Again, S-4

ARMY & NAVY

The findings of the Navy's court of inquiry on the S-4 disaster, issued last week, were divided into three parts.

a) They found "jointly responsible" for the collision the commanding officers of both ships--dead Lieut. Commander Roy K. Jones of the gored submarine and living Lieut. Commander John S. Baylis of the Coast Guard destroyer Paulding.

b) They found that the Navy would do well to publish more careful charts, to operate submarines less obscurely, to study and acquire better safety and rescue devices.

c) They found, finally, this seeming paradox: that Rear Admiral Frank H. Brumby had been demonstrated unfit to command the Control Force* and should be removed, yet that the rescue plans he approved and supervised "were logical, intelligent, and were diligently executed with good judgment and the greatest possible expedition."

The court of inquiry was composed of two august Rear Admirals (Jackson and Latimer) and a Captain and a Commander. Three distinct controversies--two of them within the Navy itself--raged in Washington so soon as their ponderings were published. So sharp were these controversies that Secretary Wilbur hastily ordered the court to reconsider the whole case and report anew.

One controversy was the Treasury Department v. the Navy Department. Secretary Mellon wrote a long, tart letter to Secretary Wilbur, reviewing the evidence and refusing to let any blame attach to Coast Guardsman Baylis. A like issue was joined by Navy men in defense of Lieut. Commander Jones. With the Treasury Department on the Paulding's side and with Jones unhappily dead, one of these arguments seemed academic, the other lamentable and futile.

More interesting was the case of Rear Admiral Brumby, on whose behalf it was contended that he had not been technically made a defendant in the trial and that the equivocal findings did not justify censuring him. While the subject of this discussion steamed out of Balboa, Panama, on his flagship, the cruiser Camden, to oversee Control Force maneuvers at the Perlas Islands last week, observers studied the court of inquiry's alleged paradox to see why it should have puzzled the Navy Department.

All that the Court had said, in clumsy, Naval fashion, was that whereas experts had been on hand with good plans and execution, their virtue was not shared by their commander, Rear Admiral Brumby. By good staff work rather than good commanding had that little been done which was done. When the busy pro-Brumbians professed incomprehension of the court's sentence: "He had not the familiarity with the essential details of construction of submarines and the knowledge of rescue vessels, and the knowledge of the actual work being carried on by his subordinates necessary to direct intelligently the important operations of which he was in charge" --it was apparent that for Navy reasons the pro-Brumbians had chosen to forget certain patches of dialog in the court record, such as the following:

"Question: Why did it take so long for air to be started into the compartment?

"Admiral Brumby: I just can't be positive about such things. I just can't remember. Ask the technical people.

"Q.: At the time the first diver went down on Sunday, December 18, and heard tappings from the torpedo room, why did he not connect up the air-hose then?

"Admiral B.: I am not familiar with the details of the construction of submarines, but those who were there thought the steps being taken were the proper ones.

"Q.: Why was not the salvage compartment line, constructed to send breathing air into the torpedo chamber, connected?

"Admiral B.: Well, I don't really know. I can't answer that question. My impression is the divers did all they could do. As to details I can't tell you. You'll have to ask the technical men.

"Q.: When was the compartment air line connected?

"Admiral B.: I don't know that it was ever connected. I'm not sure."

During the week of S-4 wrangling there was one redeeming event. Chief Gunner's Mate Thomas Eadie, the diver who went down under the rising waves that bitter Sunday to rescue a comrade whose airline had got fouled, was called to the White House to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor.

*Comprising all submarines and submarine auxiliaries in the Atlantic.