --of which only four units were originally ordered, but serial additions were made, as work progressed, to the total of 20 structures . Each vault is 250 feet, high, 100 feet in diameter, with a 50-foot-radius dome at the top, and the same size dome inverted at the bottom. Built in two parallel rows, the vaults are spaced on 200-foot, centers both ways. They were all blasted from subterranean, rock, formed and poured entirely below ground, with the first outside access to each tank through a 4x6-foot shaft from the top. Amounts of excavation and materials poured into the project indicate its vast size. Required excavation was 1,740,000 cubic yards. Reinforcing, structural and tunnel steel totaled 13,000 tons, and enough 1/4-inch steel liner plate was used to cover 45 acres. The quantity of concrete placed was 413,000 cubic yards, and the grout and gunite lining required 1,778,000 sacks of cement.