Talk:SS Columbia Eagle incident

Alvin Glatkowski bio
I understand that both Clyde McKay and Alvin Glatkowski went through the Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship of the Seafarers International Union then based in New York. I understand that Glatkowski was convicted of mutiny in Norfolk and sentenced to 10 years. Has he been heard from since?

thanks, Steve Dutky - sdutky@terpalum.umd.edu (2003-07-28T05:17:47)
 * Yes, Glatkowski was sentenced to 10 years in the Federal Court in Los Angeles and served his time at Lompoc, California. He served 7 years and has not been in trouble with the law since.


 * If you wish to discuss this further, you can contact me at loiederman@sbcglobal.net. I am one of the co-authors of The Eagle Mutiny.
 * Roberto Loiederman (2007-07-08T12:01:56)

USAF not USN helicopters
There are some major errors in this article. The two helicopters mentioned were not U.S. Navy CH-53 Sea Stallions from Vietnam. They were two U.S. Air Force HH-53 Super Jolly Green Giant helicopters from Thailand. I was an enlisted aircrew member on one of the helicopters that participated in the event. I was an aerial combat still photographer and have images of our helicopters on the flight deck. -- USAF Capt. (Retired) Jeffrey L. Whitted 155.7.176.6 (talk) 21:44, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Info and photos
One of the Strangest Stories of the Vietnam War: ‘Hippies’ Hijack a Ship full of Napalm Bombs and sail it to Cambodia Johnvr4 (talk) 17:03, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Official govt report style - Severely unbalanced coverage

 * Thank you for your feedback. I did some clean up. You are correct it reads like a gov report. It is better, still needs a little more work. May get to it later. Telecine Guy (talk) 17:42, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Removed gov, speak and talk. Thank you, Telecine Guy (talk) 20:23, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is NOT an official government mouthpiece, nor supposed to serve as a poster-wall for official (or insider) military propaganda. See: WP:NPOV.

This article (at present) is ridiculously one-sided in its presentation, rather obviously written by, or in the style of, a U.S. Navy historian or public-relations officer -- and almost certainly by current or former U.S. military (probably Navy) personnel. (I should know: I've read countless such documents from various U.S. naval commands, U.S. Naval History Office, DoD, etc.)

The overall approach of this article could be summed up with:
 * "The U.S. Navy did everything perfectly; very little else is important"

The article talks of the event as if it was a spontaneous event without context -- rather obviously evading the intense political context of that time, in which widespread U.S. public opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war was resulting in a wide array of anti-war resistance activity by thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of Americans, at home and abroad -- of which this incident was simply an extraordinary example.

Regardless of your political leanings, it is simply poor article development to cast this as an odd, isolated incident, without presenting the wider meaning or context.

It's like talking about the assasination of Abraham Lincoln without mentioning that it was a reprisal for his role in the U.S. Civil War -- or that the Boston Tea Party was an act of vandalism, without explaining its evolution from Americans' public revulsion to the Stamp Act.

Historic events matter most in context.

The article further offers no information on the wider impact of this extraordinary event (the first armed mutiny aboard an American ship in 150 years, and happening to a shipload of munitions, in wartime, diverted to a hostile country). Little to no coverage of the executive decisions, diplomatic issues, notoriety, domestic politics, naval politics or practices, changes (if any) to U.S. Merchant Marine operations or maritime law.

It contains shockingly little about the mindset and motives of the hijackers -- and no more than a couple of words, without context, from them -- despite substantial material available online, quoting them extensively. It's as if the writer didn't want their perspective on the incident to be reported at all.

It reads like a routine "cops and robbers" story (written by a cop), with the Navy (almost) coming to the rescue -- rather than what it actually was: an extraordinary (good or bad) anti-war resistance act of the 1970s Vietnam Anti-War Movement -- the lead story in newspapers and TV broacasts across the nation -- that caught the Navy, and the U.S. Merchant Marine, utterly by surprise... both services failing to prevent or control it.

Further, this article offers only a handful of titles under "References," largely from such "unbiased and credible" sources as the U.S. Navy and Penthouse magazine -- neither of them exactly known for objectivity, nor for scrupulous accuracy, in reporting. Yet, in just a few minutes of Googling, I found these alternate (and substantial) journalistic and historiographic sources, clearly less-biased towards this article's ridiculous spin to the right.


 * Cronkite, Walter, and Nelson Benton, "Columbia Eagle / Mutiny / Cambodia," segment #208707, in transcript: CBS Evening News for 1970-03-16, from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, Vanderbilt University, retrieved March 1, 2018.


 * Hoffman, Fred S., Associated Press, "U.S. Bomb Ship Seized in Mutiny: Anchored Off Cambodia", March 16, 1970, San Bernardino Sun, San Bernardino, California, Volume 76, Number 137, pp.1-2, photocopy at retrieved March 1, 2018 from OCR transcription in California Digital Newspaper Collection.


 * "Mutiny Involved 5: Captain,", March 19, 1970, Nashville Tennesseean, Page 13 retrieved March 1, 2018 from OCR transcription in Newspapers.com.


 * Emery, Fred, "Two Who Say They Support S.D.S. Tell How They Hijacked Ship," March 26, 1970, New York Times archives, retrieved March 1, 2018.


 * ...and its companion article, farther down the page:
 * "U.S. Asks Return of Ship," March 25, 1970, New York Times archives, retrieved March 1, 2018.


 * Associated Press, "2 American Ship Hijackers Want to Quit Cambodia," written July 3, 1970, published July 4, 1970, New York Times, retrieved March 1, 2018 from the Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College, Maryland.


 * Andrews, Evan, "6 Famous Naval Mutinies," November 6, 2012, History in the Headlines newsletter, retrieved March 1, 2018 from History.com.

While I've wasted too much time researching this far, and have other duties to attend to, perhaps a more neutral editor could retouch (or overhaul) this article into a balanced, documentary-quality encyclopedic article. (No, not a left-wing re-write of right-wing history -- just a proper WP:NPOV balancing act, focused on the most historically significant aspects -- rather than which military units deserved citations for failing to stop the hijacking.

As a courtesy to anyone who wants to try, I've inserted all my references in footnotes to the lead paragraph, using ref names so you don't have to repeat the whole ref.

~ Penlite (talk) 08:42, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

(corrected) Misused Indefinite Article
"a SOS was transmitted" is incorrect. The correct usage is "an SOS was transmitted". Danielhaji (talk) 02:53, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * This has been corrected. Bouktin (talk) 20:51, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Additional source material: interview of Alvin Glatkowski and Roberto Loiederman
The podcast Working Class History recorded 3 episodes on the Columbia Eagle Mutiny featuring Alvin Glatkowski and Roberto Loiederman, historian and Vietnam war-era sailor. The link can be found at E21-24: WCH Crime – The Columbia Eagle mutiny Bouktin (talk) 20:51, 10 December 2021 (UTC)