Reflections of
VIE TNAM
H o n o ring o ur L o cal V e t e rans
Photo by Harry Gerwien
Remembering the USS Forrestal In a light filled room and surrounded by mementos and a memorial to the dead, families, veterans and current Navy firefighters gathered at the Gerald R. Farrier Firefighting School on July 24, 2015 to pay tribute to the 134 Sailors who died and the 161 Sailors injured in the 1967 fire aboard USS Forrestal. Addressing the assembled guests, Walter Stinner, an aviation ordnance man, recalled that the morning of July 29, 1967 started out like any other. “First launch was like any other. Send them off, get ready for the next 15 to 20 birds. Get them loaded up, fueled up and ready for launch. It’s 10:52 in the morning. I was all the way aft with my loading team when out of nowhere is an explosion. I turned and looked forward and all you could see was black smoke,” recalled Stinner. “The wind blew it away and we witnessed a disaster in the making. All those planes were loaded with ordnance. All those planes were topped off with fuel.” An electrical anomaly had resulted in the firing of a live rocket from a loaded plane. It struck another A-4 Skyhawk that was loaded for flight, which lead to a devastating series of explosions. The explosions ripped open the hull of the super carrier and the fires spilled on to the floors below. The flight deck fires were not controlled for over an hour and the whole fires was not declared defeated until 4:00 a.m. the next morning. “I was in the darkroom doing batch photos. We’d do them 25-50 at a time. When the first 500lb bomb went off, I thought ‘who are we firing at.’ Those 5-inch guns couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. When the second bomb went off, I thought ‘who is firing at us,’” recounted Pastor Roy Saxman, who was PH3 Roy Saxman at the time of the fire. Stinner teared up as he remembered those who were 1ST PHOTO: Smoke from the burning FORRESTAL, as photographed lost that day. “Down below from the flight deck of USS ORISKANY (CVA-34), off Vietnam, on 29 July were our shipmates who were 1967. Planes on deck are A-1 “Skyraiders” and F-8 “Crusaders.” | USN Photo sleeping who I had relieved just a few hours before. I found out 2ND PHOTO: Fire on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal. | USN Photo I had lost all the shipmates I 3RD PHOTO: USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59) crewmen are assisted by had relieved,” he remembered those from USS RUPERTUS (DD-851) in fighting the fires raging aboard FORRESTAL, while a helicopter ferries fire-fighting supplies to the burning to the assembled crowd. “We ship, Gulf of Tonkin, July 1967. | USN Photo managed to save the ship because of the heroism of thousands of our shipmates. 4850 of us survived because of the heroism of those gents.” The emotion was palpable in the room throughout the ceremony. It took 12 minutes for the names of the fallen Sailors to be read. The veterans assembled wiped away tears as they saw their friends and shipmates remembered. “Bombs were supposed to just burn [if ignited]. They weren’t supposed to explode. It only took them a few seconds to explode,” said LTJG Allen Page, an intelligence officer stationed aboard Forrestal at the time, with anger in his voice. “Those were WWII bombs. We never should have touched them and we tried not to.” The ceremony concluded with a call for those present to lobby Congress to award the Purple Heart to the Sailors who lost their lives or were wounded that day. The Purple Heart is awarded for loss of life or injuries received while engaged in combat. Survivors argue that they were receiving combat pay and engaged in combat operations when the fire started, but because the fire was started by one of their own rockets, they have been considered ineligible for the award. While the criteria for receiving a Purple Heart was recently expanded to include the victims of the Fort Hood shooting in 2009, the survivors of the Forrestal would need to get the criteria expanded again to include incidents like the tragic one of July 29, 1967.
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