Talk:Clayton Hartwig

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Ohio Portal Clayton Hartwig is part of WikiProject Ohio, which collaborates on Ohio-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to current discussions.
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
Please rate this article, and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
Suggested article edit guidelines: To help us prioritise our workload, and in readiness for Wikipedia:1.0, we need to assess our articles for Quality. If this article is Unassessed, please assess it. See the Article Classification for instructions. If you disagree with a rating, you can change it or discuss it at Article Classification. After assessing this article's quality, please make sure it to add it to the Lists at Article Classification, following the grading scheme detailed there.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
	This article is supported by the Military work group.

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information and associated task forces: Associated task forces (nations and regions): United States military history task force

	It is requested that a photograph or photographs be included in this article to improve its quality.
	The Free Image Search Tool (FIST) may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites.

[edit] Conclusion of investigation?

That policy kicked off a Naval criminal investigation that eventually concluded Hartwig was angry at Truitt over a cooling of their relationship, crafted a detonator and set off the blast. This conclusion was strongly disputed by others.

Whoa- wait a second here- the USS Iowa (BB-61) article contradicts this, saying:

The NCIS Investigators at first theorized that a crewman named Clayton Hartwig had detonated an explosive device in the turret, killing himself and 46 others, allegedly due to the end of a homosexual affair with another sailor, who survived. This theory was later abandoned, and the cause of the explosion, though never determined with certainty, is generally believed to have been static electricity igniting loose powder.

So what's the deal here? Was Hartwig exonorated by the Navy or not? - Eric 08:53, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Where's the contradiction? Both pages accurately record the scandal, albeit one does it more briefly than the other. The story is simply this, before the explosion ever happened, the battleships were under continual scrutiny by Congress because they were so expensive to operate, but the Navy didn't want to give them up (besides being decent platforms for the Tomahawk missiles, they were intimidating when sailed into foreign ports). Then the explosion happened and the Navy didn't want to admit that the turrets could be potentially unsafe, so they harped on the Hartwig-Truitt thing with only circumstantial evidence. The Navy said that they were lovers, that Truitt broke it off, that Hartwig was depressed and that he planted an explosive to commit suicide. That was quickly argued by people who knew both Hartwig and Truitt, and by people who knew the inner-workings of the turret and thus knew it was way too crowded inside Turret Two for Hartwig to have placed a bomb in-between the powder bags without someone else seeing it and stopping him (as noted in the article here - the theory was disputed by others). So the Navy had to back off from that (as noted in the Iowa article you quoted). In the next paragraph of this article, you'll also read that ADM Kelso, the CNO at the time, eventually apologized publicly to Hartwig's family for all the Navy had done to drag his name through the mud.

Sorry, I served on the Iowa and I knew those guys even though I had transferred to Italy a few months before the explosion. The whole investigation, it stunk to high heaven not just for the sailors on board at the time but for any of us who served on (I was able to visit the ship in Gaeta about a year later, and met with friends who shared the exact same feelings I had about it all, so I know my feelings were echoed by those who were there). I was happy for Ken and for Clay's family that ADM Kelso publicly came clean and apologized, but still, it makes me sick to this day that they got slandered like that. Bad enough we all lost friends in the explosion, but for the Navy to slander good sailors like that was despicable. Nolefan32 04:13, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] beneficiary of life insurance?

As far as the relationship, why would someone name a crewmate as a beneficiary for something as important as life insurance? Normally a spouse or child is named. If the person is un-married, then a parent or sibling. If there was no relationship, then why would Hartwig name Truitt as the beneficiary of a policy of that importance? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Claffey27 (talk • contribs)