Sailors line the decks of the Iowa as it pulls into Norfolk Naval Station
on April 23, 1989, a few days after the fatal blast. The
misalignment of the 16-inch guns in Turret 2 is the mark
of the blast.
In 1989, a turret on the USS Iowa blew up, killing 47 men. In the ensuring
aftermath, the ship's crew completely destroyed all the evidence during their
damage control operations, rather than preserving the turret as a exhibit
for the investigation that followed.
The only thing they were sure of was that there was a body in the gun pit
next to one of the gun breeches, and that body had a tattoo only one
person on the IOWA had....
Clayton Hartwig.
In the ensuring investigation, rather than admit that they had done a shitty
job in recomissioning the battleships, and that the turret had been unsafe
from the start, the Navy called in it's l33t lawyer shock troops:
The Naval Investigative Service (aka "The Admiral's Gestapo - too much Rogue Warrior for me, lol).
Rather than admit they were at fault, the Navy proceeded to frame
Clayton Hartwig for causing the accident, concocting an incredible framework
of bullshit.
What was their thesis?
That Hartwig was homosexual, and in a fit of despondency over a broken
relationship, sabotaged the gun breech, causing the explosion.
It was to put it in a nice way, Grade AAA Bullshit...but this is nothing
new to NIS..they even had phony psychological profiles constructed
of Hartwig to fit their "despondent homosexual" thesis....
It took a hell of a long fight before the Navy retracted this bullshit
story that Hartwig was responsible for the turret explosion....
Some URLs to the entire stinking mess:
http://www.hallhistory.com/military/193.shtml
A Glimpse of Hell - Book on the entire mess....
There are more links, but most of them lead to GLAAD, and otherThe Iowa investigation is contextualized by Thompson's startling insights into the moral universe of the navy's masters, a cabal so protective of their own jobs that they prepared press releases indicating that an out- of-control Tomahawk missile launched from the Iowa was actually a part of a federal and military crackdown on an illicit marijuana field in Alabama.
Unlike the Tomahawk debacle, the falsehoods embroidered into the investigation of the Turret Two disaster did become public, as naval officials accepted a noticeably botched report from investigators who "lost" two 2,700-pound projectiles and consistently claimed, with no foundation, that Hartwig, killed in the explosion, was a murderous and suicidal psychopath who blew up the turret in revenge for a thwarted homosexual affair.
Two years later, they were forced to admit that they had no clear and convincing evidence linking Hartwig to the explosion and apologized to his surviving family members. (The family later initiated a $12 million defamation lawsuit against the U.S. Navy.)
homosexual organizations, who seem to have adopted Hartwig as
a sort of martyr, even though he wasn't even homosexual at all,
just a convient scapegoat for the Navy, like Admiral Kimmel was
at Pearl Harbor.
Anyway, this has been your daily allowance of MKSheppard-style insanity!
