1943 — Nov 16, explosion, torpedo warheads/mines Naval Mine Depot bldg. P-2, Yorktown, VA-7

Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 4-23-2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/

— 8  Moran. Explosive Accident Summary: [WW] II. DoD Explosives Safety Board, 1992, p.129[1]

— 7  Calhoun. “Yorktown’s Big Bang.” The Daybook, Vol. 14, Issue 3, 2009.

— 7  Sheppard. “The Day That Shook the Historic Triangle: The Yorktown Mine Deport Explosion.”

— 7  The Bee, Danville, VA. “Blast Wrecks Yorktown Mine Depot.” 11-22-1943, p. 10.

— 7  The Bee, Danville, VA. “Yorktown’s Blast Toll Mounts to 7.” 11-17-1943, p. 6.

Narrative Information

Calhoun:  “In the middle of the night on November 16, 1943, the equivalent of over 150,000 pounds of TNT exploded at the Yorktown Mine Depot (now known as Yorktown Naval Weapons Station) killing seven workers and causing a noise that could be heard in Richmond and Norfolk,  The explosion caused two craters, each twenty-five feet deep and over 150 feet wide, and shattered glass for miles around. [Caption under photo.]

“Early in the morning of November 16, 1943, Captain Richard Kirkpatrick was shaken rudely out of a deep sleep by a very large explosion. The retired Naval officer, recently recalled to be the commanding officer of the Navy’s Yorktown Mine Depot, later reported that he gazed out his bedroom window in the direction of the explosion.  He got dressed quickly, expecting a phone call any second. When none came, he dialed up the base operator and asked what just happened.  Kirkpatrick was informed that one of the ordnance production plants had just exploded….

“When the sun came up, the picture became somewhat more clear. Rescue workers and security personnel saw two craters, each 25 feet deep and 150 feet across. Nothing remained of the building, or the trucks and the railroad flat cars parked next to the building. All six men, five African-Americans and one white supervisor, who worked in the building were killed. A seventh person, a civilian foreman names James Seawell, was going over the night’s work assignments with his men in another building when the explosion threw him against the wall. A refrigerator then landed on his head. He died twenty-four hours later, leaving behind a wife and two daughters.

“The building destroyed was known as P-2. It served as a warehouse for the storage of torpedo warheads and mines that had been recently loaded with the powerful explosive Torpex. Ordnance stored at P-2 had just come from another building, where ordnance mate petty officers from the Yorktown Mine School had poured hot liquid Torpex into shell casings. The ordnance was then allowed to cool down at P-2 into a more solid state over a period of several hours. Workers then moved the live ordnance on to rail flat cars or trucks and then shipped it off to the Fleet. At the time of the explosion, there was 64,000 pounds of loaded Torpex ordnance inside the warehouse, 21,000 pounds of live Mark 13 Mines on the flat cars, and 18,000 pounds of torpedo warheads and mines on trucks. In all, about 104,000 pounds of Torpex, or the equivalent of 150,000 pounds of TNT, exploded in an area just under 500 square feet.

“Connected to P-2 was another storage site. Here, workers received and stored the familiar explosive TNT purchased from the U.S. Army, which was one of three ingredients used to make Torpex… Investigators concluded early on that this was the reason for two separate craters at the blast site. The first crater was the P-2 warehouse and the second crater was the TNT storage area.

“The damage could have been much worse, but basic safety measures kept the explosion limited to a confined area. Specifically, most of the ordnance plants and warehouses had tall barriers of sand and dirt on at least three sides. As a result, most of the force of the explosion went harmlessly upwards. The placement of the Depot in a secluded place along the York River in 1918 was done just in case of such of an emergency….

“After seven days of testimony and investigation, the court closed the hearing. It concluded that the Depot’s command staff had taken all necessary safety and security measures. The workforce had been properly trained and there were a sufficient number of Marines keeping a close watch over the Depot’s activities. It concluded that all brush fires were caused by the explosion and not intentionally set.

“The court did make several points about the ordnance itself. A series of radiographic images of mine cases showed that the mine cases had serious cracks in the welds. Also, rail flat cars loaded with ordnance and parked next to P-2, should not have been left there.

“As for Torpex, the court highly recommended further study. It noted that not only was there no chemical analysis made of the Torpex produced at the Depot, the Bureau did not even mandate tests, in order to speed up production. It concluded that “no clue as to the cause of the explosion has been brought out by this investigation” and “no offenses were committed and that no blame is attached to any personnel.”

“Having said all that, and despite the F.B.I.’s report, the court further concluded that “It is the opinion of this court that due to the United States being in a state of war, the potential presence of enemy saboteurs is indicated and the possibly of sabotage being the cause of the explosion cannot be overlooked. The absence of an explanation for the explosion based upon spontaneous combustion or chemical disintegration, accentuates the possibility of sabotage being the cause of the explosion.” In other words, despite all the evidence, the court went with the sabotage hypothesis put forward by the judge advocate and Kirkpatrick’s lawyer.

“When the findings reached the Bureau of Ordnance office in Washington, D.C., the Bureau came to a much different conclusion. About seven months after the explosion, Bureau investigators believed it was an accident after all. Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance Vice Admiral George Hussey wrote a secret memo to Fleet Admiral Ernest King stating. “this explosion resulted from an aircraft mine or similar explosive container being accidentally dropped or bumped against a hard and fairly sharp surface during handling.”

“The memo stated that Torpex’s sensitivity was not necessarily to blame. Similar accidents occurred with bombs made only with TNT The deciding factor in all these accidents was the fact that the bomb hit the ground at a very sharp angle, causing the explosive to detonate.

“The memo confirmed that despite its inherent danger, Naval ordnance depots and arsenals are all integral to the Fleet’ success.”  (Calhoun, Gordon. “Yorktown’s Big Bang. At the Height of World War II, the Yorktown Mine Depot Explodes.” The Daybook, V. 14, Issue 3, 2009, pp. 6-9, 14-15.)

Moran:  “NAD Yorktown…Yorktown, VA…US…11/16/43…Loading Truck…Mines, M-16-1…Warehouse…8 [Dead]…6 [injured].”  (Moran, Edward P. Jr. “World War II Explosions, Navy Installations Ashore.” Explosive Accident Summary: World War II. DoD Explosives Safety Board, Aug 1992, p. 129.)

Sheppard: “….At NMD Yorktown, Torpex was mixed and then packed into weapons, such as the Mark XIII aerial torpedoes, at Plant #2 (P-2). At its peak, more than 2.1 million pounds of Torpex was packed into various weapons. Plant workers mixed the explosives, packed weapons and prepared them for shipment around the clock.

“When the plant’s overnight shift arrived on November 15, 1943, more than 64,000 pounds of ordnance packed with Torpex sat inside P-2.

“At 12:27 a.m., the entirety of the Historic Triangle shook, as if a bomb had been dropped nearby. Windows shattered in buildings at the historic Yorktown Riverfront, walls shook, and as far away as Norfolk, there were reports of a bright flash in the sky.

“Over at P-2, there was a blinding fire cascading straight into the sky as civilians, sailors and Marines rushed to retrieve who and what they could while working tirelessly to extinguish the blaze. Their quick thinking under the circumstances calmed the fire down to a handful of brush fires by the time Captain Kirkpatrick arrived. In the early dawn light, Captain Kirkpatrick found rubble littering the ground and two large craters where P-2 used to be; craters that stretched 150 feet wide, and fell 25 feet deep.

“Workers were taken by corpsmen from the scene, including James Seawall, a foreman at a nearby building. He was handing out assignments for that night’s shift when the explosion threw him against a wall, his head struck by a flying refrigerator. He died at around 1 a.m., with his cause of death listed on his official Virginia death certificate as, ‘fracture of skull.’

“By daybreak, there were still six workers unaccounted for: J.F. Remine, who was a supervisor at P-2, and civilian laborers, Robert Taliaferro, Leonard C. Brown, Charlie Lucas and Harold Washington. Not even a scrap of fabric from their clothing was ever found….” (Sheppard, Nancy. “The Day That Shook the Historic Triangle: The Yorktown Mine Deport Explosion.” Williamsburg Yorktown Daily, VA. 5-28-2021.)

Contemporary Newspapers:

Nov 17: “Norfolk, Va., Nov. 17. – (AP) — James B. Seawell, ordnance foreman, of Lackey, Va., died today in a peninsula hospital of injuries received early Tuesday in a warehouse explosion at the Yorktown naval mine depot, bringing the known death toll to seven.  Twenty-three others have been reported injured.  The fifth naval district public relations office here reported today there was no other change in the list of casualties, but the search of the ruins had not been completed and the job was described as a hazardous one. Ammunition was said to have been scattered over a wide area around the building.  Only those individual needed to conduct the search and investigate the cause of the explosion, second in this district in less than two months, were allowed within the area where the warehouse wrecked.

“A Navy court of inquiry, convened late Tuesday afternoon, is trying to find the cause of the blast.  The board, headed by Capt. James G. Ware, USN, commanding office of Camp Peary, is composed of Capt. Allan W. Ashbrook, USN of the Naval Mine Warfare School; Comdr. Ashton B. Smith, USN, of the St. Juliens Creek Naval Mine Depot, and Lieut. Wayne T. Brooks, USNR, judge advocate.

“It was reported that the relatively small casualty list was due to the fact that employees in the area near the blasted warehouses were eating their midnight lunch when the explosion occurred at 12:25 a.m.  It was also said that several hundred women who had been employed in the building for some weeks before had been released last Saturday….

“An eye-witness to the blast at Yorktown, Pfc. Edward T. Kammerer, a Marine guard, who told of seeing a reddish-yellow flash from the warehouse just before it blew up, could give no reason for the explosion….”  (The Bee, Danville, VA. “Yorktown’s Blast Toll Mounts to 7.” 11-17-1943, p. 6.)

Nov 22:  “Yorktown, Va….[A] photograph released by the Navy discloses damage to a warehouse in an explosion Nov. 16 which killed seven persons.  The blast could be heard 60 miles away and a number of other buildings on the reservation were damaged.”  (The Bee, Danville, VA. “Blast Wrecks Yorktown Mine Depot.” 11-22-1943, p. 10.)

Sources

Calhoun, Gordon. “Yorktown’s Big Bang. At the Height of World War II, the Yorktown Mine Depot Explodes.” The Daybook, Vol. 14, Issue 3, 2009. Accessed 4-25-2013 at: http://www.history.navy.mil/museums/hrnm/files/daybook/pdfs/volume14issue3.pdf

Moran, Edward P. Jr. Explosive Accident Summary: World War II. DoD Explosives Safety Board, Aug 1992. Accessed 4-19-2013: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA507027

Sheppard, Nancy. “The Day That Shook the Historic Triangle: The Yorktown Mine Deport Explosion.” Williamsburg Yorktown Daily, VA. 5-28-2021. Accessed 4-23-1014 at: https://wydaily.com/news/regional-national/2021/05/28/the-day-that-shook-the-historic-triangle-the-yorktown-mine-depot-explosion/

The Bee, Danville, VA. “Blast Wrecks Yorktown Mine Depot.” 11-22-1943, p. 10. Accessed 4-26-2013 at: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=91384263&sterm=yorktown

The Bee, Danville, VA. “Yorktown’s Blast Toll Mounts to 7.” 11-17-1943, p. 6. Accessed at: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=91384236&sterm=yorktown+explosion

[1] All other sources note seven deaths. One, the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily of May 28, 2021 provides their names.