Seventy-Five Years Ago: Torpex Strikes Again, Part 1

A Rude Awakening

At 12:27 a.m. on November 16, 1943, the accidental detonation of 104,000 pounds of Torpex (equivalent to over 150,000 pounds of TNT) destroyed two adjoining buildings at Naval Mine Depot Yorktown (now known as Naval Weapons Station Yorktown) leaving two craters, each more than 20 feet deep and over 150 feet wide.  The explosion shattered glass windows for miles around and could be heard as far away as Richmond, Virginia. Although the blast was almost 17 times more powerful than a similar accident that occurred at Naval Air Station Norfolk less than two months earlier that killed 30 and injured approximately 400, six mine depot workers died in the immediate vicinity of the blast and a seventh was killed in another building nearby, while six others were injured. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file photo) 

By Gordon Calhoun
Museum Operations Division Historian, Naval History and Heritage Command

Early in the morning of November 16, 1943, Captain Richard Kirkpatrick was shaken out of a deep sleep by a very large explosion. The retired naval officer, recently recalled to active duty as the commanding officer of Naval Mine Depot Yorktown, 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.

He rushed to the scene in his car to find his security chief, a Marine lieutenant colonel, and his executive officer coordinating hundreds of Sailors and Marines in fire and rescue operations. Two ships tied up at the Depot’s ammunition loading piers, the minelayers USS Salem (CM 11) and Weehawken (CM 12) rushed hospital corpsmen to the scene. Satisfied that the immediate situation was in good hands, Kirkpatrick proceeded to the blast area where he saw only a few brush fires, but a tremendous amount of debris and unexploded ordnance thrown everywhere.

An aerial photograph taken November 16, 1943, looking northwest, shows the explosion site at the northern end of the Plant No. 2, or "P-2" complex near the northern border of the mine depot, situated slightly east of Felgates Creek, which bisects the northern side of the reservation. Although the loading building directly to the south of the explosion site and warehouses to the north across Main Road sustained damage, it was limited by a high earthen berm that surrounded the Finishing Building, which was largely vaporized in the blast. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)   

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 nearby. All six men working in the building at the time, five African-Americans and one white supervisor, were killed.

A seventh person, a civilian foreman named 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 the next day, leaving behind a wife and two daughters.

James B. Seawell, the seventh victim. (Courtesy of Charlotte V. Wallace)

The building destroyed was one of four that constituted the Plant No.2, or “P-2” complex, which until recently had been the only facility in America that produced the British-designed explosive known as Torpex. The three main areas of the complex, one for the preparation of the warhead cases and measuring the Torpex ingredients, one for the melting, mixing, and loading of the explosive mixture, and an area for cooling the completed ordnance, were separated by at least 50 yards and high earthen berms. Components were transferred from one area to the next via conveyor belt.

Officially named the Finishing Building, but also known as the “cooling building,” the site of the explosion was the last stop for aerial depth bombs, torpedo warheads, and mines that had been loaded with Torpex in the nearby Loading Building, where petty officers from the Yorktown Mine School had poured the hot liquid explosive mixture into shell casings. The ordnance was then allowed to cool down at the Finishing Building into a more solid state over a period of several hours. Workers then moved the live ordnance from the Finishing Building 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 building, 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, blew the Finishing Building to bits.

Connected to the Finishing Building was another building that served a similar purpose. Here, workers received and stored 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 Finishing Building and the second crater was the TNT storage area.

Looking southeast, the obliterated Finishing Building site appears on the other side of Main Road (crossing the center of the image) behind thousands of stacked sea mine and depth bomb casings, many of which have been knocked askew by the force of the explosion. Some of the large storage warehouses in the area, many of which contained explosive ingredients and even finished ordnance awaiting transport, also sustained damage.  Had the building not been surrounded by a large earthen berm, the damage could have been much worse. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)      

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.

Despite the precautions taken against an accidental explosion, there were serious concerns that this incident had not been accidental. Just two months before, a massive explosion at Naval Air Station Norfolk killed more than 30 Sailors and injured nearly 400. There was a tremendous amount of anxiety that German spies or submarines were active in the area. Within 12 hours of the explosion, the Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) opened an investigation and convened a court of inquiry.

The Bureau of Ordnance assembled a board of three officers, Captain James G. Ware, Captain Allan W. Ashbrook, and Commander Ashton B. Smith, with Lieutenant Wayne Brooks as judge advocate and lead investigator. The board pursued two major avenues of inquiry.  The first was the production and nature of Torpex, attempting to determine if one of the bombs spontaneously exploded. The second dealt with the men who handled the explosives and whether or not they were handling it safely.

Investigating a Top Secret Explosive

A diagram shows the design of the Mark 18 torpedo warhead, which was filled with 660 pounds of Torpex at the Yorktown Mine Depot. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file) 

Capt. Kirkpatrick and his chief engineer led off the testimony by briefing the panel on the Depot’s mission of ordnance production and details of its Torpex manufacturing process. Investigators quickly focused on the latter. Kirkpatrick testified that after the British handed over the formula for Torpex to the United States in 1942, BuOrd selected Yorktown to be the first for domestic manufacturing. A new plant was up and running by spring of 1943 and within days, mines, bombs, and torpedoes loaded with explosives were being shipped out to the fleet.

Initially, engineers believed that 500,000 pounds of live ordnance a month was the maximum amount that could be safely manufactured. Within a few weeks, however, the demand for Torpex from the Navy and the U.S. Army Air Corps (Torpex was used in bombs for the 8th Army Air Force’s campaign over Germany) was so high that the facility was producing and shipping out more than four times that amount a month. Kirkpatrick and his staff believed this was too dangerous and cut back production to 1,400,000 pounds a month. 

One of the pictures from the inquiry shows Mark 19 torpedo warheads on a loading dock at one of the buildings at the mine depot. Although it might appear as though they were moved around by hand trucks, the warheads were actually moved via harnesses attached to overhead monorails. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Even with the lower production levels, live ordnance was piling up in the warehouses. Ordnance recently loaded with hot, liquid Torpex had to be stored somewhere in order to cool off. There was no special place for this stage of production. As a result, 105,000 pounds of live ordnance was stored within the P-2 complex and not a separate area. The court asked Kirkpatrick why this was the case, and he replied that there simply was not room anywhere else, nor was there time to build a new storage facility. It would be the first of many times throughout that since the demand for Torpex was so high and was considered such a critical tool for Allied war success, the production of the explosive was rushed. More direct complaints along these same lines came from the Depot’s ordnance production officer who testified that the machine used to make Torpex was flawed. He stated that the Depot’s machines came straight from Britain and were operated under the assumption that they were safe.

The court then turned its attention to the safety of Torpex itself and received conflicting answers. Kirkpatrick and others acknowledged that Torpex was somewhat more unstable than other explosives. The witnesses also stated that they were aware that leaking gas caused by Torpex production possibly caused the Naval Air Station Norfolk explosion (which was later determined not to be the case) and had taken all necessary steps to monitor gas leaks.

A civilian chemist from BuOrd later testified that Torpex passed accepted safety tests, namely an “anvil” test. In this test the explosive was dropped from a certain height on to a hard surface to see what would happen.  However, the Depot’s chief chemist, Lieutenant N.H. Bullard, testified that “[Torpex] was an explosive, the research upon which is still in the process of being developed.” Bullard went on to state that he was never fully briefed about the detailed properties of Torpex. His knowledge of the explosive amounted to some papers from British scientists that gave a general overview and a few briefings. There was some research that showed that Torpex was more heat sensitive than other explosives, but not much else was known.

None of those interviewed pointed fingers directly at each other, but many veiled accusations were made. All of the Depot’s senior staff had Navy lawyers at the hearing who were allowed to cross-examine witnesses as needed. On a number of occasions, the officers’ lawyers made sure that their clients were not being implicated. For example, when a third class petty officer stated that he had heard that P-2’s workers frequently dropped live ordnance, the executive officer’s lawyer got him to admit he had never actually seen a piece of ordnance dropped.

Given the number of Navy careers possibly in jeopardy because of the incident and to avoid any conflict of interest issues, the court called on the U.S. Army’s Chief of Ordnance to provide a more neutral assessment of the damage. The Army sent Captain Charles Ford from the Ordnance Department’s Safety and Security Branch to examine the blast site and testify.

Ford first stated that there was “mute evidence” to support his opinions.  The explosion was so powerful and in such a concentrated area that items like the remains of the building, the rail cars, human remains, or shell casings had literally been obliterated. Having stated that, he believed that the first of four separate explosions occurred inside the building. The first explosion led in quick succession to a series of three more. When asked for his opinion on how the explosion happened, he stated that “rough handling” by P-2’s workers “could have been a cause.” Ford added, that like the Depot’s ordnance officer, he was not sufficiently informed about the properties of Torpex and its sensitivity to being dropped or the effect of extreme temperatures.

Investigating the Workforce


Having found the evidence on the safety of Torpex inconclusive, the Court turned its attention to P-2’s workers to determine if “rough handling” of the ordnance was indeed the reason.

A photo taken at Naval Mine Depot Yorktown sometime in 1945 apparently shows vats used in the mixing of liquefied explosive ingredients as well as the pouring of the mixed ingredients into bomb casings. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Like many industrial activities in the United States during World War II, the Yorktown Mine Depot grew exponentially to meet the war’s demands. From a civilian workforce of 1,182 in December 1941, by November 1943 the Depot employed more than 2,300 civilian workers, including about 600 women and 500 African-American men. Working alongside them were about 900 active duty Sailors.

Although a few of the senior officers testified that they were of the opinion that some of the civilian workers, particularly the ones involved in manual labor, were not the most educated or qualified, they did not believe any were incompetent or reckless.

Commander Leon J. Manees, the Depot’s executive officer and safety officer, testified that the workforce was adequately briefed on safety regulations. The workers were subject to eleven different safety memos that covered everything from how to handle live ordnance to the dangers of smoking around live ordnance. Safety officers often asked random questions to test their knowledge. The Depot’s ordnance officer stated, “Personally, I have not seen any cases of unsafe handling of Torpex. I think that most people who handle it, treat it with the greatest respect.”

A few witnesses testified that they believed the Depot could have been safer. Two railroad engineers, for example, stated that when they worked on civilian railroads, hazardous cargo was handled with more care and more gently. A few other witnesses testified that they had heard that the P-2 workforce handled cargo recklessly, but admitted that they never personally witnessed it.

The court moved on from safety procedures to focus on the six men who were working in P-2. The work team in consisted of five African-American laborers supervised by a Caucasian named Jay Remie. Remie’s supervisor testified that he had hand picked this group out of a pool of several hundred workers, and had never had to correct any of them for safety violations. He stated that he had personally known all of the laborers since they were young boys.

Several witnesses were in agreement when they testified that the laborers were standing around two Mark 13 mines awaiting moving instructions, while Remie was in the warehouse’s office making a phone call. The call was made about twenty minutes after midnight. Seven minutes later, P-2 exploded.

One witness stated that Remie had called to ask where to move a mine. Others, however, were not so sure. The lack of any known safety violations and the lack of any hard evidence that Torpex was unsafe led some to believe that the timing of Remie’s phone call and the explosion was not a coincidence. The Depot’s judge advocate and Captain Kirkpatrick’s lawyer in particular believed that Remie’s activities were suspicious and strongly believed that Remie received the signal to set off the explosion as an act of sabotage. Not only did they believe that Remie blew up P-2 intentionally, the two lawyers were of the opinion that Remie escaped and was still alive.

Next:  Was It Sabotage?

Editor's Note:  This article originally appeared in Volume 14, Issue 3 (2010) of The Daybook, the journal of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.  Special thanks to Mr. Doug Johnson, former Naval Weapons Station Yorktown Industrial Engineering head, for clarifying some details about Plant No. 2. Gordon Calhoun was editor of The Daybook from 1995 to 2014.