A large part of my writing in other media concerns WWII US Navy ships and other vessels...I chose to research and chronicle mostly the activity of the thousands of auxiliary ships which include cargo and passenger transports, repair and surveying vessels and other ships not designed for, nor expected to engage in active combat...Nevertheless, the danger level for those officers and men (I've always chuckled over that distinction) who were assigned to duty aboard ancillary shipping craft faced every bit as much risk, and sometimes more, as those who went to sea with the expectation of being shot at...Even the tiny wooden ships, such as APc-48 aboard which my uncle served,with barely enough speed to get out of their own way, yet crossed and recrossed the Pacific under their own power, faced their own levels of risk, including active combat against enemy warships a hundred times their own size...
But even in the relative safety of a protected harbor, unloading cargo carried thousands of miles to its destination without an enemy warship within many miles, danger can erupt into disaster in the flash of a moment...One such ship, the USS Mount Hood (AE-11), and its crew were the victims of one such incident only four months after being commissioned...While engaged in unloading some of its cargo onto other ships, the 3,900 tons of ordnance remaining in its holds detonated and in an instant of noise and shock, the ship and 22 other ships tied to it ceased to exist...No single cause of the explosion could ever be determined by a board of inquiry...No human remains were ever recovered as all victims were vaporized...The biggest piece of the wreckage that was ever located, even in the intervening years, was a part of the hull measuring 10 by 16 feet...
The USS Mindanao (ARG-3), pictured in the video, was one of the repair ships to which my uncle's ship was once tied for servicing, although not at the time of the incident...Look at the damage its steel hull received from a distance of 350 yards...The only survivors of the Mount Hood's complement were the 17 members who had gone ashore minutes earlier on other duties, including two facing courts martial...
Memorial Day, during which those who gave all for their country will be honored and remembered, will soon be here...I hope we all take a moment to remember that not all of those who did not return from war lost their lives in a glorious moment of combat...Death is still final, no matter how or when it arrives...The life lived before that moment is always priceless...:salute:...Ben
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMGog4QJsIs
