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I have to say, this one made me particularly angry. The harrassment of victims' family and friends, the complacency and contempt, the intentional leaks to media, and of course no accountability in the end due to legal loopholes. Just evil.
Institutionalized psychopathy in the USA? How dare you suggest such a thing. A malcontent spreading unrest like you is undoubtedly already known to the relevant authorities.
Makes it laughable when conspiracy theorists get shot down with "The government would never do that..." when time after time the evidence shows they most certainly would.
And the reasoning of the time - "they did it because they were gay". Right in the middle of the AIDS crisis. Coming from Bush Sr's government. And the way that the family members and witnesses were harassed by the "investigators". Yup, pure evil.
I was an engineering coop at Naval Ordnance Louisville right after this happened. My boss in code 50152 was on the engineering review board... The powder was stored in barges, and was stored at excess temperature out of spec. The barges had strip chart temperature recorders. So someone dropped the ball on that. When you bake black powder it becomes incredibly unstable. As part of the investigation, the engineers tried to recreate the accident. They setup an instrumented 16 inch gun at white sands. and when they hit the mount-load button, the whole thing blew up... Boom. Just like that. First try. No doubt what happened... BUT. At the time of the accident, the gunnery officer was playing with combinations of powder and projectile that were not authorized. So he might have had some responsibility. And a civilian at NAVSEA, without authority, was working with him, so he had some potential responsibility. So what happens? The NAVY, as it always does, decided to circle the wagons around any officers involved and Navy conducted a sham investigation where they tried to blame the explosion on one of the dead sailors claiming he had a homo unrequited love for another sailor who died and that he somehow blew up the turret because of that... Total BS. Everyone involved in sullying that sailors reputation should have been prosecuted. The Navy always defends bad officers, and calls it defending the reputation of the Navy. They weave the Officer corp into the service as if they are inseparable, regardless of bad behavior. Then they screw good officers over for not towing the party line... Too many Navy Officers and it seems most Navy Flag officers are dirty political animals.
"The Navy always defends bad officers, and calls it defending the reputation of the Navy"; wow. I am not in the Military, but still. Keeping and defending a bad officer only make that reputation bad. "Be an idiot and get people kill. We stick with you." great motto
The blame started at day one after the explosion. It was fairly obvious guilt had been determined before an investigation. Explosive chemicals are very unstable. Just ask Jack Parsons.
The murder/suicide theory is INSANE. Those young men worked closely together while away from their friends and families for months. I honestly can't even imagine the intense relationships that are formed between sailors on ships. As if the fact that two of them might have had a sexual relationship made any difference. I can't believe that was ever even considered. And to involve the wife in that horrible mess? Unbelievable
@@RavenKartingespecially the scare around it too. Hell, tons of people genuinely believed only gay people got it, or that it could spread through a simple handshake. I'm glad we've (mostly) overcome that stuff
@squillz8310 well i mean only gay people do get aids that is just true it is a STD that is spread from gay intercourse though someone who is gay who has normal sex can still give it to someone and it can be spread without intercourse (maybe not through handshake) but as we know this because people who haven't had aids before who where exposed to people who did have aids for long periods of time in close contact did get aids
I remember the Navy trying to blame this on some kid, like a bunch of cowards. I have no idea why they felt it had to be blamed on anyone. Military service is dangerous. Things blow up, people get killed. But the coverup should have resulted in the dishonorable discharge of everyone involved. It was disgusting. It was also blatantly obvious that it was a cover up from the start.
Well, the officers (who should know better) messing with old powder, out of its specifications. And taking money from gun repair and maintenance, again by the navy officers. Both of those make the navy look bad, since those are things that a reasonable person would see as a potential cause / contributor to the explosion. So the higher ups would be considered partially at fault if they didn't find some, low level sailor to blame.
I did 6 years in the navy and I can count on one have the number of good officers I had. Mostly JOs and warrants. Senior management was... mediocre at best. I'm not at all surprised they blamed the blueshirts.
Remember how a single sailor was blamed for the fire and subsequent destruction of the Bonhomme Richard but was thankfully acquitted? That's what the military, or any organization where there is a large difference in power between leadership and their subordinates, does. They will happily throw you under the bus to save their own hides whenever they can.
@@patrickdix772 yes, the military way is that everyone is reponsible for everyone under themselves in the hierarchy, until someone higher up screws up when the blame is quickly pushed down like yesterdays bad burritos.
Every branch of the US military is honestly a disgrace to our great nation. The corruption, greed and general lack of honesty and integrity of the leadership in every single branch is disgusting.
That don't matter, Even in business where we don't build stuff or do stuff to kill others. Look up the KC 135 explosion in 2018. Personally I blame faulty equipment. Human error is evident in all things, hence why we have quality controls. We don't still use rocks to drive nails do we? What about pressurizing a multi-million dollar piece of machinery? Should it go pop it could kill someone or multiple people as industry has demonstrated.
I am the David Smith, involved in the Iowa incident. I will say this was a pretty good video, brief but mostly accurate. To be clear, the NIS interrogated me for MONTHS. They pulled me off the ship and had me assigned as a driver for Commodore Woodberry, commander DESRON 2, so they could come pick me up every day and take me to their offices and question me. I did not sign that confession after a couple of sessions, that came WEEKS later when I was so confused that I had a hard time telling what was real and what wasn't when it came to the investigation.
It's scary how quickly the military will turn on their own to avoid responsibility. In Canada there was a case where Army cadets (young teenagers pre -army sort of organisation) were given a live grenade instead of a dummy one for a demonstration. When it of course went off they blamed the cadets and even brought forward the theory that one of them brought their own grenade in.
"Their own"? The US military (and many others) are highly compartmentalized. Officers and enlisted simply do not mix. Enlisted are the muscle the officers use to build their careers, and the scape goats used to protect it when needed.
I know a guy that was serving our nation on the Iowa that day. He said that those statements made by the Navy were untrue. He still gets very upset by it. Unfortunately, he got PTSD not from fighting the fires, but the grim unfortunate body recovery. He was kind enough to help my Marine brother get his benefits from the VA, they make it so difficult to be obtained. Thank you for your service Johnny J. and the other Sailors both then and now.
The most insulting thing was the officers aboard Iowa ordered an immediate cleanup of the crime scene (it was a crime of negligence by powerful officers inside and outside of Iowa) like removing the bodies and immediately cleaning the area without letting investigators first having access to the turret (it was peacetime when this happened so there was no wartime excuses to prevent this) and there were no photos taken of the corpses so a real investigation could figure out exactly what happened. As a result we have nothing but grey areas and confusion 35 years after the tragedy.
My brother was a young sailor aboard. He survived and is now a member of the museum's board of directors. When he first boarded the ship in the early 2000s to help prepare her to go to long beach, he heaved himself into his old rack and felt above the piping where he tossed his dog tags when he left the ship. They were still there.
At that time there was a really old school generation of leadership that seem to have an absolute obsession with weeding out people that were gay. That’s why they interrogated the sailors and family members trying to find anything that was pointing that direction. It got to the point of trying to accuse sailors of being gay without any evidence just for a victory notch on their belt. This was before don’t ask don’t tell existed. I believe that’s part of why they came up with this relationship nonsense about petty officer, Hartwig.
A few years ago, I went out a couple times with a girl. I met some of her family and she mentioned her uncle was a Navy vet, but he probably didnt want to talk about it because "his ship blew up or something." I was about 2 months from shipping out and I immediately knew it was the Iowa incident. He seemed a haunted man, and when someone else brought up that I was enlisting, he got even more quiet and didn't really engage with anyone else for the rest of the night, at least not that I saw. I can't imagine what he went through that day. And, now that Ive been in for about 4 years, Im gonna take a wild guess at my response here for the end of the video: the Navy doesnt change. Screw up, provide sailors with inadequate equipment, then when something goes wrong and people are dead, find a junior to blame, deny any responsibility, harass and degrade anyone who calls out the institution.
I too was in the US Navy and when something goes wrong, the leadership will try to scapegoat the lowest person possible. They did this recently with the person accused of arson on the Bon Homme Richard. Glad to see he was found not guilty.
My grandpa was in the navy and passed before I was old enough to ask him what it was like. I was lucky enough to have received some momentos from his time in service - one was a mini samovar made of copper. I was told that while in Turkey, they had to leave immediately with little warning. They did not have enough time to exchange the Turkish money they had, so he used the money he had on him and bought what he could before he left. It's absolutely beautiful. I wish I could have heard him tell if
When I first heard they had a suspect in the Bonhomme Richard case, I assumed he was a scapegoat. Then I heard he was one of those folks who joined up to join SEALS and then washed out, so I assumed that they would actually prove that not only had he deliberately set the fire, but they were going to connect him with at least 5 unsolved rape and murder cases up and down the western seaboard. But the courts say he's innocent, so I guess I was wrong.
Out of all the stories you covered this made my blood boil the most. On top of the 'usual' negligence and corner-cutting, they had the audacity to meticulously make up stories to shift blame and avoid consecvencies. Disgusting.
That what every army in the world does. From blaming battleship destruction (previous to US-spain war) on spies to blaming faulty launch system on a crewman who almost died as a result of control system fault.
You think that’s bad? Try reading about that time the navy had to apologize for assaulting their female officers during SERE “training”, and supposedly promised to stop.
My Middle School teacher's son died in this tragedy. His name is Phillip Edward from Las Cruces, N.M. I remember being so moved by her pain. I haven't though about this in 30 years, thank you so much for keeping this history remembered!
Yeah, hebwas suicidal over something to do with his gay lover or some such bullshit. That was what the navy was blaming it on. "Dude was a homosexual so he had a few screws loose." The navy should bear all thr weight of the shame it deserves over that. Fucking grade school childish blaming shit on others to not get caught. Everyone so worried about their careers - perfectly fine to drag a dead man's name and reputation through the mud. Despicable behavior and human beings.
@@iettord3124 yes, because the US military would never cover up anything for any reason and has never covered up anything before and can be fully trusted in regards to everything they say.
@@TheMusicHeals.kjhjhhg a channel which had given me accurate reports on different disasters for years, vs a military complex which has lied repeatedly prior about terrible things they’ve done in the past? Think the answer is obvious.
@@TheMusicHeals.kjhjhhg Well, if you want to place your trust in a bunch of conservative murderers who kill their own soldiers and then cover it up, that's your business.
I went through boot camp in '93, and one of my company commanders was a gunner's mate. Even then, he was waving the "murder-suicide" line at us as a "cautionary tale," to illustrate how it was his job to make sure that we were all "mentally and emotionally fit" to be US Navy sailors. I didn't find out it was all bull until reading the Wikipedia article years later...
I saw another video on this, where the man who the navy interrogated and entrapped, apologized and explained his side of the story. This is one of the most dishonorable and disgusting things I’ve heard of the navy doing. Also the captain who was charged with investigating the explosion had a vested interest in finding the powder not responsible as he was in command of the storage facility site of the powder.
NIS is full of scum that just look to cover the Chain of Command. That is their role. Understand that and all of this makes more sense. Think about it: There is no promotion in finding the guy/gal that outranks you guilty of a crime in the commission of their duties. Lawyers are smart, not moral.
During my time on the Iowa, I served for a while as primer loader for #2 turret center gun. I never believed the navy's story. Overspeed ramming had happened before. Not in our gun, but in others. That explanation made more sense to me than anything else. Add that to the fact that these guns had been fired numerous times and were 40+ years old and you have a recipe for disaster. Accidents happen in training all the time, some not fatal, others fatal to more than 1 person. For the Med cruise and Persian Gulf guard mission before the explosion, I was transferred to a general quarters station on Mount 52, (5 inch dual gun turret, forwardmost, starboard side) as loader. Loading the 16 inch guns was dangerous, and you had to be very careful and well trained to safely service that gun. These were young guys, doing dangerous work. They died honorably...doing their duty as best they could. They were shipmates, and we honor their sacrifice.
I knew the Navy was lying the instant they said nothing like this had ever happened before. My uncle (27th infantry division) was alongside the USS Mississippi in a landing craft headed for Makin atoll when one it's guns was over rammed and exploded killing 43
Out of curiosity isnt the gun room supposed to be designed to contain the explosion? Sucks 2 b the guys inside, but the rest of the turret would b ok. Or is it not designed 2 withstand a blast like that?
@@erichammond9308 even so, it does sort of suggest the explosion wasnt contained within t gun room. I heard a rumour that a frustrated officer opened a blast door just b4 t explosion & thats how it spread, was unsure if this was tru or not
@@ytcensorhack1876 I've heard something similar regarding the door being opened by the turret chief as well, but that doesn't quite explain it, since the USS Mississippi turret explosion killed nearly as many, and that was an experienced crew. I'm not sure, but the subdivision of the turret is to maintain integrity if the turret is hit by a shell, or if a gun has a breach failure - I don't think it would be designed and built to handle an entire propellant charges going off in an open breach, or outside of the breach, since that would require a huge amount of internal weight to the total weight of the turret, basically that weight would be traded for speed or less armor elsewhere.
I know an airman who had something sort of like this happen to him in the Air Force. Except in that situation, no one died. He discovered an unsafe condition on an aircraft that had just landed in Afghanistan. It was a fighter aircraft with a full weapon load. The brakes on one side where glowing white hot and he realized it was about to blow. He called for it to be moved and be redirected to a safe spot instead of where they would normally park. Some NCO was yelling at him about it because that would create extra work. His sergeant sided with him and they moved it to a safe spot away from the other aircraft, just in time for the tire to explode and the plane with a full load of bombs caught on fire. The emergency crews were able to put it out and no one was hurt. The airman thought he did a great job recognizing the danger of the situation and saving everyone by having it moved. Little did he know the officers were going to try to blame the entire event on him so the pilot wouldn't look bad for overheating the breaks. They said if he hadn't ordered to have it taken to a safe spot the tires wouldn't have blown up, so he caused it, not the pilot. It's not even like the pilot was going to get in trouble for having overheated the breaks, that happens sometimes. But they would rather ruin a small guy's entire career just to save face for an officer. Disgusting. Luckily in that situation the airman had good leaders who fought back against it and stopped it from happening. He didn't even know how much danger he had been in from his leadership for years. He just went about his job merrily thinking what a good airman he was. I still sort of laugh about that part of the story even after all of this time.
The Colonel F-15 pilot that shot down the two UH-60s in northern Iraq killing 50 people was swept under the table. Blame was placed on a SSGT and a Captain on the AWACS. Now the AWACS crew was probably not blameless as they are responsible for monitoring and directing aircraft. However, under rules of engagement, the pilot was required to visually identify the aircraft and he never got within 4 miles of the helicopters as he was worried that they would land before he could shoot.
@@bill5982 I thought it was 25 men that died in that incident, I didn't think it was 50. Man, I hope it wasn't fifty. But yeah, that was a horrible blight on the entire F-15 world. Those pilots should have been properly court-martialed.
That's a stupid story and full of so many factual inconsistencies with how aircraft mx and mishaps like this are actually handled. You have no idea what you're talking about
That's a stupid story and full of so many factual inconsistencies with how aircraft mx and mishaps like this are actually handled. You have no idea what you're talking about
We've seen the same thing happen with the Bonhomme Richard fire. The Navy immediately tried to claim that it was an act of sabotage by a disgruntled sailor, but it's since come out that the ship was just in a poor state of repair. The Navy will do anything to avoid responsibility.
Comments like yours are why incidents like this should be forgotten. They only serve to turn the public against our own military. There are different truths for different people.
As a vet of 22yrz in the Navy......I can attest that taking the blame for something is that is THEIR fault, DOES happen. And the military WONDERS why they're enlistment is so low and recruitment is so scarce. DUH.
Whose balls are at stake there, I mean, isn't the state apparatus strong enough to crack down on such a clusterf* as it actually severely limits the military's capabilities, not even mentioning the morale and morality issues.
I am a veteran and while attending the funeral of a friend's dad who was the local VFW commander I looked at the grave in front of me while the fired the 21 gun salute. He had the same first and last name as me. The same birth date and birth year. I researched it and he died in this turret explosion
Then your name will be on my 16'' cement filled Target Practice shell after I paint it up in High Capacity colors. I plan to stencil all 47 names on the shell. The shell is in storage hundreds of miles away and the project will start later this summer, my health permitting. This was too weird a coincidence to ignore.
@@matgeezer2094 My name is Jerry or Gerald Miller which is pretty common but the birth date and year and noticing it during a 21 gun salute was bizarre
I'm a former US Navy sailor, and I am very proud of my service and my Navy. That being said, this was an absolute black mark on my Navy. The initial investigation about a possible homosexual relationship gone bad and the Navy's relentless hounding of sailors and family members to support this outrageous charge sickens me still to this day.
The U.S. Navy has a long history of blaming people who bore little to no responsibility for a disaster or loss. Admiral Kimmel (Pearl Harbor), Captain McVeigh (USS Indianapolis), and Clayton Hartwig, among others. Anyone who has ever served in the military knows that officers and senior enlisted will do anything to protect their careers and pensions when something goes wrong, and that almost always includes blaming the lower ranks who are generally powerless to defend themselves.
It’s the same in every branch of our military. They are all led by corrupt, incompetent bureaucrats more interested in their own self interests than being real, responsible leaders.
The thing is we aren't allowed to dare criticize Admirals Nimitz (Nimitz covered up the USS Hornet/Mark Mitscher's "Flight to Nowhere" at Midway and many other disasters like USS Juneau) and Spruance because we must treat them like "gods" who did nothing wrong for some reason. Spruance was the one who ordered Indianapolis to travel unescorted from the Marianas to Manila where he was stationed because Spruance wanted his precious flagship Indianapolis so he could travel to Tokyo Bay for the surrender ceremony (Nimitz and Spruance knew about the upcoming nuclear bombings and expected the imminent surrender soon). For some reason we aren't allowed to criticize Spruance for being the main culprit for Indianapolis' demise but imagine if Halsey or MacArthur had been the commanders who ordered Indianapolis to steam towards Manila unescorted. The same worshippers of Spruance and Nimitz would be blaming Halsey/MacArthur, wouldn't they?
@@nogoodnameleft There are so many things wrong - and I do mean wrong and wrong-headed - about this rant, I hardly know where to begin. Firstly, who is not allowing any criticism of any WW2 Admirals or Generals? The US Navy commanders at Midway and almost all other battles of consequence have been critiqued for decades. So that statement about not allowed to dare is complete BS. Secondly, Mitscher was guilty of poor judgment based on confusing assumptions and incomplete intelligence about Japanese positions. It's EASY to sit here with complete knowledge and scapegoat him as some sort of idiot when that is the farthest thing from the truth. And if you're looking to vent all that opinionated, self-righteous anger, then you should include CDR Ring, and all the squadron commanders of Fighter 8 and Bombing 8. Mitscher never ordered them to fly past their point of no return. It was that decision, by the lower officers, that turned the flight to nowhere into a debacle. Not to mention Waldron's poor judgement in attacking the Japanese fleet by himself. And NO, Nimitz didn't "cover" for him. Where did you come up with that claim? Spruance's AAR was openly critical - using the passive voice as required on reports at the time - of Mitscher's actions. Secondly, the reason the Indianapolis was lost had nothing to do with Spruance. It was the result of flawed intelligence and assumptions about the threat from Japanese submarines. Captain was scapegoated not for the loss of the ship, but to cover the gross negligence at ALL LEVELS of command by parties directly and indirectly responsible for the ship's safety and operations. Again, no one man was responsible and if anything, Spruance was the least culpable. If anyone should have stood trial, it should have been those officers responsible for routing the ship and it's reporting port. They, as a group, were infinitely more responsible than Spruance. And last who are these fictional worshippers of Halsey and Nimitz you're raving about? I swear, you sound like some unhinged conspiracy theorist. Anyway, there is no moral equivalence between blaming an innocent party for failures they had no control over, and tolerating the occasional poor judgment of senior commanders. If that is the standard, then we should be castigating everyone who ever had a command in WW2 right down to the squad leaders.
@@juliancate7089 There you go again with your Nimitz/Spruance worship. Everything you say justifies what I allege regarding the Nimitz/Spruance fanboys. Everything is spinned by you so your precious Nimitz and Spruance can't be criticized. You also know that Spruance was the reason why USS Indianapolis went unescorted from the Marianas to Manila? Spruance was impatient and wanted his precious flagship Indianapolis in Manila immediately because he wanted to be on Indianapolis for the Tokyo Bay surrender ceremony. Imagine if MacArthur or Halsey were the ones who ordered Indianapolis to sail unescorted instead of Spruance. There would never be the end of the blaming and whining against Mac/Halsey, wouldn't there?
My stepbrother was on this ship when it happened, took 3 days before we knew he was ok, he came back a different man after that . I have much respect for our military.
As a non American I agree. She should have been refitted to have a Y turret (the fourth turret when counted from front to back). Then it would have 12 main guns. The boom would be extremely impressive when the rounds exit the barrels.
@@spartantraveler7251 My hunch is that it was a combination of weight, instability, and the need to upsize the ship that they didn't end up doing this. As it was the ship was at the limits of the Panama Canal if I'm not mistaken.
I remember. I was still in the Navy Reserve when this happened. When I saw the first news clips of the accident I turned to my wife and told her that the Navy can't and won't blame the equipment as that would reflect badly on the Officer Corps, instead they'll find some GM3 who died in the turret to blame. Yeah, I know a thing or two about the Navy because I've seen a thing or two about the Navy.
I was a Boiler Technician 1st class onboard USS Iowa when this happened. At the time I was on watch in #3 Fireroom as Top Watch. Before reporting onboard ship I was a Navy Recruiter and recruited BM2 (SW) Michael Williams who died in turret 2. When I first came aboard he found out I was on the ship. We used to hang out a lot. He gave me a key chain anchor that I still have to this day that hangs from my truck mirror. RIP Brothers in Arms!!!
You forgot to mention that not only were no pictures taken, but the turret was repainted and loose items were thrown overboard before Iowa returned to port.
It's simply a matter of those who WERE responsible shifting the blame onto others who cannot answer for themselves. The Navy probably saw the exercise as an opportunity to use up and get rid of the 40 year old powder, but they didn't do their homework properly at the planning stage. Top brass officials suddenly realise they've signed off on a disaster and need someone else to take the blame save their reputations be destroyed. So they decide to create a counter-argument or story to distract attention away from the lack of training or upkeep of the vessel. Ironically, this is now a common tactic in politics. This disaster shows the contempt the Admiralty class have for the ratings.
@@PBFoote-mo2zr legitimately, I would not be able to survive in the states. I was born with asthma, potentially fatal allergies, autism, ADHD and more. If my mother was charged for all of that, and I had to pay full for my meds? I would be fucked. Homeless or dead no doubt.
Thank you for this video. I was married to an Iowa sailor at the time and this is, perhaps, the best summary of the situation I’ve ever seen. I do appreciate your very British knack for the art of understatement.
@@tripolarmdisorder7696 Unfortunately it happens a LOT more than anyone suspects. 1981, saw a soldier harassed to the breaking point, he shot a DI, and was in turn shot by Lt Bassett, D trp 5th cav. There were many things in BT that opened my eyes and inspired me to be a Drill Instructor myself-things still happened, but i stopped a LOT of abuse. took apart an E-7 who kicked a trainee in the ribs in front of me, the Cpt and the 1SG. He got prosecuted, not JUST for the abuse but for the racial threats after he was arrested. he tried after he was released, before the GCM, and lost Again-nice thing about being a former PD officer, you know how to defend yourself! Homer Simpson moment (Doh!), for Sure!
During my 21-year naval career, it was common for the Navy to pile on to cover up any publicly exposed problem. The first priority of Navy leadership is to protect careers with national defense somewhat lower on the chain of priorities. NIS (now NCIS - the name change didn't change their mode of operation) is liberally used as the "Admiral's Shotgun" to produce conclusions desired by the admiral to protect careers and remove responsibility from naval leadership by pointing attention away from the real truth. More recent examples are the collisions of the McCain and Fitzgerald as well as the fire and loss of the Bonhomme Richard where failures of naval leadership were "investigated" down and far away to the lowest folks on the totem pole.Nothing new, the Navy has been doing this for at least the last 100 years. Oh, and there ain't no Leroy Jethro Gibbs working for NCIS.
Except the Bonhomme where they had a suspect, who had means, method and motive proven, him being aware of fire hazards, proven, a witness and a string of other suspected offenses.. Sure his sh*tbag lawyer viciously attacked the witness in a way that puts EVEN vice lawyers freeing rapists to shame, and got the burden of proof just 1% below what's needed for a conviction. But you'll need a hell of a lot more proof on your conspiracy theory before you get to refer to the Bonhomme arson attack as a coverup.
Anyone remember Abu Ghraib? Whole damn prison under command of the US Army, being run by a National Guard unit, and they blamed all the terrible stuff happening there on a freaking E4/Specialist? And he wasn't even the lowest person on totem pole, that would be the Private First Class Lynndie England who was in those iconic pictures they took of the prisoners where she was pointing at their junk and had another prisoner wearing a leash and dog collar. I believe the only reason it wasn't all blamed on her, was because it would look bad for the Army to send a pregnant women to Leavenworth for 20 years.
@@ryanbauer3680 Your conspiracy theory would work better and be less embarassing for you, if the perpetrators hadn't made photographic evidence of themselves. Do you see any flag officers in there running a grand conspiracy? No me neither, just a bunch of sadistic criminals who are a disgrace to the uniform. Pretty sure we lost a couple people in our province thanks to those grunts abusing prisoners. It was THE recruiting tool for insurgents for years.
I think I've seen probably 10 different variations of this terrible incident. And this is the first one that actually explained what happened in a real way. You didn't bring up all the drama that everybody likes to start out with. You talked about the gun the men and what was going on to do their job. Not politics not sexual preferences. Just what was going on at that time. And after the incident happened. Then you went through and explained where these accusations were coming from and who was behind them. I have a far better understanding of what really happened in that ship today than I've ever had before. Well done! And thank you.
The navy tried to blame a sailor who they said had homosexual tendencies. The navy also is trying to blame the fire on the Bon Homme Richard on a very junior sailor. The navy seems hell-bent on blaming disasters on those least able to defend themselves. At the time it was reported all would take would be five million dollars to repair the damage, but it was not done as a cost-cutting measure.
This also happened during the height of the AIDS crisis, and gays were very convenient scapegoats, especially for conservative institutions like the military. If it happened today, their excuse would be "they were trans."
That’s just how people always are, nobody wants to demolish their position, let alone if they’ve been working towards it for decades. So, they find someone with enough position to be plausible but no ability to defend themselves, and onto the sacrificial altar they go…
My grandfather served in the US Navy, WW2 Pacific theater. He was a gunner's mate and may very well have fired guns just like these. He didn't talk about it hardly at all, but I do remember him telling me once that they were firing harder and faster than was considered particularly wise and that one of the crewmen had two of his fingers taken off by contact with machinery. The sailor made a joke about giving the enemy the finger, used his shirt as a bandage, and kept loading. After they stood down that day, he said all of them had nosebleeds, bruising, burns, and even a few ruptured eardrums from the percussion and physical strain of gunning. Grandpa lost nearly all of his hearing below 50 dB in six months of war. He was 19 at the time, having joined the service 1 week after his 18th birthday. People joke about Marines being hard-core and a little crazy while the Navy is for nerds, but I think sailors are every bit as extreme. God bless the men killed aboard USS Iowa, just trying to do their duty. They didn't deserve to be maligned that way. RIP.
Im a Marine veteran who served in Bosnia. I have some Sailor friends, and of course they’re as hardcore as anyone when the time comes. I never really subscribed to the idea that Marines were harder than anyone else. Lots of tough soldiers of all kinds out there !!! I left as a WO3, which is a warrant officer if you didn’t know. We don’t have to be super tough to be a helicopter pilot!!! I got pretty lucky, as i was probably never quite tough enough to be infantry!!
I was always very vocal about not joining the millitary and I would always here "don't you want to be one of the soldiers that defend this country?" And as I got older I realized the obvious answer would of been "not until this country wants to defend its soldiers"
That, and when this country actually becomes worth defending. I train working K9s for SAR, LE and military applications, but finally stopped military commissions when I realized that the US and its military wasn't worth risking a good dog's life for.
I hadn't heard about this disaster. And considering the cost cutting, and the subsequent apathy, it's not surprising things went awry. May the victims rest in peace.
There was also an element of extreme bravado to it as well. Realize the New Jersey and Missouri both also went through the same training as Iowa, without any nasty ramifications. Also, if memory serves, New Jersey had even less invested in her recommissioning. No, I'm not blaming anyone specifically for the incident. There was a ton of group think and get 'er dun in play, and quite frankly there was a loss of respect for the equipment and what it was actually capable of. Warships are designed to kill people, and they don't rightly care which side of the hull those people are on.
Accidents/deaths involving the US military will be reported on one day and quickly moved on. It's staggering how often the navy crashes and then immediately tries to bury the story or covers it up.
@@craigh5236Yeah, this was a huge news story at the time. And when the truth finally came out, everyone was disgusted with the Navy for smearing an innocent man.
This is such an Army (or in this case Navy) thing to do. An officer designs an experiment which basically says "what if we use the powder bags that say do NOT use with a certain shell, with these very shells". And when it goes horribly tits up, the crew is blamed...
I was in the Australian Navy when this happened, and I have seen USS Missouri do a full broadside firing of their 16 inch guns in 1988, one extra thing is that during the initial cleanup they repainted the turret covering up possible evidence.
They did not paint over to cover evidence. The repainting was to not be such a shock to everyone when we arrived back into port. No evidence was covered up. All ammo was jettisoned as per Navy Safety standards.
@@SgtFluffytheoriginal Remarkable that this institution does find sailors after their leaders are so trigger happy blaming them. As "gun fodder" (here ... literally). Let's watch a good 'ol Captn Blackbeard pirate movie, where at least inept British, Dutch, French or Spain admirals get degraded by ripping their medals and signs of their uniform in shame. At least something that reminds of "honor". I'm sorry. Not your fault, guys:) I am just sad about the lost lives and how they dishonored even the families of the victims. Greetings from Germany over the pond and to the other side of the world, you both. Have a nice and black-powder free weekend:)
@@dieSpinnt We went to Kiel in June 89 for Kiel Week and then I took a trip to Hamburg and to Ahrensburg. Visited Arensburg Palace. We were hosted by the City of Ahrensburg. Meet two WWII Sailors from the German Navy. One was a radio operator on the Tirpitz. One of the highlights of my life meeting them.
I went to college with a former crew member of this ship, he was proud of his shipmates and service, but...not so much the condition of the ship..then the explosion happened, and my classmate dropped out after missing weeks of classes.. There IS victims beyond just the dead. - I hope you've found peace, James... -
I am not sure how to read this. At first I got the impression he switched careers,. but it sounds like he was killed by the incident just as sure as if he had been in that tower that day. In that case, my condolences.
The condition of the ship was fine. You will have issues with a 40+ year old ship, but We re worked all of the seals for the Hydraulic lines in all Turrets and Gaskets for the fire main coming into the turret. All Maintenance was done daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly.
@@SgtFluffytheoriginal Training sounds like the causative issue, not just maintenance. Same with the Army-lack of training so "Other things" could be done with the $. Wonder which Congress Critter benefitted?
@@davidgentile5225 We trained a lot. This wasn't a thing were they just said "hey, here you go" This thing was a beast to work and we could not have done this without training. Everyone in the Gun Room had been trained, the only people that truly know what happened in there are no longer here to tell us. I also still have my Training records for each station I worked. You could not do anything by yourself until you proved to the LPO that you could do it.
@@57thornsI think the comment was meant to bring awareness to the guilt of the surviving crew. Thoughts like "Why not me?" and "Could I have done anything to save them?" often plague survivors for years.
Excellent job! I'd only ever heard the initial report that smeared a fallen sailor. Shocking, but not surprising, CYA from the USN. Also, intentional or not, your pronunciation of Chesapeake as "Cheap Skate" was hilarious given the context🤣
As an ammunition handloader, the absolute worst thing you can ever do is load a cartridge with the wrong gunpowder! And someone was "experimenting" with powder in a gun 1000xs bigger! 😱😱😱😱
I used to handload as well, the idea of experimenting with the loads for a 16 inch gun in such an amateur way just beggars belief. It could only be done safely at an artillery proving ground using a properly instrumented gun.
The difference in burn speed sounds a bit excessive, e.g. instead of bullseye vs imr4831, it sounds more like imr3031 vs imr4831. (Similar possible outcome as to quality, just not as extreme. A load of bullseye would *definitely* result in a burst rifle, whereas 3031 *could* be usable with lighter bullets and (much) lighter loads.) My first reloading was done using (5 grains or so) of Unique behind a 100 grain cast lead bullet in 308. These worked well for closer (casual) target work. Used to do a fair amount of reloading in my younger (and less financially stressed) days. Never reloaded any Weatherby ammunition, even if I did reload over a dozen calibers, including .308, .223, a number of pistol calibers, and 12 gauge.
@@dennisyoung4631 Yes, your comparison is probably proportionally more equivalent. My favorite powder for my deer hunting loads (.30-06 Springfield) with a 165 grain bullet uses by 57 grains of IMR 4831, but you're damn right that I wouldn't dream of using 3031 for a bullet of that weight in that cartridge!
Or lack of training. They saw the powder smoldering, how about closing the breach and try to put the gun in firing position? This debacle's responsibility falls squarely on leadership.
Doesn't it go all the way back to a political pledge to show the Soviet Navy the USN's 600-ship strength necessitating the 1980s recommissioning of a WW2-era battleship, with guns and ammunition dating back equally as long?
The instant someone noticed the powder bag(s) smoldering, they should have closed the breech and waited it out. But then, everyone was inexperienced. So sad.
In 1989 I was 13 - I was already into history and politics weirdly, so I actually followed these events closely. I would watch 60 minutes with my grandparents, not of the “GI Generation”, my grandmother having worked in an ammo factory, and my grandfather having been in the army from 1940-1945. They were rightfully disgusted by the behavior of the Navy during this incident. I remember even an attempt on the part of the navy to say that “a cigarette lighter might have falling into the breech during powder ramming; ANYTHING to avoid actual culpability.
Hey bro, I’m American. I really appreciate you doing the research and compiling this video. I had no idea there was so much corruption and subterfuge behind the investigation.
@@Soma_109 Bureaucrat/company/government/military classic, rather. The world would be an immensely better place if the U.S. was the only country this sort of thing happened in.
Excellent video John. The Navy trying to "Mutsu" its way out by blaming a "distressed" sailor saw its last reencarnation with the fire that ravaged the USS Bonhomme Richard a while back. The Press of course jumped on the wagon once again. Glad you mention Battleship New Jersey's YT channel, John. They're one of my favourites. Sub Brief is another interesting channel, with Aaron providing fascinating insights on budget expenditure, the Brass covering for themselves and how much of a hot mess the US Navy has - sadly - become. Cheers.
I remember this whole affair. At one point in my life, I was thinking of joining my father and oldest brother and join the Navy. This was before this happened, but by the time this played out, I was so disgusted with the Navy, I was glad I passed on signing up. The reason I didn’t in the first place was my brother discouraged me from doing so stating the Navy wasn’t the same by the time he left than it was when he had joined - and not for the better.
As somebody who was in the Marines i can say the only reason they do try to blame a singular individual is to save face with the rest of the world. "The best military in the world absolutely would not cut corners so obviously it was the negligence of an individual or individuals."
Ever wonder why we'd admit to involvement in the lab at whoo-han? Maybe because it didn't start there but in an American lab right here at home. Unusual activity in & around Ft.Detrick just prior 🤔
The government can be some of the cheapest people I have ever met. But that same person can spend endless amounts of money on something they want. Not necessarily something in the best interest of the country. And that's just a small slice of the issues.
I remember reading the popular science (or was it mechanics? We got both.) article on this back in the day. Most of the details I did forget, but i do think they had talked about over-ramming old powder as the cause. Scary that anyone thought using 40+ year old powder out of spec was ever a good idea. The victim blaming was just… horrific and stupid.
Powder was old, yes, but was reworked and stacked with new bags. The issue was when we onloaded that lot, it was sitting on a Barge in the Summer for a while, causing it to become a little flaky. You can light one of the pellets and it wont really burn fast. Its the powder behind the red dot that is volatile. thats the part the primer ignites
I was a senior in high school when this happened. It was a shame that it happened and that all the fine sailors lost their lives. The Battleship North Carolina has basically the same guns and I have visited it many times and I can tell you that it’s a tight fit inside those turrets. May God bless those souls lost. As usual, you did a wonderful job on this one too. Much love from an extremely hot and humid spot right next to Ft Bragg( now Ft Liberty) in North Carolina USA 🤙🤙
When I was working for DC Public Library, I was part of the digitization of the Washington Blade, a major LGBT newspaper, and I remember reading the real time coverage of this and being so incredibly angry, for the event and response as whole and for the government's gay love affair sabotage angle BS. Thank you for making more people aware of this.
The theory was truly an insult not just to the sailors involved, but also to the entire gay community, based as it was on the assumption that gay men are so high strung that they would murder dozens of people over a failed love affair. Of course the mainstream (which meant exclusively heterosexual at that time) was blind to this angle.
The line about "The charge bags are smouldering! Oh god there's a spark!"....damn... This one hits close to home. I'm in the artillery and I've seen charge bags burn. The moment John quoted that line I was mentally screaming "Close the breech! Dear god CLOSE THE BREECH!" I'm assuming that closing the breach early would have required retracting the rammer and loading tray, which is why they weren't able to do it in time. The gun crew's lack of experience meant they knew something had gone wrong but they lacked the level of skill/confidence to try and slam the breech quickly. I can only imagine the sheer terror of those few seconds before the charge ignited... 🙏🙏🙏
That was the first thing that came to my mind when i heard these lines. An experienced and well trained gun crew upon noticing anything wrong in the gun especially smoldering powder bags would have immediately retracted the rammer and loading tray and closed the breech. The whole process would have taken only a few seconds if they had the training to react quickly and probably saved all of their lives. The fact that the maintenance on the guns which were the most dangerous system on the ship had been skipped when they knew there were serious problems with them though should have sent the captain and others to be tried and dismissed from the Navy along with the captain agreeing for the strictly forbidden combination of the wrong powder bags and 2700 pound ammunition combination being approved. The lack of leadership of the Navy and the command crew that lead to the poor maintenance of the gun systems and poor training of the sailors in the gun crews as well as approving of strictly forbidden powder and round usage killed these sailors. The fact that none of them suffered any consequences of such dereliction of duty to the men who served under them is almost as bad to me as the deaths of the men itself because it risked the same mistakes being made again.
@@paulhunter1735 If the process is anything like a 155mm, I'm assuming there's a number of drills that go into safely operating the mechanism. Probably some kind of call-and-response to make sure everyone's out of harm's way as each movement is carried out ("Hands clear! Raising Tray!" followed by "Hands clear!" from the nearby crew.). In a case like this, your only chance is to skip the drills and retract the mechanism so you can slam the breech as quickly as possible, regardless of the risk of injury. Trouble is, when your gun crew is inexperienced there's a greater chance that they might hesitate, and if they do act they will likely follow their drills which will add critical seconds to the process. This boils down to a leadership failure as the crew should have received detailed briefings on the nature of the propellant experiment, followed by dry training on what to do in the event of emergencies (among other things, all hatches to the magazine should have been closed immediately after use). Whether this would have been enough to save the men in that turret is impossible to say, but the fact that no such training was provided speaks volumes of just how reckless this experiment really was.
From what I've read about how the 16" Mk.7 gun operated, the crew would have had to retract the rammer and spanning tray, then raise the projectile cradle, then "slam" shut the ~16" diameter/~12" thick chunk of steel and engage the breech locking mechanism. Given that it took a well trained and experienced crew a minimum of thirty seconds to go from loading to firing as mentioned in the video, I doubt there was anything the crew could have done to prevent an internal explosion in the few seconds between the "powder bags are smouldering" intercom call and everything going boom. No chance to get out of the very cramped turret in time either. Those lads were doomed on the day that somebody decided there was no need for a lockout/detent system on the rammer control lever to physically prevent the operator from accidentally "giving it too much gas". And then their fate was further sealed with every subsequent round of deferred maintenance which led to the guns not being live-fired enough for adequate training. Disgraceful mismanagement and dereliction of duty from the top down, and as usual it's the poor blokes at the bottom of the totem pole who very literally wore the full force of the consequences while those who were supposed to be "in charge" walk away scot-free.
@@sixstringedthing You're probably right. I'm coming from the perspective of a much smaller gun system and trying to extrapolate. I don't have any direct knowledge of naval gun systems this big. It's just the nature of the beast that your brain just starts screaming "Do something!" when you hear a disaster like this being described. The level of careless arrogance by the CoC on display here is horrific and utterly unforgivable.
Yep... but in those old guns, it takes a lot more time to do this than they had. "Process time" is a killer, especially when it's all done by machines interacting.
Other ship fire incidents occurred during the Vietnam War on three carriers: Oriskany, Forrestal, and Enterprise. They might make good subjects. A friend who had been on the Oriskany told me about the event. He said that a major cause was a seaman who had grabbed a flaming flare threw it into a room and closed the door rather than just throwing it overboard. There were dozens of other flares in the room that caught fire and burned down to lower levels.
I don't remember this but it happened on my 7th birthday and I'm from Iowa, and that's an interesting coincidence, or not so interesting. Either way, still a coincidence.
I was in the Navy when this happened stationed at ComOceanSysLant in Norfolk. Pretty much everyone knew the "official" line was BS to cover for some officer's idiocy, which was rampant throughout the Navy. Have I got some stories....
I can’t imagine the courage and the terror that must be needed and experienced to lock yourself into a gun turret and then manhandle those live munitions into the guns. Those guys have my utmost admiration.
@@brody7714 Yes. Battleships were once a prized item for navies in the world, so these compartments, handling of explosives, etc. was a regular thing. Follow procedures and you'll be fine. Back in World War I and leading into the Battle of Jutland, British gun crews for their Battlecruisers were not following proper procedures. To greatly improve the reloading speed of their guns, Battlecruiser gun crews defied procedures and left hatches open to speed up the transfer of propellant. The hatches were supposed to be secured to minimize the risk of flash fires spreading. So when the Germans and British navies clashed, the Royal Navy's Battlecruisers were having a bad time of it and brewing up. Meanwhile their German counterparts and the regular Royal Navy Battleships who did their proper practices were not having such an awful time. The German Battlecruisers were getting hit, too, just like their British counterparts, but were not suddenly, randomly imploding. Those procedures as laid out in the manuals are there for many good reasons. Often, safety procedures are written in blood.
I was 20 when the explosion on the Iowa. I remember vaguely the controversy surrounding this event. I did not know the extent to which the Navy went to deflect its responsibility. What I learned from your video is that to conclude that government deceit is a recent phenomenon is wrong.
From what I remember... that very bad, ungood day... We were working the Iowa and its fleet up prepping for Desert Shield. It was common knowledge that the black powder charges were well beyond its designed service life. Some bags were over 50 years old. Also known was the fact they were using the Iowa to experiment with using modern extruded black powder of various types. Also known was that gun had a sticking ram... and, every old school Gunner's Mate said the same thing. "Its gonna blow up". How common was that knowledge it was a dangerous situation? The first demonstration of a breech loading bag powder gun in the US Navy detonated killing the then Secretary of the Navy. No one beyond the ship was known to be involved with its 'experiments', they bragged about adding more than ten miles to the guns ranges. How open was this knowledge? I was in an Aircraft Squadron, on detachment to Rosy Roads. The whole thing about the bodies? I had to move the bags at the air terminal right after eating a greasy undercooked breakfast. Walked out the door, AC Tims pointed at us 'get them bags off the pallets and stack'em over there' ....we were not there to move cargo, but our squadron was moving cargo all the time...and, he didn't want to lose any of his own people. B.F. Goodrich, August 1971 was a BAAAAAAAD vintage for body bags. Thats how I know most of the bag didn't have bodies. The one that busted on me, coated me... As for the insurance thing? SGLI, Servicemen's Group Life Insurance policies are issued by the DoD because active duty military may have a policy issued by a civilian company but they will not honor it. SGLI was an insurance policy offered when you joined and re-enlisted, IF you joined the Navy and did not select it, you would have to wait until you re-enlisted to get it; However if you did select it at joining you HAD to provide a name and address and later if you got married you could then change it. That was one major issue that the civilians could not wrap their head around. The driving force behind 'finding the gays' was an FBI agent that you later see accusing Richard Jewel of bombing the Olympics... with, a near exact same story he touted for the above mentioned Sailor. That guy pops up again in front of cameras if you look around... This incident, and the failure for those actually responsible not being addressed, the Capt. and Master Chief involved, and the multitude of agencies with zero experience and credibility who were involved ... left us all with no confidence those alphabet soup groups could figure it out ....if they were standing an inch from it happening.
@@rolfanderson3925 they use smokeless powder which is a form of black powder, what else would they use??? They're just a bigger version of a normal gun so they use the same stuff
@@noodlelynoodle. Um, smokeless powder is not a form of blackpowder. One needs a chemist to make, the other needs a sixteen year old and three natural materials. You can literally buy all three components of blackpowder at home depot or Wal-Mart. Its easy enough to make that a sub-normal teenager could make it and probably/possibly not kill themselves.
This one _really_ makes my blood boil. Its handling was an absolute disgrace. I don't care who you are, if you're an American you have some level of respect for the armed services and stuff like this just eats away at that respect even if those responsible are just a very small part of those institutions. What's not a small part are 47 lives.
The disrespect towards our military is stronger than it’s ever been. We are falling off of a social/moral cliff as of the last 10-15 years. Far too many people have nothing but contempt for those who protect us, whether it’s the military or the police.
why do you respect the armed services when washington told you not to have a standing army for this very reason? Incompetence & corruption & stupidity. Way to admit publicly you take a knee to a feudal bank aka the aristocratic bank that owns the federal reserve, which has turned you into a nation of mercenaries.
It's just propaganda. American civilians are expected to respect the armed services a whole hell of a lot more than politicians and senior officers are. Makes it easy to discourage the people from holding the armed services accountable for incidents like this one, where some high ranks got 47 people killed, pinned the blame on a sailor, and got away with it. There is nothing respectable about that. Nor was there anything respectable about the Navy's conduct around the Bonhomme Richard fire.
my uncles friend was a part of the crew when this happened the stories he tells how bad of condition the ship was in, it had all these leaks, rust every where would fall apart if it had to go to war should have been scrapped way before it was
Aspects of this case remind me of the hyper defensive ignoring of the problems with torpedoes at the outset of WWII. In the Iowa case that there was no system preventing over ramming is incredible to me, given the potentially catastrophic consequences of a mistake. Also, powder lift doors left open is reminiscent of similar human errors contributing to the destruction and sinking of the Hood.
Powder doors left open is heavily implicated in the loss of RN battlecruisers in WW1. Most modern theorists believe the loss of the Hood in WW2 was caused by a direct penetration of the magazines beneath the belt armour, or possibly of the Hood's torpedoes.
Not having a safety lockout that would prevent over-ramming the powder bags, when it was known to be a significant risk factor, just does my head in...? (Quite apart from all the post-accident Navy shenanigans, ugh!) Does anybody know if this was something that simply want possible due to the guns' functionality, or if its absence was just a leftover from hurried wartime design & construction, or what...? Seems like it'd be potentially setting your crew in danger any time they did the drill, unless they were VERY practiced in timing it just right 😬
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 Probably a leftover from the tech of the time she was constructed. You have to remember the main reason all of this was done manually in the first place instead of an automated system was that building such an automated system when all of this was originally designed was just insanely difficult. It wasn't until very late in the war that they got enough of a handle on this to design advanced fully automatic 3", 6", and 8" systems, none of which completed construction until after the war, most several years later. So it's likely an automatic over-ram protection system wasn't practical at the time the system was designed, (And i believe the system design actually predates the Iowa's by over a decade in terms of when the first versions entered service, more to when design started, might have begun design before 1930). The failures that let the explosion propagate down the turret are less forgivable though. The UK started building hard interlocks that would prevent keeping the door open like that into their ships before WW1 had finished after the disastrous experiences of Jutland where bypassing of the measures of the day caused fatal magazine detonations that sank multiple capital ships.
@@darthkarl99That’s an interesting point about UK warships. Could something like this have happened aboard HMS Vanguard if they’d kept her in service until the ‘80s?
A friend and coworker of mine was injured as a result of the turret explosion. What the government did afterwards was beyond shameful. The way they tryed to shift responsibility onto those that were injured or lost their lives was a disgrace.
I don't recall anyone getting injured. Everyone in the turret was killed. No injuries. The only ones who survived were in the powder magazine, among those, Kendall Truitt. I was a 20 year old Damage Controlman 2nd Class at the time aboard Iowa.
We were at sea near the Iowa and was designated as the rescue ship if required (USS Saipan). Upon return to port we were berthed next to Iowa. Sad the Navy tried to deflect the blame on the sailors, but it's what they have always done. Disgraceful
This was the dirtiest maritime investigation ever, certainly since the Lusitania inquiry. The confirmation bias is so plain to see, I'm actually sort of impressed the Navy had the balls to stick to the original theory in the face of three different organizations contradicting it.
I'm from Germany. The Iowa dropped anchor in the harbour of Kiel in 1885, when I visited the ship. I was a kid back then, but I still remember this absolute enormous bulk of steel. I was deeply impressed. I also remember the news of this desaster a few years later. There wasn't much coverage in the german media initially, but when it became clear that the Navy had mislead the investigation and blamed it's incompetence on innocent dead men, this whole affair was reported in much greater detail. There even was a whole series about it in the german newsmag Der Spiegel.
I was there, fantastic port. Great people. We made friends with some College Students from a Catholic University somewhere in town. Very nice group of people.
My aunt worked for the Naval Ordnance in Virginia during this time. The powder used by the Iowa was Korean War surplus (probably older). This type of charge becomes chemically unstable over time. The arsenal she worked at had to store the powder on a barge in the Potomac due to the risk of detonation. When the Iowa’s were brought back into service the Navy forgot to include in the budget the cost of replacing the powder charge due to lack of expertise on the subject. When the accident happened they were eager to deflect any blame on the leadership that idiotic stories were concocted to divert attention.
7:27 The "Cheapskate" Bay? That made me giggle. Since I've lived here, I've never heard it like that. It's Chesapeake, or "CHESS-uh-peak". And to fangirl all over your channel, I love each one of your videos and have watched them over and over. I especially like your intro music and, in the earlier ones, the time-appropriate video montages while your logo comes up on screen with that awesome font. If you ever need a meteorology or seismology/vulcanology person to help explain things or to provide a voice, I'd be honoured. You are a legend; keep the videos coming!
I can't imagine how angry normal USN personnel feel about this - a turret explosion blamed on the victims, an entirely ficticious relationship invented to cover up senior naval officer incompetence. Absolutely disgraceful behaviour by senior officers. They should have been court martialed
Despite this happening (shortly) before I was born, I remember this from childhood, maybe because I remember the trial being covered through the 90’s. My uncle was a sailor, too, so that might be another reason it sticks out more than other news of the era. Also, was not expecting to be dancing in front of the kitchen sink after a disaster video, killing fruit flies and prepping water for plants. Congrats on the EP, good job. ^^
I imagine you already know this but just in case, the one time we had a fruit fly infestation a spray-bottle filled with soapy water worked very well for deleting the already-existing swarm.
Anyone who has spent any time in the military knows how common this kind of scapegoating is. The upper ranks will always find a way to absolve themselves and lay the blame in whatever way protects their career.
I learned about this one a few years ago and boy howdy, if there was ever anything that made me ABSOLUTELY NEVER want to join the military. Shameful, disgusting, monstrous.
I got out of the navy in November of 1988. I was furious when the navy tried to blame dead sailors for their own deaths. I knew it was BS but I was also not surprised that senior officers in the navy tried to blame dead men.
Who would have thought that using inexperienced people with insufficient training to do super dangerous work in a non-standard and untested way using 50 year old explosives that were prohibited to use in that way with broken equipment could be bad. I think you have to be a genius to see that one coming.
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😥 you are great.🤏 But a tad regressing .
Tempo,tempo....☮️ 😊
I manned a 38/5-inch gun in my feckless youth.
Think lighting off a firecracker in a tin can with you as a wayward ladybug who just flew inside
You completely fail to mention tare pellets. The actual cause for the explosion. This video missed the mark. I was expecting better.
"on the outro looking in the youtube recommends but stays because the song kinda slaps"
I have to say, this one made me particularly angry. The harrassment of victims' family and friends, the complacency and contempt, the intentional leaks to media, and of course no accountability in the end due to legal loopholes. Just evil.
Just business as usual for military fuck ups
Institutionalized psychopathy in the USA? How dare you suggest such a thing. A malcontent spreading unrest like you is undoubtedly already known to the relevant authorities.
"and of course no accountability in the end due to legal loopholes." That is the worst part, no justice. Just a oops, we're sorry.
Makes it laughable when conspiracy theorists get shot down with "The government would never do that..." when time after time the evidence shows they most certainly would.
And the reasoning of the time - "they did it because they were gay". Right in the middle of the AIDS crisis. Coming from Bush Sr's government. And the way that the family members and witnesses were harassed by the "investigators". Yup, pure evil.
I was an engineering coop at Naval Ordnance Louisville right after this happened. My boss in code 50152 was on the engineering review board... The powder was stored in barges, and was stored at excess temperature out of spec. The barges had strip chart temperature recorders. So someone dropped the ball on that. When you bake black powder it becomes incredibly unstable. As part of the investigation, the engineers tried to recreate the accident. They setup an instrumented 16 inch gun at white sands. and when they hit the mount-load button, the whole thing blew up... Boom. Just like that. First try. No doubt what happened...
BUT. At the time of the accident, the gunnery officer was playing with combinations of powder and projectile that were not authorized. So he might have had some responsibility. And a civilian at NAVSEA, without authority, was working with him, so he had some potential responsibility. So what happens? The NAVY, as it always does, decided to circle the wagons around any officers involved and Navy conducted a sham investigation where they tried to blame the explosion on one of the dead sailors claiming he had a homo unrequited love for another sailor who died and that he somehow blew up the turret because of that... Total BS. Everyone involved in sullying that sailors reputation should have been prosecuted.
The Navy always defends bad officers, and calls it defending the reputation of the Navy. They weave the Officer corp into the service as if they are inseparable, regardless of bad behavior. Then they screw good officers over for not towing the party line... Too many Navy Officers and it seems most Navy Flag officers are dirty political animals.
"The Navy always defends bad officers, and calls it defending the reputation of the Navy"; wow. I am not in the Military, but still. Keeping and defending a bad officer only make that reputation bad.
"Be an idiot and get people kill. We stick with you." great motto
@@MemeMemeson typical inbred dodge lover
The public - So what happened?
Navy- *points* those two are GAY
Collective gasps
Reminds me of all the shenanigans corrupt police pull all the time
The blame started at day one after the explosion. It was fairly obvious guilt had been determined before an investigation. Explosive chemicals are very unstable. Just ask Jack Parsons.
The murder/suicide theory is INSANE. Those young men worked closely together while away from their friends and families for months. I honestly can't even imagine the intense relationships that are formed between sailors on ships. As if the fact that two of them might have had a sexual relationship made any difference. I can't believe that was ever even considered. And to involve the wife in that horrible mess? Unbelievable
This kind of thing is still going on
I think the relationship stuff was mostly just to cause anger because in the late 1980's AIDS was still very prominent
@@RavenKartingespecially the scare around it too. Hell, tons of people genuinely believed only gay people got it, or that it could spread through a simple handshake. I'm glad we've (mostly) overcome that stuff
@squillz8310 well i mean only gay people do get aids that is just true it is a STD that is spread from gay intercourse though someone who is gay who has normal sex can still give it to someone and it can be spread without intercourse (maybe not through handshake) but as we know this because people who haven't had aids before who where exposed to people who did have aids for long periods of time in close contact did get aids
Not believing something so bizzare is how you stay blind
I remember the Navy trying to blame this on some kid, like a bunch of cowards. I have no idea why they felt it had to be blamed on anyone. Military service is dangerous. Things blow up, people get killed. But the coverup should have resulted in the dishonorable discharge of everyone involved. It was disgusting. It was also blatantly obvious that it was a cover up from the start.
The U.S. Navy is in certain positions are full of political leeches
Well, the officers (who should know better) messing with old powder, out of its specifications. And taking money from gun repair and maintenance, again by the navy officers. Both of those make the navy look bad, since those are things that a reasonable person would see as a potential cause / contributor to the explosion. So the higher ups would be considered partially at fault if they didn't find some, low level sailor to blame.
I did 6 years in the navy and I can count on one have the number of good officers I had. Mostly JOs and warrants. Senior management was... mediocre at best. I'm not at all surprised they blamed the blueshirts.
Remember how a single sailor was blamed for the fire and subsequent destruction of the Bonhomme Richard but was thankfully acquitted? That's what the military, or any organization where there is a large difference in power between leadership and their subordinates, does. They will happily throw you under the bus to save their own hides whenever they can.
@@patrickdix772 yes, the military way is that everyone is reponsible for everyone under themselves in the hierarchy, until someone higher up screws up when the blame is quickly pushed down like yesterdays bad burritos.
The Navy has investigated the Navy, and the Navy has determined that the Navy has done nothing wrong.
This is always the answer 😂
just like EVERY government office and police...
Navy a truer word was said!!!
Every branch of the US military is honestly a disgrace to our great nation. The corruption, greed and general lack of honesty and integrity of the leadership in every single branch is disgusting.
This surprises me, indeed
"Blame the crew"
"But they're dead sir"
"Did I stutter?"
In actuality, that doesn't even need to be said, especially if an Officer is at fault, and I am pretty sure that it's taught in OCS.
@@drshoe8744Alright
That don't matter, Even in business where we don't build stuff or do stuff to kill others. Look up the KC 135 explosion in 2018. Personally I blame faulty equipment. Human error is evident in all things, hence why we have quality controls. We don't still use rocks to drive nails do we? What about pressurizing a multi-million dollar piece of machinery? Should it go pop it could kill someone or multiple people as industry has demonstrated.
I am the David Smith, involved in the Iowa incident. I will say this was a pretty good video, brief but mostly accurate. To be clear, the NIS interrogated me for MONTHS. They pulled me off the ship and had me assigned as a driver for Commodore Woodberry, commander DESRON 2, so they could come pick me up every day and take me to their offices and question me. I did not sign that confession after a couple of sessions, that came WEEKS later when I was so confused that I had a hard time telling what was real and what wasn't when it came to the investigation.
What did you confess to, true or not?
You've seen too much of the worst side of human nature. I can only hope you've found peace in the years after.
I am sorry shipmate. The actions against you were wrong. I am veteran and plank owner of the USS Iowa, BB-61 ‘83 thru ‘88.
@@robertstephens6757 I wish I could have been on the Iowa that long.
I know that feeling. Peace, brother. I'm glad you're still out there living life. I hope all is well.
It's scary how quickly the military will turn on their own to avoid responsibility. In Canada there was a case where Army cadets (young teenagers pre -army sort of organisation) were given a live grenade instead of a dummy one for a demonstration. When it of course went off they blamed the cadets and even brought forward the theory that one of them brought their own grenade in.
lol bring their own in from where?
@@griffinblades8475 their mama pack it in their lunch bag
Didn't they do a really good job with their cover-up of it?
"Their own"? The US military (and many others) are highly compartmentalized. Officers and enlisted simply do not mix. Enlisted are the muscle the officers use to build their careers, and the scape goats used to protect it when needed.
Jesus...and they expected that to fly? Ughh
I know a guy that was serving our nation on the Iowa that day. He said that those statements made by the Navy were untrue. He still gets very upset by it. Unfortunately, he got PTSD not from fighting the fires, but the grim unfortunate body recovery. He was kind enough to help my Marine brother get his benefits from the VA, they make it so difficult to be obtained. Thank you for your service Johnny J. and the other Sailors both then and now.
The most insulting thing was the officers aboard Iowa ordered an immediate cleanup of the crime scene (it was a crime of negligence by powerful officers inside and outside of Iowa) like removing the bodies and immediately cleaning the area without letting investigators first having access to the turret (it was peacetime when this happened so there was no wartime excuses to prevent this) and there were no photos taken of the corpses so a real investigation could figure out exactly what happened. As a result we have nothing but grey areas and confusion 35 years after the tragedy.
My brother was a young sailor aboard. He survived and is now a member of the museum's board of directors. When he first boarded the ship in the early 2000s to help prepare her to go to long beach, he heaved himself into his old rack and felt above the piping where he tossed his dog tags when he left the ship. They were still there.
Hell of a throwback!
*_*sniff_** I'm not crying, you're crying!
Cringe
@@Rudeljaeger You don't have to announce yourself like that. WE know you're a worthless ball of cringe.
@@Rudeljaeger your mother
The government interrogation of the wives of our soldiers, and the sexual harassment in the incident are inexcusable.
It was even worse that that behind the scenes.sad to say.
At that time there was a really old school generation of leadership that seem to have an absolute obsession with weeding out people that were gay. That’s why they interrogated the sailors and family members trying to find anything that was pointing that direction. It got to the point of trying to accuse sailors of being gay without any evidence just for a victory notch on their belt. This was before don’t ask don’t tell existed. I believe that’s part of why they came up with this relationship nonsense about petty officer, Hartwig.
Blame it on the homosexuals. NOT "in the Navy...." /YMCA
Remember, if you ever say the government will abuse and torment people to cover anything up, you're a conspiracy theorist.
In THAT, i agree 1000%!
A few years ago, I went out a couple times with a girl. I met some of her family and she mentioned her uncle was a Navy vet, but he probably didnt want to talk about it because "his ship blew up or something." I was about 2 months from shipping out and I immediately knew it was the Iowa incident. He seemed a haunted man, and when someone else brought up that I was enlisting, he got even more quiet and didn't really engage with anyone else for the rest of the night, at least not that I saw. I can't imagine what he went through that day.
And, now that Ive been in for about 4 years, Im gonna take a wild guess at my response here for the end of the video: the Navy doesnt change. Screw up, provide sailors with inadequate equipment, then when something goes wrong and people are dead, find a junior to blame, deny any responsibility, harass and degrade anyone who calls out the institution.
Dumb story
That's the American way!
I too was in the US Navy and when something goes wrong, the leadership will try to scapegoat the lowest person possible. They did this recently with the person accused of arson on the Bon Homme Richard. Glad to see he was found not guilty.
My grandpa was in the navy and passed before I was old enough to ask him what it was like. I was lucky enough to have received some momentos from his time in service - one was a mini samovar made of copper. I was told that while in Turkey, they had to leave immediately with little warning. They did not have enough time to exchange the Turkish money they had, so he used the money he had on him and bought what he could before he left. It's absolutely beautiful. I wish I could have heard him tell if
When I first heard they had a suspect in the Bonhomme Richard case, I assumed he was a scapegoat. Then I heard he was one of those folks who joined up to join SEALS and then washed out, so I assumed that they would actually prove that not only had he deliberately set the fire, but they were going to connect him with at least 5 unsolved rape and murder cases up and down the western seaboard. But the courts say he's innocent, so I guess I was wrong.
"Gundecking" as usual.
so the US navy hasn't changed then
@@jamesnicholls9969 just a little while ago they had to apologize for assaulting their female officers during SERE “training”.
Out of all the stories you covered this made my blood boil the most. On top of the 'usual' negligence and corner-cutting, they had the audacity to meticulously make up stories to shift blame and avoid consecvencies. Disgusting.
That what every army in the world does. From blaming battleship destruction (previous to US-spain war) on spies to blaming faulty launch system on a crewman who almost died as a result of control system fault.
You think that’s bad? Try reading about that time the navy had to apologize for assaulting their female officers during SERE “training”, and supposedly promised to stop.
Typical salad brass move
Read up on uss Indianapolis. That pissed me off
It still turns my stomach to this day.
This is the best analysis of the accident I've seen across all the years since it happened. Thanks.
Thank you!
My Middle School teacher's son died in this tragedy. His name is Phillip Edward from Las Cruces, N.M. I remember being so moved by her pain. I haven't though about this in 30 years, thank you so much for keeping this history remembered!
What school was it? I went to Lynn, so I'm curious if I came across the teacher in around 2005.
What was your favorite subject in middle school?
I remember this incident and the reporting about it being a deliberate act of a suicidal crewman. Thank you for setting the record straight.
Yeah, hebwas suicidal over something to do with his gay lover or some such bullshit. That was what the navy was blaming it on. "Dude was a homosexual so he had a few screws loose." The navy should bear all thr weight of the shame it deserves over that. Fucking grade school childish blaming shit on others to not get caught. Everyone so worried about their careers - perfectly fine to drag a dead man's name and reputation through the mud. Despicable behavior and human beings.
@@iettord3124 yes, because the US military would never cover up anything for any reason and has never covered up anything before and can be fully trusted in regards to everything they say.
So a random guy on the internet is who you belive lol
@@TheMusicHeals.kjhjhhg a channel which had given me accurate reports on different disasters for years, vs a military complex which has lied repeatedly prior about terrible things they’ve done in the past? Think the answer is obvious.
@@TheMusicHeals.kjhjhhg
Well, if you want to place your trust in a bunch of conservative murderers who kill their own soldiers and then cover it up, that's your business.
I went through boot camp in '93, and one of my company commanders was a gunner's mate. Even then, he was waving the "murder-suicide" line at us as a "cautionary tale," to illustrate how it was his job to make sure that we were all "mentally and emotionally fit" to be US Navy sailors.
I didn't find out it was all bull until reading the Wikipedia article years later...
I saw another video on this, where the man who the navy interrogated and entrapped, apologized and explained his side of the story. This is one of the most dishonorable and disgusting things I’ve heard of the navy doing. Also the captain who was charged with investigating the explosion had a vested interest in finding the powder not responsible as he was in command of the storage facility site of the powder.
The higher ups tried everything to shift blame away from themselves even though we knew who caused this
NIS is full of scum that just look to cover the Chain of Command. That is their role. Understand that and all of this makes more sense. Think about it: There is no promotion in finding the guy/gal that outranks you guilty of a crime in the commission of their duties. Lawyers are smart, not moral.
We lie cheat steal - Pompeo
During my time on the Iowa, I served for a while as primer loader for #2 turret center gun. I never believed the navy's story. Overspeed ramming had happened before. Not in our gun, but in others. That explanation made more sense to me than anything else. Add that to the fact that these guns had been fired numerous times and were 40+ years old and you have a recipe for disaster. Accidents happen in training all the time, some not fatal, others fatal to more than 1 person. For the Med cruise and Persian Gulf guard mission before the explosion, I was transferred to a general quarters station on Mount 52, (5 inch dual gun turret, forwardmost, starboard side) as loader. Loading the 16 inch guns was dangerous, and you had to be very careful and well trained to safely service that gun. These were young guys, doing dangerous work. They died honorably...doing their duty as best they could. They were shipmates, and we honor their sacrifice.
I knew the Navy was lying the instant they said nothing like this had ever happened before. My uncle (27th infantry division) was alongside the USS Mississippi in a landing craft headed for Makin atoll when one it's guns was over rammed and exploded killing 43
Out of curiosity isnt the gun room supposed to be designed to contain the explosion? Sucks 2 b the guys inside, but the rest of the turret would b ok. Or is it not designed 2 withstand a blast like that?
@@ytcensorhack1876 the normal operating crew of a 16" gun turret is 79 so just under half made it out alive.
@@erichammond9308 even so, it does sort of suggest the explosion wasnt contained within t gun room. I heard a rumour that a frustrated officer opened a blast door just b4 t explosion & thats how it spread, was unsure if this was tru or not
@@ytcensorhack1876 I've heard something similar regarding the door being opened by the turret chief as well, but that doesn't quite explain it, since the USS Mississippi turret explosion killed nearly as many, and that was an experienced crew. I'm not sure, but the subdivision of the turret is to maintain integrity if the turret is hit by a shell, or if a gun has a breach failure - I don't think it would be designed and built to handle an entire propellant charges going off in an open breach, or outside of the breach, since that would require a huge amount of internal weight to the total weight of the turret, basically that weight would be traded for speed or less armor elsewhere.
I know an airman who had something sort of like this happen to him in the Air Force. Except in that situation, no one died.
He discovered an unsafe condition on an aircraft that had just landed in Afghanistan. It was a fighter aircraft with a full weapon load. The brakes on one side where glowing white hot and he realized it was about to blow. He called for it to be moved and be redirected to a safe spot instead of where they would normally park. Some NCO was yelling at him about it because that would create extra work. His sergeant sided with him and they moved it to a safe spot away from the other aircraft, just in time for the tire to explode and the plane with a full load of bombs caught on fire.
The emergency crews were able to put it out and no one was hurt. The airman thought he did a great job recognizing the danger of the situation and saving everyone by having it moved. Little did he know the officers were going to try to blame the entire event on him so the pilot wouldn't look bad for overheating the breaks. They said if he hadn't ordered to have it taken to a safe spot the tires wouldn't have blown up, so he caused it, not the pilot.
It's not even like the pilot was going to get in trouble for having overheated the breaks, that happens sometimes. But they would rather ruin a small guy's entire career just to save face for an officer. Disgusting. Luckily in that situation the airman had good leaders who fought back against it and stopped it from happening.
He didn't even know how much danger he had been in from his leadership for years. He just went about his job merrily thinking what a good airman he was. I still sort of laugh about that part of the story even after all of this time.
The Colonel F-15 pilot that shot down the two UH-60s in northern Iraq killing 50 people was swept under the table. Blame was placed on a SSGT and a Captain on the AWACS. Now the AWACS crew was probably not blameless as they are responsible for monitoring and directing aircraft. However, under rules of engagement, the pilot was required to visually identify the aircraft and he never got within 4 miles of the helicopters as he was worried that they would land before he could shoot.
@@bill5982 I thought it was 25 men that died in that incident, I didn't think it was 50. Man, I hope it wasn't fifty. But yeah, that was a horrible blight on the entire F-15 world. Those pilots should have been properly court-martialed.
There's no way you're fitting fifty people in two 60s. Hell, twenty-five people in two 60s sounds wild enough.
That's a stupid story and full of so many factual inconsistencies with how aircraft mx and mishaps like this are actually handled. You have no idea what you're talking about
That's a stupid story and full of so many factual inconsistencies with how aircraft mx and mishaps like this are actually handled. You have no idea what you're talking about
We've seen the same thing happen with the Bonhomme Richard fire. The Navy immediately tried to claim that it was an act of sabotage by a disgruntled sailor, but it's since come out that the ship was just in a poor state of repair. The Navy will do anything to avoid responsibility.
Comments like yours are why incidents like this should be forgotten. They only serve to turn the public against our own military.
There are different truths for different people.
tel aviv....
Thanks for mentioning it. Man they haven't learned anything at all.
As a vet of 22yrz in the Navy......I can attest that taking the blame for something is that is THEIR fault, DOES happen. And the military WONDERS why they're enlistment is so low and recruitment is so scarce. DUH.
Whose balls are at stake there, I mean, isn't the state apparatus strong enough to crack down on such a clusterf* as it actually severely limits the military's capabilities, not even mentioning the morale and morality issues.
I am a veteran and while attending the funeral of a friend's dad who was the local VFW commander I looked at the grave in front of me while the fired the 21 gun salute. He had the same first and last name as me. The same birth date and birth year. I researched it and he died in this turret explosion
Then your name will be on my 16'' cement filled Target Practice shell after I paint it up in High Capacity colors. I plan to stencil all 47 names on the shell. The shell is in storage hundreds of miles away and the project will start later this summer, my health permitting. This was too weird a coincidence to ignore.
Woah - that's a bit uncanny
@@matgeezer2094 My name is Jerry or Gerald Miller which is pretty common but the birth date and year and noticing it during a 21 gun salute was bizarre
Wow! I can't imagine how that made you feel!
A There but for the grace of thee moment. 😳
I'm a former US Navy sailor, and I am very proud of my service and my Navy. That being said, this was an absolute black mark on my Navy. The initial investigation about a possible homosexual relationship gone bad and the Navy's relentless hounding of sailors and family members to support this outrageous charge sickens me still to this day.
The U.S. Navy has a long history of blaming people who bore little to no responsibility for a disaster or loss. Admiral Kimmel (Pearl Harbor), Captain McVeigh (USS Indianapolis), and Clayton Hartwig, among others. Anyone who has ever served in the military knows that officers and senior enlisted will do anything to protect their careers and pensions when something goes wrong, and that almost always includes blaming the lower ranks who are generally powerless to defend themselves.
It’s the same in every branch of our military. They are all led by corrupt, incompetent bureaucrats more interested in their own self interests than being real, responsible leaders.
Kimmel and McVeigh were both culpable for what happened under their commands. Bad examples.
The thing is we aren't allowed to dare criticize Admirals Nimitz (Nimitz covered up the USS Hornet/Mark Mitscher's "Flight to Nowhere" at Midway and many other disasters like USS Juneau) and Spruance because we must treat them like "gods" who did nothing wrong for some reason. Spruance was the one who ordered Indianapolis to travel unescorted from the Marianas to Manila where he was stationed because Spruance wanted his precious flagship Indianapolis so he could travel to Tokyo Bay for the surrender ceremony (Nimitz and Spruance knew about the upcoming nuclear bombings and expected the imminent surrender soon). For some reason we aren't allowed to criticize Spruance for being the main culprit for Indianapolis' demise but imagine if Halsey or MacArthur had been the commanders who ordered Indianapolis to steam towards Manila unescorted. The same worshippers of Spruance and Nimitz would be blaming Halsey/MacArthur, wouldn't they?
@@nogoodnameleft There are so many things wrong - and I do mean wrong and wrong-headed - about this rant, I hardly know where to begin. Firstly, who is not allowing any criticism of any WW2 Admirals or Generals? The US Navy commanders at Midway and almost all other battles of consequence have been critiqued for decades. So that statement about not allowed to dare is complete BS. Secondly, Mitscher was guilty of poor judgment based on confusing assumptions and incomplete intelligence about Japanese positions. It's EASY to sit here with complete knowledge and scapegoat him as some sort of idiot when that is the farthest thing from the truth. And if you're looking to vent all that opinionated, self-righteous anger, then you should include CDR Ring, and all the squadron commanders of Fighter 8 and Bombing 8. Mitscher never ordered them to fly past their point of no return. It was that decision, by the lower officers, that turned the flight to nowhere into a debacle. Not to mention Waldron's poor judgement in attacking the Japanese fleet by himself. And NO, Nimitz didn't "cover" for him. Where did you come up with that claim? Spruance's AAR was openly critical - using the passive voice as required on reports at the time - of Mitscher's actions. Secondly, the reason the Indianapolis was lost had nothing to do with Spruance. It was the result of flawed intelligence and assumptions about the threat from Japanese submarines. Captain was scapegoated not for the loss of the ship, but to cover the gross negligence at ALL LEVELS of command by parties directly and indirectly responsible for the ship's safety and operations. Again, no one man was responsible and if anything, Spruance was the least culpable. If anyone should have stood trial, it should have been those officers responsible for routing the ship and it's reporting port. They, as a group, were infinitely more responsible than Spruance. And last who are these fictional worshippers of Halsey and Nimitz you're raving about? I swear, you sound like some unhinged conspiracy theorist. Anyway, there is no moral equivalence between blaming an innocent party for failures they had no control over, and tolerating the occasional poor judgment of senior commanders. If that is the standard, then we should be castigating everyone who ever had a command in WW2 right down to the squad leaders.
@@juliancate7089 There you go again with your Nimitz/Spruance worship. Everything you say justifies what I allege regarding the Nimitz/Spruance fanboys. Everything is spinned by you so your precious Nimitz and Spruance can't be criticized. You also know that Spruance was the reason why USS Indianapolis went unescorted from the Marianas to Manila? Spruance was impatient and wanted his precious flagship Indianapolis in Manila immediately because he wanted to be on Indianapolis for the Tokyo Bay surrender ceremony. Imagine if MacArthur or Halsey were the ones who ordered Indianapolis to sail unescorted instead of Spruance. There would never be the end of the blaming and whining against Mac/Halsey, wouldn't there?
Matt Price is buried 10 feet from my family. Has an image of Iowa on the back.
His mother went to her grave fighting the Navy over this.
RIP to All
My stepbrother was on this ship when it happened, took 3 days before we knew he was ok, he came back a different man after that . I have much respect for our military.
As an American, I can't help but feel this problem could have been prevented if only there had been more guns.
Typical American response.
I approve. 😁
As a non American I agree. She should have been refitted to have a Y turret (the fourth turret when counted from front to back). Then it would have 12 main guns. The boom would be extremely impressive when the rounds exit the barrels.
hah gun go tratatatata, pew pew pew, boom boom boom!
@@spartantraveler7251 My hunch is that it was a combination of weight, instability, and the need to upsize the ship that they didn't end up doing this. As it was the ship was at the limits of the Panama Canal if I'm not mistaken.
Having more guns solved most of my life problems. *Eagle noises*
I remember. I was still in the Navy Reserve when this happened. When I saw the first news clips of the accident I turned to my wife and told her that the Navy can't and won't blame the equipment as that would reflect badly on the Officer Corps, instead they'll find some GM3 who died in the turret to blame. Yeah, I know a thing or two about the Navy because I've seen a thing or two about the Navy.
*cue the Farmers Insurance jingle*
The leadership of every branch of our military… is a disgrace to it.
I was a Boiler Technician 1st class onboard USS Iowa when this happened. At the time I was on watch in #3 Fireroom as Top Watch. Before reporting onboard ship I was a Navy Recruiter and recruited BM2 (SW) Michael Williams who died in turret 2. When I first came aboard he found out I was on the ship. We used to hang out a lot. He gave me a key chain anchor that I still have to this day that hangs from my truck mirror. RIP Brothers in Arms!!!
You forgot to mention that not only were no pictures taken, but the turret was repainted and loose items were thrown overboard before Iowa returned to port.
It's simply a matter of those who WERE responsible shifting the blame onto others who cannot answer for themselves. The Navy probably saw the exercise as an opportunity to use up and get rid of the 40 year old powder, but they didn't do their homework properly at the planning stage. Top brass officials suddenly realise they've signed off on a disaster and need someone else to take the blame save their reputations be destroyed. So they decide to create a counter-argument or story to distract attention away from the lack of training or upkeep of the vessel. Ironically, this is now a common tactic in politics.
This disaster shows the contempt the Admiralty class have for the ratings.
@@PBFoote-mo2zr legitimately, I would not be able to survive in the states. I was born with asthma, potentially fatal allergies, autism, ADHD and more. If my mother was charged for all of that, and I had to pay full for my meds? I would be fucked. Homeless or dead no doubt.
@@PBFoote-mo2zr good luck to you as well!
Thank you for this video. I was married to an Iowa sailor at the time and this is, perhaps, the best summary of the situation I’ve ever seen. I do appreciate your very British knack for the art of understatement.
I had assumed by blaming the victim you meant merely making mistakes sort of thing, but this is quite something else.
Yeah this was a case of navy good old boy club trying to cover their ass by throwing the lower enlisted under the battleship.
This is how all branches of the US Armed Services operate.
Protect the Officers and find a scapegoat...
@@tripolarmdisorder7696 Unfortunately it happens a LOT more than anyone suspects. 1981, saw a soldier harassed to the breaking point, he shot a DI, and was in turn shot by Lt Bassett, D trp 5th cav. There were many things in BT that opened my eyes and inspired me to be a Drill Instructor myself-things still happened, but i stopped a LOT of abuse. took apart an E-7 who kicked a trainee in the ribs in front of me, the Cpt and the 1SG. He got prosecuted, not JUST for the abuse but for the racial threats after he was arrested. he tried after he was released, before the GCM, and lost Again-nice thing about being a former PD officer, you know how to defend yourself! Homer Simpson moment (Doh!), for Sure!
During my 21-year naval career, it was common for the Navy to pile on to cover up any publicly exposed problem. The first priority of Navy leadership is to protect careers with national defense somewhat lower on the chain of priorities. NIS (now NCIS - the name change didn't change their mode of operation) is liberally used as the "Admiral's Shotgun" to produce conclusions desired by the admiral to protect careers and remove responsibility from naval leadership by pointing attention away from the real truth. More recent examples are the collisions of the McCain and Fitzgerald as well as the fire and loss of the Bonhomme Richard where failures of naval leadership were "investigated" down and far away to the lowest folks on the totem pole.Nothing new, the Navy has been doing this for at least the last 100 years. Oh, and there ain't no Leroy Jethro Gibbs working for NCIS.
Exactly the same in the RAAF. Careers are protected as first priority - especially if there’s a fighter pilot involved.
Except the Bonhomme where they had a suspect, who had means, method and motive proven, him being aware of fire hazards, proven, a witness and a string of other suspected offenses..
Sure his sh*tbag lawyer viciously attacked the witness in a way that puts EVEN vice lawyers freeing rapists to shame, and got the burden of proof just 1% below what's needed for a conviction.
But you'll need a hell of a lot more proof on your conspiracy theory before you get to refer to the Bonhomme arson attack as a coverup.
Anyone remember Abu Ghraib? Whole damn prison under command of the US Army, being run by a National Guard unit, and they blamed all the terrible stuff happening there on a freaking E4/Specialist? And he wasn't even the lowest person on totem pole, that would be the Private First Class Lynndie England who was in those iconic pictures they took of the prisoners where she was pointing at their junk and had another prisoner wearing a leash and dog collar. I believe the only reason it wasn't all blamed on her, was because it would look bad for the Army to send a pregnant women to Leavenworth for 20 years.
@@ryanbauer3680
Your conspiracy theory would work better and be less embarassing for you, if the perpetrators hadn't made photographic evidence of themselves.
Do you see any flag officers in there running a grand conspiracy? No me neither, just a bunch of sadistic criminals who are a disgrace to the uniform.
Pretty sure we lost a couple people in our province thanks to those grunts abusing prisoners. It was THE recruiting tool for insurgents for years.
One of those who died was a high school classmate of mine. May he and his fellow sailors rest in peace.
I think I've seen probably 10 different variations of this terrible incident.
And this is the first one that actually explained what happened in a real way.
You didn't bring up all the drama that everybody likes to start out with. You talked about the gun the men and what was going on to do their job. Not politics not sexual preferences. Just what was going on at that time. And after the incident happened. Then you went through and explained where these accusations were coming from and who was behind them. I have a far better understanding of what really happened in that ship today than I've ever had before. Well done! And thank you.
Can validate that the USS New Jersey's UA-cam channel is fantastic, and Ryan has been an amazing presenter for the ship.
Agreed!
I concur
Yes
Ryan is first class.
How have I never heard of this before? Crazy and disgusting. Thank you for covering this in such detail.
The navy tried to blame a sailor who they said had homosexual tendencies. The navy also is trying to blame the fire on the Bon Homme Richard on a very junior sailor. The navy seems hell-bent on blaming disasters on those least able to defend themselves. At the time it was reported all would take would be five million dollars to repair the damage, but it was not done as a cost-cutting measure.
If the Navy only blamed homosexuals, they’d have a lot of scapegoats 😂
This also happened during the height of the AIDS crisis, and gays were very convenient scapegoats, especially for conservative institutions like the military. If it happened today, their excuse would be "they were trans."
Always blame the blueshirts
That’s just how people always are, nobody wants to demolish their position, let alone if they’ve been working towards it for decades. So, they find someone with enough position to be plausible but no ability to defend themselves, and onto the sacrificial altar they go…
bonhomme was $1 BILLION....repair......tel aviv.....
My grandfather served in the US Navy, WW2 Pacific theater. He was a gunner's mate and may very well have fired guns just like these. He didn't talk about it hardly at all, but I do remember him telling me once that they were firing harder and faster than was considered particularly wise and that one of the crewmen had two of his fingers taken off by contact with machinery. The sailor made a joke about giving the enemy the finger, used his shirt as a bandage, and kept loading. After they stood down that day, he said all of them had nosebleeds, bruising, burns, and even a few ruptured eardrums from the percussion and physical strain of gunning. Grandpa lost nearly all of his hearing below 50 dB in six months of war. He was 19 at the time, having joined the service 1 week after his 18th birthday. People joke about Marines being hard-core and a little crazy while the Navy is for nerds, but I think sailors are every bit as extreme. God bless the men killed aboard USS Iowa, just trying to do their duty. They didn't deserve to be maligned that way. RIP.
Thank you for sharing your story. RIP your grfather.
Im a Marine veteran who served in Bosnia. I have some Sailor friends, and of course they’re as hardcore as anyone when the time comes. I never really subscribed to the idea that Marines were harder than anyone else. Lots of tough soldiers of all kinds out there !!!
I left as a WO3, which is a warrant officer if you didn’t know. We don’t have to be super tough to be a helicopter pilot!!! I got pretty lucky, as i was probably never quite tough enough to be infantry!!
Don't ever malign a nerd with an incredibly large gun. Nerds can get really psycho when give their chance to shine.
It isn’t unsurprising though, given that every branch of our military is headed up by corrupt, greedy, self serving bureaucrats.
I was always very vocal about not joining the millitary and I would always here "don't you want to be one of the soldiers that defend this country?" And as I got older I realized the obvious answer would of been "not until this country wants to defend its soldiers"
right on
That, and when this country actually becomes worth defending.
I train working K9s for SAR, LE and military applications, but finally stopped military commissions when I realized that the US and its military wasn't worth risking a good dog's life for.
I hadn't heard about this disaster. And considering the cost cutting, and the subsequent apathy, it's not surprising things went awry. May the victims rest in peace.
There was also an element of extreme bravado to it as well. Realize the New Jersey and Missouri both also went through the same training as Iowa, without any nasty ramifications. Also, if memory serves, New Jersey had even less invested in her recommissioning.
No, I'm not blaming anyone specifically for the incident. There was a ton of group think and get 'er dun in play, and quite frankly there was a loss of respect for the equipment and what it was actually capable of. Warships are designed to kill people, and they don't rightly care which side of the hull those people are on.
Accidents/deaths involving the US military will be reported on one day and quickly moved on. It's staggering how often the navy crashes and then immediately tries to bury the story or covers it up.
It was all over the news in 89
@@craigh5236Yeah, this was a huge news story at the time. And when the truth finally came out, everyone was disgusted with the Navy for smearing an innocent man.
@@nunyabidness674they determned it was the gunnery officer adding extra propellant in contradiction with SOP and safety regs.
right at the intersection of two of two of my interests- battleships and disasters. The real shame here is the cover up
This is such an Army (or in this case Navy) thing to do. An officer designs an experiment which basically says "what if we use the powder bags that say do NOT use with a certain shell, with these very shells". And when it goes horribly tits up, the crew is blamed...
I was in the Australian Navy when this happened, and I have seen USS Missouri do a full broadside firing of their 16 inch guns in 1988, one extra thing is that during the initial cleanup they repainted the turret covering up possible evidence.
well yea look at the carrier uss forrestal fire that macain caused killed 134 & any other disaster
They did not paint over to cover evidence. The repainting was to not be such a shock to everyone when we arrived back into port. No evidence was covered up. All ammo was jettisoned as per Navy Safety standards.
@@SgtFluffytheoriginal Remarkable that this institution does find sailors after their leaders are so trigger happy blaming them. As "gun fodder" (here ... literally).
Let's watch a good 'ol Captn Blackbeard pirate movie, where at least inept British, Dutch, French or Spain admirals get degraded by ripping their medals and signs of their uniform in shame. At least something that reminds of "honor".
I'm sorry. Not your fault, guys:) I am just sad about the lost lives and how they dishonored even the families of the victims.
Greetings from Germany over the pond and to the other side of the world, you both. Have a nice and black-powder free weekend:)
@@dieSpinnt We went to Kiel in June 89 for Kiel Week and then I took a trip to Hamburg and to Ahrensburg. Visited Arensburg Palace. We were hosted by the City of Ahrensburg. Meet two WWII Sailors from the German Navy. One was a radio operator on the Tirpitz. One of the highlights of my life meeting them.
@@SgtFluffytheoriginal WWII*
I went to college with a former crew member of this ship, he was proud of his shipmates and service, but...not so much the condition of the ship..then the explosion happened, and my classmate dropped out after missing weeks of classes.. There IS victims beyond just the dead. - I hope you've found peace, James... -
I am not sure how to read this. At first I got the impression he switched careers,. but it sounds like he was killed by the incident just as sure as if he had been in that tower that day. In that case, my condolences.
The condition of the ship was fine. You will have issues with a 40+ year old ship, but We re worked all of the seals for the Hydraulic lines in all Turrets and Gaskets for the fire main coming into the turret. All Maintenance was done daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly.
@@SgtFluffytheoriginal Training sounds like the causative issue, not just maintenance. Same with the Army-lack of training so "Other things" could be done with the $. Wonder which Congress Critter benefitted?
@@davidgentile5225 We trained a lot. This wasn't a thing were they just said "hey, here you go" This thing was a beast to work and we could not have done this without training. Everyone in the Gun Room had been trained, the only people that truly know what happened in there are no longer here to tell us. I also still have my Training records for each station I worked. You could not do anything by yourself until you proved to the LPO that you could do it.
@@57thornsI think the comment was meant to bring awareness to the guilt of the surviving crew. Thoughts like "Why not me?" and "Could I have done anything to save them?" often plague survivors for years.
Excellent job! I'd only ever heard the initial report that smeared a fallen sailor. Shocking, but not surprising, CYA from the USN.
Also, intentional or not, your pronunciation of Chesapeake as "Cheap Skate" was hilarious given the context🤣
Cheapskate is what I came to the comments section for :)
As an ammunition handloader, the absolute worst thing you can ever do is load a cartridge with the wrong gunpowder! And someone was "experimenting" with powder in a gun 1000xs bigger! 😱😱😱😱
I used to handload as well, the idea of experimenting with the loads for a 16 inch gun in such an amateur way just beggars belief. It could only be done safely at an artillery proving ground using a properly instrumented gun.
@@colderwar Where the closest person is in a blast proof bunker a safe distance away.
Yep
They were essentially loading a .300 Weatherby Magnum with a charge of Alliant Bullseye instead of IMR 4831.
Ridiculously reckless.
The difference in burn speed sounds a bit excessive, e.g. instead of bullseye vs imr4831, it sounds more like imr3031 vs imr4831.
(Similar possible outcome as to quality, just not as extreme. A load of bullseye would *definitely* result in a burst rifle, whereas 3031 *could* be usable with lighter bullets and (much) lighter loads.)
My first reloading was done using (5 grains or so) of Unique behind a 100 grain cast lead bullet in 308. These worked well for closer (casual) target work.
Used to do a fair amount of reloading in my younger (and less financially stressed) days. Never reloaded any Weatherby ammunition, even if I did reload over a dozen calibers, including .308, .223, a number of pistol calibers, and 12 gauge.
@@dennisyoung4631 Yes, your comparison is probably proportionally more equivalent.
My favorite powder for my deer hunting loads (.30-06 Springfield) with a 165 grain bullet uses by 57 grains of IMR 4831, but you're damn right that I wouldn't dream of using 3031 for a bullet of that weight in that cartridge!
Damn, its almost like budget cutbacks and cancelled maintenance in the area of the ship that handles explosives wasn't a good idea.
Or lack of training. They saw the powder smoldering, how about closing the breach and try to put the gun in firing position? This debacle's responsibility falls squarely on leadership.
Doesn't it go all the way back to a political pledge to show the Soviet Navy the USN's 600-ship strength necessitating the 1980s recommissioning of a WW2-era battleship, with guns and ammunition dating back equally as long?
The instant someone noticed the powder bag(s) smoldering, they should have closed the breech and waited it out. But then, everyone was inexperienced. So sad.
They were having some sort of unexplained issues in the turret at the time, so they probably were not able to do so.
@@darthfader6835 or they did and it made no differance it was massive. Kudos to damage control parties through
They probably tried to. Happened fast.
@@jbman413 if it was shut it would have not happened
In 1989 I was 13 - I was already into history and politics weirdly, so I actually followed these events closely. I would watch 60 minutes with my grandparents, not of the “GI Generation”, my grandmother having worked in an ammo factory, and my grandfather having been in the army from 1940-1945. They were rightfully disgusted by the behavior of the Navy during this incident. I remember even an attempt on the part of the navy to say that “a cigarette lighter might have falling into the breech during powder ramming; ANYTHING to avoid actual culpability.
It’s horrible what people will do to cover up their own incompetence rather than just accept responsibility 🙄😡
Some men have no honor. Some of them are in very high places. Always very sad.
Hey bro, I’m American. I really appreciate you doing the research and compiling this video. I had no idea there was so much corruption and subterfuge behind the investigation.
We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong
An American classic
@@Soma_109 Bureaucrat/company/government/military classic, rather. The world would be an immensely better place if the U.S. was the only country this sort of thing happened in.
LOL- Exactly!
@@Soma_109 Yeah in all the other countries, leadership hold themselves accountable and face the consequences of their actions 😂
@@MakerInMotion 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Those naval officers are absolute human garbage.
Shirking responsibility for the deaths they caused by pinning them on an innocent man.
Excellent video John. The Navy trying to "Mutsu" its way out by blaming a "distressed" sailor saw its last reencarnation with the fire that ravaged the USS Bonhomme Richard a while back. The Press of course jumped on the wagon once again.
Glad you mention Battleship New Jersey's YT channel, John. They're one of my favourites. Sub Brief is another interesting channel, with Aaron providing fascinating insights on budget expenditure, the Brass covering for themselves and how much of a hot mess the US Navy has - sadly - become.
Cheers.
I remember this whole affair. At one point in my life, I was thinking of joining my father and oldest brother and join the Navy. This was before this happened, but by the time this played out, I was so disgusted with the Navy, I was glad I passed on signing up. The reason I didn’t in the first place was my brother discouraged me from doing so stating the Navy wasn’t the same by the time he left than it was when he had joined - and not for the better.
Traditionally, the Navy NEVER does anything wrong. They will blame the victims every time.
... or give you (or your NOK) a medal because it is far less controversial a result of human mistakes disguised as heroism.
remember when they (or in that case Ord and all the officers attached to it) blamed sailors for the fact the Mk 13 14 and 15 torpedoes didnt work?
John Paul Jones would not have joined such a service as todays USN.
As somebody who was in the Marines i can say the only reason they do try to blame a singular individual is to save face with the rest of the world. "The best military in the world absolutely would not cut corners so obviously it was the negligence of an individual or individuals."
Ever wonder why we'd admit to involvement in the lab at whoo-han? Maybe because it didn't start there but in an American lab right here at home. Unusual activity in & around Ft.Detrick just prior 🤔
The government can be some of the cheapest people I have ever met. But that same person can spend endless amounts of money on something they want. Not necessarily something in the best interest of the country. And that's just a small slice of the issues.
As an enthusiast of the Iowa class battlships, I am very happy you've covered that tragedy
I remember reading the popular science (or was it mechanics? We got both.) article on this back in the day. Most of the details I did forget, but i do think they had talked about over-ramming old powder as the cause. Scary that anyone thought using 40+ year old powder out of spec was ever a good idea. The victim blaming was just… horrific and stupid.
yea go all the way when recomming a battleship , MANUFACTURE NEW POWDER
Powder was old, yes, but was reworked and stacked with new bags. The issue was when we onloaded that lot, it was sitting on a Barge in the Summer for a while, causing it to become a little flaky. You can light one of the pellets and it wont really burn fast. Its the powder behind the red dot that is volatile. thats the part the primer ignites
@@SgtFluffytheoriginal I was on the San Diego that day, if you were on the Iowa, you might know why that is significant.
Ah yes...the good ol' "we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing"
I was a senior in high school when this happened. It was a shame that it happened and that all the fine sailors lost their lives. The Battleship North Carolina has basically the same guns and I have visited it many times and I can tell you that it’s a tight fit inside those turrets. May God bless those souls lost. As usual, you did a wonderful job on this one too. Much love from an extremely hot and humid spot right next to Ft Bragg( now Ft Liberty) in North Carolina USA 🤙🤙
When I was working for DC Public Library, I was part of the digitization of the Washington Blade, a major LGBT newspaper, and I remember reading the real time coverage of this and being so incredibly angry, for the event and response as whole and for the government's gay love affair sabotage angle BS. Thank you for making more people aware of this.
The theory was truly an insult not just to the sailors involved, but also to the entire gay community, based as it was on the assumption that gay men are so high strung that they would murder dozens of people over a failed love affair. Of course the mainstream (which meant exclusively heterosexual at that time) was blind to this angle.
Never let someone who isn’t in the ship decide on it maintenance
The line about "The charge bags are smouldering! Oh god there's a spark!"....damn...
This one hits close to home. I'm in the artillery and I've seen charge bags burn. The moment John quoted that line I was mentally screaming "Close the breech! Dear god CLOSE THE BREECH!"
I'm assuming that closing the breach early would have required retracting the rammer and loading tray, which is why they weren't able to do it in time. The gun crew's lack of experience meant they knew something had gone wrong but they lacked the level of skill/confidence to try and slam the breech quickly.
I can only imagine the sheer terror of those few seconds before the charge ignited...
🙏🙏🙏
That was the first thing that came to my mind when i heard these lines. An experienced and well trained gun crew upon noticing anything wrong in the gun especially smoldering powder bags would have immediately retracted the rammer and loading tray and closed the breech. The whole process would have taken only a few seconds if they had the training to react quickly and probably saved all of their lives. The fact that the maintenance on the guns which were the most dangerous system on the ship had been skipped when they knew there were serious problems with them though should have sent the captain and others to be tried and dismissed from the Navy along with the captain agreeing for the strictly forbidden combination of the wrong powder bags and 2700 pound ammunition combination being approved. The lack of leadership of the Navy and the command crew that lead to the poor maintenance of the gun systems and poor training of the sailors in the gun crews as well as approving of strictly forbidden powder and round usage killed these sailors. The fact that none of them suffered any consequences of such dereliction of duty to the men who served under them is almost as bad to me as the deaths of the men itself because it risked the same mistakes being made again.
@@paulhunter1735 If the process is anything like a 155mm, I'm assuming there's a number of drills that go into safely operating the mechanism. Probably some kind of call-and-response to make sure everyone's out of harm's way as each movement is carried out ("Hands clear! Raising Tray!" followed by "Hands clear!" from the nearby crew.). In a case like this, your only chance is to skip the drills and retract the mechanism so you can slam the breech as quickly as possible, regardless of the risk of injury.
Trouble is, when your gun crew is inexperienced there's a greater chance that they might hesitate, and if they do act they will likely follow their drills which will add critical seconds to the process.
This boils down to a leadership failure as the crew should have received detailed briefings on the nature of the propellant experiment, followed by dry training on what to do in the event of emergencies (among other things, all hatches to the magazine should have been closed immediately after use).
Whether this would have been enough to save the men in that turret is impossible to say, but the fact that no such training was provided speaks volumes of just how reckless this experiment really was.
From what I've read about how the 16" Mk.7 gun operated, the crew would have had to retract the rammer and spanning tray, then raise the projectile cradle, then "slam" shut the ~16" diameter/~12" thick chunk of steel and engage the breech locking mechanism. Given that it took a well trained and experienced crew a minimum of thirty seconds to go from loading to firing as mentioned in the video, I doubt there was anything the crew could have done to prevent an internal explosion in the few seconds between the "powder bags are smouldering" intercom call and everything going boom. No chance to get out of the very cramped turret in time either. Those lads were doomed on the day that somebody decided there was no need for a lockout/detent system on the rammer control lever to physically prevent the operator from accidentally "giving it too much gas". And then their fate was further sealed with every subsequent round of deferred maintenance which led to the guns not being live-fired enough for adequate training. Disgraceful mismanagement and dereliction of duty from the top down, and as usual it's the poor blokes at the bottom of the totem pole who very literally wore the full force of the consequences while those who were supposed to be "in charge" walk away scot-free.
@@sixstringedthing You're probably right. I'm coming from the perspective of a much smaller gun system and trying to extrapolate. I don't have any direct knowledge of naval gun systems this big.
It's just the nature of the beast that your brain just starts screaming "Do something!" when you hear a disaster like this being described. The level of careless arrogance by the CoC on display here is horrific and utterly unforgivable.
Yep... but in those old guns, it takes a lot more time to do this than they had. "Process time" is a killer, especially when it's all done by machines interacting.
Other ship fire incidents occurred during the Vietnam War on three carriers: Oriskany, Forrestal, and Enterprise. They might make good subjects. A friend who had been on the Oriskany told me about the event. He said that a major cause was a seaman who had grabbed a flaming flare threw it into a room and closed the door rather than just throwing it overboard. There were dozens of other flares in the room that caught fire and burned down to lower levels.
Ryan really does possess amazing amounts of information on these things....
I remember this incident I was in high school and I remember we had a moment of silence to honor the victims of This disaster..
I don't remember this but it happened on my 7th birthday and I'm from Iowa, and that's an interesting coincidence, or not so interesting. Either way, still a coincidence.
I was in the Navy when this happened stationed at ComOceanSysLant in Norfolk. Pretty much everyone knew the "official" line was BS to cover for some officer's idiocy, which was rampant throughout the Navy. Have I got some stories....
I can’t imagine the courage and the terror that must be needed and experienced to lock yourself into a gun turret and then manhandle those live munitions into the guns. Those guys have my utmost admiration.
They’re pretty safe generally…
… If regulations are followed and proper maintenance is observed…
They're usually pretty safe. A lot of the process is automated.
@@brody7714 Yes. Battleships were once a prized item for navies in the world, so these compartments, handling of explosives, etc. was a regular thing. Follow procedures and you'll be fine.
Back in World War I and leading into the Battle of Jutland, British gun crews for their Battlecruisers were not following proper procedures. To greatly improve the reloading speed of their guns, Battlecruiser gun crews defied procedures and left hatches open to speed up the transfer of propellant. The hatches were supposed to be secured to minimize the risk of flash fires spreading. So when the Germans and British navies clashed, the Royal Navy's Battlecruisers were having a bad time of it and brewing up. Meanwhile their German counterparts and the regular Royal Navy Battleships who did their proper practices were not having such an awful time. The German Battlecruisers were getting hit, too, just like their British counterparts, but were not suddenly, randomly imploding.
Those procedures as laid out in the manuals are there for many good reasons. Often, safety procedures are written in blood.
They are like tank crews on a larger scale. Both take the courage most don't have.
I was 20 when the explosion on the Iowa. I remember vaguely the controversy surrounding this event. I did not know the extent to which the Navy went to deflect its responsibility. What I learned from your video is that to conclude that government deceit is a recent phenomenon is wrong.
From what I remember... that very bad, ungood day... We were working the Iowa and its fleet up prepping for Desert Shield. It was common knowledge that the black powder charges were well beyond its designed service life. Some bags were over 50 years old. Also known was the fact they were using the Iowa to experiment with using modern extruded black powder of various types. Also known was that gun had a sticking ram... and, every old school Gunner's Mate said the same thing. "Its gonna blow up". How common was that knowledge it was a dangerous situation? The first demonstration of a breech loading bag powder gun in the US Navy detonated killing the then Secretary of the Navy. No one beyond the ship was known to be involved with its 'experiments', they bragged about adding more than ten miles to the guns ranges. How open was this knowledge? I was in an Aircraft Squadron, on detachment to Rosy Roads. The whole thing about the bodies? I had to move the bags at the air terminal right after eating a greasy undercooked breakfast. Walked out the door, AC Tims pointed at us 'get them bags off the pallets and stack'em over there' ....we were not there to move cargo, but our squadron was moving cargo all the time...and, he didn't want to lose any of his own people. B.F. Goodrich, August 1971 was a BAAAAAAAD vintage for body bags. Thats how I know most of the bag didn't have bodies. The one that busted on me, coated me... As for the insurance thing? SGLI, Servicemen's Group Life Insurance policies are issued by the DoD because active duty military may have a policy issued by a civilian company but they will not honor it. SGLI was an insurance policy offered when you joined and re-enlisted, IF you joined the Navy and did not select it, you would have to wait until you re-enlisted to get it; However if you did select it at joining you HAD to provide a name and address and later if you got married you could then change it. That was one major issue that the civilians could not wrap their head around. The driving force behind 'finding the gays' was an FBI agent that you later see accusing Richard Jewel of bombing the Olympics... with, a near exact same story he touted for the above mentioned Sailor. That guy pops up again in front of cameras if you look around... This incident, and the failure for those actually responsible not being addressed, the Capt. and Master Chief involved, and the multitude of agencies with zero experience and credibility who were involved ... left us all with no confidence those alphabet soup groups could figure it out ....if they were standing an inch from it happening.
again manufacture new powder , cheaper then bribing a congressmen
Don’t think a 16in gun would be effective if it was using black powder lmfao
@@rolfanderson3925 they use smokeless powder which is a form of black powder, what else would they use??? They're just a bigger version of a normal gun so they use the same stuff
@@noodlelynoodle. Um, smokeless powder is not a form of blackpowder. One needs a chemist to make, the other needs a sixteen year old and three natural materials. You can literally buy all three components of blackpowder at home depot or Wal-Mart. Its easy enough to make that a sub-normal teenager could make it and probably/possibly not kill themselves.
@@THOMAS81Z The Powder Bags were unique to the Iowas at that time all the factories that made them no longer exist
This one _really_ makes my blood boil. Its handling was an absolute disgrace. I don't care who you are, if you're an American you have some level of respect for the armed services and stuff like this just eats away at that respect even if those responsible are just a very small part of those institutions. What's not a small part are 47 lives.
The disrespect towards our military is stronger than it’s ever been. We are falling off of a social/moral cliff as of the last 10-15 years. Far too many people have nothing but contempt for those who protect us, whether it’s the military or the police.
why do you respect the armed services when washington told you not to have a standing army for this very reason? Incompetence & corruption & stupidity. Way to admit publicly you take a knee to a feudal bank aka the aristocratic bank that owns the federal reserve, which has turned you into a nation of mercenaries.
It's just propaganda. American civilians are expected to respect the armed services a whole hell of a lot more than politicians and senior officers are. Makes it easy to discourage the people from holding the armed services accountable for incidents like this one, where some high ranks got 47 people killed, pinned the blame on a sailor, and got away with it. There is nothing respectable about that. Nor was there anything respectable about the Navy's conduct around the Bonhomme Richard fire.
my uncles friend was a part of the crew when this happened the stories he tells how bad of condition the ship was in, it had all these leaks, rust every where would fall apart if it had to go to war should have been scrapped way before it was
@@redred222 Well we saw what happen when you sent rust bucket to war (Moscow). At least they have retired it.
As always, excellent sleuthing of the facts and fabulous presentation- keep up the awesome work you do!
Aspects of this case remind me of the hyper defensive ignoring of the problems with torpedoes at the outset of WWII. In the Iowa case that there was no system preventing over ramming is incredible to me, given the potentially catastrophic consequences of a mistake. Also, powder lift doors left open is reminiscent of similar human errors contributing to the destruction and sinking of the Hood.
Powder doors left open is heavily implicated in the loss of RN battlecruisers in WW1. Most modern theorists believe the loss of the Hood in WW2 was caused by a direct penetration of the magazines beneath the belt armour, or possibly of the Hood's torpedoes.
@@andrewmcalister3462 yes, that's my understanding too
Not having a safety lockout that would prevent over-ramming the powder bags, when it was known to be a significant risk factor, just does my head in...? (Quite apart from all the post-accident Navy shenanigans, ugh!)
Does anybody know if this was something that simply want possible due to the guns' functionality, or if its absence was just a leftover from hurried wartime design & construction, or what...? Seems like it'd be potentially setting your crew in danger any time they did the drill, unless they were VERY practiced in timing it just right 😬
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 Probably a leftover from the tech of the time she was constructed. You have to remember the main reason all of this was done manually in the first place instead of an automated system was that building such an automated system when all of this was originally designed was just insanely difficult. It wasn't until very late in the war that they got enough of a handle on this to design advanced fully automatic 3", 6", and 8" systems, none of which completed construction until after the war, most several years later.
So it's likely an automatic over-ram protection system wasn't practical at the time the system was designed, (And i believe the system design actually predates the Iowa's by over a decade in terms of when the first versions entered service, more to when design started, might have begun design before 1930). The failures that let the explosion propagate down the turret are less forgivable though. The UK started building hard interlocks that would prevent keeping the door open like that into their ships before WW1 had finished after the disastrous experiences of Jutland where bypassing of the measures of the day caused fatal magazine detonations that sank multiple capital ships.
@@darthkarl99That’s an interesting point about UK warships. Could something like this have happened aboard HMS Vanguard if they’d kept her in service until the ‘80s?
Glad to hear the Battleship New Jersey channel getting some love. Both New Jersey and Iowa have videos in remembrance of the turret 2 disaster.
A friend and coworker of mine was injured as a result of the turret explosion. What the government did afterwards was beyond shameful. The way they tryed to shift responsibility onto those that were injured or lost their lives was a disgrace.
I don't recall anyone getting injured. Everyone in the turret was killed. No injuries. The only ones who survived were in the powder magazine, among those, Kendall Truitt. I was a 20 year old Damage Controlman 2nd Class at the time aboard Iowa.
@@danielburdette6648 My friend was on deck and there were injuries. I agree, the government response of blaming the victims was disgusting.
We were at sea near the Iowa and was designated as the rescue ship if required (USS Saipan). Upon return to port we were berthed next to Iowa. Sad the Navy tried to deflect the blame on the sailors, but it's what they have always done. Disgraceful
lets be honest when you bring back the guns you manufacture new powder , hell it cost less then a congressmans bribe to fund
how did they handle the massive loose gun on deck
They took Corpsman off the San Diego as well. We were on our way back from Gitmo.
Navy vet here. I've never heard of this incident but the explanation in the video of how the navy handled it I have seen before.
The fact that rammer can move on its own sometimes is the biggest revealing fact in this whole case
This was the dirtiest maritime investigation ever, certainly since the Lusitania inquiry. The confirmation bias is so plain to see, I'm actually sort of impressed the Navy had the balls to stick to the original theory in the face of three different organizations contradicting it.
They haven't changed. Remember the Bonhomme Richard fire? The military has made scapegoating into an art form. Disgraceful.
I'm from Germany. The Iowa dropped anchor in the harbour of Kiel in 1885, when I visited the ship. I was a kid back then, but I still remember this absolute enormous bulk of steel. I was deeply impressed. I also remember the news of this desaster a few years later. There wasn't much coverage in the german media initially, but when it became clear that the Navy had mislead the investigation and blamed it's incompetence on innocent dead men, this whole affair was reported in much greater detail. There even was a whole series about it in the german newsmag Der Spiegel.
Crikey - you're that old?
@@oldgoat5589Please respect the 150-year olds
@@yespeace2000 Yup, there are some of us dinosaurs who are regulars on here!
I didn't know the lowa was around in 1885
I was there, fantastic port. Great people. We made friends with some College Students from a Catholic University somewhere in town. Very nice group of people.
The poor families. This one is really aggravating with the Navy’s investigation, blame game, and inability to take responsibility.
My aunt worked for the Naval Ordnance in Virginia during this time. The powder used by the Iowa was Korean War surplus (probably older). This type of charge becomes chemically unstable over time. The arsenal she worked at had to store the powder on a barge in the Potomac due to the risk of detonation. When the Iowa’s were brought back into service the Navy forgot to include in the budget the cost of replacing the powder charge due to lack of expertise on the subject.
When the accident happened they were eager to deflect any blame on the leadership that idiotic stories were concocted to divert attention.
7:27 The "Cheapskate" Bay? That made me giggle. Since I've lived here, I've never heard it like that. It's Chesapeake, or "CHESS-uh-peak". And to fangirl all over your channel, I love each one of your videos and have watched them over and over. I especially like your intro music and, in the earlier ones, the time-appropriate video montages while your logo comes up on screen with that awesome font. If you ever need a meteorology or seismology/vulcanology person to help explain things or to provide a voice, I'd be honoured. You are a legend; keep the videos coming!
I have not heard that pronunciation as well😂
I was wondering if I was the only one who caught that.
Victim Blaming is among the highest traditions in the US Navy
I can't imagine how angry normal USN personnel feel about this - a turret explosion blamed on the victims, an entirely ficticious relationship invented to cover up senior naval officer incompetence. Absolutely disgraceful behaviour by senior officers. They should have been court martialed
You are one of my favorite parts of saturday! Thanks for all the effort, I really appreciate the hard work and great content. Thank you sir!
I pass by the Iowa daily on my way to work through the port of Los Angeles. Beautiful ship! RIP to those who perished.
I work on a sax shop, ask me the question about dilderidoos
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii so what is the question of the dilderidoos?
@@DjAboo1 which size?
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii if talking saxophones I play Alto. If talking t shirts it’s xxl
At 7:27, I think you meant to say "Chesapeake Bay" as opposed to "Cheapskate Bay" :')... Great video!
Despite this happening (shortly) before I was born, I remember this from childhood, maybe because I remember the trial being covered through the 90’s. My uncle was a sailor, too, so that might be another reason it sticks out more than other news of the era.
Also, was not expecting to be dancing in front of the kitchen sink after a disaster video, killing fruit flies and prepping water for plants. Congrats on the EP, good job. ^^
I imagine you already know this but just in case, the one time we had a fruit fly infestation a spray-bottle filled with soapy water worked very well for deleting the already-existing swarm.
Anyone who has spent any time in the military knows how common this kind of scapegoating is. The upper ranks will always find a way to absolve themselves and lay the blame in whatever way protects their career.
I learned about this one a few years ago and boy howdy, if there was ever anything that made me ABSOLUTELY NEVER want to join the military. Shameful, disgusting, monstrous.
I got out of the navy in November of 1988.
I was furious when the navy tried to blame dead sailors for their own deaths.
I knew it was BS but I was also not surprised that senior officers in the navy tried to blame dead men.
I've never seen pictures of Iowa in the 1980s from the deck and when you do you can tell immediately this is a very tired ship.
A well done retrospective as always! Thank you John!
Who would have thought that using inexperienced people with insufficient training to do super dangerous work in a non-standard and untested way using 50 year old explosives that were prohibited to use in that way with broken equipment could be bad. I think you have to be a genius to see that one coming.
John, you might be my favorite John! I love your videos! All the way from a currently stormy, and soon to be incredibly hot and sunny, Tampa FL.