The Scarred History of Turret No. 2

The “Missy” is the proudest ship

That rides the billow’s crest.

In gunnery she’s unexcelled,

Her skippers are the best.

Five years she’s held the “Iron Men”

For athletes none can beat.

And in efficiency but few

Approach her in the fleet.

--Minna Irving

*

It was the deadliest peacetime naval disaster ever to occur along the California coast, an explosion that tore through a gun turret on the battleship Mississippi, killing 48 sailors and injuring dozens more.

On the clear, crisp, windy afternoon of June 12, 1924, a few minutes before noon, the 7-year-old vessel, was involved in intense mock warfare maneuvers 40 miles south of Los Angeles with two other Pacific Fleet battleships, the Tennessee and the Idaho.

The gunners on all three battlewagons were competing for a $20 prize that Congress had voted to award the fleet’s most proficient naval marksman. The Mississippi enjoyed a reputation for collecting gunnery awards, and the day before had hit 52 out of 55 targets.

Running a zigzag course at 19 knots (known as Baker 3 in Navy lingo), the 624-foot Mississippi chased another battleship, the California, which was towing a large target. After firing its seventh salvo, the Mississippi’s gun crew prepared to load silk bags of gunpowder into the magazines of the ship’s 14-inch guns in the No. 2 turret. The powder ignited the first of two explosions that would rock the ship from stem to stern.

Capt. W.D. Brotherton knew something was drastically wrong when he noticed brownish smoke coming from the No. 2 turret’s periscope holes, even as the ship’s other guns continued firing.

Sounding the fire alarm, Brotherton shouted orders to cut electric power, flood the magazines and stop the ship. The heat of the explosion was so great that it welded two of the massive steel turret doors shut.

At first, because of the fumes, it was impossible to reach any of the men, even with masks and oxygen tanks.

They died as men in battle die,

Each sailor at his post,

Fit mates of Lawrence, Hull, Paul Jones,

And all that hero host.

With Skrynas at the telephone

His last report to give,

While Ensign Erwin stepped aside

That other lads might live.

Only two sailors in the turret firing room, J.F. Caviezel and Robert McAvin, escaped, by diving down through a 40-foot hatchway that closed automatically behind them. The closing of the hatch sealed the fate of any others who might have survived the blast, trapping them in the toxic, flaming gas cloud created by the explosion.

Seamen in the upper chambers of the gun turret died instantly in the fiery explosion; those in the lower levels were suffocated as the blast siphoned off their oxygen.

The damaged 33,000-ton dreadnought headed back to port.

As the stricken battleship glided into a San Pedro berth, Rear Adm. William V. Pratt boarded the ship and the hospital ship Relief pulled alongside. Then No. 2’s 14-inch guns went off again.

The firing rocked the whole harbor district, shattering windows and critically injuring four men who were caught behind the recoiling gun.

The accident occurred when rescuers were removing the body of the “gun pointer,” who was found sitting at his post with his finger still on the trigger.

Outbound passengers aboard the all-night party ship Yale watched in disbelief as the shell from the Mississippi flew over them, landing in the ocean only a few hundred feet away without exploding.

Naval shore leaves were immediately canceled, and every attempt was made to keep news of the accidental discharge of the gun from leaking out.

Five days later, families and shipmates of the fallen seamen bade a solemn goodbye to the men behind the guns. Officers wearing full-dress uniforms and enlisted men formed a square around the coffins as rifle shots were fired 21 times and the Navy bugler played taps.

Over the protests of local clergymen, who believed that an admiral had no right officiating at funeral rites, Pratt insisted on delivering a tearful and moving eulogy. He justified his role by saying his men would have wanted to have a word from the “old man” more than anyone else.

Even before the sailors’ caskets could be shipped to their hometowns, the court of inquiry was underway.

Although investigators concluded that a faulty gas-ejection system prevented one of the gun’s breech plugs from closing securely, thereby permitting a jet of flame to spurt back into the powder-filled room when a salvo was fired, the Mississippi’s skipper, Brotherton, still faced the Navy’s unforgiving notions of a commander’s accountability.

Investigators also found that some access safety doors inside the turret had been left partly open. Also, the crew failed to examine one or more of the gun bores and call out “Bore clear!”--another violation of regulations.

His career ruined, Brotherton spent his last years a broken man. Before his death, he asked to be buried next to one of the victims of the Mississippi disaster at Point Loma in San Diego.

Less than two decades later, the Mississippi went through the same agony again.

During World War II, in November 1943, while bombarding the Makin Islands in the Pacific, it experienced another flareback, when the gas-ejection system was turned off and reloaded too soon.

Again it was turret No. 2.

This time 43 men died.

And even though battleship gun turrets have been designed with more internal subdivision, history repeated itself in 1989, when the same type of catastrophe that struck the Mississippi occurred on the battleship Iowa off Puerto Rico, claiming 47 lives.

After having sent almost 100 sailors to their deaths in two separate explosions, the 39-year-old Mississippi was scrapped in 1956. Displayed at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Navy Hall in San Pedro is a stone monument dedicated to the men who lost their lives in one of the nation’s greatest peacetime naval disasters.

Oh! It is not her battleships

That make the Navy strong.

The thickness of her armor-plates,

Her batteries in song.

Her might is in her sturdy tars

To flag and service true,

Like those immortal men who died

In Turret No. 2.