Salvaging a Mate’s Reputation : New findings in battleship Iowa explosion cast doubt on suicide theory

Is the Navy getting set to come about on its version of what caused a gun turret explosion on the battleship Iowa two years ago that killed 47 sailors?

Whatever it concludes in the next few weeks, there are two reputations very much at stake: That of a gunner’s mate who died in the explosion and that of the Navy itself for grabbing at the first theory that floated by that seemed to absolve it of blame and salvage its pride in running tight ships.

The Navy already has altered course on one point: Its own investigation shows that an explosion of the kind that ripped the battlewagon’s 16-inch gun turret could happen by accident, something it vehemently denied in 1989.

Tests also cast serious doubt on the Navy’s pet theory--that a sailor whose offer of special friendship was spurned by another crew member committed suicide by slipping a detonator into the turret’s gunpowder.

It was the Federal Bureau of Investigation that, based on a personality profile, suggested the suicide theory. The Navy snapped it up, noted that residue found in the breech was consistent with what would remain of a detonator and closed the case.

Asked by Congress to study the tragedy, Sandia National Laboratory concluded months ago after putting gunpowder bags under heavy pressure that they could explode accidentally if they were rammed into a breech too hard. The Navy now admits it could happen, though it hasn’t said it did happen.

Sandia also found in the turrets of two other battleships the kind of residue that the Navy said must have come from a detonator planted in a power bag.

As if to discourage the accident theory, the Navy still clings to the fact that the ramrod in the shattered turret was found set at low speed. But Sandia says it could have been blown out of a high-speed setting by the explosion.

With results of investigations in such conflict, the cause may never be known. The sooner the Navy says just that and lifts at least part of the cloud from the name of Gunner’s Mate Clayton Hartwig the better.