A Glimpse of Hell : The Explosion on the U. S. S. Iowa & Its Cover-Up

On April 19, 1989, Turret Two aboard the recommissioned battleship USS Iowa exploded, killing 47 men. In A Glimpse of Hell, former naval officer, newspaper reporter, and 60 Minutes producer Charles Thompson has written an authoritative exposé of the United States Navy high command's consistent efforts to manipulate the evidence of that disaster and slander deceased seaman Clayton Hartwig. The Iowa investigation is contextualized by Thompson's startling insights into the moral universe of the navy's masters, a cabal so protective of their own jobs that they prepared press releases indicating that an out-of-control Tomahawk missile launched from the Iowa was actually a part of a federal and military crackdown on an illicit marijuana field in Alabama. Unlike the Tomahawk debacle, the falsehoods embroidered into the investigation of the Turret Two disaster did become public, as naval officials accepted a noticeably botched report from investigators who "lost" two 2,700-pound projectiles and consistently claimed, with no foundation, that Hartwig, killed in the explosion, was a murderous and suicidal psychopath who blew up the turret in revenge for a thwarted homosexual affair. Two years later, they were forced to admit that they had no clear and convincing evidence linking Hartwig to the explosion and apologized to his surviving family members. (The family later initiated a $12 million defamation lawsuit against the U.S. Navy.)

As active duty officers rebuffed his own investigation, Thompson found that many personnel, including captains and admirals, were willing to talk when their careers were no longer on the line. A Glimpse of Hell assiduously follows the Iowa story with a dedication that honors the dead and their families, as one journalist does more to expose the careerism and sexual preoccupations of ranking naval officers--and their consequences--than any government investigative agency. --James Highfill