The Strange Destruction of the USS Turner.
The second in my potential series of historical mysteries and oddities
This was originally inspired by reading of historian Ted Darcy's work on finding what happened to some of the 138 men lost in the explosion of the USS Turner, and his tracking them down to unmarked graves in the New York area.
The Turner was a standard example of the second block of Gleaves class destroyer, of about 2,000t displacement, and had been in service less than a year when she was destroyed.
She’d arrived off the Ambrose Lightship on the night prior to her destruction (03JAN1944) and had anchored just outside the anti-submarine nets that protected New York harbour.
A few hours later, around 6AM when the crew were having breakfast, a series of explosions ripped through the Turner, killing many of her crew and leaving the hull with huge holes on both sides. The forward 5” gun turrets seem to have been close to the explosions; the ‘A’ turret was forced upward by the bulging of the hull while the entire ‘B’ mount was ejected.
Fire, and sporadic explosions of stored ammunition, continued until 07:50 when another massive explosion caused the ship to capsize and sink. By 08:30 the entire ship, and 138 crew, were underwater.
The explosions were felt and heard in New York and New Jersey
A tragic end but hardly unusual in wartime. The Turner is generally believed to have been sunk because of the detonation of anti-submarine rockets, ammunition for the ‘Mousetrap’ anti-submarine rocket launcher.
However there are a couple of interesting aspects that may make the incident suitable for gaming.
From 19OCT1943 the Turner had been one of the escorts of a trans-Atlantic convoy, GUS18 (Gibraltar to US, Slow). On the night of 23OCT while operating as an ASW picket in advance of the convoy the Turner’s surface-search RADAR had picked up an unidentified surface contact. About eleven minutes after the RADAR contact (at 19:43) lookouts sighted the object, a German (?) submarine running on the surface, less than 500m from the Turner.
The destroyer began firing but the sub (if it was actually there) dived quickly so depth charges were launched. In addition to their detonations an underwater explosion was heard, one that disabled the destroyer’s electrical power, rendering RADAR, hydrophones and main gun turrets useless.
After about fifteen minutes power was restored but the submarine, if that’s what it was, had disappeared. Despite further searches by the convoy escorts it was never found. Nor have later records revealed the identity of the submarine. It's almost as if the sub wasn't really there...
Secondly soon after the sinking of the Turner the US Navy quickly moved to salvage the wreck (she sank in about 16m of water) and little of the hull remained for long. Was this to recover the bodies inside? To cover up and embarrassing penetration of the US coast by a German submarine? Or to hide what really sank their ship...
Earlier in the war the U-Boats has sunk numerous ships around and inside New York harbour. The sinking of a warship in 1944 would have been highly embarrassing. The weather than January morning was poor, blustery with low cloud and snow flurries, good visual cover for a sub.
So was the Turner an embarrassing but understandable wartime accident?
A really embarrassing late war German submarine sinking?
Or was the "German submarine" encountered something else entirely? And the sinking of the destroyer the vengeance of a strange craft using a weapon rather different to the torpedoes and guns of the war then raging?
What did the US Navy discover and then conceal so well?
Further reading.
Wiki page on the Turner.
Survivor Tales of the USS Turner DD648
First-hand account of diving the the wreck and the official USN report into the sinking.
The second in my potential series of historical mysteries and oddities
This was originally inspired by reading of historian Ted Darcy's work on finding what happened to some of the 138 men lost in the explosion of the USS Turner, and his tracking them down to unmarked graves in the New York area.
The Turner was a standard example of the second block of Gleaves class destroyer, of about 2,000t displacement, and had been in service less than a year when she was destroyed.
She’d arrived off the Ambrose Lightship on the night prior to her destruction (03JAN1944) and had anchored just outside the anti-submarine nets that protected New York harbour.
A few hours later, around 6AM when the crew were having breakfast, a series of explosions ripped through the Turner, killing many of her crew and leaving the hull with huge holes on both sides. The forward 5” gun turrets seem to have been close to the explosions; the ‘A’ turret was forced upward by the bulging of the hull while the entire ‘B’ mount was ejected.
Fire, and sporadic explosions of stored ammunition, continued until 07:50 when another massive explosion caused the ship to capsize and sink. By 08:30 the entire ship, and 138 crew, were underwater.
The explosions were felt and heard in New York and New Jersey
A tragic end but hardly unusual in wartime. The Turner is generally believed to have been sunk because of the detonation of anti-submarine rockets, ammunition for the ‘Mousetrap’ anti-submarine rocket launcher.
However there are a couple of interesting aspects that may make the incident suitable for gaming.
From 19OCT1943 the Turner had been one of the escorts of a trans-Atlantic convoy, GUS18 (Gibraltar to US, Slow). On the night of 23OCT while operating as an ASW picket in advance of the convoy the Turner’s surface-search RADAR had picked up an unidentified surface contact. About eleven minutes after the RADAR contact (at 19:43) lookouts sighted the object, a German (?) submarine running on the surface, less than 500m from the Turner.
The destroyer began firing but the sub (if it was actually there) dived quickly so depth charges were launched. In addition to their detonations an underwater explosion was heard, one that disabled the destroyer’s electrical power, rendering RADAR, hydrophones and main gun turrets useless.
After about fifteen minutes power was restored but the submarine, if that’s what it was, had disappeared. Despite further searches by the convoy escorts it was never found. Nor have later records revealed the identity of the submarine. It's almost as if the sub wasn't really there...
Secondly soon after the sinking of the Turner the US Navy quickly moved to salvage the wreck (she sank in about 16m of water) and little of the hull remained for long. Was this to recover the bodies inside? To cover up and embarrassing penetration of the US coast by a German submarine? Or to hide what really sank their ship...
Earlier in the war the U-Boats has sunk numerous ships around and inside New York harbour. The sinking of a warship in 1944 would have been highly embarrassing. The weather than January morning was poor, blustery with low cloud and snow flurries, good visual cover for a sub.
So was the Turner an embarrassing but understandable wartime accident?
A really embarrassing late war German submarine sinking?
Or was the "German submarine" encountered something else entirely? And the sinking of the destroyer the vengeance of a strange craft using a weapon rather different to the torpedoes and guns of the war then raging?
What did the US Navy discover and then conceal so well?
Further reading.
Wiki page on the Turner.
Survivor Tales of the USS Turner DD648
First-hand account of diving the the wreck and the official USN report into the sinking.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3hh9e7d
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