OCR Text |
Show FORTY-EIGHT ARE BLOWN 10 DEATH ! i FORWARD GUN TURRET ON U. 1 S. BATTLESHIP MISSISSIPPI EXPLODES Unexpected and Sudden Officers and Crew are Swept to Eternity by Premature Ex. plosion San Pedro. Forty-eight men three officers and forty-five enlisted men had their lives snuffed out aboard the dreadnaught Mississippi Thursday in the navy's greatest peacetime disaster, a disaster that brought to a tragic climax a week of sham battles and target practice, j Aboard the hospital ship Relief f lay the dead, killed by a premature explosion in the Missippi's N'o 2 turret, tur-ret, and the injured. Abroad the U. S. S. New Mexico, f'airship of division divi-sion N'o. 4 of the battle fleet, members mem-bers of the naval board of inquiry prepared to open their investigation of the disaster. Aboard the Mississippi, Missis-sippi, anchored outside the breakwater, break-water, officers and men watched the flame shattered turret where a four-teen-inch gun, with an as yet ur.ex-ploded ur.ex-ploded charge jammed in its breech, meant that the danger of still another anoth-er explosion had not yet passea. It was a "flarebnck" from one of these guns that shot death in flames' and poisonous pases back into the turret through its open breech. A second, the breech locked, let loose in the harbor here as the Mississippi! steamed home with its dead and in-j jured from the drill grounds and hur-i led a steel projectile dangerously j near to an outbound passenger liner. Meanwhile this harbor community' was overrun with messenger boys,' their pockets stuffed with telegrams; envelopes containing the anxfous quires of mothers, wives, sweet-J hearts from all parts of the United States. Through the gloom of the eariy morning hours1 they hurried lack and forth in the darkened and deserted streets. Then came automobiles from near-j by cities and towns, carrying rcla-j tives or f Herds of the dead and injured. in-jured. Of the injured there were strange ly few. With a death list close to the half hundred mark, only eight men were numbered among the hurt, and the injuries of these were com j paratively slight, consi.-tinir mainly j of n.inor bums and lacerations. Just how the fatal explosion occurred oc-curred was still undetermined, though from witnesses aboard the Mississippi Mississip-pi ?-,d aboard other vessels near wheie the disaster broke up their scheduled target practice a fairly comprehensive picture of the accident was obtjiined. I The battleships Mississippi, Ten-cCs;-re, Idaho and California, the latter lat-ter towing the target, were off San Clcmente island, forty-five miles from here, and were engaging in secret gunnery practice, a feature of which was mass firing by thirty six f ourteen-im h rifles trained on a single target. |