Asbestos Exposure Aboard the USS Carpellotti (APD-136)

She was named for a young Marine from the coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania who gave his life on the first day of America’s first offensive operation of the Second World War. Private First Class Louis Joseph Carpellotti was born on 13 February 1918 in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the Marine Corps on 22 September 1940 and was killed in action at Tulagi, Solomon Islands, on 7 August 1942, when he led a detachment to deliver flanking fire on a Japanese position, enabling the rest of his squad to assault and capture it. For his personal valor in this action, he was posthumously awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. A Navy ship was named in his honor, carrying his name across two oceans and through more than a decade of Cold War service.

USS Carpellotti (APD-136) was a Crosley-class high speed transport in service with the United States Navy from 1945 to 1958. She was laid down on 31 October 1944 at the Defoe Shipbuilding Company in Bay City, Michigan, launched on 10 March 1945, and commissioned on 30 July 1945, under the command of Lieutenant Commander John V. Brown, USNR. She displaced 1,450 long tons, stretched 306 feet from bow to stern, and carried a complement of 204 officers and enlisted men. Her propulsion plant consisted of two Combustion Engineering DR boilers driving a turbo-electric system with two General Electric steam turbines, producing 12,000 horsepower and a top speed of 23 knots.

For the men who served aboard her across more than thirteen years of active duty, the Carpellotti offered steady employment and the particular camaraderie of a small ship with a close-knit crew. What she also offered, without their knowledge or consent, was continuous exposure to asbestos that has placed many of those veterans at elevated risk of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related disease decades after their service ended.

A Ship Completed Too Late for War, Ready for Decades of Service

Completed too late for active participation in World War II, Carpellotti remained on active duty with the Fleet, based on Norfolk. Rather than the beaches of the Pacific, her early years brought her to European ports for midshipman cruises and to the Caribbean for amphibious assault exercises along the east coast. In 1948, she made a good-will tour to the Persian Gulf.

As the Cold War deepened, the Carpellotti took on a steadily more demanding operational role. She took part in North Atlantic Treaty Organization exercises in 1952 in the first NATO amphibious operation, “Main Brace”; and in 1955 and 1957 during her tours with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. She also supported occupation service in Europe in the postwar years, logging thousands of miles across the Atlantic and beyond.

Throughout all of this service, across ports in England, France, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the Persian Gulf, the Carpellotti’s engineering plant was running, her boilers were generating steam, and her crew was maintaining the machinery that kept her at sea. That machinery, from the boilers themselves to the steam lines, pumps, valves, and electrical systems throughout the ship, was insulated, sealed, and packed with asbestos-containing materials as a matter of standard naval construction practice.

The Carpellotti was decommissioned on 21 April 1958 in Norfolk, Virginia. She was sold for commercial service on 20 June 1960 for $141,474 to Diamond Manufacturing Company of Savannah, Georgia, and used in the construction of the Norfolk-Portsmouth bridge and tunnel project. She was ultimately sold for scrapping in 1966 to Boston Metals Company of Baltimore, Maryland.

Asbestos on the USS Carpellotti

The USS Carpellotti was built and commissioned at a time when asbestos was not merely permitted in naval shipbuilding but considered essential to it. The U.S. Navy used more than 300 asbestos products and parts on ships for several decades, from the 1930s to the early 1980s. For the Carpellotti, a ship commissioned in 1945 and serving until 1958, this meant that her entire active life was spent as an asbestos-saturated vessel.

Asbestos was widely used in Navy repair ships and other vessels due to its fire-resistant and durable qualities. It was found in various areas of these ships, including engine rooms, boilers, turbines, gaskets, electrical wiring, deck tiles, and bulkheads. On a high-speed transport like the Carpellotti, these materials were present throughout the ship, concentrated especially in the engineering spaces that drove her 12,000-horsepower propulsion plant.

The Carpellotti’s two Combustion Engineering DR boilers were the heart of her propulsion system, and they were also among the most heavily asbestos-laden spaces aboard the ship. Every surface of those boilers was insulated with asbestos-containing block insulation. The steam lines running from the boilers to the General Electric turbines were wrapped in asbestos pipe covering. The valves, pumps, and fittings throughout the engineering plant were packed with asbestos gaskets and packing material that wore under the stress of continuous operation and required regular replacement.

Breathing in or swallowing those asbestos fibers can cause veterans to develop mesothelioma 10 to 60 years later. Asbestos-containing products were used throughout Navy and Coast Guard ships. 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 the dangerous mineral. For a crew of 204 men living and working in a 306-foot vessel, there was no compartment entirely free of asbestos-containing materials.

The Engineering Spaces and the Men Who Worked in Them

The Carpellotti’s engineering crew were the men most directly and most intensely exposed to the ship’s asbestos-containing equipment. The boiler room and engine room spaces on a Crosley-class high-speed transport were compact, poorly ventilated, and operating under significant heat and pressure. Every maintenance evolution in those spaces required direct contact with asbestos-laden equipment.

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.

For the men of the Carpellotti who stood watch in the boiler room and engine room, that finding carries particular weight. On a small, fast vessel designed to sprint troops to amphibious landings at 23 knots, the engineering plant was pushed hard, and the maintenance demands on the boilers, turbines, and associated equipment were correspondingly intense. Worn asbestos gaskets had to be scraped and replaced. Asbestos pipe covering that cracked or deteriorated under heat and vibration had to be cut away and re-applied. Packing material in pump glands wore out and had to be replaced. Every one of these routine maintenance tasks released asbestos fiber into the confined air of spaces where the engineering crew worked, ate, and slept.

No Sailor Was Beyond the Reach of Asbestos

The asbestos hazard aboard the USS Carpellotti extended well beyond those who worked in the engineering spaces. Every member of the ship’s complement of 204 men lived in close proximity to asbestos-containing materials throughout the vessel. A gunner’s mate who spent his days at the ship’s 5-inch gun or twin 40mm mounts still slept in berthing compartments lined with asbestos insulation. A radioman working in the communications spaces was surrounded by asbestos-insulated cables and electrical equipment. A boatswain’s mate maintaining the ship’s four LCVPs worked on a vessel whose every below-deck compartment harbored asbestos.

High-speed transports like the Carpellotti also carried troops, typically up to 162 embarked Marines or soldiers destined for amphibious landings. Those embarked troops, packed into the ship’s troop spaces for the duration of a transit, were also exposed to the same asbestos-containing materials as the ship’s permanent crew, adding yet another category of potential victim to the vessel’s exposure history.

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

The danger did not end when a sailor stepped ashore. Asbestos fibers that clung to work clothing, settled in hair, and adhered to skin traveled home with every man who left the ship on liberty or on discharge. Spouses who laundered those uniforms, children who greeted a returning sailor at the door, and family members who shared a household with the returning sailors were exposed to secondary contamination without any awareness of what was arriving with him.

A Ship with Multiple Lives and Multiple Exposure Events

The USS Carpellotti’s post-naval career added additional chapters to her asbestos story. After her decommissioning in 1958 and her sale for commercial service in 1960, the Carpellotti was used in the construction of the Norfolk-Portsmouth bridge and tunnel project in Virginia. Workers who cut, modified, or worked in and around the ship’s existing structure during that commercial service encountered the same asbestos-containing insulation, tile, and building materials that had been installed during her original construction. Commercial and construction workers who came aboard a decommissioned Navy vessel without the benefit of any asbestos abatement faced exposure that was potentially as significant as anything the ship’s naval crew had experienced.

The ship was ultimately sold for scrapping in 1966. Breaking apart a vessel that had accumulated more than two decades of asbestos-containing insulation, gaskets, tile, electrical cable, and construction materials releases enormous quantities of fiber, and the workers of Boston Metals Company in Baltimore who dismantled the Carpellotti did so at a time when occupational asbestos regulations were still in their infancy.

Asbestos was no longer used on most Navy ships by the 1980s. Major renovation efforts removed asbestos-containing materials from the majority of vessels. For the Carpellotti, decommissioned in 1958 and scrapped in 1966, that institutional reckoning came too late to protect anyone who had served aboard her or worked on her in her post-naval life.

The Disease That Follows Veterans for Decades

Mesothelioma is an aggressive and incurable cancer of the tissue lining surrounding the lungs, abdomen, or heart, caused by asbestos exposure. It does not announce itself quickly. Some Navy veterans develop mesothelioma 10 to 60 years after asbestos exposure. A machinist’s mate who kept the Carpellotti’s boilers running through the NATO exercises of 1952 or the Mediterranean deployments of 1955 and 1957 may have spent decades in apparent good health before a diagnosis arrived to connect the present to those long-ago watches below deck.

Beyond mesothelioma, asbestos exposure can cause lung cancer, asbestosis, and other serious respiratory conditions. Veterans who develop any of these illnesses following naval service should consider whether asbestos exposure during that service may be a contributing factor, and should consult both a medical specialist and a legal professional.

VA Benefits and Legal Options

Veterans who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma or another asbestos-related illness following service aboard the USS Carpellotti have two primary avenues available to them. The first is VA benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs, which can provide disability compensation, free or low-cost healthcare, and other support to veterans whose illness is connected to their military service. The second is legal compensation through civil litigation against the manufacturers of the specific asbestos-containing products installed aboard the ship.

While you cannot sue the military or government for exposure to asbestos on Navy ships, you may be able to sue private companies that made the products you were exposed to. Those manufacturers, who supplied the Navy with asbestos-containing boiler insulation, turbine blankets, pump gaskets, pipe covering, electrical cable, and the dozens of other products that saturated a vessel like the Carpellotti, knew the hazards their products posed. They chose not to warn the sailors who would spend years in contact with those products. That choice created legal liability that persists to this day.

There is currently over thirty billion dollars in asbestos trust funds set up for victims of asbestos-related diseases. An experienced asbestos attorney who specializes in Navy veteran claims can review service records, identify the specific manufacturers whose products were aboard the Carpellotti during a veteran’s period of service, and pursue compensation through personal injury litigation or asbestos trust fund claims, at no upfront cost.

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 always the most critical step.