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Drink up, blow up, cover up

It all happened in the span of a few hours. On the night of Nov. 2, 2006, while the destroyer Halsey was tied to the pier in Kagoshima, Japan, several members of the crew got drunk on board the ship following an official reception for Japanese visitors.

Then a fire broke out in the main engine room. But some of the sailors were too drunk to even don their firefighting gear. During and after the fire, the captain remained in his stateroom — despite pleas from his officers to take charge of the situation.

On top of all that, one of the ship’s sailors had to go to the hospital after being bitten by a shipmate.

Details of the incidents, released recently by Naval Surface Forces in a redacted preliminary inquiry report, paint the picture of a commanding officer who pressured his on-duty crew members to keep the party going after their Japanese visitors left. And when the fire broke out, some were too drunk to respond. The next day, Halsey skipper Cmdr. John Pinckney Jr. ordered his crew to conceal the extent of the damage, the report said.

The same piece of machinery reportedly exploded again when the Halsey was back in port in San Diego, where the cover-up was revealed.

When it was all over, the Navy was stuck with an $8.5 million repair bill, and Pinckney’s career was over. He was relieved Feb. 2 by SurfFor chief Vice Adm. Terrance Etnyre “for loss in confidence in Pinckney’s ability to command” following the preliminary inquiry and an administrative proceeding.

Pinckney had been a promising commanding officer. He joined the Navy in 1980 and served as a fire controlman before earning a commission in 1987. He had a successful career as a surface warfare officer with tours in all the right places. But he commanded Halsey for just eight months before being cashiered from the fleet.

And while the preliminary investigation details a disastrous night in Japan, it also reveals Pinckney’s attempt to conceal from his chain of command the details of the fire in one of the ship’s two main reduction gears, which transfer energy from the turbines to the propeller shafts. News of the bitten sailor was also kept quiet.

According to a report in The San Diego Union-Tribune, which first reported the results of the preliminary inquiry, “The Navy linked an explosion and fire in the same gear the following month on Pinckney’s incomplete accounting of the first fire.”

And while Pinckney has reportedly retired from the Navy and the Halsey has returned to duty after sea trials in July, the episode isn’t over. Officials are conducting a Judge Advocate General’s Manual investigation into the incident, said Cmdr. Jane Campbell, spokeswoman for SurfFor. It is not clear whether other crew members will be disciplined as a result, and the investigation likely will produce more details of what happened to the ship in the days and weeks that followed the first fire.

The inquiry report contains no statement from Pinckney. Attempts to contact him have not been successful.

This is the account provided by the preliminary inquiry.

Around 6 p.m. Nov. 2, the ship hosted a reception for 40 local Japanese dignitaries. About 30 select members of the crew enjoyed drinks and snacks with the visitors.

One sailor, who was selected to serve as a side boy for the reception, arrived on the flight deck in his dress blues only to be told by Pinckney that the side boys were not on a duty status. He instead told them to mingle after all of the guests arrived.

“Around 10, maybe all the guests started to depart,” the sailor is quoted as saying. “The bar was pretty much empty at this time so the captain went up to his stateroom and brought down two more bottles of [sake] or soju and said, ‘[Pour] a drink for my friends the side boys.’ So we drank some more.” The sailor admits drinking “a little too much.”

Pinckney repeatedly pressured his sailors to drink. One officer, who was inside the ship at the time, discovered the party outside after hearing loud music.

“There were a large number of personnel on the Flight Deck drinking and having a good time. The source of my annoyance became clear to me as I saw the speakers had been placed on the Aft [vertical launching system] deck.” After this officer looked around to see several duty section members drinking, the CO approached and said, “It’s about time you joined us. ... Have a drink.”

The officer repeatedly replied, “I will not. I am on duty.” The officer walked away and happened upon the command duty officer in the helicopter hangar. The two concluded, “We may very well be the only sober line officers on the entire ship.”

According to another account, the command duty officer “was holding a beer, but indicated that she was not drinking, ‘just doing it to placate the CO.’Ÿ”

As this was going on, intoxicated sailors took the party off the flight deck and into the ship.

“I decided to go and get a soda from the soda machine when I saw one of our sailors walking through the port P-way by the post office with a beer in his hand. I also noted that he smelled very strongly of alcohol,” wrote one witness.

As the captain continued to drink with enlisted crew members on the flight deck, the night changed dramatically.

“Shortly after that we heard some bells ring and at first I was thinking, ‘what is that,’ because they were rung pretty badly,” the side boy wrote. “Then I heard a call over the 1MC that it was a class Bravo fire in the [Main Engine Room 1]. I guess you could say instinct took over because I dashed off the flight deck; as I was running, I heard the Captain say ‘don’t run.’Ÿ”

Other members of the crew reacted, too, but they weren’t fit for duty. As inebriated sailors arrived on the mess decks to form firefighting teams, they struggled to get into their gear.

It was bad enough that one officer “began grabbing bodies that were idle in the mess decks and did not appear to have consumed any alcohol, regardless of duty section status.”

One senior sailor had to chaperone some drunken sailors.

“Later that evening, I am not sure of the time, the fire alarm sounded, and I responded to the mess decks. I helped the fire party dress out and get to the scene as soon as possible. I maintained a constant watch on two of our sailors [who] were intoxicated and were waiting to be seen by the corpsman. We had several alcohol-related incidents occur that night, but they were not part of the duty section.”

As sailors were piling into the mess decks to don firefighting gear, one witness reported, “I returned to the mess decks, where it smelled like a brewery.”

That witness told two members of the firefighting team to stand down because they smelled like alcohol.

‘Wait until morning’

The executive officer — whose name has been redacted — explained what he saw that night.

After retiring to his stateroom around 9, before the fire broke out, he was told that a sailor had been “involved in an altercation with another sailor” at the pier and needed transportation to a nearby hospital.

It turns out the wounded sailor had been bitten on the arm so badly — in a dispute over exiting a cab after shore liberty — that “a large chunk of flesh” was gone from the sailor’s arm and the sailor had descended into a “panic attack” and was “hyperventilating,” according to another witness.

No situation report on the wounded sailor was sent up the chain of command, according to the inquiry.

After checking on the wounded sailor, the XO went back to his stateroom only to hear an alarm for “white smoke” in Main Engine Room 1.

He was told there was a fire in the “dehumidifier, that it was out and that ‘de-smoking’ was in progress. I was also informed that there had been a ‘WHOMF’ sound prior to discovery of the fire.”

Half an hour later, the XO was told that the “dehumidifier had ‘exploded’ and that the fire had spread to the MRG.”

The XO and an unidentified crew member who was “very agitated” went below to inspect the damage, “finding the dehumidifier cover blown outward, charring in the electrical section of the dehumidifier and G casing scorched with cover gaskets blown outward.”

As XO, it was his duty to keep the captain informed of the ship’s status. But the captain was absent.

“I did not see the CO during the casualty but was informed that he was initially still on the flight deck and then made his way to his cabin” despite the alarms.

No one could get the captain to come out of his room. At one point, there were four officers outside his cabin trying to get his attention.

“I knocked on his door and got no response. I called four times and spoke to him twice. Both times I advised him that we had a fire and possible damage to the MRG and that I recommended that we send a SITREP and that we open and inspect the MRG. Both times I received direction from the CO to wait until morning.”

According to the XO, Pinckney’s order did not go over well with the command duty officer, engineering duty officer and senior chief gas turbine system technician.

“GSCS was very upset and verbal with respect to the direction to wait. He was very adamant about wanting to go in and see if there were any other damage,” the XO reported. “I had to pull him aside and explain that although I disagreed with the CO, the situation was stable and that the CO’s order to wait had no possibility of adversely impacting the immediate safety of the ship or personnel.”

An inspection in the morning revealed blown gaskets in the MRG but “no damage to the gear itself,” the XO wrote. When a draft message detailing the fire, which included damage to the main reduction gear, made it to Pinckney, he pulled all mention of the MRG. The XO objected, saying the report “needed more detail to cover the MRG, but was overruled by the CO.”

“When the SITREP was sent on 3 November 2006, mention of the MRG was specifically excluded by the CO,” according to the inquiry summary.

With a second investigation underway, it’s not yet clear if more Halsey sailors will be disciplined for the events of Nov. 2 and what followed. But on that night in Japan, one officer, having seen the party start to get out of hand, hoped for the best.

After discovering the party and receiving pressure from Pinckney to drink up, the officer walked off and ran into another sober duty officer.

“As long as I don’t hear any bells or whistles tonight, I am good,” the officer said.

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