More than three and a half million
Americans served in the United States Navy during the Second World War the
expansion of the US Navy during the war was astounding the Navy added thousands
of ships by the end of the war the United States Navy accounted for more
than 70% of the entire world's number and gross tonnage of naval vessels over
a thousand tons. And while we tend to focus on the warships, we forget that
millions of those sailors served aboard the Navy's thousands and thousands of
supply support and auxilary ships and that those men also risked their lives
even if they weren't in frontline combat. The November,1944 explosion of the
ammunition ship USS Mount Hood, barely even acknowledged by the Navy at the
time, was illustrative of those risks. It is history a deserves to be remembered.
The ship that would eventually be named USS Mount Hood was laid down originally
on September 28th 1943 as SS Marco Polo built by the North Carolina shipbuilding
company in Wilmington North Carolina the ship was a type C2 vessel a design
created by the U.S. Maritime Commission in 1937 and 1938. These all purpose cargo
ships had five holds and a design speed of 15.5 knots. The ship was built on a
contract for the U.S. Maritime Commission, an independent agency of the
federal government established in 1936 and intended to facilitate a merchant
shipbuilding program. One hundred and seventy two type C2 vessels were built
in U.S.shipyards between 1938 and 1975. Renamed Mount Hood after the mountain in
the Cascade Range in Oregon on November 10th, The ship, U.S. Maritime Commission
hull number 1358 was launched November 28th. Like many C2 ships, the Mount Hood
was taken into the US Navy on a loan charter basis. That meant the ship would
be operated by the Navy but the title would still be held by the Maritime
Commission. The idea was that after the war, the ship would revert to the
Maritime Commission and could be sold to private interests to facilitate merchant
shipping. Many ships acquired by the Navy on a loan charter basis were
specifically modified for Navy use. Mount Hood was one of those modified ships
converted into an ammunition ship type C2 - -
-S-AJ1, the first of her class, at the Norfolk Navy Yard by the Norfolk
shipbuilding and dry dock company. Ammunition ships are cargo vessels
specifically designed to carry ammunition for naval ships and aircraft.
As modified the USS Mount Hood displaced thirteen thousand nine hundred and ten
long tons, was four hundred fifty nine foot two inches long with a beam of 63
feet and a draught of twenty eight foot three inches. The ship had a cargo
capacity of seven thousand seven hundred deadweight tons, and a complement of 267
officers and men. The USS Mount Hood was commissioned on July 1st, 1944. After a
brief cruise for shakedown and fitting-out, was assigned to the Pacific,
was loaded with ammunition at Norfolk Virginia, departed August 21st, transited
the Panama Canal six days later, and arrived at Seeadler Harbor in the
Admiralty Islands on September 22nd Seeadler Harbor is located on Manus
Island the largest island of the Admiralty islands, an archipelago group
to the north of New Guinea in the South Pacific Ocean the Admiralty islands had been
administered as part of German New Guinea from 1884 to 1914. Seeadler means
"sea eagle" in German and the harbor was named after a German ship. The Admiralty
islands were occupied by the Japanese at the outset of the war, had been liberated
in a hard-fought campaign under General Douglas MacArthur in the spring, and by
September Seeadler Harbor had been transformed into a large base including
wharves and an airbase that served as a staging area for further World War Two
operations in New Guinea and the Philippines. At the time of USS Mount
Hood's arrival Seeadler harbor was utilized as a major site of repair and
logistical support for ships participating in the Philippine invasion
and those operating in the South Pacific area. According to the Navy Board of
Investigation the busy harbor regularly included between 200 and 600 ships. The
Mount Hood was used as a primary source of issue of ammunition to all types of
ships of the U.S. Third Fleet. The ship was described as extremely active,
delivering ammunition to ships in all parts of the harbor, and was frequently
called upon to issue ammunition to combatant ships at short notice.
The Navy Board of Investigation noted that speed of transferring ammunition
was ever of prime necessity. Because of this critical role the Mount Hood was
moved from a less congested part of the harbor that had been reserved for
ammunition ships to a more central berthing. This
represented a risk, as it meant that many more ships would be in close proximity
to a ship that was literally packed with ordnance. But a discussion by the
squadron ordnance officer, the harbor master and the captain of the Mount Hood
determined that the need to quickly supply ammunition was more important. The
central anchorage lessened the distance needed to supply ammunition to
other ships, and facilitated communication with the staff of the
service squadron. The berth also placed Mount Hood in the smoothest water
possible, and allowed a cruiser to be placed alongside the Mount Hood for
ammunition transfer. The morning of November 10th, naval reserve lieutenant
Lester Wallace, the Mount Hood's communications officer went ashore with
13 enlisted men. Another four enlisted men went ashore in a second boat. Wallace had to pick up new communication manuals and other publications. The other
men also had errands- some had dental appointments, some were visiting the base
chaplain, some were mail clerks picking up the mail. Two men were being taken to
the base brig to face court-martial. The men arrived on shore at around 8:30 in
the morning. The Mount Hood was already busy, with
several small boats alongside already transferring ammunition. At the time
Mount Hood had approximately 3,800 tons of ammunition on board, including 250,
five hundred, and thousand pound bombs, as well as fuses, rockets, smokeless powder,
and ammunition and projectiles of numerous sizes. The primary method of
transferring ammunition was with the small boats called landing craft
mechanized or LCMs. These 50-foot open-topped shallow drought vessels were
designed to carry vehicles, but were also used to carry stores. That morning there
at least nine LCMs alongside Mount Hood, along with a pontoon lighter, each
loading or unloading various types of ordnance. The ship was busy and the
hatches of all five holds were open and working. The day was described as bright
and sunshiny when 29 year old lieutenant Wallace and the sailors of Mount Hood
were walking along the beach to the base. Wallace said that one of the sailors,
with a startled look in his eye, shouted "LOOK!" and pointed seaward. There was a
bright flash and two quick explosions. The investigation
determined that around 8:55 a.m. an explosion, evidenced by flame and smoke,
amidships near number three or four hold
rose to above mast height. Within a few seconds at the most,
the report concluded, most of the ammunition aboard USS Mount Hood
was set off . U.S.S. Argonne, the flagship of the commander of service squadron 10- the 448
foot floating headquarters of the service fleet at Seeadler
lay moored to the buoy at berth 14, 1,100 yards away. Argonne's captain commander T.H. Escott, was outside his cabin when Mount Hood exploded. "I was standing outside my
cabin in conversation with the executive officer. By the time we'd recovered our
stance from the force of the explosion and faced outboard, the area in the
vicinity of berth 380, where Mount Hood had been moored, was completely shrouded
in a pall of dense black smoke. It was not possible to see anything worth
reporting. A second or so hereafter fragments of steel and shrapnel became
falling on and around the ship. Though some 4,500 yards away, Wallace and the
men on shore were thrown to the ground they rushed up and ran back to their
small boat. Wallace reported "We headed toward the Mount Hood, but we found nothing but
debris. So we went back and reported to the commander of the base what we'd seen
and helped him as much as we could to determine what happened.
The review board reported "A terrific explosion occurred, smoke obscuring the
ship and surrounding vicinity for a radius of five hundred yards on all
sides. The smoke mushroom to a height of approximately seven thousand feet. When
it had lifted from the waters a few minute later, only small pieces of debris
were to be seen. The ship had disappeared And by "disappeared" the report meant
simply gone. The largest piece at the more than 400 foot long vessel that has
ever been found, was a piece of hull that was some 16 foot by 10 foot. The LCMs
alongside were also disintegrated. No human remains were ever found.
Officially 327 men, Mount Hood's crew, the crews of small vessels nearby, and other
sailors thrown overboard and never recovered, were listed as missing. Wallace
and the 17 men who had been on shore at the time of the explosion, and just one
other man who had been aboard another ship, and had been injured, were all that
was left of Mount Hood's crew. Mount Hood's anchorage had been at about 19
fathoms, or around 114 feet above the ocean bottom, and yet the explosion was
so powerful that it dug a crater in the bottom of the ocean
a thousand feet long, 200 feet wide, and between 30 and 40 feet deep. Men on shore two and
a half miles away were thrown to the ground, and the ship
rained shrapnel and unexploded ordnance on all the ships around it, doing severe
damage to every ship within about 2,000 feet and damaging some ships that were
as far away as 6500 feet. Argonne took substantial damage from the falling
debris. including two men killed. Escott noted some 221 pieces of debris ranging
in size from 1 to 150 pounds were recovered on board totalling 1,300
pounds. The ship's 12-inch searchlight was
destroyed, 5 transmitting antennas broken away, and steam, fresh water and
salt water lines ruptured, as well as taking extensive damage from concussion.
The John C. Butler class destroyer escort USS Oberrender was 1100 yards
away from Mount Hood. Flaming debris rained down on the ship, killing one
sailor outright and knocking another overboard who was never recovered and
listed among the missing. 17 members of Oberrender's crew were injured. The ship
was so badly damaged, suffering two large holes in the hull and many punctures
above and below the waterline, as well as damage to the wiring, piping systems, and
topside equipment, that it had to be towed to drydock and spend the rest of the
month in repairs. Three crew members were killed and 70 were wounded aboard
the attack cargo ship USS Alhena, 25 of them seriously.
Alhena herself suffered extensive damage above decks, which necessitated some six
weeks of repair work. The story of one of Alhena's sailors injured in the explosion,
William Knight, was described in a memoir written later by his son. "White-hot
shards of Steel fragmentation embedded themselves in his head, knocking him out
of the gunner's position. The force of the shrapnel injury sent him sprawling over
the deck, and he vaguely heard someone scream "corpsman!" just before everything
went black. The injury eventually required 120 days of hospitalization.
William Knight's severe injury was an example of the random nature of the
death and injury that came from the falling debris, It was a traumatic event in
the life of a man who lived a traumatic life. The name William Knight was
actually a false name that was intended, according to the research done by his
son, to hide the name of his real father- gangster Al Capone. The random nature of
the shrapnel was also shown aboard the Destroyer tender
USS Piedmont. Although some 3,500 yards away, a 250-pound
aerial bomb penetrated the movie locker on the boat deck, while another pierced
the fo'c'sle and plowed through a tier of bunks. Amazingly neither bomb exploded,
and no one was injured in either compartment. But one man was killed when
he was hit directly on the head by the base of a 5-inch ammunition shell. But by
far the worst damage was done to the Luzon class internal combustion engine
repair ship USS Mindanao, just 350 yards away and broadside to the blast, in
between Mount Hood and USS Argonne. Mindanao was ripped by the explosion and
shrapnel, all crew members who were topside were killed outright and many
more were killed and wounded below deck. A fleet of small vessels attended the
ship's crew and damage. Mindanao suffered 23 killed and 174 wounded in the
explosion. A member of Mount Hood's crew, Lt Wilfred D Collie, was aboard
Mindanao, and was among those killed. His were the only remains of Mount Hood's crew
that could be identified. In all, 26 ships and 33 smaller vessels were damaged in
addition to those destroyed in the explosion. The navy estimated that
repairs required more than a hundred seven thousand man-hours. Forty-five men
were known killed, 327 were listed as missing, and another 371 injured. The 743
casualties represented the second-worst Pacific Fleet base disaster of the war-
second only to Pearl Harbor. Because of wartime restrictions, the Navy didn't
even acknowledge the explosion of the Mount Hood until December 5th. And even
then the report didn't talk about the severity of the damage, it merely read
"The 13,733 ton ammunition ship Mount Hood was lost when it accidentally
blew up at an advanced base in the Central Pacific." The Navy established a
review board to discover the cause of the explosion.
lieutenant Wallace, as the senior survivor of USS Mount Hood, was
interviewed, but couldn't offer much detail about the explosion.
He noted that "conditions appeared to be normal when I left the ship." He concluded
"I guess no one will ever know what really happened.
She just blew. We had never had an explosion of any kind on the Mount Hood
before that. The review concluded that the explosions had not been caused by enemy
action. While the exact cause could not be determined, the report concluded
"Since the possibility of enemy action appears to have been remote, the most
probable cause of the accident was rough handling of the ammunition while loading
or unloading." The report identified many errors in ammunition handling aboard the
Mount Hood, noting that ship had a relatively inexperienced crew, that there
was a lack of leadership among the officers, and a lack of discipline among
the crew. The report also criticized placing the ship in such a central
location, rather than putting it in a more remote location that was reserved
for ammunition ships. But Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in chief for the United
States Pacific Fleet and Pacific ocean areas, refused to concur with any finding
faulting the officers involved, saying that "The technical mistakes made by the
officers were errors in judgment resulting from a keen desire to meet
necessary military commitments and move on with the progress of the war. The
exigencies of war will always require the acceptance of certain operational
hazards." Nimitz's fighting may have been intended to protect the reputations of
the officers who died. The report went so far as to censor out the names of the
officers involved. In addition to emphasizing the already existing rules
for ordnance handling, the report gave three specific recommendations: One:
wherever practicable ammunition ships should be berthed at least 1,100 yards
from other ships and installations. Two: an effort should be made to maintain a
level of internal organization and administration to a standard higher than
that which apparently existed aboard USS Mount Hood, and three: that port
regulations require regular inspection and supervision of ammunition ships. And
thus the explosion aboard Mount Hood was barely reported, written off as an
"operational hazard," and the war went on. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the
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My great uncle was on that ship and was reported missing after the explosion and was only officially KIA close to the end of the war 😢. I have his folded flag and is the pride of my collection.