Asbestos Exposure Aboard the USS Bates (DE-68/APD-47)

USS Bates was named in honor of Ensign Edward M. Bates, born September 19, 1919, who was killed on board USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In naming the ship for one of the first Americans to die in the Pacific War, the Navy paid tribute to a generation of men who would be asked to sacrifice everything in the conflict that followed. The USS Bates herself would ultimately be lost in that same conflict, sunk by kamikaze aircraft in the waters off Okinawa on May 25, 1945. But for those who served aboard her across her brief two years of active duty and survived, the asbestos embedded into every compartment of the ship posed a danger that continues to this day.

A Destroyer Escort Built for Two Wars in One

The USS Bates (DE-68/APD-47) was a Buckley-class destroyer escort laid down on March 29, 1943, at the Bethlehem-Hingham Shipyard in Hingham, Massachusetts. She was launched on June 6, 1943, and commissioned on September 12, 1943, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Eugene H. Maher, USNR.

Her propulsion system consisted of turbo-electric drive producing 12,000 shaft horsepower, driving two screws to a top speed of 23 knots. She carried a complement of 15 officers and 198 men. From the beginning, the Bates was a vessel built for the hardest and most dangerous assignments the Navy could offer. Destroyer escorts were the workhorses of the wartime fleet, responsible for protecting convoys from submarine attack, screening larger ships from air assault, and conducting a wide range of amphibious support operations. The Bates carried out all of these missions and more across two theaters of war in less than two years of service.

The USS Bates was first assigned to the Europe-Africa-Middle East Theater and later to the Asiatic-Pacific Theater. She escorted convoys across the Atlantic, supported the Normandy invasion in June 1944, and then was converted for a new and demanding role. Upon her return to New York City, Bates underwent a brief yard availability and was then converted to a Charles Lawrence-class high speed transport by Marine Basin Shipyard in Brooklyn. On July 31, 1944, her classification was changed to APD-47.

As a high-speed transport, the Bates carried Marines and special operations forces to some of the most dangerous beaches of the Pacific War. She earned three battle stars for her service, participating in the Normandy invasion, the Iwo Jima operation, and the Okinawa operation. She sank after being hit by three kamikazes off Okinawa on May 25, 1945. Twenty-one of her crew were lost with the ship and remain on eternal patrol.

The Final Hours of the Bates

The circumstances of the Bates’s sinking were recorded in extraordinary detail by the Naval History and Heritage Command. At approximately 11:15 on May 25, 1945, the converted fast transport Bates, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Henry Albert Wilmerding Jr., USNR, was on patrol just south of Ie Shima when she was attacked by three kamikazes. The bomb from the third kamikaze hit close aboard, rupturing the hull on the port side. Bates went dead in the water and lost all fire main pressure, and the fires got out of control.

Damaged Bates was heroically towed into an anchorage area, only to capsize and sink. Of the 213 men aboard, 21 perished with the ship. The survivors were rescued from the waters off Okinawa.

A Ship Built with Asbestos Throughout

The USS Bates was constructed and operated during the period when asbestos was not merely permitted in naval shipbuilding but mandated by the Navy itself. The Navy’s acute awareness of fire risk aboard warships laden with fuel, ammunition, and aviation gasoline drove an institutional requirement for asbestos throughout every vessel. The result was that every ship commissioned during this era was saturated with asbestos from the moment it left the shipyard.

The U.S. Navy used asbestos on every class of ship built between the 1930s and early 1980s. Over 1,000 U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships built before 1983 contained asbestos. The Bates, as a Buckley-class destroyer escort built at the height of wartime naval construction, was no exception. Prior to the late-1970s, asbestos was a common material used in shipbuilding, and could be found in equipment such as boilers, turbines, pumps, valves, and electrical components. Additionally, certain materials including gaskets and packing were often made entirely from asbestos. Steam pipes, which ran across the entire ship, were insulated with asbestos blankets and asbestos paper tape. When damaged, repaired or replaced, these materials released asbestos fibers into the air.

Products containing asbestos were not only found in below-deck areas. Pipe insulation, adhesives, electrical cables, deck coverings, laundry and galley equipment, and valves also contained this dangerous product. On a destroyer escort of the Bates’s size, these materials were packed into every compartment, from the engine spaces and boiler room to the crew’s berthing, the galley, and the communications spaces. There was no part of the ship that was free from asbestos-containing materials.

The Engineering Spaces: The Most Dangerous Compartments

For the men who kept the Bates moving, the spaces below deck represented a daily source of asbestos exposure. The ship’s turbo-electric propulsion system operated under significant heat and pressure, demanding insulation throughout the boiler room, the engine room, and the steam lines that connected them. Every pipe in those spaces was wrapped in asbestos-containing insulation. Every valve was packed with asbestos gasket material. Every pump was sealed with asbestos packing that wore out under the stress of continuous operation and had to be regularly replaced.

The engine and boiler spaces held an especially high concentration of asbestos, putting machinist’s mates, boiler tenders, and others who spent their work days in these areas at heightened danger. In the confined, poorly ventilated spaces of a destroyer escort’s engineering compartments, asbestos fibers released during routine maintenance had nowhere to go. They lingered in the air that the engineering crew breathed throughout each watch, each deployment, and each transit across the Atlantic or the Pacific.

A 2019 International Journal of Radiation Biology study of more than 114,000 U.S. Navy veterans found significantly elevated mesothelioma mortality rates among engineering and machinery rates. Machinist’s mates, boiler technicians, pipefitters, fire control technicians and water tenders had the highest mesothelioma death rates in the study, confirming that the heaviest exposure occurred in engineering spaces below deck.

No Sailor Was Safe

The danger aboard the Bates was not limited to those who worked in the engineering spaces. Every member of the ship’s crew of more than 200 men lived and worked in a vessel saturated with asbestos-containing materials. A gunner’s mate who spent his days at the ship’s anti-aircraft weapons still slept in a berthing compartment lined with asbestos insulation. A radioman working in the communications shack was surrounded by asbestos-insulated cables and electrical equipment. A cook preparing meals in the ship’s galley worked in a space where the equipment around him contained asbestos components.

Because of the close quarters and poor ventilation on Navy ships, service members would breathe in or swallow asbestos fibers. On a 306-foot destroyer escort with more than 200 men aboard, the confined conditions that made asbestos exposure so pervasive were inescapable by design. The ship was not a large vessel; her crew lived in extraordinarily close proximity to every asbestos-containing system aboard her.

The risk extended beyond those who served at sea to those who built and repaired the vessel on shore. Workers at the Bethlehem-Hingham Shipyard who laid down and constructed the Bates, and the workers at Marine Basin Shipyard in Brooklyn who converted her to a high-speed transport in 1944, performed their work in environments where asbestos-containing materials were being cut, fitted, applied, and installed throughout the vessel. Those workers breathed the same fibers as the sailors who would later serve aboard her.

The companies that provided the Navy with these asbestos products were generally aware of the hazards of asbestos, but did nothing to warn those serving aboard the USS Bates or its contemporaries. As a result, few if any sailors took proper precautions while working with asbestos, and many developed mesothelioma and other asbestos-related illnesses.

A Short Service, A Long Shadow

The USS Bates served for less than two years before she was sunk off Okinawa. Her brief service life might suggest a limited window of asbestos exposure for those who served aboard her. But that assumption is mistaken on two counts. First, the intensity of exposure aboard a wartime vessel operating continuously, with constant maintenance demands on asbestos-laden equipment, could be extraordinary even over a short period. Second, asbestos-related disease does not require years of exposure to take root. A single exposure can be sufficient to set the biological process in motion that, decades later, produces a diagnosis of mesothelioma.

Beyond those who served aboard the Bates herself, the ship’s relatively brief operational life means that many who were exposed came through the vessel as temporary assignments, as yard workers during her conversion, or as part of the rescue operations following her sinking. Some of those individuals may not immediately connect a current illness to their time in or around the Bates.

The Disease That Takes Decades to Appear

Mesothelioma is a rare and aggressive cancer of the tissue lining surrounding the lungs, abdomen, or heart. It is caused by asbestos exposure. The disease’s latency period can span 10 to 60 years between initial exposure and first diagnosis.

More broadly, many veterans who served on other Buckley-class destroyer escorts in the same era, or who went on to serve aboard other asbestos-saturated vessels after or before their time on the Bates, accumulated exposure across multiple ships and multiple decades of service. The total burden of exposure across a naval career often far exceeded what any single ship assignment would suggest.

Navy veterans are at a high risk of developing mesothelioma because of the amount of asbestos the United States military used.

VA Benefits and Legal Compensation

Veterans and their families navigating an asbestos-related illness diagnosis have two primary avenues available to them: VA benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs, trust fund claims, and legal compensation through civil litigation against the manufacturers of the asbestos-containing products that were present aboard their ships.

Pursuing asbestos compensation from the companies that manufactured and sold asbestos products to the Navy for use on board ships does not impact VA benefits. There is no risk in pursuing asbestos compensation alongside VA benefits. The manufacturers of the boiler insulation, pipe covering, valve packing, gasket compounds, and electrical cable insulation installed aboard the USS Bates knew their products were hazardous. They chose not to warn the sailors who would live and work surrounded by those products. Those companies bear significant legal accountability.

Some asbestos companies that filed for bankruptcy and no longer exist were ordered to put aside money in trust funds for future mesothelioma patients. Today, there is an estimated thirty billion dollars in these trusts. An experienced asbestos attorney who specializes in Navy veteran claims can review service records, identify the specific manufacturers whose products were aboard the USS Bates, and pursue compensation through personal injury litigation and asbestos trust fund claims, typically at no upfront cost to veterans or their families.

Statutes of limitations apply to asbestos claims, and the window to file can close. For a disease that takes decades to reveal itself, acting promptly upon diagnosis is essential.