During my hitch with the Navy I recall numerous battle practice exercises with gun practice. We would fire the five inch 54 caliber main weapon at the island of Vieques, near Puerto Rico.
I recall the demonstrations and complaints by locals appearing in various media outlets during this time. They were opposed to this warship activity but the practice exercises did not diminish during my time featuring many hours on the flying bridge conducting target designation transmitter operations.
I remember the USS Iowa turret explosion. It was all over the news and I was apalled with some aspects of the published conclusions proffered by the Navy investigative team.
The incident ocurred five days past my 32nd birthday.
On this day in 1989 the Number Two 16-inch gun turret of the United States Navy battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) exploded.
The detonation was in center gun room and killed 47 turret crewmen and severely damaged the gun turret itself.
Two major investigations were undertaken into the cause of the explosion, one by the U.S. Navy and then one by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Sandia National Laboratories.
These proceedings conflicted with various elements covered in the conclusions.
As was the Navy of that era, there was always an attempt to blame individuals for what happened. The Navy concluded that the explosion was caused via electronic or chemical detonator by homosexual sailors seeking murder/suicide revenge for a failed relationship.
Naturally the accused died in the explosion and this resulted in mass criticism of the Navy findings resulting in the Senate requesting GAO review. The GAO contracted Sandia National Laboratories who reviewed the Navy technical investigation.
Sandia determined that a significant overram of the powder bags into the gun had occurred as it was being loaded and that the overram could have caused the explosion. After the Navy reviewed their investigation they concurred with the overram hypothesis and expressed regret to the families of the accused sailors without offering a formal apology.