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Navy Vets View: Battleship "Safety" Vs. Sailors

By Ben Chitty

The following article was written by Ben Chitty of New York VVAW; Ben spent 1965-1969 with the U.S. Navy, including two tours to Vietnam.

For a while this spring, it looked like the U.S. senior military service might go down without engaging any enemy. Fresh from the accidental destruction of a civilian airbus over the Persian Gulf last July, this April, the U.S. Navy reported three fatal shipboard incidents in quick succession—first, an explosion in one of the gun turrets on the battleship USS Iowa on April 19th while on training maneuvers off Puerto Rico; then, a few days later, a fire on a forward supply ship in the west Pacific; and, finally, two men lost overboard from a submarine in the Sea of Japan.

The Iowa tragedy dominated the news for almost a week. Five men died instantly, incinerated in the explosion of 660 pound of "Navy Cool" powder in the chamber of a 16-inch gun. Another 22 men were smashed about by the force of the blast, and seared to death by the heat. Still another 20, unlucky enough to survive the first few moments, asphyxiated as a toxic fireball sucked the oxygen from the ruptured compartments below the turret. There was so little left of some of these men that the Navy figured out that 47 died by mustering the ship's crew and counting who was still alive.

Officers, officials and politicians joined members of the families of the dead and injured to meet the ship at the dock in Norfolk. Seven thousand attended the memorial service. President Bush eulogized those who died "for the cause of peace and freedom." He personally walked past more than 200 of the nearly 400 family members present (his staff explained that he thought he had seen all of them). And the questions began. Could the Iowa be repaired? Are Navy ships safe? Are the costs and risks or funning a battleship justified? What—or who—was to blame? All good questions, all with controversial answers.

The antique 16-inch guns, designed to throw a 2700 pound shell almost 24 miles, were state-of-the-art when the Iowa was launched in 1942. They can't be repaired. The Pentagon made a pitch for replacing them with Tomahawk missile launchers at a cost of more than $1 billion a ship (counting the missiles themselves). More urgent questions about the potential for accidental or unplanned detonations were raised by opponents of the Navy's nukeport pans for New York (where the Iowa will be stationed) and San Francisco. The Pentagon devoted hundreds of hours, thousands of words, persuading skeptics that a similar catastrophe probably can't happen in port. But the most important questions—How did it happen? What's the point?—developed in very different ways.

After initial speculation about improper loading procedures, or over-age unstable powder, the Navy's investigation focused on a lurid tale of homosexual passions, morbid jealousy, and psychotic revenge. One of the dead men, it seems, had named a shipmate beneficiary in his life insurance policy. Could this be a case of murder? So, they checked this theory out and made life so miserable for the beneficiary that they had to transfer him off the ship. Finally, the Navy retracted the murder theory, announced the innocence of the reported suspect—who turned out to be married—and proposed suicide to explain the tragedy. A sailor, they suppose, distressed when his advances were rejected by a couple of sailors, may have set off a bomb.

At least four things can be said about this theory. First, the story is a little unlikely and almost completely without supporting evidence. Second, while homosexuality is common enough in the Navy, such spectacular suicidal slaughterers are not. Sailors usually go nuts with a knife, not a bomb. Tight, enforced, discipline is required to run a ship. If a sailor becomes isolated and depressed enough to blow himself up, along with 48 of his mates, surely someone should have noticed a problem and done something. Third, the timing is suspiciously convenient: fifteen days after the Iowa explosion, a federal court of appeals in San Francisco ruled that the Army must reinstate Sergeant Perry Watkins, an avowed homosexual who has already served 14 years. A good time to show that homosexuals in the military can be killers because they're homosexuals! Finally, the theory lets the Navy off the hook. If a single deranged individual who should never have been allowed to remain in the service killed all these men, then it's a tragedy, but really an accident. In a well-run Navy these things don't happen.

But they do. Ships are military installations. They are supposed to be dangerous and deadly. So what is a battleship for? For more than a decade after World War II, no battleships were active in the fleets. As the U.S. war in Vietnam heated up, the Navy brought the USS New Jersey out of the mothballs and deployed it to Vietnam. The admirals found (as they hoped) that a battleship is a cost-effective and relatively safe platform from which to deliver massive firepower on a coastal area. "Cost effective" is clear enough: even at $80 million a year in operating costs, a battleship is cheaper than an aircraft carrier. "Safe" is more questionable.

Designed to survive exchanges with Japanese guns of equal size, a battleship is just about unsinkable. She is built to limit the damage from any number of hits; on the Iowa, the blast and fireball were confined (and compressed) to the turret itself. But big and slow as she is, a wagon is easy to hit by missile from the air or torpedo under the surface. In fact, the safety really lies on the enemy's weapons: battleships remain "safe" only as long as the enemy uses only conventional weapons. Let's see now: who is likely to be threatened or attacked by the U.S. who has only conventional weapons? Everybody except Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China (and probably Israel and South Africa and Pakistan and India).

When Ronald Reagan began to beef up the U.S. military machine, he asked Congress for four battleships, a weapon with a specific and limited use. The ship is an imperial weapon, meant to extend and maintain imperial influence over less developed countries. Its main use is "political," to display U.S. determination and power. In fact, Reagan only used the weapon once. When Moslem militia in Lebanon began sniping at U.S. Marines, he sent the New Jersey to bomb the hillsides of Beirut. The sailors on the Jersey were safe all right, but not the 260 Marines killed by a car bomb attack on their headquarters-barracks building near the Beirut Airport at dawn on Sunday, October 23rd, 1983. The experiment was not completely a success, at least not in the countries where pacification requires occupation.

But Reagan somehow managed to speak part of the truth in 1983. Gazing sincerely into the TV camera, he said, "We're a nation with global responsibilities. We're not somewhere else in the world protecting someone else's interests; we're there protecting our own." A couple of months later, responding to a Congressional report critical of the Marines' security procedures in Lebanon, he admitted, "If there is to be blame, it properly rests here in this Office with this President. And I accept responsibility for the bad as well as the good." But even in truth, he managed to lie. With the thoroughgoing cynicism of the fundamentally irresponsible, he failed to mention that these deaths came during the application of an ambitious and deadly policy. The Marines didn't aim to die in Lebanon—the U.S. aimed to make Lebanon safe for Americans and American influence. As commander-in-chief of an imperial military force, he was responsible for the policy, and he made the decision to apply the force: he was responsible for their deaths.

The Iowa serves the same kind of deadly ambition. At the memorial service, Bush said, "The Iowa was recommissioned, and her crew trained, to preserve the peace." Like his predecessor, Bush hopes no one asks just what he means by "peace." He can't just say these 47 men died training for an imperial conflict, for U.S. intervention in the third world. He cares not tell their families why young men have to die for their country in the military service he commands. But, like his predecessor, he bears some responsibility—for the policy which requires these weapons, allows these deaths, and defines "peace" ads the peace of the grave, both for peoples and nations who defy the U.S. empire, and for the men and women whom he enlists in the U.S. imperial service.