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Sailors to the End
Book Describes Horrific Fire Aboard the USS Forrestal in 1967
 Listen to Scott Simon's interview with Gregory A. Freeman.
 View photos depicting the fire and its aftermath.
 Listen as Capt. Beling updates the crew on the fire, then an officer warns about the danger of chlorine gas.
The flight deck and many planes were destroyed in the fire.
Photo: U.S. Navy |
Aug. 3, 2002 -- On July 29, 1967, 134 U.S. sailors were killed aboard the USS Forrestal in Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin. They died in battle, but this was a battle of a different kind. The nearly 6,000 men aboard the aircraft carrier fought, and defeated, a raging fire that threatened to destroy the vessel and all aboard.
On Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon talks with Gregory A. Freeman, author of the new book, Sailors to the End: The Deadly Fire on the USS Forrestal and the Heroes Who Fought It, and John Beling, who was the ship's captain.
The fire, Freeman says, was "a microcosm of what was happening with the Vietnam War in general," in terms of communications with the Pentagon. The United States had launched a major bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and the Forrestal was in the thick of it. During the fire, the ship was "sending reports back (to Washington) of what was going on… but orders came back and did not reflect reality," Freeman says.
The fire began when an aircraft accidentally launched a missile on board. It shot across the deck and plowed through an auxiliary fuel tank that was attached to the belly of another plane -- the cockpit of which contained pilot John McCain (now the Arizona Senator).
As Freeman reveals in his book, the fire was made worse by the fact that the Navy had loaded the ship with many very old 1,000-pound bombs -- some dated to 1935. When he ordered the bombs for a coming attack, Beling says he "assumed we would get what we ordered" -- namely, fresh bombs.
Instead, he got ordnance that exploded almost immediately upon coming into contact with the fire. The old bombs, Freeman says, "turned what would have been a small problem into a major catastrophe."
Other Resources
The author's Web site, including excerpts from the book.
A site dedicated to the Forrestal, maintained by a veterans' group.
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