Battleship Mississippi (BB-41) Interactive Map. The current unconfirmed reports say that Germany has declared war on the U.S., which doesn't make much difference. But unlike other explosions, the 16-inch gun in the No. Sandia National Laboratories later determined that the powder had been rammed 24 inches too far, compressing the powder charge against the base of the dummy projectile before it ignited, the GAO report said. The Invasion of Lingayen Gulf (Filipino: Paglusob sa Golpo ng Lingayen), 6-9 January 1945, was an Allied amphibious operation in the Philippines during World War II.In the early morning of 6 January 1945, a large Allied force commanded by Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf began approaching the shores of Lingayen from Lingayen Gulf, on the island of Luzon. "He hit me on the shoulder one day, and he's like, 'If I ever die, you're going to be a rich man,'" Truitt recalled. "This is essentially what happened. After overhaul at San Francisco. Following repairs, she participated in the capture of Kwajalein in February 1944 and bombarded Japanese-held islands in February and March. The mighty warship was 624 feet long with a beam of 97.5 feet, and displaced 33,000 tons fully loaded. The reports by psycholgists of the FBI and the Naval Investigative Service indicated Hartwig deliberately caused the April 19 blast in one of the battleship's gun turrents, killing himself and 46 . After the explosion, Truitt mentioned the insurance policy in passing to Hartwig's family. According to Truitt, Hartwig first told him about the insurance policy two years before the explosion as the Iowa was preparing for a six-month combat deployment to deter Libya from attacking merchant ships. It was also clear that each 16-inch gun turret required more sailors than the Navy could afford to assign. "They were the real gun experts," said retired Rear Adm. Gene LaRocque, a former battleship captain and the founder of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "That's sort of what started the whole thing.". She returned to the Pacific in October 1934 to resume her earlier pattern of regular exercises, Fleet Problems and training. By 2 turret of the Iowa, told investigators after the incident that if the sailor operating the ram had pushed the bags of powder too far into the breach the gun, the powder "would have gone off," Navy records say. His work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Esquire, The National Interest, Car and Driver, Men's Health, and many others. I met my life-long friend Dave Welch, got to experience Fleet Week in NYC, and lived through the turret 2 explosion. "At 10 minutes to 10 a.m., somebody came over the phones and said, 'We're having a problem, Turret 2, center gun,'" Carr recalled. "Imagine an old timey cap gun, where you remove the caps, and bang them with a hammer," Truitt said. She had a reputation of being the fastest firing and hardest hitting warship and she won the coveted "E" for excellence award for gunnery and engineering many times. On April 16, 1989 there was an explosion in a gun turret on the U.S.S. Luckily, the fire did not set off the powder bags in the other two guns. Black smoke poured out from the burning No. The deadly blast aboard the Iowa marked the first explosion in a battleship turret since 1943, when 43 sailors aboard the USS Mississippi were killed, the Government Accountability Office later determined. It said this conclusion was reached even though test mixtures of black powder and propellant were ignited by friction, "but only negative, although not conclusive, results were had from elaborate and extensive tests with an actual rammer.". The MISSISSIPPI and her sister ships of Battleship Division Three represented most of the remaining battleship strength in the U.S. Navy. In 1961 the USS ARIZONA was altered once more. The main battery was distributed two turrets forward and two aft. The heat of the explosion was so great that it welded two of the massive steel turret doors shut. Destroyers report there are six subs in back of us. . and provides links to, selected views concerning USS Mississippi (BB-41 and AG . Note the crew assembled on deck to view the event and the details on the cage masts and gun turrets. 2. 13 June 1924 In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blogJapan Security Watch. Ward Carroll, a naval aviator who was a spokesman for the Naval Safety Center at the time. Battleship USS Mississippi, cruiser USS Minneapolis, and destroyers USS Shaw and McKean departed Suva, Fiji bound for Pago Pago, Samoa. The gunners on all three battlewagons were competing for a $20 prize that Congress had voted to award the fleets most proficient naval marksman. 2 turret. "It's a classic example of Navy leaders not being willing to speak truth to power and make the hard decisions," Carroll said. In June 1941, in response to the deteriorating war situation in Europe, she was brought back to the Atlantic, operating between the United States and Iceland during much of the rest of that year. Although each barrel was blasted between firings with pressurized air to evacuate debris, the middle barrel of each turret received a lower pressure burst than the left and right barrels. "This is just from my experience of three years of working and shooting those guns: Eventually the powder bags ripped and the rammer head or the rammer chain sparked, and that's what set off the first explosion," Carr said. They have been throwing torpedoes at us for the past four months. Did you enjoy this article or find this article helpful? In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. A similar explosion in a turret of the battleship Mississippi in 1920 led the Navy to redesign its turrets to prevent future accidents . Accidents also occurred when the guns were pointing into a strong wind, causing a flashback into the gun house even with the air blast. Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Fransisco. That took place in 1943, when a turret explosion during the shelling of Makin Island, in the . After the war, Mississippi was effectively defanged, with three of her four main battery turrets removed. He braved the flames, smoke, and carnage inside the turret to turn on sprinklers so that bags of gunpowder would not go off, and he secured hatches so that the accumulating water would not sink the ship,he told Penthouse in a January 1990 interview. Forty-eight men died of asphyxiation as a result of the explosion. As the rammer was withdrawn, there emerged from the breech a small grayish ball of smoke and flame followed by a large flash. Original Reporting. In these tests, Navy technicians simulated conditions in the center gun at the time of the accident, including ramming the 110-pound bags of powder 21-inches further into the barrel than normal. They are considered buried at sea by the US Navy. All others are marked with an "X.". Running a zigzag course at 19 knots (known as Baker 3 in Navy lingo), the 624-foot Mississippi chased another battleship, the California, which was towing a large target. On December 9, 1941 Japanese forces occupied Makin Island. BB-41 suffered another turret explosion killing 43 men 20 November 1943 off Makin Island. She was bombed from the air. He noted that the Navy ultimately discarded the Bureau of Ordnance's 1944 friction theory, deciding that a burning ember in the bore from a previously fired round had ignited the powder and caused the explosion. So when that flame came down, all those powder bags went off, and that was the third and final detonation.". Despite her forty years of service,Mississippiwas bound to tragedy, experiencing two major accidents in the same turret, in the same gun, twenty years apart. This could have led to dangerous debris remaining in the breech when the gun crew assumed it was safe to load. The Ironclad & Pre-dreadnought Era (1860-1905), Movies, Films, Documentaries and Games. Class: Allen M. Sumner class destroyer Named for: Reigart Bolivar Lowry Complement: 336 Officers and Enlisted Displacement: 2200 tons Length: 376 feet 6 inches Beam: 40 feet Flank Speed: 34 knots Range: 6500 Nautical Miles Final Disposition:Scrapped October 1996 The General Accounting Office and both House and Senate armed services committees are reviewing the Navy's investigation. Technology. I said, again, this is weird. She was powered by nine Babcock and Wilcox boilers and her four screws were driven by four Curtis turbines producing a maximum 32,000 horsepower. She was commissioned in December 1917, and operated in the western Atlantic area until July 1919, when she transited the Panama Canal to the Pacific. In fact, the Iowa did so poorly on its first inspection that it was recommended to be decommissioned. Later in the year, she was part of the force that invaded Peleliu and Leyte and defeated a Japanese task force in the Battle of Surigao Strait. I'm sorry for anyone's personal grief or personal anguish over that.". Initially this had been the area of a flag and platform for ceremonies and visits to the site from 1950-1960. "Dec. 10. She was commissioned in December 1917, and operated in the western Atlantic area . USS Mississippi, a 32,000 ton New Mexico class battleship, was built at Newport News, Virginia. Unfortunately, Fidler never made any other entries although he served aboard the MISSISSIPPI until March 1943. According to the findings from a 1944 investigation by the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance, the explosion in turret No. In this part I will briefly describe . As the stricken battleship glided into a San Pedro berth, Rear Adm. William V. Pratt boarded the ship and the hospital ship Relief pulled alongside. Forty-two sailors were killed and another sixteen wounded. On the eighth salvo, turret two, gun two suffered a rare flare back. The four powder bags inserted into the breech, totaling 470 pounds of explosive powder, caught fire and ignited other bags waiting to be loaded. The damaged 33,000-ton dreadnought headed back to port. In 1943, she took part operations against Kiska Island, in the Aleutians, and in the capture of the Gilbert Islands. ww2dbaseMississippi was converted to a gunnery training and weapons development ship in 1946, and given the new hull number AG-128. That investigation continues to attract scrutiny. Bipartisan. USS Mississippi was decommissioned from service. RLoret 1 yr. ago. 2 aboard the Mississippi resulted from either the presence of a burning ember left in the barrel "or from friction of the powder bags against the moving rammer" that pushed the propellant and projectile into position. 3 January 1944. As a battleship, the Mississippi was heavily armored to slug it out with enemy ships. "They knew more about guns than everybody else in the Navy put together.". 43 killed, 19 injured. 1943 - 1943: 9: My father, A.A. Frye was an anti-aircraft gunner's mate on the starboard side. Trying to contain it.'". Here is a portion of a realphoto postcard showing the removal of the dead once the ship returned to port. USS Mississippi (BB-41), during combat operations off Makin, Gilbert Islands, suffers cordite explosion in #2 14-inch gun turret. USS Franklin (CV-13) approaches the Brooklyn Navy Yard on April 28, 1945. . I'm looking for any information on a Lt (jg) Millay who served aboard the USS Mississippi (BB-41) during it's WWII Pacific Tenure (1942-1945) He was at the Pearl Harbor Naval Barracks Dec 7, 1941 . Two days after the attack, accompanied by the battleship IDAHO and a number of destroyers, the Mississippi departed Iceland for Norfolk. We'll see. The explosion tore through the No. Navy officials said this week the report on the Mississippi was authentic, but pointed out that it was later overruled by higher-ranking investigators. Idaho and four destroyers. Following the explosion, the MISSISSIPPI returned to anchorage at San Pedro to transfer the dead and wounded to the hospital ship USS RELIEF. This need not have happened. Forty-seven sailors in the turret died in the blast and ensuing fire. You might like to see my original copy of the Memorial Address. Ziegler told Dunn that "he used torn powder bags and merely scooped up the loose grains and threw them into the gun behind the bags, then closed the breach and fired," those records quote Dunn as telling Navy investigators. The World War II Database is founded and managed by Australian news report on the USS . A bizarre accident occurred afterward while the Mississippi was anchored in San Pedro Bay. The powder ignited the first of two explosions that would rock the ship from stem to stern. Only the turret officers can be identified. We just outran several units of the German fleet (submarines). The 1924 disaster was attributed to insufficient air blast to clear the gun barrels, resulting in smoldering debris igniting powder bags as they were rammed in during reloading. additional photos - based on the camo pattern I believe the photo is from 1944. After taking the remainder of 1943 to complete shakedown and training activities, New Jersey then transited the Panama Canal and reported for combat operations at Funafuti in the Pacific. An inquiry found that there had been inadequate air pressure forced through the gun to expel the incandescent gases and other flammable residue after firing. 1919-1940, by Harvey M. Beigel. I was on active duty at that time. After an extensive preliminary bombardment, the Marine assault force headed towards the beach and Mississippi and the other ships increased their rate of fire. . In 1924 and 1943, open breech explosions had occurred in the Turret Two center gun aboard Mississippi, each time killing most of the crewmen in the turret. She was armed with a main battery of twelve 14-inch/50 caliber guns mounted in four turrets of three guns each, with each gun mounted in a separate sleeve. Thanks for posting. 2s 14-inch guns went off again. Very informative. The fleet in Pearl Harbor must have been asleep and I do not mean dozing. 1. In the case of theIowa, the devastating blast happened toward the tail end of the Cold War, when the Navy felt it needed 600 ships to counter the Soviets. "I just thought they had some really strange questions for what I assumed was an honest attempt at an investigation.". The Senator from Michigan has asked for a Court Martial of leading admirals and in the 14th Naval District. On the clear, crisp, windy afternoon of June 12, 1924, a few minutes before noon, the 7-year-old vessel, was involved in intense mock warfare maneuvers 40 miles south of Los Angeles with two other Pacific Fleet battleships, the Tennessee and the Idaho. Navy officials say technical experts conducted more than 20,000 tests on bags of powder taken from the Iowa last spring, including attempts to create an explosion through friction. Lt. Bruce Coles, a spokesman for the Navy, this week discounted the similarities between the accidents aboard the Iowa and the Mississippi. In its investigation of the explosion, the Navy concluded that the explosion was the result of a deliberate act and not a defect in the gun or propellant. Nearly twenty yearsand a major refit laterthe USSMississippiwent to war in the Pacific. In this role, she carried a variety of old and new guns and radars, while serving with the Operational Development Force in the Atlantic. Because there were still unfired rounds in the other two guns of Turret No. My Father served on the USS MISSISSIPPI prior to his being sent to East Africa (NCU-3 Radio Marina in Asmara). US MILITARIA FORUM - COLLECTORS PRESERVING HISTORY During the latter operation, on 29 November 1943, Mississippi experienced another turret explosion, which took 43 lives . The explosion in the center gun room killed 47 of the turret's crewmen and severely damaged the gun turret itself. Suddenly, in the midst of the barrage . I think it was a terrible, terrific tragedy that we had. siege1863, US Battleship Turret Explosions 1904-1989. Was on board 1943-45. . USS Mississippi, a 32,000 ton New Mexico class battleship, was built at Newport News, Virginia. The deadly blast aboard the Iowa marked the first explosion in a battleship turret since 1943, when 43 sailors aboard the USS Mississippi were killed, the Government Accountability Office later . Later, the Navy would honor Zellars by naming a destroyer after him. Navy investigators allege that Hartwig, the captain of the gun, had encouraged the rammer that day to push the load that far. The ship was built at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company of Newport News, Virginia, from her keel laying in April 1915, her launching. MISSISSIPPI. Mississippi provided gunfire support for the Lingayen landings in January 1945 and for the conquest of Okinawa in March-June. Today her name lives on in the Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Mississippi (SSN-782). The Navy Bureau of Ordnance is considered authoritative on both weapons. Second, it is to showcase "The gun where the explosion occurred had not fired" that day. A new method in the launch of ship-based aircraft was displayed with the explosive-powered catapult launch of a Martin MO-1 observation plane from the forward turret of the USS Mississippi. Saturday, April 26, -(UP)An explosion in the forward turret of the U.S. heavy cruiser St. Paul killed 30 men Monday while the ship was firing on Communist targets in Korea, the Navy announced today. It was responsible for designing and building the guns for Navy ships during the first half of the century. The military eats their own it takes a while to realize that.". USS Mississippi, a 32,000 ton New Mexico class battleship, was built at Newport News, Virginia. I'll bet the Prince took something down with her. 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