Off San Clemente

ARMY & NAVY

The waters of the Pacific rolled blue and calm one day last week as a gunner aboard the U. S. S. Wyoming, engaged in war games off San Clemente Island, took his ramrod to seat a shell in the breech of a 5-in. gun which was participating in a barrage to cover a landing party of Marines. The gunner's thrust was his last. As he shoved home the shell, up with a roar went the breech in a great red flare of flame and blood against the blue. "I saw one boy sort of drift past me," recounted a survivor, "floating through the air, half of his head shot off, and land on the deck. It was awful."

Apparently the fuse cap on the shell's nose, which detonates it when it strikes its target, had exploded prematurely. When the smoke cleared, the captain and three members of the Marine gun crew were dead, three others lay dying, ten were injured. The 26-year-old Wyoming, demilitarized and used as a training ship since the London Naval Armament Limitation Conference of 1930, is the Navy's second oldest battleship. A court of inquiry promptly met to investigate the Navy's second fatal explosion on the San Clemente training grounds within seven months. The Navy's most disastrous explosion along the Pacific Coast was off San Pedro 13 years ago when a blast aboard the U. S. S. Mississippi killed 48.

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