uss mississippi turret explosion 1943
This first appeared in 2019. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Jaguars, narcos, illegal loggers: One mans battle to save a Guatemalan jungle and Maya ruins, Has wildflower shaming gone too far? Powered by Invision Community, USS MISSISSIPPI (BB-41) 1924 Turret Explosion, US MILITARIA FORUM - COLLECTORS PRESERVING HISTORY. This guy served on the USS MISSISSIPPI and USS NEVADA from 1917-1919. After overhaul at San Francisco. No Way, Afghanistan: The Avoidable 20-Year Disaster, New Footage Shows Russias New T-90M Tank Going to War in Ukraine, The Collapse of Kamala Harris Is Nearly Complete. By WASHINGTON Friction, the cause initially considered for the explosions aboard the USS Iowa this year, was also thought by Navy gun experts to be a possible cause of a 1943 explosion aboard the battleship USS Mississippi that killed 42 sailors. At 0059, an in-bore explosion, caused by a defective projectile, tore through the inside of Turret II, burned more than 700 pounds . The deck was armored to 3.5 inches and the conning tower to sixteen inches. The damaged 33,000-ton dreadnought headed back to port. "Imagine an old timey cap gun, where you remove the caps, and bang them with a hammer," Truitt said. One man who was recognized as a hero of the disaster and credited with saving the ship was the turret captain, Lt. (jg) Thomas E. Zellars. Officers wearing full-dress uniforms and enlisted men formed a square around the coffins as rifle shots were fired 21 times and the Navy bugler played taps. Mississippi was converted to a gunnery training and weapons development ship in 1946, and given the new hull number AG-128. Photo courtesy of Irv Jacobs via Ron Reeves (of blessed memory). Politics. Though the Navy Bureau of Ordnance's findings are 45 years old and involved the Mississippi's 14-inch diameter guns, the mechanisms and equipment in volved are similar to the 16-inch guns used on the Iowa and the Navy's other three battleships now in service, current and retired Navy personnel say. This could have led to dangerous debris remaining in the breech when the gun crew assumed it was safe to load. "At 10 minutes to 10 a.m., somebody came over the phones and said, 'We're having a problem, Turret 2, center gun,'" Carr recalled. Editorial Guidelines and Publishing Standards. The closing of the hatch sealed the fate of any others who might have survived the blast, trapping them in the toxic, flaming gas cloud created by the explosion. It's possible that the powder bags began to smoke because they were old, so the gun captain rammed the bags with too much power. He passed away in 2010. A Marine rifle squad fired three volleys. He said the owners told him that the yard long was the crew of the ship but I figure that it contains the sailor that was assigned to the ship pictured. The ceremony was held at San Pedro, California on 17 June 1924. The right gun had just fired and was returned to loading position and the plug opened. Battleship USS Mississippi, cruiser USS Minneapolis, and destroyers USS Shaw and McKean arrived at Pago Pago, Samoa. Carr was eventually able to climb into the wrecked turret. Over more than a decade, she operated with the fleet's other battleships, conducting exercises and training operations in the Pacific and in the Caribbean. Another sailor, Senior Master Chief Steven Skelly, told Milligan that "There has been account after account of all classes of battleship" where friction ignited ripped bags of powder as they were rammed into the gun. His career ruined, Brotherton spent his last years a broken man. ww2dbaseMississippi was converted to a gunnery training and weapons development ship in 1946, and given the new hull number AG-128. It was later determined that 47 sailors were killed by the blast, which occurred as the Iowa was conducting routine gunnery exercises 330 miles northeast of Puerto Rico, 19 April 1989. "Interestingly, I was never read my rights, nor did I realize that I was a suspect," Truitt told Task & Purpose. "They knew more about guns than everybody else in the Navy put together.". The recoil severely crushed ten men inside and the salvo narrowly missed an outgoing passenger vessel. Laid down in April 1915 at the Newport News Naval Yard, Virginia, Mississippi was commissioned in December 1917, a month after the end of World War I. Navy records show that Emett C. Dunn, Jr., a civilian employee of the Navy stationed in Charleston, S.C., told investigators that during a March visit to the Iowa the senior enlisted man in turret No. Note the crew assembled on deck to view the event and the details on the cage masts and gun turrets. This could have led to dangerous debris remaining in the breech when the gun crew assumed it was safe to load. * November 1943: The battleship USS Mississippi, while shelling Makin Island in World War II, had an explosion in turret No. 20 November 1943." Battleship USS Missouri - Official Website NavSource - USS Missouri (BB-41) My uncle died in 1937 from TB (he contracted while on active duty) so the story was told to me by his brother (my grandfather). RLoret 1 yr. ago. Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved. She was armed with a main battery of twelve 14-inch/50 caliber guns mounted in four turrets of three guns each, with each gun mounted in a separate sleeve. Was on board 1943-45. . . (Photo: U.S. Navy) President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, had a dream in the early 1980s: A 600-ship fleet. "This is just from my experience of three years of working and shooting those guns: Eventually the powder bags ripped and the rammer head or the rammer chain sparked, and that's what set off the first explosion," Carr said. Mississippiwas a heavily armed battleship by the standards of the day. The British lost the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. Gunners mate Kendall L. Truitt, one of the 12 sailors who escaped the No. In the case of theIowa, the devastating blast happened toward the tail end of the Cold War, when the Navy felt it needed 600 ships to counter the Soviets. He is the founder and editor for the blogs Japan Security Watch, Asia Security Watch and War Is Boring. Answer (1 of 4): Note: When a Turret accident of this magnitude, or a penetrating hit from a shell, occurs, everyone dies. United States General Accounting Office. The battleships three remaining turrets continued firing until the naval support phase of the invasion had ended. It doesn't make any difference to the crew, their attitude being the same as six months ago, except that boys talk more about the Japs than the Germans. 2 16-inch gun turret aboard the Iowa (BB-61). Those people turned out to be Gunner's Mate 2nd Class Clayton Hartwig, whom the Navy had initially claimed had loaded the gun before it exploded, and his best friend, Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Kendall Truitt. Previously, ships other than aircraft-carriers had to come to a halt in order to lower the aircraft into the water to allow them to take off. On the eighth salvo, turret two, gun two suffered a rare flare back. The four powder bags inserted into the breech, totaling 470 pounds of explosive powder, caught fire and ignited other bags waiting to be loaded. USS Mississippi (BB-41/AG-128), a New Mexico-class battleship, was the third ship of the United States Navy named in honor of the 20th state, and the second battleship to carry the name.Commissioned in 1917, too late to serve in World War I, she served extensively in the Pacific in World War II, for which she earned eight battle stars.She was one of several pre-war battleships that . Mississippi provided gunfire support for the Lingayen landings in January 1945 and for the conquest of Okinawa in March-June. In early 1942, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mississippi rejoined the Pacific Fleet. The mighty warship was 624 feet long with a beam of 97.5 feet, and displaced 33,000 tons fully loaded. ww2dbaseUSS Mississippi, a 32,000 ton New Mexico class battleship, was built at Newport News, Virginia. Undergoing repairs, Mississippi returned to action in January 1944 when it provided fire . All of the crew had been advised to set up allotment accounts for their families. Panoramic photograph of the funeral for the forty-eight officers and men killed when Mississippi's (BB-41) Number Two 14-inch Gun Turret burned during gunnery practice on 12 June 1924. It was the deadliest peacetime naval disaster ever to occur along the California coast, an explosion that tore through a gun turret on the battleship Mississippi, killing 48 sailors and injuring dozens more. "We did not accuse Kendall Truitt of anything in the investigation or the other gent," Kelso said. ", Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved. You need to play a total of 20 battles to post in this section. She also featured twelve 5-inch/51 caliber guns, eight 3-inch anti-aircraft guns and two submerged 21-inch torpedo tubes. This freed up the name USS Mississippi (BB-41) for one of twelve "standard type" battleships, designed with a similar armor scheme, speed, and main armament in order to operate together. Running a zigzag course at 19 knots (known as Baker 3 in Navy lingo), the 624-foot Mississippi chased another battleship, the California, which was towing a large target. US National Archives and Records Administration. 2. Flame and gases immediately filled the gun compartment, passed through the safety doors above the shell table to the other two gun compartments and through the peep doors to the turret officer's booth. During his early months aboard the MISSISSIPPI, Seaman Fidler maintained a log book. Two days after the attack, accompanied by the battleship IDAHO and a number of destroyers, the Mississippi departed Iceland for Norfolk. Sandia National Laboratories later determined that the powder had been rammed 24 inches too far, compressing the powder charge against the base of the dummy projectile before it ignited, the GAO report said. Sometimes, if firing was prolonged and fairly rapid, the compressors supplying the air to the compressed air bottles could not keep up with the demand and in those cases, the bores might not receive a complete blast of air, leaving some debris or incandescent gases lingering inside. Five days later, families and shipmates of the fallen seamen bade a solemn goodbye to the men behind the guns. The aging battlewagon had served longer than most ships at the time, but it had also experienced two rare tragedies, in the same place, under similar circumstances. Following the explosion, the MISSISSIPPI returned to anchorage at San Pedro to transfer the dead and wounded to the hospital ship USS RELIEF. I'm sorry for anyone's personal grief or personal anguish over that.". Then they found two sailors who had been blown from the turret onto the deck. ww2dbaseDuring 1931-33 , Mississippi underwent a major modernization that gave her an all-new superstructure, improved armament and enhanced protection. He battled to contain the fire until he passed out from smoke inhalation, waking up later in an emergency dress battle station. Battlecruiser Invincible suffers an explosion after it's turret Q is hit by a 12-inch shell from German battlecruiser Ltzow. The World War II Database is founded and managed by But unlike other explosions, the 16-inch gun in the No. Fortunately for him and his crew, his ship was anchored at Hvalfordur on the fateful morning of December 7, 1941. But it soon became apparent that the World War II-era battleships required too much time, money, and manpower to be overhauled, Carroll said. On the clear, crisp, windy afternoon of June 12, 1924, a few minutes before noon, the 7-year-old vessel, was involved in intense mock warfare maneuvers 40 miles south of Los Angeles with two other Pacific Fleet battleships, the Tennessee and the Idaho. The military looks for scapegoats when people die rather than admit their mistakes or acknowledge that accidents are even possible, Truitt said. Although the worst loss of life in peace time, the turret explosion aboard Iowa in 1989 is tied with the 1942 explosion in the No. Navy investigators allege that Hartwig, the captain of the gun, had encouraged the rammer that day to push the load that far. Forty-two sailors were killed and another sixteen wounded. "I was like: OK; I'll bite; why? Am trying to find information of awards/medals that might have been awarded. The guns' lubricants were the next to ignite, he said. Repulse have gone down. Later in the year, she was part of the force that invaded Peleliu and Leyte and defeated a Japanese task force in the Battle of Surigao Strait. Mississippi was a heavily armed battleship by the standards of the day. "If this story sounds familiar, it's because this is kind of the oldest story ever told around the U.S. It was one of the worst disasters suffered by the Navy during peacetime. Each of those visits was special, but a particularly unique one resulted in a perk rarely seen on a military vessel: in 1943 a bathtub was . They further claimed Hartwig became suicidal because he and Truitt who was married at the time had been lovers but Truitt had rebuffed him. Following repairs, she participated in the capture of Kwajalein in February 1944 and bombarded Japanese-held islands in February and March. Suddenly, in the midst of the barrage . Although each barrel was blasted between firings with pressurized air to evacuate debris, the middle barrel of each turret received a lower pressure burst than the left and right barrels. Despite her forty years of service, Mississippi was bound to tragedy, experiencing two major accidents in the same turret, in the same gun, twenty years apart. The gunners on all three battlewagons were competing for a $20 prize that Congress had voted to award the fleets most proficient naval marksman. Battleship by the standards of the worst disasters suffered by the Navy put together. `` was converted to gunnery. Recoil severely crushed ten men inside and the plug opened and was returned to action January... That day to push the load that far rare flare back, Asia Security Watch, Security. Where you remove the caps, and given the new hull number.! Guns than everybody else in the No out from smoke inhalation, waking up later in an emergency dress station. 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