“FOREST” FIRE

There were three major fires aboard US Navy aircraft carriers during the course of the Vietnam conflict.  The first occurred on 26 October 1966, killing 44 sailors aboard ORISKANY (CVA-34) after a phosphorous parachute flare accidently ignited in a hangar-deck storage locker.  The last was aboard ENTERPRISE (CVAN-65) on 14 January 1969, when a rocket ignited under the wing of an F-4 during start-up, touching off a multi-level blaze that killed 28 and took three hours to control.  But the worst, and best remembered, of these disasters occurred aboard USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59).

Having transferred from the Atlantic Fleet for a rotation off Southeast Asia, FORRESTAL had arrived on Yankee Station just four days earlier.  Her seven squadrons, VF-11, VF-74, VA-46, VA-106, VAH-10, RVAH-11, and VAW-123 flew 150 sorties without incident.  Flight operations were continuing around 1100 on the 29^th of July when a Zuni air-to-ground rocket under the wing of an F-4B misfired as the plane was being readied on the after flight deck.  The rocket skidded forward among aircraft crowding the deck and struck an A-4 in the fuel tank.  The resultant explosion spread flaming JP-5 over the after half of the flight deck.  Within minutes ordnance and fuel from other aircraft began exploding.  Fanned by a 20-knot wind, the blaze quickly turned to an inferno and spread to berthing spaces below the flight deck.  Here the flames blocked the egress of about fifty unfortunate sailors.

Meanwhile secondary explosions were turning the 4-acre flight deck into an aircraft scrapyard.  Panicked sailors began ripping ordnance from aircraft hardpoints to be thrown overboard.  Many were blown overboard themselves, or had bombs and rockets explode in their faces.  It took almost an hour, with firefighting help from nearby ORISKANY and RUPERTUS (DD-851), to control the flight deck blaze.  Secondary fires below decks burned into the night.

One hundred and thirty-four officers and enlisted lost their lives in this tragedy.  Sixty-four aircraft were destroyed or damaged.  FORRESTAL was detached to Norfolk where $72 million in repairs began in September (not including replacement aircraft).  She returned to active service, this time with the dubious nickname, “USS Forest Fire” which she carried for years.  On 4 February 1991 she was re-designated AVT-59 and took over as our pilot training carrier, replacing the venerable WWII-era LEXINGTON (AVT-16).  Her duty in this capacity was short-lived, she was decommissioned on 30 September 1993, another victim of post-Cold War downsizing.  Video of this after deck disaster was subsequently used in a film shown to many sailors of the late 20^th century as part of damage control training.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  5 AUG 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Mersky, Peter B. and Norman Polmar.  The Naval Air War in Vietnam.  Annapolis, MD: Nautical and Aviation Pub., 1981, pp. 121-22.

Polmar, Norman.  The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 16^th ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, pp. 87,101.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 227.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Flight deck cameras caught much of this mishap, including the escape of the pilot of the A-4 struck by the rocket.  LCDR John S. McCain, III, saved his own life and that of another pilot, after jumping from the wing of his Skyhawk.  He was wounded in the legs and chest by fragments of an exploding bomb.  He would later be shot down over Hanoi and spend 5 1/2 years as a POW of the North Vietnamese.

FORRESTAL remembers former Secretary of the Navy and our first Secretary of Defense in 1947, James V. Forrestal.  McCain is remembered today, along with his father and grandfather, with the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer JOHN S. MCCAIN (DDG-58).  We currently do not maintain a designated AVT carrier.

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                                        KEY WEST CONFERENCE

The years following the end of WWII were tumultuous for the US military.  The atomic bomb that ended that war fundamentally changed strategic thinking.  Why bother with conventional forces when the answer to world conflict was the atomic bomb?  Weren’t the millions of dollars spent every year to maintain a Navy, a Marine Corps, and even an Army, wasted?  Primacy belonged to the Air Force, whose strategic bombers held the evil of the world at arm’s length.  Our Navy was still wincing from the National Security Act of 1947 that challenged Navy independence by combining the Navy and War Departments into the Department of Defense.  The Marine Corps was about to be relegated to the status of the Royal Marines–a police force able to conduct only small-time commando raids.  Land-based Naval air capability faced extinction.  Clearly, to insure future Navy viability, she was going to have to get into the atomic weapons business.  But funding for the new generation of aircraft carriers represented by the flush-deck (no island) United States (CV-58), deploying nuclear capable aircraft, was being questioned.  Against this backdrop, newly appointed Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal (the former SecNav), asked a former business associate, Ferdinand Eberstadt, to lobby Congress to coordinate foreign policy and military planning under a National Security Council.  The effort stalled however, over the role of the Air Force.  Forrestal now recognized that the survival of the Navy and Marine Corps depended upon compromise.

On this date, Secretary Forrestal convened a conference of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at Naval Station Key West to work out an overarching compromise military strategy, one of our first runs at “jointness.”  A reasonable accord was reached.  The Navy agreed to allow the Air Force exclusive domain over “strategic air forces,” and assured all that the Navy would not, “develop a separate strategic air force.”   The Navy would continue to, “attack inland targets” however, and UNITED STATES, when finished, would still deploy aircraft with atomic weapons.  The Marine Corps’ lead role in amphibious operations was reaffirmed, but they were limited to four divisions in size, and they were not to comprise another “land force.”  To the Army was given the mission of ground operations.  Rocketry and operational ground support was doled to the Air Force.  Despite this agreement debate continued, and when Louis Johnson succeeded Forrestal as Secretary of Defense in 1949, he canceled the UNITED STATES project on 23 April 1949, shifting resources into more Air Force bombers.  Excepting a flirtation with sea-based bombers, Naval atomic defensive air power awaited the commissioning of USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59) on 1 October 1955.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  15 MAR 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Goodspeed, M. Hill.  U.S. Navy:  A Complete History. Washington, DC: Naval Historical Foundation, 2003, p. 538.

Hoopes, Townsend and Douglas Brinkley.  Driven Patriot:  The Life and Times of James Forrestal.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1992, pp. 372-74.

Love, Robert W.  History of the US Navy, Vol 2  1942-1991. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992, pp. 314-15.

Millis, Walter, ed.  The Forrestal Diaries.  New York, NY: Viking Press, 1951, pp. 392-94.

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