416 solar container explosion

Two people died, nine were injured and three were missing after an explosion on Monday at a fuel storage facility near Florence owned by Italian energy firm Eni, the president of the Tuscany region said. On April 30, 1946, the USS Solar, a U.S. Navy Buckley-class destroyer escort (DE 221), exploded at the Navy Pier in Leonardo, killing seven sailors and injuring 125 others. The Solar was refitted in 1946 to serve as a sonar test vessel. On April 30, she was berthed at Leonardo Pier I of Naval. On 30 April 1946, Solar was berthed at Leonardo Pier I of the Naval Ammunition Depot at Earle, N.J., to discharge ammunition. The operation went smoothly until, shortly after 1130, three explosions blasted the ship near her number 2 upper handling rooms. Her number 2 gun was demolished and the. My grandfather, Alvin Lester Stephens, was a survivor of the USS Solar's magazine detonation during WWII. The ship was named after a sailor killed at Pearl . The 2 May 1946 edition of The Matawan Journal contains details of the local response to the "disastrous blast of the USS Solar at the Leonardo pier area of the Earle Naval Ammunition depot." After the initial response from US Naval and Middletown authorities, first aid squads from 35 communities. USS Solar was a Buckley Class Destroyer Escort laid down at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in February 1943 and commissioned into the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet in February 1944. Spending her wartime service engaged as a Convoy Escort and Anti-Submarine ship, the Solar ranged as far East as Oran, Algeria. Description: (DE-221) Following the explosion of her forward magazine while she was at Naval Ammunition Depot, Earle, New Jersey, on 30 April 1946. Note that her forward superstructure has been folded back, crushing her smokestack and other midships fittings. The barrel of one of her forward 3/50.