Hartwig Shipmate Defends Him as No ‘Suicidal Freak’

Gunner’s Mate Kendall L. Truitt told Congress on Wednesday that former crew mate Clayton M. Hartwig was no “suicidal freak” and did not cause the explosion that killed Hartwig and 46 other sailors on the battleship Iowa.

Truitt accused the Navy of using “a big cover-up” to thwart theories that the shipboard explosion was accidental rather than caused intentionally, “most likely” by Hartwig, as the Navy has concluded.

Rep. Nicholas Mavroules (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on investigations, also has been critical of the Navy’s report. And at the end of the hearing he told Vice Adm. Joseph S. Donnell III, “You’ve pointed your finger when there’s that little chance” that the explosion was accidental.

“Wouldn’t you have been better off to say we don’t know?” the congressman asked.

Donnell said the Navy believes “we do know” that Hartwig most likely caused the explosion.

Truitt said Hartwig was not told until the morning of April 19 that he was going to be positioned at center gun in the No. 2 gun turret, “so there would have been no time for planning” a suicide explosion. He said Hartwig had once talked of suicide, but Truitt said he did not take him seriously.

Truitt said his own theory is that the blast was caused by a defective hydraulic rammer--the piece of equipment used to shove the powder bags up against the projectile in the huge gun.

He said he had had a problem with a rammer on the left gun in the No. 2 gun turret about a year earlier, describing it as behaving like a transmission stuck between neutral and drive. He theorized that the rammer might have “suddenly taken off,” putting too much pressure on the propellant.

He also maintained that gunpowder on the Iowa had been stored in high heat, that the cans were not airtight, and that “you could smell ether” when entering a powder storage area. Truitt said the fact that the crew mates working closest to the center gun had not gone through the exercise together before “may have been a contributing factor” in the blast.

Questioned about his personal relationship with Hartwig, Truitt said they had a basically strong friendship, with occasional quarrels. Under questioning, he denied that they had ever been homosexual lovers.

The Navy’s official report on the Iowa accident made no mention of a possible homosexual link between the two, although there had been earlier news reports that Naval Investigative Service agents were pursuing such a theory.