Even by 1942, there was quite a lot of salvage operations going on in Pearl. While I understand that the game developers cannot afford to waste a lot of time on "one shot" effects like the salvage of the OKLAHOMA via cranes:
It would have been rather simple to take one of the early US Battleship models they made for the game; delete all the superstructure, flip it upside down, and then use it as a static 3d model which appears in pearl from 09 DEC 41 to MAY 1943; at which time it's replaced by another static 3d model of a battleship with it's superstructure removed like so:
which lasts from MAY 1943 to NOVEMBER 1943; upon which the model moves to one of pearl's dry docks...