It is entirely possible for a man to be carrying a can of gasoline from his garage through his living room to fill the lawn mower for the last time before his house is going to be repossessed, drop the can and accidentally ignite it by his lit cigarette, burning the house down. It is possible.
Which brings me to the Bermite Powder Company. The company has left a lasting mark on Santa Clarita, California. The Department of Defense helped to fund the company's activities by awarding them contracts for decades. One of these contracts was awarded by the Ship's Parts Control Center in Mechanicsburg PA for production of 8-inch shells which were only used by the USS Newport News.
From 1934 to 1987, the Whittaker-Bermite Corporation manufactured, stored and tested explosives on 996 acres now considered to be prime real estate in the city of Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles. The explosives included ammunition rounds, flares, detonators, signal cartridges and pyrophoric pellets (fragments that spark spontaneously) and ignitors.
To this day the company is responsible for innovative environmental efforts.
More words below.
From the Santa Clara Valley Signal April 4, 2010--
Cleanup of the Whittaker-Bermite site - a nearly 1,000-acre chunk of polluted land in the middle of Santa Clarita - is taking considerably longer than expected due to the complexity of the task, officials said.
Meantime, the clock is ticking on an insurance policy that is paying the lion's share of the cleanup. In 2004, a rough estimated cost for both the soil and the groundwater projects was $200 million.
"We cannot just be cowboys and run on our own," said Hassan Amini, geologist for the primary contractor handling the cleanup.
"There are parties that we need to bring ... up to speed. The review process takes time," Amini said.
The 996-acre brownfield was an operating munitions plant from the 1930s - when the Santa Clarita Valley was little more than a sleepy cow town with some remote industry - until it closed in 1987.
The original business was called the Bermite Powder Co., but in 1967 Whittaker Corp. bought the site and it was renamed Whittaker-Bermite.
During the 60 years or so the plant was in operation, contaminants seeped into the ground. Some made it into the Santa Clarita Valley's two aquifers, which provide drinking water to local residents. Pumping from all wells in contaminated areas has been halted.
But it wasn't until the late 1990s that a serious cleanup effort began under the supervision of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.
A timeline set in 2003 has the entire site cleaned up by August 2010. But Amini said that timeline was unrealistic.
Although the property is now owned by another firm, Whittaker - through its insurer - is responsible for cleaning it up. Besides Whittaker's main contractor, AMEC Geomatrix Consultants Inc., are half a dozen to a dozen subcontractors involved with digging, extraction, testing and removing the toxins, said Jose Diaz, Department of Toxic Substances Control project manager for the site.
With the process taking so much longer than anticipated, Diaz said Whittaker's insurance could run out before the job is finished. He said the policy term expires later this decade.
Each step of the way during the cleanup process, Whittaker's insurer, AIG, must give approval, Diaz said.
There were two investigations of the turret two explosions both of which remained classified for nearly a decade. The supporting documentation for the reports is still unavailable. The first was the initial one officer investigation was declassified on 31 December 1979. I will attempt to separate what I know from what I believe. The line below is the break point.
I obtained a copy through a Freedom of Information Act request in 1981. The first copy was heavily redacted. Upon an appeal I was sent a much less redacted copy. I was surprised during the request that I was called at my job at the Defense Logistic Agency and asked why I wanted it. The officer calling mentioned that quite a few court martials came out of the 1972 cruise. I was surprised. I didn't recall them, they had been handled very quietly. Later the official investigation Naval Ordnance Systems Command (NavOrd) was declassified. That investigation was obtained by the Newport News Association and is published here.
The preliminary report "RECORD OF PROCEEDING OF FORMAL ONE OFFICER INVESTIGATION CONVENED ON BOARD USS NEWPORT NEWS (CA-148) BY ORDER OF COMMANDER SEVENTH FLEET" says:
11. An initial effort was made to complete this investigation as unclassified. Some evidence, however, necessary to the establishment of findings of fact and opinions has been classified and, therefore, the overall classification of the report is Confidential. In some instances supporting evidence has been of higher classification. In each case, however, the highly classified evidence has been generally redundant upon some of the lower classification. In such cases only the lower classification evidence has been included.
First some words about government contracts and liability. If two parties enter into an agreement the buyer promises to pay a certain amount in exchange for supplies or services. When the seller delivers the product and the buyer pays the agreed upon amount the agreement is over and neither side has further rights or responsibilities.
Commercial items generally have some implied warranty. You usually waive all rights when you click off all of those End User License Agreements you never read, but in theory they exist. Products are supposed to do what a reasonable person using them, as intended, can expect them to do. A coffee cup should not melt when hot water is poured in it. If it does you could expect to receive redress from the person who sold it to you. However, if you tell a someone to make a cup out of paraffin, and get burned while trying to drink from it the maker is not responsible. It was your specifications and he has no liability.
During the sixties most Department of Defense buying was done with Military Specifications (Mil Specs). The specifications were detailed and would require the items be made with certain materials and specific processes. The Government has the right to inspect at anytime up through product acceptance. Once the Inspection and Acceptance form was signed the material belonged to the Government and the all contractual obligations end upon final payment.
The vendor in theory could be liable if they could be shown to have deliberately and fraudulently performed under the contract and the Government could not have known about the malfeasance before a hidden defect was discovered. These rights however are carefully circumscribed in weapons systems or large complex contracts by a Limitation of Liability clause. A company might be liable if an executive was able to prove in court that he meant to do it and acted within his scope of his authority, but then the testimony would probably be thrown out since the witness was obviously mentally incompetent.
The current version is below, but it hasn't changed much over the years:
Limitation of Liability (Feb 1997)
(a) Except as provided in paragraphs (b) and (c) below, and except for remedies expressly provided elsewhere in this contract, the Contractor shall not be liable for loss of or damage to property of the Government (excluding the supplies delivered under this contract) that --
(1) Occurs after Government acceptance of the supplies delivered under this contract; and
(2) Results from any defects or deficiencies in the supplies.
(b) The limitation of liability under paragraph (a) of this clause shall not apply when a defect or deficiency in, or the Government’s acceptance of, the supplies results from willful misconduct or lack of good faith on the part of any of the Contractor’s managerial personnel. The term “Contractor’s managerial personnel,” as used in this clause, means the Contractor’s directors, officers, and any of the Contractor’s managers, superintendents, or equivalent representatives who have supervision or direction of --
(1) All or substantially all of the Contractor’s business;
(2) All or substantially all of the Contractor’s operations at any one plant, laboratory, or separate location at which the contract is being performed; or
(3) A separate and complete major industrial operation connected with the performance of this contract.
(c) If the Contractor carries insurance, or has established a reserve for self-insurance, covering liability for loss or damage suffered by the Government through purchase or use of the supplies required to be delivered under this contract, the Contractor shall be liable to the Government, to the extent of such insurance or reserve, for loss of or damage to property of the Government occurring after Government acceptance of, and resulting from any defects or deficiencies in, the supplies delivered under this contract.
(End of Clause)
The intent of this clause is to have the Government adsorb the risks inherent in these types of contracts. This theoretically lowers the price of the contracts by relieving the companies of keeping large reserves or insurance which would be needed to compensate those injured by inherently dangerous products, and mitigating the risks of later legal action. The Government is sovereign and can not be sued without its permission. Government officials generally cannot be held liable for official actions no matter how ill advised.
Given the above and the fact that the news was filled with other issues there were never any follow-up reports about the explosion on board the USS Newport News. The projectiles had been manufactured three or four years earlier and investigation of the manufacture of the material would be difficult. In December of 1972 the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam began. A peace agreement was reached in January 1973 and the prisoners of war came home. US participation in what was then its longest war was over without a victory. The Watergate Scandal began to percolate during 1973. Except to examine unrest in the military and bemoan the perceived shortcomings of the enlisted personnel in the war the country and the Government did its best to turn its back on the war and those who fought in it.
After one day of headlines the largest US loss of life in a combat event in 1972 was forgotten.
From the summary of the Naval Ordnance document:
2. (U) [unclassified] The explosion resulted from the high-order detonation of a projectile in the fore of the center gun of turret two, which vented mainly to the inside of the turret. By some mechanism not clearly apparent, this ignited additional powder charges in all three hoists. The resulting high-energy flame propagated downward almost instantly from charge to charge in the hoists, blowing apart the hoist casings between decks in the way of ignited charges, until for some reason also not apparent, the propagation stopped just above the handling room level. Some 720 pounds of powder burned in the hoists. Twenty men died.
3. (C) [confidential] If flame propagation down the hoists had extended a few feet further, into the handling room level below the armor deck, the extent of possible further damage and casualties might have been catastrophic. The loading scuttles at the bottom of the hoists would have been no protection if the hoists themselves had blown apart, as they did in the levels above. Events could then have led to a magazine explosion, from which the survival of the ship herself would have been in question.
4. (C) In our judgment this casualty was not caused by inadequate manning, training, experience, maintenance, or operating procedures in NEWPORT NEWS; nor by defective design of the material involved. Rather, we conclude that it was caused by the premature functioning of the projectile's auxiliary detonating fuze manufacture and inadequate product acceptance inspection.
From the one man report: The projectile traveled a total of 35 inches from its initial position. In this interval the projectile detonated. Products of combustion of the propellant and projectile explosive were vented into the turret. As a result of conflagration the entire crew of the turret proper and both projectile decks perished. The entire crew of the powder handling deck level and magazines escaped from the turret.
Extensive volumes of smoke and toxic gases engulfed the powder handling deck and penetrated up the trunk into surrounding spaces. As a result two of the turret crew having escaped and one other crew member not otherwise associated subsequently succumbed.
There is no recorded case in all history of eight-inch projectiles in the United States Navy of an in-bore premature explosion.
Just to make the point that we in the crew did our jobs here is paragraph five from the introduction of the body of the NavOrd report:
5. We noted with satisfaction the evidence that throughout this deployment the ship's performance had been outstanding, and that this had extended to the emergency actions taken in this casualty.
Between the two reports, the first less formal, the second approved a board of admirals there is a glaring difference. Paragraph 48 of the Opinions section is:
48. That while the possibility of sabotage or malicious damage to the equipment or the ammunition for Turret Two in this incident cannot be wholly discounted, there is no evidence that such was involved and no rational point at which to commence any examination of that possibility.
The released NavOrd report nowhere uses the word sabotage, and does not even speculate about how the ammunition came to be in an armed state. It just appears on the ship. They were quite concerned about the failure of the inspectors to discover a shell was delivered in an armed state. This gave the Navy support in their bureaucratic battle to take back job slots for inspectors which had been given to the Defense Logistics Agency. Newspaper stories published before the Newport News returned to port in Subic Bay contained statements from Navy spokesmen that the explosion was not the result of sabotage.
Familiar causes for inbore explosions were ruled out. The gun was not double loaded. It was not a misfire in a hot barrel. Also obstruction in the bore, a too tight barrel liner, and an oversized projectile were ruled out. The two probable causes were a defect in the base of the shell which allowed hot gases from the powder to set off the shell or a fuse which was armed upon firing. The most probable cause for premature explosion was initially considered to be a crack in the base or missing gas check seal in the shell. That was ruled out because the distance the shell traveled down the barrel meant that the explosion happened in less than a millisecond after the powder was fired. Projectiles set off by the powder often get outside of the barrel before the explosion or at least much further than within the first 35 inches of travel.
The NavOrd report states:
26. The evidence noted in the preceding paragraph appears to establish that the casualty resulted from a nose-initiated high order detonation, which occurred within a fraction of a millisecond after propellant ignition. (This supersedes our initial judgment, and that of other experienced observers at Subic, that the detonation was low order, about .007 seconds after detonation, hence most probably caused by a defective projectile base seal.)
27. All experience with D-loaded projectiles seems to indicate that such a detonation, within that reaction time, could result only from initiation by the tetryl booster of the nose ADF.
28. In our judgment, the only realistic explanation as to how the latter could have occurred must include the requirement that the fuze rotor (which carries the primer) was in the armed position before the gun was fired. This is because we understand that tests have demonstrated that accidental firing of the ADF primer, by whatever cause, will not fire the booster unless the rotor is armed; and we visualize no mechanism for firing the ADF booster, within the reaction time of this casualty, except by firing the ADF primer. The possibility that the rotor was in fact armed as here postulated is supported by the evidence note in paragraph 16.Further Fuze Implications
30. The discovery of armed fuze components in service projectiles (paragraph 16) emphasizes the question of how such a situation could be permitted to exist. Navy standards enforced for half a century required total, absolute, and unvarying adherence to the most rigorous standards of explosive safety, reflected among other things in ordnance safety precautions long ago described as having been written in blood. Somewhere in recent years those standards have been defaulted, and the lives of a turret crew have been added to the cost.
31. Where that malfeasance occurred in this case is not hard to find. The auxiliary detonating fuzes here concerned have been identified by manufacturer, lot number, and date. All thus far discovered with safety defects, as well as all those known to be in NEWPORT NEWS ammunition, were manufactured under two contracts with the Bermite Powder Company in 1968 and 1969, and were “inspected” by the Defense Contract Administration Services (DCAS), specifically DCASD, Van Nuys, in accordance with technical requirements which are the responsibility of COMNAVORDSYSCOM assigned by him to the Naval Ammunition Production Engineering Center (NAPEC), Crane, Indiana.
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Up until now I have tried to keep this as opinion free as possible. Parts
one and
four are really what I care about. But just because a some point in my life I was near where these people for a time and in a place does not mean my thoughts are anything like what theirs might be if they had lived. Their voices were stilled years ago.
I still have one.
The purpose of war is for great leaders to struggle mightily against each other and when it is all over the winner gets to gather up the tombstones of the dead and build a monument to themselves. What makes Maya Yang Lin such an uncommon genius she found a way to memorialize the men and woman in the war without glorifying the war. It is also what makes those who glorify war so irritated when actual veterans show up for their celebrations. Living veterans didn't even contribute to the purpose of the war and are an embarrassing reminder of the costs.
The fuze may have been intentionally set to armed. We will never know. If the Navy ever considered this possibility there is no public record. Last December I wrote requests to both of my senators Bob Casey and Pat Toomey and requested they ask the Navy. They forwarded the question to the Navy. I have heard no reply. It would be a decent thing for them to say it was considered but we have no way of knowing. Actually saying the cost of knowing is too risky to ask would be a less cowardly response than not answering. I do realize that Senator's offices can only reply to the swamp of form letters with form letters.
If one or two of the armed projectiles had been used while we were in Haiphong or some other mission while the ship was under return fire, it would have been lost with all hands and the loss could never be explained. Still I believe someone committed mass murder and never was even looked for.
There was apparently some lawsuits by the relatives of the casualties which must have been settled out of court leaving no record or findings.
Law was followed and order was maintained.
I've got one more diary to write on this series and I am done.
Link to rest of diaries in series. Two and three.
Two suggestions.
1) Buy Kyle Longley's just published book The Morenci Marines A Tale of Small Town America and the Vietnam War. It's about people I knew.
2) Get the hell out of Afghanistan.
9:52 PM PT: Corrected link to Part One