National Affairs: Off San Diego

Ships of war, built to destroy, always look proof against destruction, especially in dock or at anchor. The kind of thing that can happen to them when least expected happened last week aboard the aircraft carrier Langley, at her dock in San Diego, Calif. Other ships of war in the harbor heard an explosion, saw a sheet of flame. Smoke poured from a gaping hole in the Langley's side abaft her bridge. Three sailors who had been working in a launch slung from the Langley's davits, struggled in the water.

The explosion's results: Four of the Langley's men badly injured and a dead man (Chief Carpenter's Mate James Raynor Ailsworth) identifiable only by his Masonic ring; a ragged split in the Langley's plane-landing top deck.

The explosion's cause: Gasoline and fumes leaking into a compartment of the ships "skin", next to a 250,000-gallon airplane fuel tank (which contained 60,000 gallons at the moment but did not explode).

The Langley was patched up, prior to full repairs at Mare Island Navy Yard (San Pablo Bay, Calif.).