Both the server and attendant were attacked and beaten really without any provocation. Perceived discrimination without any foundation.

The report on the Kitty Hawk incident too does not mention and COULD NOT EVER mention that nuclear weapons if indeed on the ship would have been considered to have been compromised. Compromised in the sense that the ship was in such a state of chaos they could not be used.

“The subcommittee has been unable to determine any precipitous cause for rampage aboard U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. Not only was there not one case wherein racial discrimination could be pinpointed, but there is no evidence which indicated that the blacks who participated in that incident perceived racial discrimination, either in general or any specific, of such a nature as to justify belief that violent reaction was required … The members of the subcommittee did not find and are unaware of any instances of institutional discrimination on the part of the Navy toward any group of persons, majority or minority … Black unity, the drive toward togetherness on the part of blacks, has resulted in a tendency on the part of black sailors to polarize. This results in a grievance of one black, real or fancied, becoming the grievance of many … The Navy’s recruitment program for most of 1972 which resulted in the lowering of standards for enlistment, accepting a greater percentage of mental category IV and those in the lower half of category III, not requiring recruits in these categories to have completed their high school education, and accepting these people without sufficient analysis of their previous offense records, has created many of the problems the Navy is experiencing today.”

Two destinations where I served during that era each and every “local town” contained a very large number of bars and houses of prostitution that catered to the American soldier.

Usually an entire stretch of the “strip” would consist of bars solely devoted to the black troop and maintained as so by the black soldiers. Always referred to as “the block”. A white GI passing through the area on foot that alone was enough for him to get set up and beaten badly, even to death. Merely for having the nerve to walk through the block was enough to get you murdered. Whitey just had to know his place. A phenomenon too not confined to any locale or service.

Those interested google and go see:

The LBJ stockade riot Vietnam. Long Binh Junction riot.

The USS Kitty Hawk riot.

With regard to the Kitty Hawk riot not even really a riot, black sailors rampaging through the ship attacking every white sailor they could get their hands on. Events too on the Kitty Hawk as transpiring to remarkably like what you see when you view the old time Soviet propaganda silent film “Potemkin”.