Posted on 10/01/2013 11:26:31 AM PDT by 11th_VA
In 1972, the United States was embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam, and the USS Kitty Hawk was headed to her station in the Gulf of Tonkin. Its five thousand men, cooped up for the longest at-sea tour of the war, rioted--or, as Troubled Water suggests, mutinied.
Disturbingly, the lines were drawn racially, black against white. By the time order was restored, careers were in tatters. Although the incident became a turning point for race relations in the Navy, this story remained buried within U.S. Navy archives for decades.
With action pulled straight from a high seas thriller, Gregory A. Freeman uses eyewitness accounts and a careful and unprecedented examination of the navy's records to refute the official story of the incident, make a convincing case for the U.S. navy's first mutiny, and shed new light on this seminal event in American history.
(Excerpt) Read more at amazon.com ...
About 13 years ago this did come up here on FR, and a bunch of freepers chimed in about it.
It was amazing, and exciting —history mostly covered-up.
This may have been the time one of the other carriers on Yankee station caught fire and had to withdraw and Kittyhawk had to fill back in. That would suck.
Seemed to have a way of taking care of itself.
Fascinating - thanks for the link.
I don't believe so. If you're thinking of the Forrestal fire, that fire happened about five years earlier. (The report does make mention of sabotage incidents on Ranger and Forrestal but the fire on Forrestal was accidental, not sabotage.)
Float check
So, how close does that (honest) report by the Housae criticizing the hypocrisy and race-band-aiding compare to today’s “politically corrupt” handling by Holder’s Injustice Department?
11. The members of the subcommittee did not find and are unaware of any instances of any instances of institutional discrimination on the part of the Navy toward any group of persons, majority or minority.
12. Black unity, the drive toward togetherness on the part of blacks, has resulted in a tendency on the part of black sailors to polarize. This results in a grievance of one black, real or fancied, becoming the grievance of many. Polarization is an unfortunate trend and negates efforts since 1948 to integrate the military services and to stamp out separation. This divisive trend must be reversed.
13. Nonmilitary gestures such as “passing the power” or “dapping” are disruptive, serve to enhance racial polarization, and should be discouraged.
14. After the incidents on Kitty Hawk and Constellation, a meeting was called by the Secretary of the Navy of all the admirals in the Washington, D.C., area in which the CNO spoke to the failure of the Navy to meet its human relations goals. Immediately thereafter, his remarks were made available to the press and sent as a message to all hands. Because of the wording of the text, it was perceived by many to be a public admonishment by the CNO of his staff for the failure to solve racial problems within the Navy. Even though this was followed within 96 hours by Z-gram 117 which stressed the need for discipline, the speech itself, the issuance of it to the public press, and the timing of its delivery, all served to emphasize the CNO’s perception of the Navy’s problems. Again, concern over racial problems seemed paramount to the question of good order and discipline even though there had been incidents on two ships which may be characterized as “mutinies”. The subcommittee regrets that the tradition of not criticizing seniors in front of their subordinates was ignored in this case.
15. The Navy’s recruitment program for most of 1972 which resulted in the lowering of standards for enlistment, accepting a greater percentage of mental category IV and those in the lower half of category III, not requiring recruits in these categories to have completed their high school education, and accepting these people without sufficient analysis of their previous offense records, has created many of the problems the Navy is experiencing today.
16. The reduction of time in recruit training from 9 to 7 weeks, thus sending those personnel who do not qualify for advanced training in “A” schools from the street to the fleet in less than two months, appears to result in inadequate preparation for shipboard duty.
17. The investigation disclosed an alarming frequency of successful acts of sabotage and apparent sabotage on a wide variety of ships and stations within the Navy.
We had a fairly high failure rate in first term enlistees, about 20-25%. In my divisions I had to get rid of 1 hispanic, 2 blacks, and a Vietnamese for pattern of misconduct, several white kids for drugs, and one little weird kid who came out of the closet. We didn't put up with too much from the sailors. The hispanic kid told his first class to F off, and when he and I had a discussion about it he told me that his tasking (from me) was bulls#$t. He was talking to the Skipper in less than 30 minutes. I thought the skipper would restrict him from liberty for the port period. The Old Man gave him 2 months of restriction and docked him 1/2 his pay for two months. It was all I could do to not yell "Damn! That's gotta hurt."
The Vietnamese kid was the funniest and most infuriating. Our legal officer nicknamed him Keyser Soze (the ultimate criminal from "the Usual Suspects") On the outside he was a bungling idiot, afraid to work on the flight deck, who begged to be kept working heads and beds. Behind that exterior was a criminal mastermind. Not really, but when we started finding out all the stuff he had done it made a better story. He originally was getting processed out for a pattern of misconduct, little stuff like UA and violating verbal and written instructions. As we were processing him out we took him to security for some out processing from the base where he produced a fake id card by mistake. It had his picture, but his BEQ roommate's name and rank. He had stolen it from his roommate and then doctored it with his photo. Theft, fraud, destruction of government property. When he produced the proper ID, the security guy looked him up and said he had to deregister his car, a car he wasn't authorized to have. He then produced a faked request chit for the car forging the signature's for his whole chain of command up to the CO. Forgery, false official statement, violation of a general order. Then we found out he didn't legally own the car and had never paid the appropriate taxes or insurance.
Our legal officer literally begged him to stop breaking the law long enough for us to admin sep him.
The reason we were so quick to jettison the trash was that the rest of our kids were so good. I've never seen a harder working bunch of guys anywhere. They would work a twelve hour day and still greet you with a smile. I would never begrudge them a nap in the p-way just below the flight deck between cycles. They deserved it. Those kids are the one of the things that still gives me hope for the future of this country.
I had just heard rumours about things like this. Thanks for posting it.
Ok,I wasn’t sure of the dates on Forrestalls’ fire.
in ‘72 i was in the boy scouts, at summer camp..
race riots broke out, yes, in boy scout camp..
i was cracked on the head with a flash light by a “black” boy scout..
i remember the trucks and cops rolling through lost lake, taking into custody and arresting “black” boy scouts..
i learned all i need to know about “ghetto people” that summer..
He was a MM - Machinist Mate (RO)
Maybe he was smoking on the fantail and went over. Sorry to hear about that.
Gregory A. Freeman uses eyewitness accounts and a careful and unprecedented examination of the navy's records to refute the official story of the incident, make a convincing case for the U.S. navy's first mutiny, and shed new light on this seminal event in American history.
A friend of mine joined the Army in the early 80s and went to Germany. The orderly walked him to the barracks and told him that this is as far as he goes because the blacks ruled that Barracks.
But soon the Army started kicking out all the trouble makers and it was safe.
That sure sounds credible to me.
There were incredible stories of the black violence and race riots in the Army during the early 70s late 1960s in Germany.
At Fort Benning when I went through jump school in 1972, the enlisted men’s club was off limits because it was under the control of violent black racists.
In the 1980s I was in a National Guard unit spending a lot of time on active duty and had a barracks in Germany and I didn’t see the major race issues that I had seen years before, but while most of it seemed to be fixed, some seemed to have been accepted or merely absorbed as normal.
If you can locate that thread I would sure like to see it, this thread isn’t very long but it was very interesting itself.
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