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.
On 28 July, the day before the accident, Forrestal was resupplied with ordnance by the ammunition ship USS Diamond Head. The load included sixteen 1,000 lb AN/M65A1 “fat boy” bombs (so nicknamed because of their short, rotund shape), which Diamond Head had picked up from Subic Bay Naval Base and were intended for the next day’s second bombing sortie. Some of the batch of AN-M65A1s Forrestal received were more than a decade old, having spent a portion of that exposed to the heat and humidity of Okinawa or Guam, eventually being improperly stored in open-air Quonset huts at a disused ammunition dump on the periphery of Subic Bay Naval Base. Unlike the thick-cased Mark 83 bombs filled with Composition H6, the AN/M65A1 bombs were thin-skinned and filled with Composition B, an older explosive with greater shock and heat sensitivity.
Composition B also had the dangerous tendency to become more powerful (up to 50% by weight) and more sensitive if it was old or improperly stored. Forrestal‘s ordnance handlers had never even seen an AN/M65A1 before, and to their shock, the bombs delivered from Diamond Head were in terrible condition; coated with “decades of accumulated rust and grime” and still in their original packing crates (now moldy and rotten); some were stamped with production dates as early as 1953. Most dangerous of all, several bombs were seen to be leaking liquid paraffin phlegmatizing agent from their seams, an unmistakable sign that the bomb’s explosive filler had degenerated with excessive age, and exposure to heat and moisture.
According to Lieutenant R. R. “Rocky” Pratt, a naval aviator attached to VA-106 the concern felt by Forrestal‘s ordnance handlers was striking, with many afraid to even handle the bombs; one officer wondered out loud if they would survive the shock of a catapult-assisted launch without spontaneously detonating, and others suggested they immediately jettison them. Forrestal‘s ordnance officers reported the situation up the chain of command to the ship’s commanding officer, Captain John Beling, and informed him the bombs were, in their assessment, an imminent danger to the ship and should be immediately jettisoned overboard.
Faced with this, but still needing 1,000 lb bombs for the next day’s missions, Beling demanded Diamond Head take the AN-M65A1s back in exchange for new Mark 83s, but was told by Diamond Head that they had none to give him. The AN-M65A1 bombs had been returned to service specifically because there were not enough Mark 83s to go around. According to one crew member on Diamond Head, when they had arrived at Subic Bay to pick up their load of ordnance for the carriers, the base personnel who had prepared the AN-M65A1 bombs for transfer assumed Diamond Head had been ordered to dump them at sea on the way back to Yankee Station. When notified that the bombs were actually destined for active service in the carrier fleet, the commanding officer of the naval ordnance detachment at Subic Bay was so shocked that he initially refused the transfer, believing a paperwork mistake had been made. At the risk of delaying Diamond Head‘s departure, he refused to sign the transfer forms until receiving written orders from CINCPAC on the teleprinter, explicitly absolving his detachment of responsibility for the bombs’ terrible condition.
With orders to conduct strike missions over North Vietnam the next day, and with no replacement bombs available, Captain Beling reluctantly concluded that he had no choice but to accept the AN-M65A1 bombs in their current condition. In one concession to the demands of the ordnance handlers, Beling agreed to store all 16 bombs alone on deck in the “bomb farm” area between the starboard rail and the carrier’s island until they were loaded for the next day’s missions. Standard procedure was to store them in the ship’s magazine with the rest of the air wing’s ordnance; had they been stored as standard, an accidental detonation could easily have destroyed the ship.
While preparing for the second sortie of the day, the aft portion of the flight deck was packed wing-to-wing with twelve A-4E Skyhawk, seven F-4B Phantom II, and two Vigilante aircraft. A total of 27 aircraft were on deck, fully loaded with bombs, rockets, ammunition, and fuel. Several tons of bombs were stored on wooden pallets on deck in the bomb farm. An F-4B Phantom II, flown by Lieutenant Commander James E. Bangert and Lieutenant (JG) Lawrence E. McKay from VF-11, was positioned on the aft starboard corner of the deck, pointing about 45 degrees across the ship. It was armed with LAU-10 underwing rocket pods, each containing four unguided 5 in (127.0 mm) Mk-32 “Zuni” rockets. The Zuni was protected from launching by a safety pin that was only to be removed prior to launch from the catapult.
At about 10:51 (local time) on 29 July, an electrical power surge in Phantom No. 110 occurred during the switch from external to internal power. The electrical surge caused one of the four 5-inch Mk-32 Zuni unguided rockets in a pod on external stores station 2 (port inboard station) to fire. The rocket was later determined to be missing the rocket safety pin, allowing the rocket to launch. The rocket flew about 100 feet (30 m) across the flight deck, likely severing the arm of a crewman, and ruptured a 400-US-gallon wing-mounted external fuel tank on a Skyhawk from Attack Squadron 46 (VA-46) awaiting launch. At least one of the Skyhawk’s M-65 1,000-lb. bombs fell to the deck, cracked open, and was burning with a white-hot ferocity.
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.
The destroyer USS George K. MacKenzie pulled men from the water and directed its fire hoses on the burning ship. Destroyer USS Rupertus maneuvered as close as 20 feet (6.1 m) to Forrestal for 90 minutes, directing her own on-board fire hoses at the burning flight and hangar deck on the starboard side, and at the port-side aft 5-inch gun mount.Rear Admiral and Task Group commander Harvey P. Lanham, aboard Forrestal, called the actions of Rupertus commanding officer Commander Edwin Burke an “act of magnificent seamanship”. At 11:47 am, Forrestal reported the flight deck fire was under control. About 30 minutes later, they had put out the flight deck fires. Fire fighting crews continued to fight fires below deck for many more hours.
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.
*****
The fire revealed that Forrestal lacked a heavy-duty, armored forklift needed to jettison aircraft, particularly heavier planes like the RA-5C Vigilante, as well as heavy or damaged ordnance.
The United States Navy uses the Forrestal fire and the lessons learned from it when teaching damage control and ammunition safety. The flight-deck film of the flight operations, titled “Learn or Burn“, became mandatory viewing for firefighting trainees. All new Navy recruits are required to view a training video titled Trial by Fire: A Carrier Fights for Life, which was produced with footage of the fire and damage control efforts, both successful and unsuccessful.
Footage revealed that damage-control teams spraying firefighting foam on the deck to smother the burning fuel, which was the correct procedure, had their efforts negated by crewmen on the other side of the deck spraying seawater, which washed the foam away. The sea water worsened the situation by washing burning fuel through the holes in the flight deck and into the decks below. In response, a “wash down” system, which floods the flight deck with foam or water, was incorporated into all carriers, with the first being installed aboard Franklin D. Roosevelt during her 1968–1969 refit. Many other fire-safety improvements also stemmed from this incident.
Due to the first bomb blast, which killed nearly all of the trained firefighters on the ship, the remaining crew, who had no formal firefighting training, were forced to improvise. All current Navy recruits receive a week-long training course in compartment identification, fixed and portable extinguishers, battle dress, self-contained breathing apparatus and emergency escape breathing devices. Recruits are tested on their knowledge and skills by having to use portable extinguishers and charged hoses to fight fires, as well as demonstrating the ability to egress from compartments that are heated and filled with smoke.
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.
The following link for the training video was provided by Jack Sturdivant on Facebook: You can see. Most of us in the Navy were required to watch this at one time: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=trial+by+fire+-+uss+forestol&&view=detail&mid=2A81AF931A316D1DD7632A81AF931A316D1DD763&&FORM=VRDGAR
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Incorrect photo
We did not yet have the F114
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Removed. Thanks!
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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:
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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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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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Wow! I used to think sailors had it made.
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Great article. Good to remember and honor history
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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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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 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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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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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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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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Great article. Makes the complex understandable.
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Very informative
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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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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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