This is CBS, Ireland the World. I'm John Batchew with Gordon Chang, my colleague and friend,

and we're very pleased to be joined by Professor Jim Holmes of the U.S. Navy War College,

writing most recently at the National Interest of the Spring of 1989

and a disaster on a very famous ship, the USS Iowa. Jim, recover the backstory

for us before we plunge into the burning controversy today. Good evening to you. What happened?

Hey, John. Hey, Gordon. Pleasure to be with you, as always. Yeah, I mean, the facts of the case are

pretty straightforward as far as what happened.

Iowa was conducting, it was conducting gunfire exercises near Puerto Rico, which was where we used to go to do such things.

They were doing, and they had an explosion in the second turret.

There are three turrets on a battleship

each each each each sporting uh three main guns three to three big guns about 67 feet long

they had they had a they suffered an explosion in the center gun room and it killed 47 47

sailors basically in the six foot in the six-floor gun turret.

And it set off a huge controversy because the Navy tried to blame it on the gun captain.

The enlisted gunners made it charge of the gun, claimed he was gay, and his lover had jilted him and so forth.

And therefore, it was a murder-suicide.

It turned out, however, that they were doing unauthorized experiments with the numbers of gunpowder bags and so forth. They were used in unauthorized number of

those and other authorized type of gunpowder with one of the 2,700 pound armor piercing shells,

a condition that the Navy had expressly

forbidden because it was dangerous, but they were doing it anyway.

So that was obviously part of the stake that came out during the post-exposure controversy.

So the explosion itself is determined to have been that experiment.

...