After the board finished its investigation, Beling went back to his temporary assignment at the Pentagon to await the conclusion. Soon after the Forrestal returned to the States, the navy had assigned Beling to work in the office of Admiral Thomas Moorer, the chief of naval operations. Moorer was the top man in the navy, and he knew Beling well from the times their long navy careers had intersected. When Beling returned home with a ship in need of long repairs and needing something to do in the meantime, Moorer saw to it that Beling was given a desk job in the Pentagon, working for him. At any other time, Beling would have hated such an assignment. But right after returning unexpectedly from Vietnam and during the investigation, Beling knew that the assignment was a vote of confidence from Moorer. So did everyone else.
Weeks after being interviewed for the investigation, Beling was working in his fifth-floor office at the Pentagon when he got word that the board had found no individual at fault for the fire and the subsequent deaths. An aide to the admiral visited Beling one day to let him know that the report should be on the admiral’s desk soon, and Beling could expect to be exonerated. Beling was relieved, but he never showed it to anyone. It just wouldn’t be proper for the captain of a ship to rejoice at being let off the hook for such a disaster. Beling never thought he was at fault, but he nevertheless felt a terrible loss for the men under his command.
This is a good conclusion, Beling thought. Maybe they figured out what the hell happened out there and can put a stop to that ever happening again.
And Beling also felt a small sense of satisfaction that his testimony to the board had made a difference.
I guess my message did get through. And I didn’t have to make a big fuss about it.
Though he would never forget the loss on the Forrestal, Beling was eager to put the investigation behind him and get on with his career. Just two days after the Forrestal sailed for Vietnam, Beling had received word that in the next year or so he would be promoted to rear admiral. That promotion was still on schedule. He had plenty more to do in the navy, and working at this desk was not in his plans for much longer.
The seventy-five-hundred-page report by the board of investigation found numerous faults that led to the accidental rocket firing and the subsequent fire on the Forrestal, but ultimately the board concluded that no individual could be held responsible. The report broke the incident down into tiny parts, meticulously describing what happened and critiquing the action of the crew.
The board concluded that the fire “was caused by the accidental firing of one Zuni rocket,” which then struck John McCain’s plane, “rupturing its fuel tank, igniting the fuel, and initiating the fire.” The report went on to say that “poor and outdated doctrinal and technical documentation of ordnance and aircraft equipment and procedures, evident at all levels of command, was a contributing cause of the accidental rocket firing.”
But most important for those whose careers were on the line, including Beling, the board concluded that “no improper acts of commission or omission by personnel embarked on Forrestal directly or indirectly contributed to the inadvertent firing of the Zuni rocket.” In other words, the bottom line for the board was that no one should be held individually responsible for the disaster.
The board offered many other useful conclusions, addressing the question of rocket pigtails and TER pins at length. After closely studying how the use of rocket pigtails and TER pins affected the accident, the board concluded that the deviation from the rule for plugging in pigtails should have been forwarded to Captain Beling for his approval, but it was not. Even so, the board said such a deviation should have been approved by a navy official higher than Beling. The board went on to say that some of the ordnancemen responsible for arming planes on the flight were “generally competent as individuals but were poorly organized and instructed.”
But also, the board gave the crew a break by saying that “at least part of the poor organization and procedures mentioned above, and the failure to uncover them, can be attributed to the short period during which the squadron had been operating on Yankee Station.” The board also acknowledged that “the fire could not have been extinguished prior to the explosion of major ordnance (ninety-four seconds after initiation of the fire) regardless of the aggressiveness, readiness, response and expertise of personnel and readiness of equipment.” The report went on to say that “the design and operating procedures of fire fighting equipment currently available in attack carriers is totally inadequate to the needs generated by modern combat operations and the concentrations of very large quantities of ordnance and fuel on jet aircraft.”
The detailed investigation also led the board to recommend a great number of improvements in carrier operation, from minor procedural and equipment improvements to wholesale revisions. The investigators praised some actions taken by the Forrestal crew, such as the decision to cut holes in the flight deck so they could pour water into burning compartments, but they criticized the men for strategic errors in fighting the fire and a general sense of disorganization in some areas. Many of those faults were traced to a basic deficiency in training provided by the navy, plus the horrendous scope of the fire.
“Current fire fighting exercises do not provide adequate training for the type and scope of fire experienced by Forrestal 29 July,” the board said.
There was very little mention of the faulty ammunition delivered the night before the fire, with the report detailing the ammunition taken on board but making no mention of it being old, faulty, or unstable. The report noted the quick cook-off time for the bombs, but did not point to that as the primary reason the Forrestal lost 134 men. Some navy officials familiar with the facts were realizing that the ship might have faced a much smaller crisis without the old bombs on board, but the official navy report glossed over that fact. The ship still would have suffered the accidental firing of the rocket and a bad fire, but some observers thought that fire could have been contained if not for the bombs blowing up so much sooner than expected. Beling knew that to be the case.
But the official navy report makes no mention of that alternative scenario and devotes scant space to the issue of short cook-off times, concluding only that “cook-off times of ordnance stores in use were not available to Forrestal and that considerable injury and loss of life can be attributed to the cook-off of installed ordnance stores at a time earlier than expected.” So in that brief statement the board acknowledged that the short cook-off times were the real reason 134 men died, but took that conclusion no further.
There were no recommendations for preventing such a disaster in the future from old and faulty ordnance, and no indication that the navy should investigate the matter further. (The board did recommend that normal cook-off times for ordnance be posted at firefighting stations and on the ordnance itself, and it recommended that procedures be developed to rapidly cool ordnance in a fire.)
But even if the board didn’t seem eager to hold the navy accountable for the old bombs, at least it did not make Beling a scapegoat for the disaster. The board noted that Beling had demonstrated a personal interest in the training of his crew and the ship’s readiness for a fire disaster, concluding that “no blame attaches to Captain Beling in connection with the fire that occurred in Forrestal on 29 July 1967.”
Instead, the board cited inadequate training for carrier crews and said “the deaths and injuries resulting from the fire aboard Forrestal on 29 July 1967 were caused by the negligence and inefficiency of the Headquarters, Naval Air Systems Command.”
At the end of the report, the board listed its recommendations. After sixty-one recommendations covering a wide range of topics, recommendation number sixty-two appeared right over the signature of Admiral Massey: “That no disciplinary or administrative action be taken with regard to any persons attached to USS Forrestal (CVA-59) or Carrier Air Wing 17 as a result of the fire which occurred on board USS Forrestal on 29 July 1967.”
Beling was itching to get on to his next assignment, probably the command of another prominent ship, since his experience and skills would be wasted if he remained with the Forrestal to oversee her repairs. But first, the Massey investigation had to make its way through the naval command structure and become the official word on the disaster. That would take some time, Beling knew, so he waited, impatient but at least content that he would be moving on to a real job soon.
The normal procedure was for the Massey report to be passed on from one high-ranking officer to the next for approval, until the top man signed off on it. The first officer to review the findings of the Massey investigation was three-star admiral Thomas Booth, commander of the naval air force for the Atlantic Fleet. Booth wrote a two-page response that disagreed with only one point, saying that a board recommendation for changing a test receptacle on the TER-7 rocket-arming device was not a good idea. He noted in his review that he had sent a copy of the board’s findings and its “Lessons Learned” to all aircraft carriers in the Atlantic Fleet with instructions to require that it be read by all crew members now on board and all those assigned later.
Booth sent the report on to his superior, Admiral Ephraim Holmes, commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet. A four-star admiral, Holmes was sort of the number-two man in the navy, one step below Moorer, who was the head of the entire U.S. Navy and Beling’s current boss. At this step, Beling started to worry that there might be a problem.
Holmes was new to the job, having replaced Moorer when he moved up to become chief of naval operations. Moorer had been commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet when the Forrestal sailed for Vietnam, but by the time she returned to the States, Moorer had moved up and Holmes was in that position. Beling did not know how Holmes would react to the report, but he did know one thing that gave him pause. Holmes was a black shoe.
In the highly stratified world of the navy, one of the distinctions among high-ranking officers was whether you were a “black shoe” or a “brown shoe.” Deriving from the differences in their uniforms, black shoes were navy officers with no direct tie to flying, and brown shoes were aviators or former aviators like Beling. They all worked together on a carrier, of course, but their different backgrounds often led to good-natured rivalries, and sometimes more serious differences of opinion. Massey and Booth were brown shoes, so Beling wasn’t surprised that they all saw the Forrestal fire from the same perspective. Holmes might be different. And he was brand-new to the job. Beling hoped that didn’t mean he was eager to make a name for himself, but he wasn’t worried much.
Unfortunately, Beling underestimated Holmes’s reaction. Two months after Booth signed off on the report, Holmes issued his opinion on December 1, 1967. In an eight-page response, Holmes flatly refused some of the board’s conclusions.
“The Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, therefore, specifically does not concur in Opinion 115 of the Report of the Investigation wherein it is stated ‘That the deaths and injuries resulting from the fire aboard the Forrestal on 29 July 1967 were not caused by the intent, fault, negligence, or inefficiency of any person or persons embarked in the Forrestal.’ Further, the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, specifically does not concur in Opinion 4 of the Report which states ‘That no improper acts of commission or omission by personnel embarked in Forrestal directly contributed to the inadvertent firing of the Zuni rocket from F-4 #110.’”
Specifically addressing Beling’s role in the disaster, Holmes wrote that “the conduct of the Commanding Officer and the role played by him in connection with the tragic incident cannot be ignored.” The admiral went on to criticize Beling for failing to properly supervise his crew, for failing to be aware of the procedural changes that led to the rocket firing, and for inadequately responding to the fire itself.
As for the Massey investigation’s conclusion that the disaster should be blamed “solely on the negligence and inefficiency of the Headquarters, Naval Air Systems Command,” Holmes refused to accept that criticism. There were deficiencies in training, he said, but the deaths on the Forrestal were caused by more than that. Individuals were responsible, Holmes said.
It didn’t take long for word to reach Beling that Holmes had taken a hard-line approach to reviewing the Massey investigation. Beling was disappointed, but he had to let the scenario play out according to navy regulations. It wasn’t long before Holmes sent a message to his superior, Moorer, requesting that Beling be transferred from the Pentagon to work under Holmes’s command in Norfolk. Moorer’s office approved the transfer as a routine matter, the admiral apparently unaware at that point why Holmes wanted Beling. But when he was told to catch a plane for a one-week assignment to Holmes’s office in Norfolk, Beling understood. Holmes could not reprimand Beling unless Beling was serving under his command.
So, like a schoolboy being called to the principal’s office, Beling had to go through the motions of transferring to Holmes’s office in Norfolk, knowing that he had no duties to perform there. He was to go there and wait for his punishment. It came in the form of a three-page letter delivered to him one day as he sat alone in a temporary office.
Though he had braced himself for the moment, Beling’s heart sank as he read the accusations. Holmes cited “loose procedures” and said “these facts clearly establish that your exercise of command was not effective.” Regarding the rocket-arming changes and the fact that Beling was not aware of them, the letter said, “Your nonaction in this regard amounted to a dereliction in the performance of your duties, which dereliction materially contributed to the circumstances resulting in the tragic incident aboard the Forrestal.”
The letter specified that Beling “showed poor judgment” by deviating from established safety procedures, failing to advise superiors of such changes, failing to “devote sufficient time and supervision to administrative and organizational procedures which resulted in a general squadron laxity.” And finally, the letter stated, “Your dereliction of duty as pointed out above and your lack of supervision contributed materially to the inadvertent firing of the Zuni rocket and permitted a situation to exist which resulted in the fire of 29 July 1967.
“Pursuant to references (b), (c), and (d), you are hereby reprimanded.”
Beling’s heart was pounding as he finished the letter, but not loud enough to drown out the words still ringing in his ears: “Your nonaction.” “Dereliction of duty.” “Poor judgment.” “Laxity.” “Failure.” “Reprimand.” Nothing could have hurt him more at that moment.
Beling was right back on the bridge of the Forrestal, watching his ship burn. He should have known he would never escape with his career intact. Men died on his watch, and the navy was saying it was his fault.
When Beling returned to his office in the Pentagon after his week in Norfolk, he was still wondering what to do with the reprimand. After the initial shock of the harsh criticism, Beling got angry. The reprimand had hurt so much because it stirred his deep feelings of regret and sorrow at the waste of young lives he had seen on the Forrestal. But when he thought about the facts at issue, Beling couldn’t sit still and just take the reprimand. To do so would be a sign that he agreed with Holmes’s conclusions, a tacit acknowledgment that he was in fact to blame for the deaths of those men. Beling knew he wasn’t. He knew the real reason those men died, and all the talk about why the rocket fired missed the point. Sure there were problems that caused that rocket to fire. But that rocket didn’t kill 134 men. They died because one-thousand-pound bombs started blowing up only a minute and thirty-four seconds into the fire.
As angry as the reprimand made Beling, he still wasn’t sure what to do about it. He didn’t want to accept it, but he also was reluctant to make a big fuss about it. Even aside from the personal pain it caused him, and that was no small matter, the reprimand was a major blow to his career. The reprimand would be a red flag every time a superior considered an assignment for him, and it would sully his reputation among the entire navy community. Beling winced at the reception he knew he would receive from his next ship’s crew if he showed up dragging that reprimand behind him.
Beling had the right to contest the reprimand, but to do so would require a full-fledged court-martial, the military equivalent of a trial. He would have to take his case before a panel of military judges and, with the help of legal counsel, show why the reprimand was not justified. It was up to Beling—just accept the reprimand or go through a complete court-martial. He struggled with the choice.
I could probably win that court-martial. I know this damn reprimand isn’t right, and I could make a good case that I wasn’t responsible for what happened out there. But a court-martial would be so public. What would that do to the navy? I’d have to air the navy’s dirty linen. I’m not sure I want to do that.
After weeks of soul-searching, Beling decided that he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t demand a court-martial and accuse the navy, publicly, of killing those men on the Forrestal. The idea of just rolling over and accepting the reprimand made him crazy with anger and indignation, but in the end he decided that he’d rather suffer that defeat alone than force the navy to admit to its failings. After all, he thought, the investigations had turned up a great many problems that contributed to the Forrestal fire and it appeared the navy was going to correct them. Wasn’t that really the more important question? And the country was right in the middle of so much dissension and protests over the Vietnam War. The military was taking a lot of hits already from people who had no respect for the institution or the people serving. John Beling didn’t want to add fuel to that fire.
No, it was better that he accept the reprimand, as much as it hurt him. That’s what a good officer would do, he told himself. He knew it meant his career might never recover, but he was beginning to think that might be the case even if the reprimand were rescinded. His initial thoughts after the fire were starting to sound more and more on target. A captain just can’t recover from an incident like the Forrestal fire.
Just as Beling was resigning himself to the reprimand and whatever the future might not hold for him, the final report and reprimand reached Admiral Moorer’s desk in the Pentagon. Beling knew that it would be typical for the admiral to sign off on his subordinate’s assessment and leave it at that. That would be the final word, since Moorer was the navy’s top man. It turned out that Moorer had other things in mind.
Moorer was none too pleased to see that Beling had received a reprimand. Moorer’s reading of the investigation’s findings, from a fellow brown shoe’s perspective, suggested to him that everyone underneath Holmes had read it the right way. But still, Moorer wanted good reasons for concluding what he thought was the case from the investigation—that despite the size of the tragedy, neither Beling nor anyone else on board was personally responsible. To help him make a final decision, Moorer decided to launch yet another investigation.
Moorer called in an old friend and colleague, James Russell, who had recently retired as vice chief of naval operations. Russell was familiar to Beling as well, a former carrier aviator whom Beling considered superbly qualified to assess the situation. Beling still hadn’t said a word to Moorer to protest the reprimand, but he was thrilled to hear that Russell had been asked to make a final assessment. Russell came out of retirement, partly as a personal favor to Moorer, just for the investigation.
Months passed as Russell went through the Massey investigation and then went back with his own staff to investigate the incident further. Finally, Beling’s phone rang as he was doing paperwork in his office. It was an aide to Moorer.
“Sir, Admiral Russell is going to brief the CNO on his investigation in about ten minutes. Would you like to attend?”
“Yes, I certainly would like to attend,” Beling replied. He put the phone down and immediately left for Moorer’s office.
When he reached Moorer’s outer office, he found Russell and a group of aides already waiting. Beling introduced himself and soon Moorer stepped out. He and Russell greeted each other warmly, just as would be expected of old friends, and everyone went into Moorer’s office. Beling sat quietly to the side, knowing that he was there only to observe. After some chitchat to get things settled, Moorer got down to business.
“Okay, Jim, so tell me, what the hell happened out there?”
Russell didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he got up and walked closer to Moorer’s desk, reaching in his jacket pocket. He pulled a brass slide switch from the TER rocket-arming system, one of several switches that were part of the redundant safety systems designed to keep the rocket from firing. The switch wasn’t much bigger than a key.
“That’s the culprit,” Russell said, handing it to Moorer.
“That switch failed, and so did four other safety devices. That’s why that rocket fired.”
Moorer looked at the switch in his hand and thought for a minute.
“So you’re saying this is the real cause? It was a device failure?”
Russell said yes, and that led him to begin discussing a wealth of technical detail he and his staff had discovered in their investigation. Much of it coincided with and supported the findings of the Massey investigation. The failure of the electrical safety devices didn’t negate some of the other problems cited by Massey and Holmes, Russell said, but they were all secondary to the failure of the safety devices. The rocket pigtails, the TER safety pins, and all the other factors still mattered, Russell said, but the rocket fired because the electrical surge made its way through safety switches like that one. They were supposed to stop just such an accidental voltage surge.
“Bottom line, if you want to know what caused the fire, you’re holding it.”
Beling left with everyone else when the meeting was over, knowing that Moorer would contact him when he was ready. He felt a great sense of relief walking back to his office, confident that he had been exonerated by the highest office in the navy. Within a few days, Beling received a copy of a letter that Moorer had sent to Holmes. It directed Holmes to withdraw the reprimand.
Soon, Beling received notice that he was once again being transferred back to Norfolk for a one-week assignment under Holmes. This time, he was glad to go. As before, he went to Norfolk and sat in a temporary office waiting for a delivery. When the delivery came, it was a much shorter letter. After the usual jargon referencing the investigation and the previous letter of reprimand, the final line was what mattered.
“Your reprimand is hereby rescinded.”
Beling finally felt that the investigations were behind him and he could move on. He continued working under Moorer in the Pentagon into 1968 and was assigned to a prestigious task force of military officers and civilian scientists developing sophisticated tools for monitoring activity in Southeast Asia. It was satisfying work, but Beling was still eager to get back to commanding ships. He knew he was in line to be assigned as commander of a carrier battle group in the Pacific. Not only would he be back on a carrier, but as a rear admiral, he would be superior to the captain. The navy takes a while to process appointments like that, so Beling was trying to be patient, knowing that the desk job wouldn’t last forever. He was encouraged when the Bureau of Naval Personnel sent word to Beling that the assignment was imminent and he should start preparing for the move to San Diego. Finally, he thought, July 29, 1967, was about to end.
And then, another twist. Before Beling’s assignment to the carrier group in San Diego could be finalized, Admiral Moorer’s term of office ran out. Beling’s good friend, the admiral who had watched out for him in such a difficult time, was to be replaced as chief of naval operations by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr. This was not good news. Zumwalt was not a former carrier man, like Beling and Moorer and Russell. Zumwalt had earned his stripes on destroyers, and unfortunately, Beling had had a few run-ins with Zumwalt during his time at the Pentagon. Most of the problems came down to just fundamental differences in perspective because of their different backgrounds, but the end result was that Beling and his new boss didn’t get along well.
But maybe it doesn’t matter. I’ll be out of here any day now for San Diego.
Beling kept plugging away at his desk job, waiting for the final orders to report to San Diego. He was ready to go as soon as the paperwork came through.
Beling waited and waited, and the orders never came. Zumwalt offered no explanation. Beling inquired with more friendly contacts in the navy about why he wasn’t being sent to San Diego yet, and one admiral with an aviation background wrote to Zumwalt to ask why Beling was still being held in the Pentagon. Zumwalt did not reply to the letter, but Beling soon received transfer orders.
Beling opened the orders as soon as they arrived. But they did not say San Diego. Instead, Zumwalt was transferring Beling from the Pentagon to a desk job in Iceland.
Iceland. Not only was Beling denied the prestigious command of a carrier battle group as he had been promised, but he was being sent to Iceland, to a desk job that any black-shoe navy officer with none of Beling’s experience could handle. The message was clear, and Beling believed it had little to do with his personal disagreements with Zumwalt. No matter how many investigations cleared him, the navy wasn’t going to let Beling off the hook for what happened on the Forrestal. He was being exiled.
And once again, Beling found himself on the bridge of the Forrestal, staring in disbelief as a raging fire killed young men under his command. For John Beling and so many more of the men of Forrestal, the fires would never end.