The USS Iowa Disaster: Success of the Forensic Dental Team

Abstract

The authors record the contributions of dentistry to the identification of the crew members who were in one of the most significant peacetime military accidents in U.S. Navy history-the April 1989 explosion in a gun turret on the battleship USS Iowa and the deaths of 47 U.S. Navy personnel. Dental identification was the primary means of identification for most because a very high percentage of the bodies were burned or fragmented. The dental-identification team's success was a direct result of its preparedness, its use of dental personnel with mass-disaster experience, and the overall excellent quality of the antemortem dental records. The dental-identification team's successful involvement in the USS Iowa tragedy was considered a model for success and therefore was instrumental in contributing to the development of the American Board of Forensic Odontology "Guidelines for the Development of a Disaster Dental Identification Team."

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