Tuesday, February 25, 2003

Empty Quiver - 175

Chegwidden appointed Mac as interim JAG while he recovered at home with an injured back, hand and foot and his new dog that helped save his life in the mountains. Meredith tried to help name the dog using Shakespeare names but nothing worked until it got into Cs chair and he said "get out dammit." The dog responded to his "name": dammit.

H defended Lt O'Dell the disbursing officer aboard a carrier who was being "framed" for fraud. (Unrealistically) Judge Helfman was progressing with the hearing without adequate investigation being done. H wanted to go aboard his ship but was told no by M. She didn't order him not to go so he went anyway. When he got there he found Turner just leaving to go to the USS Crawford on an investigation and the base going to lockdown. He was stuck on base and couldn't get back by Helfman's time of 1500. He told O'Dell to go ahead with the hearing and if he found anything on board his ship he would talk to the convening authority. H printed out all fax's and copies from the machine's memory and found several conflicting memo's and letters for armored cars sent after O'Dell was arrested but over his signature. The Master Chief helped H discover that PO Marin was the likely suspect. Marin disappeared from the ship and intercepted an armored car which was delivering $10 million for use during deployment that he had re-routed for 1 hour earlier than expected. He tried to escape in a boat because of the lockdown and was arrested before he got away.

Turner investigated a missing nuclear torpedo warhead from the submarine Crawford. He meticulously re-traced the entire 19 hr loading process. First four torpedoes were temporarily stored in tubes while the rest were loaded. When the ship went off shore power the ship went dark for a moment. When the lights came on a PO noticed the "loaded" tag on one tube had fallen to the floor. He put it back on without looking and hung the "empty" side. When they finished loading they moved three of the torpedoes from the tubes back to the racks- leaving the one with the mislabeled tag in the tube. Water slugs were fired believing the tags without checking so the torpedo dropped out onto ocean bottom below pier.

No comments: