In June 1967, Forrestal departed Norfolk for duty in waters off Vietnam. As the huge ship cut a wake through the calm waters of the Gulf of Tonkin on 29 July 1967, the hot, tropical sun beat down from a clear sky. Forrestal had been launching aircraft from her flight deck on strikes against an enemy whose coastline was only a few miles over the horizon. For four days, the planes of Attack Carrier Air Wing 17 had been launched on, and recovered from, about 150 missions against targets in North Vietnam. On the ship's four-acre flight deck, her crewmen went about the business at hand, the business of accomplishing the second launch of the fifth day in combat.
It was just about 10:50 a.m. (local time). The launch that was scheduled for a short time later was never made. Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III, later a prisoner of war in Vietnam and still later U.S. Senator from Arizona, said later he heard a "whooshy" sound then a "low-order explosion" in front of him. Suddenly, two A-4s ahead of his plane were engulfed in flaming jet fuel — JP-5 — spewed from them. A bomb dropped to the deck and rolled about six feet and came to rest in a pool of burning fuel.
The awful conflagration, which was to leave 132 Forrestal crewmen dead, 62 more injured and two missing and presumed dead, had begun. The entire nation felt the tragedy, and Life magazine reported that "in five minutes, everyone became a man." The ship returned to Norfolk for extensive repairs.
chinfo.navy.mil
Presumably McCain learned to not test
the missle firing control until after takeoff
TP |
