Customer Reviews

Explosion Aboard the Iowa

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The family of GMG2 Clayton Michael Hartwig USN would like to express their sincere thanks and appreciation for your help in removing all doubt and clearing the reputation and memory of our loving son, brother and uncle.

I did not see any reference to a reliability (failure mode and effects, fault tree determination, etc.) analysis requested by and performed for the Navy here in San Diego in the summer of 1990. This analysis agreed with the conclusion that the ramming of the powder bags was most likely accidental (due to certain shortcomings in the rammer hydraulic system), occurred at the higher projectile ramming speed of 13.9 ft/sec, and was probably caused by particle contamination of the fluid in the hydraulic system of the rammer. Were the results of these efforts (report) witheld from the author? I would be interested in knowing this and it would not surprise me at all if that indeed had happened!

Good read. Moderately technical. But provides a pretty good treatment of the investigation AFTER the investigation. The Navy (single officer) investigation concluded that the explosion was the act of a suicidal gay sailor. This conclusion made it easy for the Navy to dismiss any potential impact to the Navy establishment. This investigation (conducted at the request of Congress by an independent lab) proved that the explosion COULD have happened in an entirely different manner. I picked up this book after I realized that the USS Iowa CO at the time graduated from USNA 3 years before me. Again, this book is a good read.

This book is more than a technical problem and its resolution. The book provides a window into the lack of moral courage by senior naval officers to address an issue involving the wellbeing of the american sailor. Basicly, the navy could not identify a techincal cause for the explosion so it must be a sailor's fault. Thus find a victum to hang the cause on and what better way than to point a finger at a "queer". ( Queer = anyone whose lifestyle is not in keeping with the excepted standard as interpeted by Senior Naval Officers.) So the reputation of a sailor is destroyed and the 16 in. guns can continue to fire. The final result of the incident aboard the Iowa is the realization by sailors that the U.S.Navy will not hesitate to debase the honor and reputation of an individual within the Navy so long as the "mission" is accomplished.

The Navy now wonders why the re-enlistment rate is so poor!