I read VADM Lockwood's book on the disaster along with the accounts in Naval History. An interesting factoid is that the fictional ship in the Novel "The Caine Mutiny" was a converted Clemson Class Destroyer. Most (if not all) of the remaining ships of the Class were converted into Destroyer Minesweepers and the author based his descriptions on his service aboard one.
As a pilot I love the comment about "Get-There-Itis", as this is a classic example of VFR into IMC, leading to CFIT (Visual Flight Rules leading into Instrument Meteorological Conditions leading into Controlled Flight Into Terrain.)
The safety culture we have today simply didn't exist at the time. The Navy wouldn't expect to make changes to procedures over something like this because the regulations simply weren't that detailed (for a wide range of topics). The expectation was that captains, commodores, and admirals would have their own ways of doing things, not that procedures would be standardized across the Navy. Given the relatively primitive instruments and wide range of skill levels, experts were *obviously* able to do things that below-average officers couldn't. The development of a rigorous safety culture in SAC (in response to the loss ratenof the B-47 and the realization that bombers crashing with hydrogen bombs in their bellies probably wouldn't be good) is arguably the turning point for modern industrial societies.
