May 11, 2012

There were 2 posts published on May 11, 2012 (this is page 1 of 1).

Wikipedia’s article on the USS Iowa turret explosion

USS Iowa's turret two explodes


My meeting General Shelton got me researching some flag officers I’ve known. On the way I happened to land on the Wikipedia article about the 1989 turret explosion aboard the USS Iowa. The article is one of the best I’ve read on Wikipedia. It’s as riveting as a novel. The book about the incident, A Glimpse of Hell: The Explosion on the USS Iowa and Its Cover Up, is equally compelling, as this excerpt shows.

I was in the Navy at the time and I remember well this incident and the subsequent whitewash. It was a lesson to me that the term “military justice” will always be an oxymoron.

The USS Iowa turret explosion occurred in the Number Two 16-inch gun turret of the United States Navy battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) on April 19, 1989. The explosion in the center gun room killed 47 of the turret’s crewmen and severely damaged the gun turret itself. Two major investigations were undertaken, one by the Navy and then one by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and Sandia National Laboratories. The investigations produced conflicting conclusions.

via USS Iowa turret explosion – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Cheap thoughts: the nose knows

Photo by David Selby


While watching my pooch sniff his way around the neighborhood this week, I pondered how he always seemed to know when a storm is coming – often much sooner than we do. Is it the vibration of the thunder? The sound of thunder? Could it be that he is more sensitive to the electrical charges, being that he wears more fur than we do?

Then I remembered the NOVA program on dogs and how a dog’s senses are inferior or equal to humans in all aspects except one: the sense of smell. A dog’s sense of smell is its meal ticket and is a bazillion times more powerful than a human’s. What if a dog can smell an approaching storm? Of course, rain has a distinctive smell and definitely changes the way the environment smells.

But what if it went further than that? What if dogs can smell lightning? Lightning and other high-energy electric discharges ionize air, creating ozone. What if dogs can smell this ozone?

And … if my dog is at his most compliant in the midst of a storm (or the threat of a storm), could a small ozone generator attached to his collar make him safely and painlessly stop in his tracks should he decide to escape on an unauthorized jaunt through the neighborhood?