The morning of Saturday, July 29, 1967, began early for some of the men, but not all. Even though two launches were scheduled for that morning, much of the ship’s crew was given the unusual permission to sleep a bit later than usual to make up for all the late hours. The ammunition transfer had been hard work for much of the crew, and the man overboard had kept anyone from getting rest in the late-night period when the bulk of the crew was off duty. Even on an aircraft carrier where men work around the clock and long days are nothing unusual, the officers still tried to compensate if the crew had been put through an extended period without rest.
A nice gesture, but it didn’t help Ed Roberts any. Flight quarters, the call rousting the crew to begin preparations for the day’s launches, was sounded at 4 A.M. Roberts and Gary Shaver were already awake, never having gotten back to sleep after the man-overboard alarm. As soon as they heard the alarm, they knew they wouldn’t get any more sleep. By the time flight quarters sounded, Roberts had already dressed and started making his way to the flight deck. He was groggy as hell, regretting his decision last night to eat dinner before going to bed. He could have had an extra hour’s sleep.
Roberts joined Shaver and the rest of the crew on the flight deck, working in the dark for a long time, testing the catapults and arresting gear, waiting for the sun to rise over the horizon and bring them closer to another full day of combat.
Bob Shelton was on the coffee-break area outside the bridge, still trying to settle down from his second night of sleep interrupted by the nightmare. He was badly shaken and waiting for the sun to rise. Shelton was looking over the sea with a coffee cup in his hand when his buddy James Blaskis appeared.
“Hey man, how’s it going?” Blaskis asked, cheerful as usual. Then he saw Shelton’s face and gave him a quizzical look. “Geez, what’s wrong with you? You look like hell.”
Shelton nodded his head and said he wasn’t surprised, that he hadn’t slept much at all in the past two nights.
“Yeah, that man overboard. I hear they didn’t find the guy either.”
“Even after that,” Shelton said. “I…I just couldn’t sleep. That’s all.”
Shelton was still thinking about the nightmare and wondering why he suddenly had such a problem. But he didn’t want to discuss it with anybody, not even Blaskis. Too weird.
“Well, almost eight o’clock, about time to go. Where are you today?” Blaskis said.
“I’m in port aft,” Shelton said, referring to the port-after steering compartment in the belly of the ship. “Guess I better get going…” And then he realized that he was wearing his white uniform as if he were going to work on the bridge that day. He’d put on the wrong uniform and never realized it until then.
“Yeah, I thought you might be. I’m supposed to be on the bridge. Wanna trade?”
Shelton hesitated and Blaskis asked again. “C’mon, you’ve already got the whites on.”
Shelton agreed and he could see that Blaskis was happy to have a quiet day ahead of him instead of working on the bridge. He must have been pretty confident he could make the trade, too, because he was wearing his denim work clothes.
Blaskis called out goodbye to Shelton as he hustled down the ladder, the first of many on his long trip to the port-after steering compartment. As he left, Shelton could see that he had a paperback book shoved in his back pocket.
Shelton was still bleary-eyed, but it was time to go to work. The rest of the ship was getting busy too. On the Forrestal’s fifth day in the Vietnam War, the first air strike had been launched at 7 A.M., and that meant that the air crews, pilots, and flight deck crews had made an early start. The second launch was scheduled for 11 A.M. This was the mission Rocky Pratt had heard about the night before, the big assault on the rail line that would require launching most of the Forrestal’s planes as quickly as possible.
The mission needed heavy firepower, so the ordnance crews loaded the old composition B bombs that came aboard the night before—anything to get rid of the dangerous ordnance. If all went well, the old bombs would be off the ship by 11:30 A.M. and wreaking havoc over Vietnam. The pilots were never told they would be carrying old World War II–era bombs that were so unstable they scared the dickens out of the Forrestal’s ordnance crew.
The day promised to be a beautiful one on the sea, reaching eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit by midmorning, with 74 percent humidity and calm seas. Cloud cover was scattered at two thousand feet, and once the sun rose, the sailors could see for ten miles. The sea was glassy, as flat and calm as a mountain lake.
All indications were that the Forrestal would serve another relatively uneventful day launching and retrieving airplanes in this, its fifth day of combat in its entire history. The previous days’ operations had gone smoothly and today’s operations shouldn’t be any different. Still, the crew knew that nothing on an aircraft carrier was routine or certain.
The ship was set at material condition Yoke, a midpoint status required by the fact that air strikes were being prepared. If the ship were to completely stand down, material condition would be set at X, meaning that the ship is essentially “open” with free access throughout the ship for authorized personnel to travel from one area to another. When the ship was set at material condition Yoke, certain hatches and passageways were closed off as a protective measure so that the ship could be compartmentalized quickly in an emergency and any problems could be isolated. In a worst-case scenario, the ship could go to condition Zebra, sealing off most of the ship into tight portions that help compartmentalize fire, water, and dangerous gases.
A number of other navy ships in the area were providing support or conducting their own activities that morning on Yankee Station. The USS Oriskany and the USS Bon Homme Richard, two aircraft carriers, were nearby, as were the destroyers USS Mackenzie, Rupertus, and Tucker, and a number of other smaller vessels. The ammunition ship USS Diamond Head was still at Yankee Station after supplying the Forrestal with arms for the day’s air strikes. Yankee Station was a central work area for navy ships supporting air strikes in North Vietnam and other land-based activities, so a number of ships were always in the area. Once in a while Roberts would look out toward the rising sun and see a ship’s silhouette.
Shaver was on the flight deck with Roberts, but Shaver wasn’t doing his usual job. He had broken his hand earlier in an accident when he and some other crew were lifting a piece of equipment on the flight deck. His hand was caught between the equipment and a railing, and severely crushed. Dr. Kirchner in the sick bay had put a cast on the hand and then Shaver was reassigned to duties he could perform with limited use of the hand. On this Saturday, he was working with the crash crew, ready to respond in an emergency, and he also was driving one of the tractors that helped start the planes. As he worked that morning, Shaver noticed that some of the bombs looked unusual.
Damn things look like antiques, he thought. Those things look old as hell. But ordnance wasn’t his job. So what the hell. Work to do.
Roberts was in a foul mood already, angry that he’d gotten so little sleep the night before and feeling like he’d been on the flight deck for days without a break. He knew how tired he was and he knew that put him at risk for an accident, so he tried hard to concentrate. Just recently, before Shaver broke his hand, the two of them had witnessed a grisly accident on the flight deck. Shaver was directing an F-4 Phantom onto a catapult when someone frantically signaled him to stop the plane. The man normally didn’t have anything to do with plane movement, so Shaver was puzzled at first. When the man continued his frantic signaling, Shaver ordered the pilot to stop and signaled for the wheels to be chocked. That’s when he noticed crew running toward the rear of the plane, on the other side, out of Shaver’s view. He felt a knot in his stomach as he saw crew members with white shirts and red crosses running toward the plane. When he stepped around to see what was wrong, Shaver saw a red shirt on the deck. While working on the ordnance hanging from the plane’s wing, trying to make the last-minute adjustments so the plane could be launched quickly, the man’s red shirt had become snagged on a rocket-mounting bracket. The plane continued to move forward, and the man was pulled off his feet. The man was dragging helplessly as the plane continued forward, and in his thrashing to free himself, one of his feet got caught under the plane’s wheel. No one could hear the man’s screams over the deafening sounds of the flight deck. Before anyone could react, the plane had rolled all the way up his leg and one side of his body.
Shaver was horrified. Blood was everywhere and Shaver could even see that the man had bitten through his tongue. Shaver suddenly realized that he had directed the plane forward and over the man’s body. He took a few steps back, then ran behind the island and fell to his knees, vomiting on the deck. Falling forward, he pounded on the deck in a rage, so upset that he couldn’t go back to work that day.
Roberts had also seen the accident up close and the image stuck with him. Now, as he worked to prepare the 7 A.M. strike, he knew the same thing could happen to him if he wasn’t careful as he put the chocks under the wheels of aircraft. He had to be alert, no matter how crappy he felt.
There was another big reason Roberts was in a bad mood. Just a few weeks after shipping out on the Forrestal, Roberts had received a Dear John letter from his girl back home.
After finishing his work on one plane, Roberts was walking back to another when he saw a couple of crew members writing messages on a bomb hanging under a plane’s wing. An old tradition, the messages usually were some sort of taunting toward the enemy. One of the crew was finishing up his message: “Suck on this, Ho Chi Minh!”
Roberts walked over and asked if he could borrow the chalk. With his greasy, gloved fingers, he carefully wrote out “Fuck you Janet.”
The 7 A.M. launch proceeded with no problem. By 7:50 A.M., thirty-seven aircraft were launched against North Vietnam, and while the crew waited for the planes to return, they began preparations for the second launch, scheduled for 11 A.M. Roberts and the rest of his team of blue shirts had just finished positioning a plane on one of the catapults and were waiting over by the island for their next task. Their crew leader came over, motioning for them to crowd in closer to hear him. He shouted over the plane noise.
“Do you guys want to break for chow now?”
Roberts and the other crew were surprised because their team didn’t usually take a break for another hour. Crew 4 usually went to chow first, but Roberts’s crew leader explained that the other team wanted to switch for some reason. Didn’t matter to Roberts or his fellow crew members. They shrugged their shoulders and headed off. Roberts was glad to get out of the noise and the wind, not to mention the stench of the fuel and exhaust. They filed around the island structure to the hatch that led them below, walking single file. As they went below, they stopped in their “coffee locker” to stow their gear. The locker was a small area with a coffee urn, used as a general break area and a place to hang your helmet and gloves. As they tossed their gear aside, Roberts pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and then pulled out his lighter. He snapped open the Zippo and sparked the lighter in one smooth move, a motion meant to look so utterly casual but one he’d practiced over and over when no one was looking. Unfortunately, the lighter didn’t ignite, causing a few of his buddies to chuckle.
“Damn thing’s out of fluid,” he said. It probably wasn’t, he realized, but he had to save face. “Better see if I can get some av-gas.”
Roberts headed down the passageway to one of the fueling stations, where big black hoses were used to pump aviation fuel, or av-gas, up to the flight deck. Checking first to see if any of the purple shirt fuel guys were around, Roberts unreeled a couple feet of hose and squeezed it enough to make a few drops flow from the nozzle and into his lighter. Then he headed back to the coffee locker, where a few guys were still waiting before heading to chow. He started to head out with them, but he was so tired he decided a little sleep was better than food.
“Hey, Dan,” he called out to one guy. “I’m not going to chow. I’m going to get some sleep back here in the fuel station. Wake me up when you get back, okay?”
Dan said he would, so Roberts turned around and went to the fuel station again. He stretched out on the floor there, resting his head on his arm and his headgear, and quickly fell asleep.
As 11 A.M. approached, some of the crew belowdecks were just getting into their day because of the late start. Ken Killmeyer had gone to breakfast and then went to pick up the day’s mail for his division.
He returned to his berthing quarters, passed it out to the men in his division who were still there, and then stashed the rest to distribute later. Killmeyer’s assignment for the morning was dull and laborious, like a great many of the jobs on board an aircraft carrier. While the glamorous work was being done up on the flight deck, Killmeyer was far below cleaning his division’s berthing compartment. But before he got to that, he had to read his mail. Killmeyer had received a letter from his six-year-old sister Patty back home in Pittsburgh, and he immediately sat down to write her back.
Like so many others who had worked the night shift and were on their rest period, Gary Pritchard and Paul Friedman were sound asleep in their bunks, ignoring the constant cacophony that would wake anyone who wasn’t used to sleeping with airplanes landing on a metal deck just feet above his head.
Captain Beling was still in his stateroom preparing to address the crew about the previous night’s activities. Other officers usually handled the preparations for a launch and then Beling would step onto the bridge just before the planes were ready to go. The captain had been on the bridge for the launch of the aircraft in the 7 A.M. strike, but he then retired to his nearby sea cabin before resuming the rest of his working day. He was nearby and ready to take command if necessary, but Captain Beling wanted to take advantage of the lull between flight operations to address the crew about the previous night’s man overboard. Losing a man overboard was particularly frustrating for Beling because it was always an unnecessary, wasted loss of life. Some purpose might be found in losing a man to combat or an unavoidable accident, but losing a man overboard was inexcusable for Beling.
As work continued on the flight deck and throughout the ship, Beling’s voice got the crew’s attention through the 1MC, the public-address system that penetrates every part of the ship. Killmeyer paused when he heard the 1MC crackle to life, putting down the letter he was writing home.
Beling began with the three words that he always used when addressing the crew.
“Men of Forrestal, this is the captain. As you know, we just launched our midmorning strike. Pretty soon we will be recovering some of our aircraft. But right now, I want to talk to you about something very, very serious. It is what happened and why it happened, that man overboard that we had early this morning at 3:15 A.M. At that time, a man named Warren saw someone fall overboard from elevator number one, which at that time was at the hangar-deck level. A few seconds later, the alert starboard lifeboat watch, two of them, saw a man in the water. Without hesitation, they threw in a life ring and notified the bridge.
“The life ring had a light attached to it and they put it in the water about twenty yards from the man and heard him shout for attention the word ‘Hey!’ The starboard quarter watch ran next; a seaman in Fourth Division also was alert. He didn’t happen to see the man, but he did see the life ring and the light that was alertly thrown from the bridge. Within minutes HC-2 number twelve [a helicopter], piloted by Lieutenant Gregory, was launched. Forrestal maneuvered into position for rescue and stopped dead in the water about five hundred yards from the man’s spotted position. A very black night.”
Killmeyer listened carefully to the captain’s story. Even way down in the port-after steering compartment, Blaskis put down his book to listen. They were curious to learn exactly what happened the night before, and why the man was not recovered.
“There were two destroyers in company, the Rupertus and the Tucker. They came in close to help. It took the helo about thirty minutes, with the destroyers’ help and the ship’s help, to find the man in the water. The helo then maneuvered into position over him for rescue and then lowered its rescue seat. The man involved grabbed the seat. However, as the seat was raised just a little bit, a foot or two or three, the man immediately lost his grip and disappeared into the water. Forrestal remained on the scene with the two destroyers until daybreak and departed without finding him. We have left the Tucker to continue searching. However, there is in my judgment no chance whatsoever that this man will be found.
“Now by taking our muster and subsequent close checking, we have established who the unfortunate individual is. It is Seaman Dyke of the First Division.
“Now some of the rest of this. Seaman Dyke fell from number-one elevator. At this time he was not assigned to the working party on that elevator. Accordingly, he had no business there. Second, three other shipmates appear to have been engaged in horseplay. The man, who must remain at this time nameless, who was fooling around with Dyke was observed to have made a punching motion at him, fooling around. Dyke backed up, lost his balance, and fell over the side.
“Now the rest of this is that horseplay cannot be conducted anywhere at all on a ship like this. It is all very well to give your life for your country, but it is not very smart to foolishly fall over the side.
“On a ship like this there are dangers on every side, and unless one keeps his eyes open and thinks ahead a little bit, we are going to have much more of these needless losses. Let’s play heads-up ball and our losses then, if any, will come from the enemy, not from ourselves.”
The 1MC fell silent again, and throughout the ship men went back to what they had been doing. The captain’s address had captured everyone’s attention, partly because it was the first time that most of the crew had gotten the whole story on the man overboard. Word had passed quickly that the man was not recovered, but most of the crew did not know until Beling’s address who was lost, or how it happened. Some of the crew were not content with the explanation that the man could not be recovered; they wondered why the helicopter crew did not send a swimmer in to pick up the man, who would have been weak and probably hypothermic after thirty minutes in the night sea.
The planes from the first air strike were recovered without incident and then the deck was configured to launch the second air strike. Because an aircraft-carrier deck is both huge and tiny at the same time, depending on what you’re trying to do with it, preparing a launch always required a great deal of planning and meticulous positioning of aircraft. To get all the planes launched as quickly as possible, so that all of the air strike’s planes were up at once, the deck crew positioned planes around the edges of the flight deck to go through all the start-up sequences and safety checks that were necessary before flight. Then each plane was taxied forward to one of the four catapults for launch.
John McCain, Jim Bangert, and the twenty-five other pilots were ordered to their aircraft at 10:25 A.M., climbing into their cockpits with the aid of their crews and then proceeding with the sequential steps necessary to get a jet engine up to speed. As the pilots worked in the cockpit, dozens of crew were working around the aircraft to load bombs and missiles, conduct safety checks, and perform various other duties. The flight deck was a sea of colored shirts, with sailors maneuvering around aircraft and other equipment in the deliberate motion designed to avoid the many dangers lurking everywhere on deck. The sound was deafening as twenty-seven jet planes were readied for takeoff.
At 10:46 A.M., moving along at a brisk twenty-seven knots—about thirty-one miles per hour—the Forrestal turned so that the pilots would have enough wind over the flight deck to provide lift. The total wind speed over the flight deck was thirty-two knots, blowing from forward to aft of the ship, the equivalent of a thirty-seven-mile-per-hour wind.
Before the 11 A.M. launch of the attack planes, the deck crew launched a KA-3B tanker plane. This was standard procedure for any air-strike launch; tanker planes were always put in the air first so the attack planes could refuel as necessary. This enabled the fighters and bombers to take off with less weight and to fly longer missions than would be possible on just their initial fuel stores. An EA-1F Skyraider was also launched to provide electronic countermeasures that would help protect the other planes.
By 10:51 A.M., all of the flight crews had manned their aircraft and some of the planes had been started. Another KA-3B fuel tanker was being readied for launch, as was an E-2A Hawkeye, a prop plane with a large rotating dish on top that would be used for monitoring the attack planes’ flights.
The pilots were in the final stages of their preflight tasks. Bangert was in the forward cockpit of his F-4 Phantom jet. He’d just started his starboard engine and was about to switch from external to internal electrical power. Bangert was a seasoned pilot, so much so that he was the senior landing-signal officer (LSO) for the carrier air wing, a position that made him responsible for guiding other pilots on their carrier-deck landings and also for issuing a grade on each landing. His mission for the 11 A.M. launch was to suppress any ground targets providing antiaircraft flak. Lawrence McKay would be riding in the second seat behind Bangert, acting as the radio intercept officer.
Bangert was informed five minutes before climbing into his aircraft that he would be carrying Zuni rockets rather than the 2.75-inch rockets more commonly used by the F-4 Phantom. Bangert had never flown with Zuni rockets, and during the five days the Forrestal was in combat, only 3 aircraft out of 379 planes launched with ordnance had carried Zuni rockets. The change was spurred by some technical problems that made it difficult to load the 2.75-inch rockets on the Phantom, which had been flown just that morning on the 7 A.M. strike and had come back with a five-hundred-pound bomb that had not disengaged properly. The commanding officer of the air wing briefed Bangert about a few flight procedures that needed to be altered because of the Zuni rockets—such as changing the target-sight settings—but apparently the Zuni rockets did not alter the original flight plan much. The MK-32 Zuni rocket could be used by naval aviators for a variety of tasks because of its versatility in both air-to-air and air-to-ground applications. For missions over North Vietnam, it was used almost exclusively against ground targets, often in an effort to suppress antiaircraft fire. Various types of warheads and fuses were installed on the Zuni, depending on the desired effect. On Bangert’s plane that morning, the Zuni rockets were equipped with VT proximity fuses that caused them to detonate at treetop level. That made them effective against ground troops, whereas other fuse and warhead configurations could detonate the warhead on contact with a target, or as a “bunker buster” with a delayed-action fuse to detonate the explosive below the surface. At about six and a half feet long and five inches in diameter, the Zuni was long and sleek. Fins on the tail of the rocket were folded into the body until it was fired, and then they popped out to provide aerodynamic stability. Unguided once it was ignited, the Zuni was basically a point-and-shoot type of weapon. The rocket used a solid propellant that burned for about 1.5 seconds. Produced in Belgium, millions of Zuni rockets were fired in combat in Vietnam and in other conflicts.
Only two months earlier, a Zuni rocket had misfired from an F-8A Crusader on the aircraft carrier Hancock. Several crewmen near the plane were burned by the rocket launch, but the Zuni did not hit anything on the deck and caused no serious damage.
Bangert’s plane was outfitted with twenty-four Zuni rockets, two Sidewinder missiles, and two Sparrow III missiles. The other aircraft on the flight deck were loaded with a variety of weapons, including Shrike and Sidewinder missiles, and many of the bombs that had been transferred to the Forrestal the night before.
In all, the planes sitting on the deck were loaded with sixteen of the old, World War II–era bombs weighing 1,000 pounds each, four newer bombs weighing 750 pounds each, and sixty newer bombs weighing 500 pounds each, in addition to missiles, rockets, and twenty-millimeter ammunition. There also were 150 tons of bombs and missiles sitting on the deck on pallets, and more below in storage.
Bangert’s Phantom was positioned on the starboard side, at the extreme aft portion of the flight deck, with six more Phantoms parked to his right along the edge of the deck. Looking at the flight deck from overhead, this put Bangert’s plane at the extreme lower right of the long flight deck, pointing across the deck at about a forty-five-degree angle. Other planes were positioned along the other deck edges, wingtip to wingtip, with a few looking straight up the flight deck toward the front of the ship, and others across the deck from Bangert, pointing back almost in his direction. The effect was to have the ship’s deck ringed in planes, with an open space in the middle so that individual planes could be moved out and then forward to the catapults for launch. In addition, a dozen other planes were bunched up just aft of the island structure and on the two elevators in that area. Those planes included a KA-3B Sky Warrior fuel tanker loaded with twenty-eight thousand pounds of JP5 jet fuel.
Most of the jets on board required an external power source to start them up. Shaver was driving one of the tractors that help start the planes, and he had been working at the very rear of the flight deck before being called to help with some planes farther forward. As he drove his tractor forward, he passed his good friend Lonnie Hudson on a tractor going in the opposite direction. Gary Shaver’s tractor had the longer hose needed by the RA-5C Vigilantes that were forward, so he knew that Hudson was going back to do the F-4 Phantoms at the rear. They were swapping places.
As they passed each other, Hudson nodded his head and gestured at Shaver as if to say, “Hey, what’s up?” Shaver responded with a friendly shrug of the shoulders and moved on. He had no idea that switching positions with his friend Lonnie would turn out to be such a pivotal moment.
Bangert’s plane was being readied by still another crewman in a squat, bright yellow tractor. He hooked up his tractor to the plane’s electrical system and hit the juice when Bangert gave him the signal. The crewman then sat back on his tractor and watched Bangert go through the rest of the preflight preparations, much of which involved coordinating his cockpit checks with the crew outside arming his plane with the missiles.
Two of the crew members working with Bangert’s plane were busy checking the missiles and rockets to ensure that they were properly installed and that the systems were safe. One man began conducting stray voltage checks on the weapons systems, to make sure the electrical system was not malfunctioning in a way that could accidentally trigger the weapons. He found no stray voltage in any of the systems on the port side and then went to the starboard side to conduct the same tests. Having found no stray voltage or other potential problems with the weapons systems, he plugged in the “pigtails,” cable connectors that linked the rockets and the plane’s launching device. This was the shortcut approved by the ship’s administration for the sake of speed. Plugging in the pigtails armed the weapons on the port side.
At 10:51:21 A.M., Bangert had just started his starboard engine. With the engine running, Bangert reached out to press the button that would switch from the external cart’s power supply to the plane’s internal system. As his gloved finger hit the button, Bangert and McKay both felt a mild explosion shake the plane. Bangert looked up in time to see a small rocket flying across the deck with a yellow-orange exhaust flame.
Oh my God, what was that? Was that from my plane? Frantically, Bangert immediately rechecked all his weapons switches and found that they were in the proper position. I couldn’t have fired a rocket! What happened?
All over the deck, other pilots who had glimpsed the missile’s path were frantically checking their own cockpit systems. They all shared that heart-stopping moment of uncertainty, the blood draining from their faces as they looked to see if they were responsible. None of the pilots found their switches out of place. An electrical surge had fired the rocket on Bangert’s plane without anyone hitting a firing switch.
The single Zuni rocket had fired from one of the three launchers installed on the port wing of Bangert’s F-4 Phantom. Ironically, Bangert was the safety officer Ken McMillen had consulted about the pigtail shortcut, the officer who said there was nothing to be done about the safety risk.
In an instant, the firing of the rocket initiated a long journey of pain. Two crew members were kneeling under the port wing of Bangert’s Phantom when the rocket fired. The one who was checking the weapons systems was burned on the left side of his face, left hand, and his wrist, and he felt like his jersey was on fire even though there were no flames. Several other crewmen working around the Phantom were knocked down by the rocket launch, which happened so quickly that no one actually saw the rocket leave the plane. They all looked back at the Phantom to see smoke rising from one of the rocket pods on the port wing, and small bits of debris fluttering in the wind.
The rocket was flying across the deck at chest height, at hundreds of miles per hour, headed toward a fuel chief who was standing just behind the number-four arresting wire, pretty much in the middle of the deck between Bangert’s plane and those parked on the other side of the ship. He was knocked off his feet by the rocket as it passed without touching him.
Another sailor on deck was much less fortunate. An ordnanceman, he was walking along the flight deck in front of a group of A-4 Skyhawks when the Zuni rocket hit him in the shoulder, passing through and instantly severing his arm but leaving him standing.
The rocket then continued on, its course altered to the right by the collision with the ordnanceman. Having traveled about one hundred feet, the rocket then struck the A-4 Skyhawk piloted by John McCain. Like most pilots, McCain was a bit superstitious, and his parachute rigger, Tom Ott, a crewman responsible for the pilot’s equipment, had begun a little preflight routine. Ott was carefully wiping McCain’s helmet visor clean before handing it to him in the cockpit. This was to make sure McCain could get a clear look at the antiaircraft missiles coming at him over North Vietnam, but the act had taken on more significance over time. It had become an important gesture of friendship, a reassuring, last-minute favor for a pilot who was about to risk his life in combat. Ott had just wiped the visor clean and handed the helmet back to McCain, and then Ott shut the plane’s canopy.
Ott gave McCain a thumbs-up signal, and McCain probably returned it with a smile that Ott could not see under the pilot’s face mask. That was the last time McCain ever saw Ott.
Nearby, Robert Zwerlein was getting McCain’s plane outfitted and ready to move forward to the catapults. Standing just a few feet away, he was focused on the plane and never saw the rocket fire on the other side of the deck.
McCain felt a huge impact as the Zuni rocket tore through his plane on the right side and exited the left side, ripping open his fuel tank with four hundred gallons of JP5 jet fuel. Two crewmen nearby were set on fire as the hot rocket exhaust passed by them. They were already rushing forward toward the island before the jet fuel spreading over the deck ignited.
Just below the flight deck at the very rear of the ship, Edmond McGrew was on man-overboard watch, keeping his eyes trained on the water in his sector, looking for anyone who had fallen overboard. As McGrew watched the water on the port side of the ship, another sailor had joined him on the fantail for a cigarette. Now they both saw the Zuni rocket hit the water on the port side, never exploding. They could tell that the object was not a man overboard, but they had no idea what it was.
The fuel poured out of McCain’s torn plane, spreading to the rear of the ship rapidly as it was pushed not only by the thirty-seven-mile-per-hour wind but by the exhausts of at least three jets positioned immediately in front of McCain’s plane. The jet fuel was ignited soon by fragments of burning rocket propellant, but there was a delay of a second or so as the fuel spilled from the plane, giving some crew members enough time to realize the danger they were in. With a sudden, deafening “whoomp!” sound, the fuel ignited and soon engulfed all of the A-4 Skyhawks parked on the port side. In a heartbeat, scores of men were in a horrible situation. Some men, like Robert Zwerlein, were doomed by their close proximity to the initial fire. As the fire flashed, he had no chance to escape and was caught in the blaze.
The pilots strapped inside their planes needed help to get out. As they looked out of their canopies, they saw nothing but flames and black smoke, which was so thick that some of them could not see well enough to tell what awaited them if they opened their canopies. And others who could see knew that they were surrounded by a burning lake of jet fuel. In that instant, dozens of crewmen around those planes found themselves soaked in burning jet fuel. Several men stumbled out of the fire scene, covered head to toe in flames. One pilot jumped out of his plane and made his way out of the fire, his entire flight suit in flames. Once he got out of the fire and headed toward safety, he inexplicably turned around and walked back into the fire. Probably disoriented, he disappeared into the heart of the fire and never came back out.
The fire had erupted so quickly that no one had a chance to warn those on the rear portion of the deck to run toward the safety of the center deck and the island structure. The men trapped in the fire had little or no opportunity to escape the huge fireball that grew ever larger as the fuel poured out of the planes, each one adding hundreds of gallons of fuel to the fire.
The rocket’s flight was almost caught on film by the plat camera, a television camera located on the island structure. The plat camera was used to record all flight-deck operations for future study, and also to provide images of flight-deck activities to monitors throughout the ship. When the rocket and the subsequent fire caught the camera operator’s eye, he was focused farther forward on a plane about to be launched off a catapult. He immediately swung the camera back to the rear of the ship and trained it on the fire, where it remained for hours, but he missed the actual launch of the rocket. The camera operator had to abandon his post after a while because of shrapnel penetrating the space, but the camera continued to record the events. Later analysis of the film showed the reflection of the rocket in a window as it traveled across the deck.
Aviation machinist’s mate Robert Mitchell was on routine patrol in his temporary duties with the master of arms that day, and he had stopped by the plat-camera location to watch some of the flight-deck operations as the 11 A.M. launch approached. Mitchell was watching one of the monitors in the area when he saw a flash on the screen and immediately felt a concussion of the ship. When the plat-camera operator swung around and showed the aft portion of the flight deck in flames, Mitchell hastily headed toward the master of arms’s office.
He knew the fire was immediately above the office, and his friends there probably didn’t know the danger they were in. He hurried down the island structure to the hangar bay below and then sprinted to warn them, himself rushing into an area that would soon be in extreme danger. He was constantly shouting “Fire on the flight deck!” as he was running, to alert everyone he saw. Having seen the magnitude of the fire with his own eyes, Mitchell was not waiting for orders to act.
On the level just below the flight deck, Airman Charles Price was in the squadron storeroom and had just finished his duties in preparing the VA-46 squadron for the 11 A.M. launch. At 10:51, just before the accident and before any alarms sounded over the 1MC, Price informed the other squadron members that he’d finished his work in preparing the launch and was going to go to lunch. To get to the mess hall, Price left the squadron storeroom and went to a catwalk that runs along the port side of the ship and up to the flight deck. Price climbed four steps up the ladder leading to the flight-deck level and was facing the front of the ship when he heard a sudden whoosh as the jet fuel erupted. Price turned around toward the sound and found himself facing a wall of flame.
Near the number-two arresting wire on the rear portion of the flight deck, close to McCain’s plane, crewman G.L. Reynolds was making a visual check of the aircraft starts in the A-4 Skyhawks lined up on the port side. The warrant officer in charge of the planes, Donald Hugo, was nearby and about to make a check of his headset communications with Reynolds. Both had their backs to the McCain plane, so neither saw the rocket hit, but at that instant, they both heard the fuel erupt and felt a massive shock wave from the explosion. They turned around to see McCain’s Skyhawk in flames and men running away from the fire. They also saw others crawling away, their clothes and bodies on fire. Instead of running away from the obvious danger, Reynolds and Hugo both rushed toward the planes on the port side to “break down” the aircraft by releasing the chains and chocks holding them in place. If the pilots were to have any chance at maneuvering the planes out of harm’s way, someone had to release them first. After releasing several planes, Reynolds directed one to taxi forward and away from McCain’s plane. Hugo then rushed to the rear to help with the initial firefighting efforts.
Overhead, Leonard Eiland was at the controls of Angel 20, the helicopter flying “plane guard” for the 11 A.M. launch. The Forrestal’s helicopters were out of commission for the morning because of scheduled maintenance, so the aircraft carrier Oriskany had sent Angel 20 as a loan for the morning. For any aircraft launch, navy regulations require a helicopter to be circling in the air near the ship and ready to rescue any fliers who go down. Most days, it meant just flying in circles until the launch was completed, so the pilot, David Clement, let his co-pilot Eiland have the controls.
Angel 20 was commencing yet another turn from nearly a mile out when Eiland caught something out of the corner of his eye and looked toward the Forrestal.
What the hell is that?
Eiland saw splashes in the water followed by a large burst of black smoke on the rear portion of the flight deck. He motioned to Clement, who looked toward the carrier and saw the problem.
“Looks like a plane down, maybe some men overboard,” Clement said. “Taking control…”
The pilot took over from Eiland and turned Angel 20 sharply toward the Forrestal, kicking the helicopter into high speed to close the distance. He called back to the Oriskany to report what he had seen, and alerted the two rescue swimmers in the back to prepare for a water rescue. In fact, the first splashes they saw were from the Zuni rocket and debris from the initial ignition of the jet fuel. It also is likely that some men jumped overboard at that moment to escape the flames.
On the Forrestal’s bridge, Lieutenant Commander James Bloedorn was in charge while the captain was away. When the fire started he was standing by the windows on the left side of the bridge overlooking the flight deck with a young sailor named W.T. Burgess. Bloedorn had looked away from the flight deck, and when he turned back, he saw Burgess pointing toward the rear of the ship. The young man’s eyes were huge white saucers and he couldn’t get any words out of his mouth. Bloedorn looked and saw the fireball.
“Plane on fire on the flight deck, aft!” Bloedorn called out.
Bob Shelton immediately glanced up at the clock in front of him and wrote in his logbook: “1052: Aircraft fire on the flight deck.” It didn’t excite him especially; it was just another fire. The ship had plenty of small ones all the time.
Bloedorn ordered Burgess to sound the fire alarm over the 1MC public-address system. Burgess was a native of Macon, Georgia, with a heavy Southern drawl, and one of his jobs on the bridge was to pass on announcements from the bridge officers to various others throughout the ship. He hustled over to the intercom system and first sounded a whistle tone to call for attention. Then he called out, “Fahr on the flight deck! Aeeyft. Fahr on the flight deck! Aeeyft. Man all foam stations on the double!”
Then after a short pause, Burgess came back on the 1MC to call, “All repair crews man your GQ stations!” A bit of a misnomer, “repair crews” referred to the emergency crews specially trained for firefighting and rescue, as well as actual repairs of damage inflicted in combat, for instance.
Shelton looked up when he heard Burgess call the fire alarm, because he thought Burgess seemed a little too excited for a routine fire. Belowdecks, Killmeyer had written nearly two pages of the letter home to his little sister when Burgess’s excited alarms came over the 1MC system. Killmeyer and Burgess were in the same division and were close buddies, so he was used to Burgess’s thick Georgia accent. The scratchy public-address system, combined with Burgess’s accent and his excitement, made it difficult for some on board to understand his initial fire call. When he called, “Fire on the flight deck. Aft,” in his heavy accent, the words were a bit muffled and many crewmen did not understand the initial fire warning. Killmeyer did, however, and he also noticed a change in Burgess’s usual calm demeanor. He knew that Burgess was a quiet, mild-mannered guy who never even cursed. Killmeyer thought of him as the kind of guy you want to marry your daughter, maybe. But now Killmeyer immediately noted a sense of urgency in the fire call and began to worry.
Immediately after the first fire alarm, Bloedorn could see that the fire was serious and out of control. He called out, “Sound general quarters!” right after the fire started but then several seconds passed and he still hadn’t heard the alarm. He looked back toward Burgess, who was standing directly in front of the general-quarters alarm, and realized the young man had not heard him.
“Sound general quarters!” Bloedorn shouted again, more urgently, and he simultaneously lunged toward Burgess’s station to hit the alarm himself. Burgess heard him that time and reached up. As soon as he hit the lever, the ship was filled with a sound that chilled most sailors to the bone, while simultaneously triggering a tremendous adrenaline rush. At 10:53 A.M., sixteen alarm bongs rang out—it seemed an eternity as the bongs sounded and the anticipation grew—and then Burgess called, “General quarters! General quarters! All hands man your battle stations!”
If the first announcement did not get everyone’s attention on board the ship, and it didn’t, the general-quarters alarm certainly indicated that the ship was in trouble. Sailors throughout the ship dropped whatever they were doing and hustled to get to their general-quarters stations, creating near pandemonium as people rushed to get through the crowds clogging passageways. Killmeyer shoved the letter under the pillow in his bunk and started racing toward his general-quarters station, the magazine-handling room for the five-inch port guns aft and below on the fourth deck. He headed up a ladder and to the port side of the ship because GQ procedures called for sailors to run aft and down on the port side and run forward and up on the starboard side, in an effort to expedite movement.
Not everyone was in position to hear the announcements clearly, however. Frank Eurice, coming off of a long watch on the engine’s throttles, had decided to take advantage of his midday break to get some sun. While the 11 A.M. air strike was being readied, Eurice and a friend he knew only as French had made their way out onto the starboard-side gun-mount sponson, a structure that juts out from the side of the ship just below the flight deck to hold the big five-inch guns. This was to be a rare opportunity for Eurice to see sunlight, because normally he worked far belowdecks.
There were huge stacks of potatoes in crates out there, so Eurice and his buddy just spread their beach blankets on top of them. They were enjoying a fine morning up there, oiled down and suntanning, just watching the Tonkin Gulf roll by. Local boats were off in the distance, and the water was as flat as a lawn, making for quite a picturesque scene. The guys were really enjoying the time outside, and Eurice rolled over to get some sun on his back. That’s when he noticed the black smoke.
Eurice wasn’t concerned at first because from his vantage point he couldn’t see exactly where the smoke was originating. The Forrestal normally produced a nearly invisible exhaust, but as a machinist’s mate, Eurice knew the boilers could churn black smoke if the technicians, known as BTs, didn’t get the oil-and-air mixture just right.
“Those dumb BTs,” Eurice muttered, looking up at the stack. That’s when he noticed there was no smoke coming out of the stacks. What the hell?
Eurice called to his buddy, “Hey French! What do you think this is?” They both sat up and lifted their sunglasses to take a better look at the smoke, by now rolling off the deck and down toward the sea. They just sat quietly for a moment and watched the smoke, unable to imagine anything that would cause such a scene.
Up on the bridge, the officers in charge immediately notified Captain Beling of an obviously dire situation. The fire message was delivered to the captain in his sea cabin, his working quarters about twenty feet from the bridge. (The captain’s regular quarters were farther away and belowdecks, but the sea cabin allowed the captain some privacy and rest without being too far away from the action.) Having overseen the morning’s first launch and then addressing the crew about the man overboard, Beling had retired to his sea cabin to finish getting dressed. As the time approached for the second launch of the morning, he was just finishing the routine that on most mornings he would have done earlier. He was showered and had put on his crisp uniform pants and shoes, but he was still standing in his white T-shirt in the bathroom after shaving. He had just wiped the last bits of shaving cream off of his face and was reaching for his khaki uniform shirt when he heard the phone ring.
The ringing of the phone immediately told him something was wrong because the captain’s sea cabin is considered a refuge where you don’t bother him without a good reason.
Beling hurried over to the phone by the bedside and grabbed it. He immediately heard someone exclaim, “Captain, we have a big fire on the flight deck!” Without any other response, Beling quickly put the phone back in its cradle and rushed out the door and straight to the bridge. He arrived in a few seconds, still in his T-shirt, and found a terrible scene awaiting him. He took his seat in the high captain’s chair on the left side of the bridge, simultaneously giving him a clear view of the flight deck and putting him in the position that most clearly evidenced his authority.
Beling could see that his officers were understandably excited and frightened by the scene below them. There was a noisy din of voices shouting orders, asking questions, and yelling into microphones to be heard in other portions of the ship. The adrenaline was flowing, and Beling knew it had to be contained if he and his officers were to respond well. Beling immediately established order by taking command of the ship.
He calmly stated, “I have the con.” Acknowledging that Beling was officially in control of the ship, Bloedorn called out, “The captain has the con!” and the helmsman repeated, “Aye, aye, captain has the con.” Shelton noted in his log that the captain was in control.
Instantly, Beling could see that his ship was facing a major threat. One look out the windows aft showed him a huge fireball and billowing black smoke, with men running out of the curtain of flames, their clothes burning. Others were running toward the fire to help.
Officers and crew were bombarding Beling with information about the fire and the ship’s status, but his own voice overcame any others when he gave an order. His first concern was to reduce the wind flowing across the deck so that the flames would not be fanned unnecessarily. “Emergency full back!” Beling called out, ordering the ship’s engines slammed into reverse and to full speed. This was a radical move, akin to throwing a car into reverse while cruising down a highway, but Beling wanted to slow the ship very quickly. The ship shuddered as the order was executed, and soon the ship’s speed was cut from twenty-seven knots, or thirty-one miles per hour, to about nine knots, or eleven miles per hour. That eliminated the strong wind that was whipping the flames ever higher. But Beling soon ordered the ship forward again at a slower pace. He did not want to come to a dead stop, because a slight wind would help keep the fire from moving forward from its current location.
Other officers on the bridge were busily giving orders to the crew on the flight deck and were communicating with other key individuals throughout the ship, all the while keeping Beling informed of what they were learning and what they were doing. In the first moment of the fire, the bridge was a hectic but highly organized focal point for the men of Forrestal. Shelton, the quartermaster in charge of recording everything happening on the bridge, scribbled furiously in his logbook as every order was given and every report called out over the din of voices. Though the first call of “fire on the flight deck” didn’t excite him, Shelton began to realize something very serious was happening. He worked hard to concentrate as orders and reports swirled around him.
On the other side of the bridge, Captain Beling was sitting in control, but he was still half dressed. Having taken care of the most pressing duty in slowing the ship, he took a moment to calm his officers and bridge crew. He reminded them that they all had a job to do and that they should all keep a calm head. The men on the bridge paused to hear the captain’s reminder and then went back to their duties.
At that point, the captain turned to the marine orderly who was always nearby to assist him. “Go get my shirt,” he ordered. The orderly quickly returned with Beling’s uniform shirt, which he then put on.
Now I feel like a captain, he thought, and returned to giving orders.
Word was spreading quickly throughout the ship. Commander Merv Rowland, the chief engineering officer, was in his stateroom belowdecks when he first heard the 1MC calls for fire on the flight deck and then the general-quarters alarm. Rowland had been up most of the night like the rest of the crew for the man overboard, but then he was up even longer because there had been a problem with an evaporator. As chief engineering officer, Rowland was responsible for practically every piece of machinery on the ship, so he had stayed awake all night supervising his crew as they made the repairs. Rowland didn’t have to be there; he had a good crew working under him that he trusted, but he knew it would be helpful for the old man to be there in case they needed a word of advice. Rowland was far from a softy, but he understood that young sailors can be reassured and encouraged by the mere presence of an older, more experienced hand.
The evaporator repair was completed successfully, and then Rowland headed back to his stateroom for some rest. He had just undressed and crawled into his bunk when the fire alarm sounded. Like others familiar with the frequency of small fires on board a carrier, Rowland did not immediately react to the fire call. He lay in his bunk for a moment, waiting to hear further announcements or the ringing of his bedside phone. He knew that if the situation was serious, the bridge would notify him quickly. But Rowland would be long gone by the time his phone rang. Immediately after the alarms, Rowland’s Filipino steward rushed into his stateroom, out of breath. He knocked on the door quickly and then opened it without waiting for Rowland’s permission. Having seen the fire on a television monitor, the steward rushed to notify his officer.
“Commander, Commander! Fire! Bad fire!” he shouted.
As chief engineering officer, Rowland would play an important role in any disaster aboard the Forrestal, directing damage control and repair efforts and reporting directly to the captain about the progress of the problem and the remedy. Like Captain Beling, Rowland was not dressed when he got the alarm. He rushed out of his stateroom wearing nothing but his boxers and a T-shirt, headed toward his GQ station at central control, but then he turned back and got his shoes because he thought the deck might get hot.
As he was putting his shoes on, Rowland felt a mixture of anger and determination.
Here I’ve done twenty-eight years in the goddamn navy, been in wars and on all kinds of ships, and I come out here and a bunch of goddamn gooks are going to finish my career. Goddammit!
But then his innate ferocity surged within him. To no one but himself, he stood up and exclaimed, “Bullshit! Let’s put out this fire!” Rowland raced out into a passageway already crowded with sailors rushing to their stations.
Back on the flight deck, less than a minute had passed since the rocket fired from Bangert’s plane and hit McCain’s plane. The fire had already engulfed most of the planes parked on the port side alongside McCain, with the JP5 jet fuel spilling aft, toward the rear of the ship. Aviation bosun’s mates Robert Menery and D.W. Maxwell were standing near elevator number two, forward on the port side, when Menery spotted the fire. The scene on the deck was already reaching hellish proportions, with a huge wall of flame obscuring the rear of the ship and the dense black smoke billowing hundreds of feet into the air. Like dozens of other men who were well out of the immediate danger zone forward on the flight deck, Menery and Maxwell started running toward the fire to help their shipmates. At the same time, those who were trapped in the fire were running and crawling out of the inferno, fellow sailors and aviators helping them along and struggling to carry injured men out of danger.
Airman T.J. Hunt was also running aft from the same area as Menery and Maxwell, and when Hunt got closer to the fire area, he encountered young Bobby Zwerlein trying to move forward with his clothes burning. Hunt aided Zwerlein, putting him on the deck to help extinguish the flames on his body and then dragging him toward the island structure where men were starting to gather for safety and first aid. As he was aiding Zwerlein, other sailors brought forward the man who had been hit by the rocket as it flew across the deck. His face was badly burned and beginning to swell, but he was not bleeding badly even though his left arm was missing. He was reaching across with his other hand to grab the wound, and crying, “Help me.” The sailors laid him down on the deck behind the island, where other wounded were gathering, and then they could see that his trousers were on fire and his abdomen was open. He was conscious and worried that he would lose his arm, not realizing it was already gone.
The aviators strapped into their planes were facing tough decisions, without much time to think. For those parked on the starboard side, near Bangert’s plane where the rocket originated, the response to the fire was easier because it did not engulf them immediately. Those aviators were able to see how bad the situation was, but they also could tell that the fire was not in their immediate vicinity.
The first reaction of pilots near the fire or engulfed in it was to stay with the plane as they had been instructed, waiting for the deck crew to extinguish the fire or rescue them. They also had no idea some of them were sitting on top of old bombs that would explode in the fire far sooner than anyone expected. Most of the pilots paused before trying to escape, a pause that cost some of them their lives. The most fortunate pilots escaped from their cockpits with the help of their plane crews on the deck and, like everyone else on the flight deck, they alternately ran for the cover of the island and headed back toward the flames to help others escape. All of the twelve aviators parked to the rear on the right side of the deck, including Bangert and McKay, whose plane had accidentally fired the rocket, managed to escape their planes without serious injury. But beginning immediately to the left of Bangert’s plane, on the very rear of the flight deck, and all the way beyond McCain’s plane on the left side of the ship, the pilots were in serious trouble.
To the left of McCain’s Skyhawk, David Dollarhide had been in his cockpit awaiting the launch when he heard a muffled explosion. As he looked out to the deck, he saw burning JP5 fuel rolling out and to the front of his plane. Initially he was concerned but thought the situation might be handled quickly. Within seconds, however, Dollarhide saw five or six men rolling out of the fire, in flames and writhing on the deck.
Dollarhide reacted quickly, knowing he had to get out of the plane before it was totally engulfed by the fire. He unbuckled his harness, opened the canopy, and stood up in the cockpit, feeling the heat from the flames already growing closer. Before trying to extricate himself, he took the time to pull down the “head knock” on the ejection seat. The ejection seat of a jet plane is an extremely dangerous device that can kill when accidentally activated, so the pilots were taught to carefully deactivate the seat when leaving the plane. The “head knock” was a handle that pulled down from the pilot’s headrest, deactivating the ejection system. (The pilot would knock his head on it if the seat were left in the safe mode, reminding him to arm the ejection seat.) Though his plane might be blown to shreds in a few minutes, Dollarhide followed proper procedure in disarming his ejection seat so it would not be a danger to others.
Without his plane crew to help him out with the ladder he normally used, Dollarhide could see that he faced a dangerous leap to the flight deck, which was rapidly being covered with burning fuel. The aviators had not been trained to escape a ground fire surrounding their planes, so he had to improvise. Dollarhide decided that the best way to escape was to go directly forward, over the part of the canopy that jutted up from the front part of the cockpit like a short windshield. If he could get out of the cockpit and up on the nose of the plane, he might be able to leap past the flames.
But the cockpit of a Skyhawk leaves very little room for maneuvering; it is known as one of the tightest cockpits ever made. So the best Dollarhide could do was stand on the seat and lunge forward. He fell awkwardly over the front canopy, landing hard on the nose of the plane and immediately slipping right off onto the deck ten feet below. Dollarhide landed hard on his right hip and elbow. Barely making it past the fire line, Dollarhide lay on the deck stunned from his fall, hurting badly and unable to get up. He lay there on his side for a moment, in pain and feeling the intense heat radiating from the fire, waving his arms to call for help. A few yards away, Airman Price, the one who had stepped up the ladder to the flight deck on his way to lunch and encountered a wall of flame, saw Dollarhide on the deck. Price climbed up onto the deck and ran to Dollarhide, helping the aviator to his feet. Dollarhide took a few steps and fell again, this time into the arms of a green-shirted crewman. Price and the green shirt both helped Dollarhide toward the safety of the island, dragging him eventually.
All of the pilots on the port side were engaged in the same struggle for their lives. Back on the fantail on the port side, Lieutenant Commander Herb Hope’s Skyhawk was parked on the extreme back corner of the flight deck, behind where the fire started. He heard a sudden “whoomp!” as the fuel ignited, and as he looked forward to the fire, he saw an orange-red fireball before the sky suddenly turned black. The thick, oily smoke was being blown directly back over Hope’s plane, engulfing him in a black cloud that shut out any other indicators of how bad the fire was or what Hope should do in response. Before the black cloud completely engulfed Hope’s plane, he looked to his left and saw his friend Lieutenant Commander Gary Stark in the cockpit of the Skyhawk just forward of Hope’s plane. Stark’s canopy was open, like many others on the flight deck, because the pilots got very hot sitting in their flight gear in the blazing sun. They usually did not put the canopy down until the last minute. Hope had closed his cockpit canopy early because he was annoyed by jet exhaust blowing right into his face, but Stark was sitting exposed in the open cockpit with no gloves and his oxygen mask off.
As the flames crawled up Stark’s plane and into the open cockpit, he had no protection. Hope could see Stark react by raising his hands and crossing his arms over his face. That was the last time anyone saw Stark alive. Others would report seeing him later, seeming to sit calmly in his plane as it burned, but he was already dead.
As the black smoke caused the bright Tonkin Gulf morning to turn dark for Hope, he quickly considered his options. No one was nearby to help him, and even if there were, Hope would not have seen them because of the smoke. The fuel from McCain’s plane was rushing to the rear of the flight deck, directly to Hope’s corner of the world, and he could see flames already beginning to leap up toward his plane. He quickly decided to get out of his plane and make a run for it, but as all the other pilots were learning, getting out on your own is no easy feat once you’re strapped in for a carrier launch. The easiest way to get out quickly was to jettison the canopy, actually blowing it off the plane instead of raising it manually, which could be awkward without help. The Skyhawk was capable of blowing the canopy off the plane with explosive charges, as part of the sequence required to use the plane’s ejection seat. But even in the heat of the moment, Hope was thinking like a good aviator.
I wonder if popping the canopy will put this plane ACOP, he thought, meaning “aircraft out of commission for parts.” Normally, he wouldn’t want to put the plane down for repairs because he blew the canopy, but that thought only lasted a short second.
Hope put his head down to protect himself from the blast and pushed the button to jettison the canopy. Instantly, the canopy went flying up and away from the plane, allowing the cloud of smoke to wrap around the pilot. Wasting no time, he used the same maneuver that Dollarhide had attempted in getting to the front of the aircraft, but he managed to get over the front canopy and onto the nose without falling off the plane. Then he wiggled his way out across the nose to the refueling probe, a long metal tube that sticks straight out alongside the nose of the plane. Hope grabbed the refueling probe and swung his legs down, hanging from the probe to get himself close enough to the deck to jump down safely. As soon as he was down, Hope ran a short distance to the edge of the flight deck and leapt into the safety net that juts out a few feet. A little lower than the flight deck and as far away from the fire as he could get for the moment, the safety net looked like temporary safety from the fire and the shrapnel that Hope knew would be flying soon. Hope never slowed down when he got to the edge and threw himself at full speed into the safety net, where he landed right on two green shirts who had had the same idea a moment earlier.
Forward at the origin of the fire, McCain was making the same decision as all the other pilots who found themselves trapped in the fire. Like the others who would survive, McCain wasted no time in getting out of his plane. McCain flipped the switches to shut down his engines, and at about the same time, he heard two loud clanks as the thousand-pound bombs fell off his plane’s belly and hit the deck. McCain opened his canopy and threw himself out on the nose of his airplane. He walked out onto the narrow refueling probe and jumped down onto the deck and directly into the burning fuel from his plane. He rolled through the fire to the forward edge of the inferno, tumbling out with his flight suit on fire and covered in fuel. He quickly rolled and patted out the flames on his clothes, then jumped to his feet, wasting no time in running away from the scorching fire and toward the safety of the island. McCain ran as fast as he could, glimpsing Dollarhide lying on the deck and being aided by others. He saw another pilot leaving his airplane in the same way he did, jumping into the fire and rolling clear. That pilot’s flight suit was in flames.
All over the flight deck, crewmen were rushing to drag hoses from the fire stations toward the fire. Of the seventeen fog-foam stations on the deck, hoses from eight of them were being led toward the fire within the first minute after it started, one station aft was engulfed in flames, and three were inoperable for mechanical reasons. Belowdecks, sailors were manning the foam-generation stations that fed foam up to the deck. They activated the large pump stations that mix a simple detergent solution with pressurized seawater, creating a foam that the firefighters can use to smother the fire. The twenty seawater firefighting stations on the flight deck also were being manned quickly, with hoses from eight stations led aft in the first minute, two engulfed in flames, and one not functional.
Most of the crewmen were trying to help in the firefighting, even if they initially had sought cover from the fire. Sailors ran to the nearest firefighting stations and dragged the hoses toward the fire as others helped to get the fog foam or seawater flowing. Some difficulties occurred right away, as sailors untrained in the operation of the systems did their best to get them working. The fog-foam generators required activation, and some sailors did not know the procedure, fumbling with the switches and buttons to get the system operational. At most stations, however, the fog foam began flowing quickly, within forty-five seconds.
In the crash-crew shack in the island, William Brooks and Richard Sietz were discussing who would take the next launch and who would take the plane recovery. They were part of Repair 8, the team of firefighters and rescuers who stood by ready to spring into action immediately in the event of a crash or other emergency.
The crash shack was located on the rearmost corner of the island, and the only way you could get into it was from the right side. Various firefighting equipment was kept in the crash shack, along with the silver “hot suits” that allow the firefighters to stride right into burning airplane wreckage and rescue a pilot. But they were not yet geared up for the launch, wearing only the standard pants and jersey worn by all the deck crew, as they sorted out assignments for the 11 A.M. launch. Protected as they were by their position inside the crash shack and hearing nothing of the commotion outside, their first sign of trouble was the call of “Fire on the flight deck!” over the 1MC. When they heard the fire alarm, Brooks and Sietz ran out of the crash shack and were stunned by what they saw. They started to break out fire hoses on the starboard side as aviation chief Gerald Farrier ran by them with a fire extinguisher in hand, headed toward the flames. Farrier was the crewman in charge of Repair 8, and he responded immediately to the fire by charging right into it.
Nearby, Shaver had been hooking up his starter tractor to a plane when he heard a muffled explosion behind him. He turned and saw a plane in flames, and then instantly remembered he was working on the crash crew. Shaver dashed to the crash shack and grabbed a large “purple K” fire extinguisher. Along with several others, Shaver and Farrier ran directly into the fire scene. They were met by a surge of people coming forward, some of them badly burned. Shaver and Farrier struggled to move quickly with the unwieldy, heavy extinguishers, Farrier firing a test shot of the CO2 extinguisher as he approached the flames. The white cloud was immediately blown into the fire in front of McCain’s plane, with no effect.
Farrier’s first concern was the pilots trapped in their planes, knowing that they would have more difficulty than the others in getting free of the danger. In the confusion of the fire’s initial moments, there was no way to know which pilots already had escaped and which ones were still trapped in their burning planes. Farrier charged forward, taking the lead both physically and in his role as chief firefighter. Shaver wasn’t surprised to see Farrier putting himself at risk. He knew Farrier was a good man; they were friends and their wives went shopping together back home. If there was a fire to be fought and men to be saved, Farrier’s men knew that he was going to be right in the thick of it.
Dozens of crewmen and aviators saw Farrier rush right to the worst of the fire around McCain’s plane, with no more protection than anyone else on the deck, and less than some. Shaver was nearby, struggling to activate the fire extinguisher with his broken right hand. He had to put the extinguisher on the deck and crouch down, holding the metal canister between his legs as he squeezed the lever to spray the purple powder. In what seemed an instant, the canister was emptied.
As Farrier got to McCain’s plane, he saw that the two thousand-pound bombs had dropped from its belly and one had rolled about six feet toward the center of the deck. These were two of the old composition B, World War II–era bombs that had so upset the ordnance crew the night before—the ones that they said had decayed so much they were extremely sensitive to heat and vibration. They had said these bombs would explode in a fire, rather than just burning like the more modern bombs. And they would explode with the power of a fifteen-hundred-pound bomb because of their age.
Farrier had no idea. Lying in the flaming jet fuel, the huge bomb was quickly heating up. A longitudinal split had already formed in the outer shell of the bomb.
Other crewmen and aviators alternated between running for their lives and fighting their way toward the flames to help their buddies. About a minute and a half into the fire, dozens of crew members were still in the vicinity of McCain’s plane and the fire farther aft, and some pilots were still strapped into their planes. The Repair 8 crew was training hoses on the burning Skyhawks, along with other crewmen who grabbed the first hose they could find, and charged into the danger zone.
Just feet from the flames, Farrier did what he could with the wholly inadequate fire extinguisher. He sprayed clouds of PKP into the flames with little effect. He could see that the situation was reaching a point where it was far too dangerous to have so many rescuers this close by, and he started waving off the other crew, telling them to run for safety. Shaver looked up to see Farrier frantically waving at him and other crew members.
“Go! Get out of here!” he yelled over the roar of the fire. “Get out!”
Some men dropped what they were doing and ran, but many continued to play their hoses on the burning planes. Shaver’s fire extinguisher was empty, so he started to get up.
Farrier stayed on the job, never leaving the men he knew were trapped beyond the curtain of fire, doggedly training a portable fire extinguisher on a bomb that was rapidly approaching its cook-off point. As the thick black smoke billowed and swirled, Farrier and Shaver could see that the thousand-pound bomb with the ugly split in its casing had begun to glow a bright red.