Port Chicago disaster

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Image:Portchicago.jpg The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly explosion that took place on July 17 1944 at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, in the United States. Ammunition being loaded aboard cargo vessels bound for the war in the Pacific exploded, killing 320 sailors and civilians, and injuring more than 400 others. Most of the dead and injured were African-American recruits, and the continuing unsafe conditions even after the disaster resulted in a number of servicemen refusing to work, known as the Port Chicago Mutiny, a month later.

1 Background
2 The mutiny
3 Conspiracy theories
4 See also
5 External links

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Background

The town of Port Chicago, California, was located on Suisun Bay in the estuary of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, connected to the Pacific Ocean via San Francisco Bay. This was the site of a U. S. Navy munitions depot which was later renamed the Concord Naval Weapons Station. Bombs, shells, mines, and other explosive ordnance devices were transferred from railcars to ships, whence they would be moved to locations in the Pacific Theatre.

On July 17 1944, a merchant ship docked at Port Chicago, the SS Quinault Victory, was being prepared to take on cargo. Another merchant ship, the SS E.A. Bryan, was across the platform from it, in the process of being loaded with almost 5,000 tons of high explosives, bombs, depth charges, and ammunition. On the pier were sixteen rail cars with over 450 more tons of explosives.

At 10:18 p.m., an explosion rang from the pier and a fire was started. Six seconds later, a more powerful explosion as the entire contents of the SS E.A. Bryan simultaneously detonated, destroying the pier and much of the surrounding town and area with an explosive force felt as far as Boulder City, Nevada, about 500 miles (800 km) away. Chunks of metal and wood were flung thousands of feet into the air, and windows in the surrounding towns were shattered, causing many injuries. Image:Portchicago2.jpg The 320 sailors on duty were killed instantly, 390 others were injured. Navy personnel worked quickly to contain the fires and to prevent other explosions from occurring. The nearby town was evacuated.

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The mutiny

After the fires had been contained, the gruesome task of cleaning up remained—body parts and corpses littered the bay and port. Less than a month later, these same sailors involved in the cleanup of their colleagues were themselves asked to resume the dangerous task of ammunition loading.

Of the deaths from the explosion, 202 were African-Americans, and the accident accounted for 15 percent of all African-American casualties in World War II. The prevalence of using almost exclusively African-Americans for dangerous jobs like loading ammunitions was resented by the sailors, and the safety conditions which had lead to the explosion had not been rectified. On August 9 1944 (three weeks after the disaster), 258 out of the 320 African-American sailors in the ordnance battalion refused to load any ammunition, in what was later branded the Port Chicago mutiny. It was seen as underscoring the tense race relations in the armed forces at the time.

Two hundred and eight sailors were convicted in summary courts-martial, and received bad conduct discharges. The remaining 50 were found guilty of mutiny in a subsequent court martial, and were sentenced to 8 and 15 years of hard labor, although they eventually received clemency in 1946. In 1999, President Bill Clinton granted a pardon to Freddie Meeks, one of the few remaining survivors of the 50 court-martialed sailors.

The cause of the explosion at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine was never determined, although it was attributed to some sort of mistake in the loading of the torpedoes and other ordnance into the ship, which was notably difficult work, especially under rushed conditions.

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Conspiracy theories

One journalist, Peter Vogel, maintains the explosion was caused by a nuclear bomb, based on the discovery of a supposed Los Alamos document from 1944 which contains the line, "Ball of fire mushroom out at 18,000 ft in typical Port Chicago fashion" in the description of a hypothetical atomic weapon. [1]

However, during the development of the first atomic weapons, it was common for Manhattan Project workers to use comparative explosions such as the one which happened at Port Chicago in order to give relative estimates on damage and explosive behavior. For Vogel's theory to be true, all previous Manhattan Project historiography — which indicates that there would not have been enough enriched uranium or plutonium to construct an atomic bomb by July 1944 — would have to be incorrect, and all references to such a plan would have had to be systematically eliminated from documents and kept deeply secret for the many decades which have since passed. Furthermore, the atomic bomb which was detonated over Hiroshima in 1945 produced many residual health effects on the survivors, none of which have ever been observed in Port Chicago survivors and city residents.

Image:Port-Chicago-memorial.jpg

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