{"id":72219,"date":"2017-05-22T09:30:47","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T13:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72219"},"modified":"2017-05-22T10:25:23","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T14:25:23","slug":"the-west-loch-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=72219","title":{"rendered":"The West Loch incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On May 21, 1944, 73 years ago yesterday, sailors in Pearl Harbor were loading ammunition onto several Landing Ship Tankers (LSTs) in preparation for the US invasion to take back the Marianna Islands from the Japanese when tragedy struck<\/a>;<\/p>\n

At 15:08, LST-353, moored at Tare 8, exploded, sending a large fireball into the sky. The noise was heard miles away at Pearl Harbor Headquarters. More explosions of increasing intensity followed, sparking fears of a Japanese attack or even an earthquake. Fire and debris raining down on the fuel and munitions stored on the decks of other LSTs had caused an explosive chain reaction. Within minutes, 200 men had been blown into the water. Eleven wooden buildings on the shore were destroyed and vehicles blown on their side. In all, 20 buildings were damaged.<\/p>\n

Initial efforts by the crews to fight the fires were impeded by the heat, although some ships further away managed to muster damage control parties. Many of the LSTs tied together at Tare 8 began to sink. Within the hour, Admiral Richmond K. Turner was directing fire-fighting efforts from a launch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ABC7 News<\/a> spoke with a local survivor of the blast, 91-year-old Rod Plaisted;<\/p>\n

Plaisted was an 18-year-old sailor in May of 1944, stationed at Pearl Harbor’s West Loch area, three years after the Japanese attack.<\/p>\n

Plaisted was one of many men moving bullets and bombs amid hundreds of ships getting ready for the invasion of Saipan when he looked up and saw flames on one ship, then a huge explosion launched tons of metal into the air.<\/p>\n

“I looked at it thinking, wow, that is really something to see. That’s something to remember, then it occurred to me what goes up comes down,” said Plaisted.<\/p>\n

That’s when he made a run for it dodging white hot debris the entire way.<\/p>\n

“Finally stuff was starting to hit and I went down and curled up like that.” Said Plaisted, while imitating a fetal position.<\/p>\n

Once Plaisted finally got up he ran to a bomb shelter, just in time to see a fellow sailor killed by white hot metal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Wiki, 163 sailors lost their lives and another 395 were injured in the explosion that burned for twenty-four hours. The Pentagon issued a press blackout order that lasted until 1960 when details were finally released. Wiki summarizes the conclusions of the resulting investigation.<\/p>\n

A subsequent Naval Board of Inquiry never determined the exact cause of the disaster but concluded that the initial explosion was caused when a mortar round aboard LST-353 detonated during an unloading operation because it was either dropped or went off when gasoline vapors ignited. The incident \u2013 together with the Port Chicago disaster two months later \u2013 led to major changes in weapon handling practices within the United States Navy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 21, 1944, 73 years ago yesterday, sailors in Pearl Harbor were loading ammunition onto … The West Loch incident<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}