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Commander Fuqua’s Deck Department had one major task to complete, however, before it could relax. Having been at sea, Arizona needed to replenish its fuel tanks. In expectation of the upcoming voyage to Long Beach—some 2,500 miles—a full load of 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil was pumped aboard. Despite the trade winds blowing across Pearl Harbor that December morning, an oily smell lingered and lay heavy in the air. Elsewhere aboard the Arizona, storage tanks contained 180,000 gallons of aviation fuel for the three Vought Kingfisher scouting planes, and ammunition lockers brimmed with more than a million pounds of gunpowder. Crew members had long learned to take such explosive cargo as a matter of course, but each of the seven battleships moored along Battleship Row—and Pennsylvania momentarily on blocks in Dry Dock No. 1—carried the ingredients to readily become floating bombs.8
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Walter R. Borneman (Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona)