Casualties Of Peace

After the Navy suffered a string of peacetime casualties in recent weeks from shipboard fires, collisions and plane crashes that left ten dead and 71 injured, it was ready for an unprecedented step. For two days last week, the Navy conducted a service-wide "stand-down." Though essential functions such as drug interdiction and Persian Gulf ship movements continued, the service halted all routine operations for two days while every officer and sailor reviewed safety procedures.

The Navy's problems with safety may not all be a matter of preparedness among its crews. TIME has learned that the Naval Investigative Service is looking into whether Scott Aviation, a defense contractor based in Lancaster, N.Y., sold the Navy smoke-protection gear that the company knew did not work as intended. Since 1981 the Navy has purchased more than 450,000 of Scott's Emergency Escape Breathing Devices, hoodlike units that fit over the head and neck to provide breathable air while blocking the entry of toxic fumes. They are now used on virtually all naval vessels except submarines.

| Christopher Duvall, who was chief test engineer at Scott Aviation from 1983 until 1985, has told naval investigators the company tested the device in a way that would not properly measure its ability to protect the wearer. Since human tests of the device could not involve actual toxic gases, the Navy called for testing with salt or vegetable-oil aerosols. Duvall says the company knew the device could scrub out those relatively large particles but not the much smaller molecules of poisonous gases. Scott Aviation did not point this out to the Navy. According to Duvall, when more meaningful tests were performed at his insistence, the devices failed. He says that the company ordered him to destroy the results and that he later resigned in frustration.

After an earlier attempt to bring his claims to the attention of the Navy met with inaction, Duvall approached the Navy Investigative Service regional fraud office in San Diego two years ago. That visit led to the current investigation. Now new tests by both the Navy and the Federal Aviation Administration show that the smoke masks offer just about one-tenth the protection required by service specifications. A spokesman for the company would say only, "We do not think Mr. Duvall is correct." Meanwhile, the hoods are still in use.