On 29 July 1967, USS Forrestal (CVA/CV-59) suffered a catastrophic fire during flight operations while on Yankee Station off the coast of Vietnam. Wracked by eight high-order explosions of thin-shelled Korean War–vintage bombs and a number of smaller weapons explosions, the world’s first super carrier was mere minutes away from the bottom of the Gulf of Tonkin. In its wake, the fire claimed 134 Sailors and Airmen, and seriously injured or burned another 161. Of those who died, 50 died where they slept. Many more were wounded but did not report their injuries because of the severity of those of their shipmates.
The official Navy investigation identified the Skyhawk struck by the Zuni as aircraft No. 405, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Fred D. White. Lieutenant Commander John McCain stated in his 1999 book Faith of My Fathers that the missile struck his aircraft, alongside White’s A-4 Skyhawk. “On that Saturday morning in July, as I sat in the cockpit of my A-4 preparing to take off, a rocket hit the fuel tank under my airplane.” Later accounts relying on his book also state that the rocket struck his A-4 Skyhawk.
The rocket broke apart on impact with the external fuel tank. The highly flammable JP-5 fuel spread on the deck under White’s and McCain’s A-4s, ignited by numerous fragments of burning rocket propellant, and causing an instantaneous conflagration. A sailor standing about 100 feet forward was struck by a fragment of the Zuni or the exploding fuel tank. A fragment also punctured the centerline external fuel tank of A-4 #310, positioned just aft of the jet blast deflector of catapult number 3. The resulting fire was fanned by 32-knot (59 km/h; 37 mph) winds and the exhaust of at least three jets. Fire quarters and then general quarters were sounded at 10:52 and 10:53. Condition ZEBRA was declared at 10:59, requiring all hands to secure the ship for maximum survivability, including closing the fire-proof steel doors that separate the ship’s compartments.
The official report states that one Korean War-era 1,000 lb AN-M65 bomb fell from an A-4 Skyhawk to the deck; other reports say two. The bomb fell in a pool of burning fuel between White’s and McCain’s aircraft.
Damage Control Team No. 8, led by Chief Farrier, were the first responders to any incident on the flight deck. They immediately took action. Farrier, without taking the time to locate and put on protective clothing, immediately attempted to smother the bomb with a PKP fire extinguisher, attempting to delay the fuel fire from spreading and give the pilots time to escape their aircraft. Twenty seconds later the hose crew arrived and fought the periphery of the fire. Despite Chief Farrier’s constant effort to cool the bomb that had fallen to the deck, the casing suddenly split open and the explosive began to burn brightly. The Chief, recognizing that a lethal cook-off was imminent, shouted for his firefighters to withdraw, but the bomb detonated—one minute and 36 seconds after the start of the fire. The unstable Composition B in the old bombs enhanced the power of the explosions. Thirty-five personnel were in close proximity to the blast. Two fire control teams were virtually destroyed; Farrier and all but three of his men were killed instantly. Twenty-seven men were injured.
The pilots, preparing to launch, were strapped into their aircraft. When the fire started and quickly spread, they immediately attempted to escape their aircraft. McCain, pilot of A-4 Skyhawk side No. 416, next to White’s, was among the first to notice the flames, and escaped by scrambling down the nose of his A-4 and jumping off the refueling probe. Lt. Cmdr. Robert “Bo” Browning, in an A-4E Skyhawk on the port side, escaped by crossing the flight deck and ducking under the tails of F-4B Phantoms spotted along the starboard side. CVW-17 operations officer, Lt. Cmdr. Herbert A. Hope of VA-46, escaped by jumping out of the Skyhawk cockpit and rolling off the flight deck and into the starboard man-overboard net. He went to the hangar deck and took command of a firefighting team.
“I saw a dozen people running… into the fire, just before the bomb cooked off,” Lt. Cmdr. Browning later said. McCain saw another pilot on fire, and turned to help him, when the first bomb detonated. McCain was knocked backwards 10 feet, struck by shrapnel and wounded. White managed to get out of his burning aircraft but was killed by the detonation of the first bomb. Not all of the pilots were able to get out of their aircraft in time. Lt Ken McMillen escaped. LT (JG) Don Dameworth and LT (JG) David Dollarhide were injured escaping their aircraft. Lt. Cmdrs Gerry Stark and Dennis Barton were missing.
The first bomb detonation destroyed White’s and McCain’s aircraft, blew a crater in the armored flight deck, and sprayed the deck and crew with bomb fragments and shrapnel from the destroyed aircraft. Burning fuel poured through the hole in the deck into occupied berthing compartments below. In the tightly packed formation on the aft deck, every aircraft, all fully fueled and bomb-laden, was damaged. All seven F-4s caught fire.
Lieutenant James J. Campbell recoiled for a few moments in stunned dismay as burning torches tumbled toward him, until their screams stirred him to action. Several men jumped or were blown into the ocean. Neighboring ships came alongside and pulled the men from the water. When Browning got back on deck, he recalled, “The port quarter of the flight deck where I was is no longer there.”
Two more of the unstable 1,000 lb bombs exploded 10 seconds after the first, and a fourth blew up 44 seconds after that. A total of ten bombs exploded during the fire. Bodies and debris were hurled as far as the bow of the ship.
The explosions tore seven holes in the flight deck. About 40,000 US gallons of burning jet fuel from ruptured aircraft tanks poured across the deck and through the holes in the deck into the aft hangar bay and berthing compartments. The explosions and fire killed fifty night crew personnel who were sleeping in berthing compartments below the aft portion of the flight deck. Forty-one additional crew members were killed in internal compartments in the aft portion of Forrestal.
The explosions of the large, old weapons blew holes in the armored flight deck above spaces primarily set aside for crew berthing. Flaming and unburned fuel, water, and foam cascaded down into the compartments. Battling the fires below deck was more difficult than that topside with the confined spaces, little light, thick black smoke, and toxic fumes. Although the fire on the flight deck was controlled within an hour, fires below deck raged until 0400 the next morning.
Personnel from all over the ship rallied to fight the fires and control further damage. They pushed aircraft, missiles, rockets, bombs, and burning fragments over the side. Sailors manually jettisoned numerous 250 and 500 lb bombs by rolling them along the deck and off the side. Sailors without training in firefighting and damage control took over for the depleted damage control teams. Unknowingly, inexperienced hose teams using seawater washed away the efforts of others attempting to smother the fire with foam.
Undetonated bombs were continually found during the afternoon. LT (JG) Robert Cates, the carrier’s explosive ordnance demolition officer, recounted later how he had “noticed that there was a 500-pound bomb and a 750-pound bomb in the middle of the flight deck still smoking. They hadn’t detonated or anything; they were just setting there smoking. So I went up and defused them and had them jettisoned.” Another sailor volunteered to be lowered by line through a hole in the flight deck to defuse a live bomb that had dropped to the 03 level—even though the compartment was still on fire and full of smoke. Later on, LT (JG) Cates had himself lowered into the compartment to attach a line to the bomb so it could be hauled up to the deck and jettisoned.
Twenty-one aircraft were destroyed and another 40 damaged of the 73 on board at the start of the fire.
Throughout the day, the ship’s medical staff worked in dangerous conditions to assist their comrades. The number of casualties quickly overwhelmed the ship’s medical teams, and Forrestal was escorted by USS Henry W. Tucker to rendezvous with hospital ship USS Repose at 20:54, allowing the crew to begin transferring the dead and wounded at 22:53. Firefighter Milt Crutchley said, “The worst was going back into the burned-out areas later and finding your dead and wounded shipmates.” He said it was extremely difficult to remove charred, blackened bodies locked in rigor mortis “while maintaining some sort of dignity for your fallen comrades.”
At 5:05, a muster of Forrestal crewmen—both in the carrier and aboard other ships—was begun. It took many hours to account for the ship’s crew. Wounded and dead had been transferred to other ships, and some men were missing, either burned beyond recognition or blown overboard. At 6:44 pm, fires were still burning in the ship’s carpenter shop and in the aft compartments. At 8:33 pm, the fires in the 02 and 03 levels were contained, but the areas were still too hot to enter. Fire fighting was greatly hampered because of smoke and heat. Crew members cut additional holes in the flight deck to help fight fires in the compartments below. At 12:20 am, July 30, 14 hours after the fires had begun, all the fires were controlled. Forrestal crew members continued to put out hot spots, clear smoke, and cool hot steel on the 02 and 03 levels. The fires were declared out at 4:00 am.
Although the investigation report cited errors of safety checks on the Zuni rocket, it concluded that no one on board was directly responsible for the fire and subsequent explosions, and recommended that no disciplinary or administrative action be taken against any persons attached to the ship or its air wing.
Forrestal received emergency repairs over eight days at Subic Bay, The Philippines, before sailing for complete repair at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. She went on to serve until 11 September 1993 when she was decommissioned after 21 deployments. She never made another Vietnam cruise.
This information was extracted from the Manual of the Judge Advocate General Basic Final Investigative Report Concerning the Fire on Board the USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59), portions of which are available from both the U.S. Navy JAG online library and other articles on Wikipedia.
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This happened less than two months 6/8/67 after Israel’s IDF attacked the USS Liberty with 34 KIA/174 WIA. ADM. John McCain JR after a very short investigation deemed it was an accident. The Men of the Liberty has tried to get a Congressional Investigation into the Truth about the attack. Seems like Accidents have been part of the McCain’s Family Life. Was there a Naval Investigations and a Congressional Investigation into both accidents (?)
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Great article. Suggest removing pic of the USS Stark (FFG-31) after she was hit by Exocets in the Persian Gulf in 1987. Not sure what it has to do with the article other than lessons learned from the Forrestal most likely saved the Stark. However, the Stark crew’s amazing feats of damage control kept their ship afloat. By any reasonable sailor’s perspective, she should have been a goner. My ship (USS Gallery FFG-26) in-chopped to the Persian Gulf in September of 1987. Pretty hairy cruise!
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USS INTREPID CVA 11 we were a day out Hong Kong when capt. told us we were going full speed to the aid of the the Forrestal..got there during the night…by about 11 am she started to sag in the stern pretty close too much while still pumping streams of water and black smoke
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Although not mentioned in the article, I was aboard the USS Bausell DD 845 operating in Yankee Station when the Forrestal had her fire. We were immediately detailed to respond and to escort her to Subic Bay. I will never forget the sight of that flight deck with the ship running a 2 1/2 degree list or more from the damage.
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Very informative
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Great article. Makes the complex understandable.
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One thing not mentioned is why the Navy was using ordinance from the Korean War in the first place. One of the unknown scandals of the Vietnam Air War was the shortage of conventional bombs in the U.S. inventory. Because the Rolling Thunder air campaign was using so many conventional high explosive bombs, ordinance stocks quickly began to run out, to the point where aircraft were flying missions carrying a fraction of ordinance on their bomb racks.
In order to allay this shortage, DOD, began to scour any location that had conventional bombs of any kind, to the point where bombs from World War II were being used. Even foreign recipients of US military aid had their own ordinance stocks raided for use in the air campaign.
Because of the age of these bombs, as well as their often being stored in substandard conditions, incidents like those on the Forrestal were inevitable
To the best of my knowledge, it was’t until late 1967 that conventional bomb stocks got back to the required level.
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Nice article, but it’s inaccurate to say it was “extracted” from the JA report. I’ve read it and it’s not written anything like the prose you use. I also contributed significantly to the Wikipedia article about the incident. In a brief comparison, I found you’ve cut and pasted entire series of sentences from that article. That’s where much of the article was “extracted” from.
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A great article and well written. F-14s were not around then and that photo should be removed. When there is a fire on any ship at sea, stand and fight as there is no where to go. Men are brought together as shipmates to help one another.
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Photo removed. Thanks!
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I was there that day also aboard the USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31) working as a plane captain in Fighter Squadron 24 (VF-24). We were preparing for our last launch of our last line period against the ‘Dragon’s Jaw bridge’ in North Vietnam before going home for a much needed rest when Captain Ruiz came over the horn and told us the Forrestal was on fire and we were on our way to render assistance. All hands were told to turn too and download all the ordnance we just spent the last 3 hours uploading… all in 30 minutes!
We sent out helicopters and some of our medical teams over to the Forrestal immediately while we were frantically downloading ordnance. We first spotted her smoke on the horizon about 15 minutes later. As we approached her, the plume of black smoke from her fires went thousands of feet into the clear blue cloudless sky. A RA-5C Vigilante was being pushed overboard by those fighting the fires, sailors were jumping into the sea from the flight deck as bombs exploded in the inferno that was the aft section of the Forrestal flight deck. We stood on the flight deck of the “Bonny Dick” and witnessed this hell…helpless to do anything about it.
Our choppers started coming back with wounded which we took directly to sick bay. The poor kid I carried was blue and purple and his clothes had been burned onto his body. Never knew is he made it.
The USS Oriskany had arrived before we did to render aid and assistance and eventually ‘escorted’ the Forrestal back to Subic Bay Naval Station. The USS Bon Homme Richard and Carrier Air Wing 21 (CAG-21) MiG Killers were the sole carrier on ‘Yankee Station’ for a couple of days before reliefs arrived and we were able to go home.
As we pulled into Subic Bay, the Forrestal was tied up at the carrier pier at Cubi Point Naval Air Station and we docked at the Subic Pier. When we passed her we were able to see for the first time the flight deck of the Forrestal. Never saw such devastation on a US Navy ship like that before. Absolutely sad and tragic. The only thing that compares to it is the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Thanks you for this article. Never knew the ‘details’ about what actually happened that day… but it is vividly etched in my brain forever. God Bless all those who died and were wounded that day! RIP
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Bob, George Dailey AO2 VF-24 ord. crew. I don’t think any of us have forgotten that day.
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Interesting and detailed account of a major tragedy.
I wish I knew how to submit an article to CherriesWriter, but I’ll be darned if I can see a way to it.
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send me an email at john.podlaski@gmail.com
On Mon, Oct 7, 2019, 6:34 PM CherriesWriter – Vietnam War website wrote:
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I was there that day, aboard the USS Bon Homme Richard CVA-31, we were heading to PI and from there back to the states. Our capt came on the 1MC and said we were turning around because the Forrestal was on fire. We stood off maybe 1/4 to 1/2 mile. Our helo crews and medical officer flew over while Forrestal was still on fire, picking up wounded and bringing them back to our ship for triage. I carried stretchers. Sights and smells that I still vividly remember. The next day we transferres the wounded over to USS Repose then headed for Subic to re-arm and re-provision, I remember the 24 hour working party on the pier in Subic, the Capt provided several kegs of beer for the working party after we had busted opur butts for 24 hours. We had to head right back out to yankee station to take the Forrestalls place, until another relief carrier could be dispatched. We were delayed going home for at least 30 days or more I forget exactly how many. There is a very good book written by the Engineering officer of CVA-59 who was there that day , titled “Sailors To The End”
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Great article. Good to remember and honor history
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Wow! I used to think sailors had it made.
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I was drafted into the US Army in 1967 and spent the end of my tour in Vietnam. After returning home I worked with an ex sailor who was on that ship during the tragedy. I hope my memory is correct but I believed he told me that a microwave radar had set off a rocket that set off other rockets or bombs in a chain reaction. He told me the crew fought the fire for three days straight. He said that so much water was pumped into the ship that it almost slipped below the surface. He told me that the ship came very close to the angle that would have caused it to sink but the Captain kept pumping water until the fires were out. My co worker’s name was Carl Clevenger. He was a little guy who was about 4’11”. He enlisted from Michigan and told me that even though he was not a firefighter that he and his classmates were trained at Great Lakes Training Station to fight fires. He said when he was training to be the nozzle man that the pressure of the water streaming from the fire hose would lift him off the ground. Carl was not injured significantly during the blaze.
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Change of Email Address
Would you please change my email address (tbrown@idl.com.au) in your system to the following:
amb77@bigpond.com
Thank you
Best wishes, tony
Tony Brown
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I’m unable to change anything on that program. You’ll have to sign back up.
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Incorrect photo
We did not yet have the F114
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Removed. Thanks!
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During its SLEP evolution at Philadelphia in the 80s the port side of the flight deck was widened by about 20′ for a length of 200′ back to the LSO area. Fairing in the new steel with the previously super heated plate in the area of the fire became quite an endeavor.
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On Sun, Oct 6, 2019 at 4:01 PM CherriesWriter – Vietnam War website wrote:
> pdoggbiker posted: ” On 29 July 1967, USS Forrestal (CVA/CV-59) suffered a > catastrophic fire during flight operations while on Yankee Station off the > coast of Vietnam. Wracked by eight high-order explosions of thin-shelled > Korean War–vintage bombs and a number of smalle” >
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McCain did a wet start , which put a flame farther than normal , setting of ordinance on plane behind him, that what started it. Coverup he Admirals son.
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or there was no pin in the Zuni
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If the diagram of the arrangement of aircraft on the deck is correct (no aircraft is located behind McCain’s), and there’s no reason to believe it’s not, then there is no way a wet start, if it truly happened, could have impacted the ordnance on another aircraft.
Note: the word is “ordnance” not “ordinance” – a common mistake of civilians.
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Thank you for your response. / John
On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 1:03 PM CherriesWriter – Vietnam War website wrote:
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I am a retired Army Mariner and had to watch the films they will make you a believer on the importance of firefighting and fire trainer all crew it’s sad that our greatest learning opportunities comes from our greatest tragedy’s
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Wow! I was brand new in country as a 2LT of Infantry in leadership of an Infantry Platoon just south of Chu Lai.
*Ed* *Been caught trying to chop down my Family Tree!* *Genealogist: @ Ancestry.com as Griffin_Edwin*
*Find a Grave: Edwin Griffin (#48744063)*
*Facebook: Ed Griffin*
On Sun, Oct 6, 2019 at 3:00 PM CherriesWriter – Vietnam War website wrote:
> pdoggbiker posted: ” On 29 July 1967, USS Forrestal (CVA/CV-59) suffered a > catastrophic fire during flight operations while on Yankee Station off the > coast of Vietnam. Wracked by eight high-order explosions of thin-shelled > Korean War–vintage bombs and a number of smalle” >
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The men at the Battle of Bastogne the men were scrapping mold off the ammunition. The date stamped on the end was 1917. The ammunition’s manufacturer was on strike. The unions called a strike for higher wages.
How many more such events occurred because of old ammunition?
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