West Loch Disaster: ‘Second Pearl Harbor’ remembered 75 years later

Ships in Pearl Harbor and its oil- and fuel-soaked waters were on fire.

Deafening explosions that rained down red-hot fragments punctuated the inferno. One of the concussions could be heard 15 miles away. Men’s bodies were flung miles through the air. Nearby buildings were damaged.

It was not Dec. 7, 1941. It was later in World War II on May 21, 1944, but the West Loch Disaster, as it became known, is sometimes called the “second Pearl Harbor.”

On Tuesday, the 75th anniversary of the disaster, the Navy remembered the 163 sailors, soldiers and Marines who gave their lives when a chain reaction of explosions and fire consumed ships and men loading up ammunition and fuel for the invasion of Saipan. Another 396 were wounded.

Joe Kelly, 93, made the trip from Virginia to return to the spot where his tank landing ship, LST 129, was caught in a mix of burning ships and dead and wounded men.

“It was just — in hell,” he recalled. The yeoman second class, just 18, manned a fire hose and was directing it at burning oil on the water “to try to keep it from getting the ship.”

Suddenly, the water shut off. He didn’t even see the 20mm gun that had flown through the air and cut the fire hose behind him.

For Kelly, who now walks with a cane, it was a pilgrimage that turned out to be very emotional — even after so many years.

The huge, rusting bow of LST 480 — one of six of the 327-foot ships that sank — still juts out of the harbor waters where it was beached near what’s known as the West Loch Annex.

“It brought back too many emotions,” Kelly said afterward. “It’s like going to a grave. It has an impact on you.”

The families of several others who were in the West Loch Disaster made the trip as well.

Cmdr. Allen Maxwell Jr., expected to take over command of Afloat Training Group Middle Pacific, noted the twin tenets of hope and danger that accompany warfare at sea.

“When we sail into war, we do so willingly with mustard seed faith — knowing we will return to our loved ones and be complete once more,” Maxwell said aboard a Navy launch motoring near the wrecked LST 480. “Every one of these men believed this, and sadly, they did not return to their families. However, we are still here honoring them.”

Maxwell also noted that “we did not have processes in place to share lessons learned as quickly as we do now,” with other ammunition-handling tragedies occurring the same year.

Those included the explosion of an ammunition ship that was being loaded in Port Chicago, Calif., killing 332, and a series of explosions that killed 22 people at the Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot in Nebraska.

Twenty-nine LSTs were in West Loch nested close together so they could be loaded for Operation Forager and the invasion of the Japanese-held Mariana Islands, including Saipan.

Fuel and ammunition were everywhere. One Navy official described the ships as “floating ammunition dumps, floating gasoline storage tanks, floating vehicle garages, floating ship repair yards and floating overcrowded hotels.”

Each LST had 80 to 100 drums of high-octane gas and another 200,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

“Very, very dangerous situation. But you just have to understand that this is a time when we were preparing for this massive invasion, and there was a great deal of urgency,” Navy Region Hawaii historian Jim Neuman told sailors and family members aboard the launch.

A Naval Board of Inquiry couldn’t pinpoint a cause, but determined the first explosion occurred on LST 353 when a mortar round detonated.

Despite no-smoking orders, some personnel were smoking. Navy investigators found a “deplorable lack of elementary safety precautions.”

LST 129 crew member Daniel J. Mullane Jr.’s son and daughter — Daniel III, 61, and Lynn, 62 — also came from Virginia for the memorial service.

Their father, who ran the store on the ship, was getting supplies but returned with his boat to help pick up as many men as possible.

“It’s a moving experience that we are here,” Lynn Mullane said. “It’s an honor after hearing about this our whole lives.” Their father died 24 years ago.

LST 129 was involved in the invasions of Saipan, Tinian and Peleliu. At Peleliu the ship was caught in a typhoon, its hull was broken open and its crew had to abandon ship and swim to shore in the middle of the battle with no weapons or provisions, the Navy said.

When Kelly was evacuated six weeks later, he weighed less than 100 pounds.