Word: sailors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Come summertime, there are two kinds of water people. There are the swimmers, surfers, scullers and sailors, who take to the sea under their own power or at the wind's mercy. And then there are those who harness horsepower, turn a key and roar across the waves. The naval battles between the two types have gone on for years, as sailboats topple in the wakes of motorboats. But this year the most visible -- and audible -- combatant promises to be one of the smallest and peskiest of them all: the "personal watercraft," better known by Kawasaki's trademark Jet Skis...
...wake of the gun-turret explosion on the U.S.S. Iowa that in April killed 47 sailors, the Naval Investigative Service considered a bizarre theory: that Navy petty officer Kendall Truitt may have set off the explosion to collect on a $100,000 insurance policy taken out by a sailor killed in the blast. The story was guaranteed a full airing when Pentagon sources privately confirmed the investigation to the press...
Truitt angrily denied the allegation, suggesting that the fault could lie with an inexperienced crew. Last week a Navy statement seemed to clear Truitt. Investigators are now focusing on the equally bizarre theory that Clayton Hartwig, the insured sailor, committed suicide by causing the explosion with a $15 timing device. The Navy blandly insisted that no apology was due Truitt because it had not "discussed publicly" the murder-suicide theories...
...during practice firing on the battleship U.S.S. Iowa, the Navy presented one of the heroes of | the disaster at a press conference: Gunner's Mate Third Class Kendall Truitt, 21, who had been sacking powder in a lower-level magazine when the blast took 47 lives. A bespectacled sailor with a mild manner, Truitt calmly recounted his escape from the burning turret. Last week the Navy's inconclusive probe of the explosion took a bizarre twist, and Truitt was shoved front and center again -- but hardly as a hero. Investigators said Truitt might have set off the explosion to kill...
Truitt, on leave from the Iowa, flatly denied that he or Hartwig was a culprit. At a press conference with his wife last week, he claimed that the rumors proved that the Navy was "at a loss" to explain the tragedy. Said the sailor: "They're just looking for a scapegoat...