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Every ForrestalCrewman HeroBy PETER ARNETTABOARD THE CARRIER FORRESTAL, Off Vietnam(AP)~The fireballs that hopped and tumbled toward Lt. James J. Campbell were men, and he stood transfied beneath the white body of an F4 Phantom jet until he heard theirscreams.Then Campbell and scores of other Navy men preparing the jet planes for strikes against North Vietnam flung themselves on the fireballs that seconds earlier had been their buddies.“We rolled on them, dived on them. Anything to get the fires out,*’ said Campbell, from Homestead, Pa.“They were screaming and writhing. And as their planes burned up we saw the big bombs fall to the flight deck, glowing red.”The young officer was in the midst of the worst U. S. Navy disaster in a combat zone since World War II. He was at the after end of the flight deck of the 76,000-ton carrier Forrestal, that had steamed into the Gulf of Tonkin five days earlier to join the war against the Communists.A pilot poised to participate in the war probably had the first intimation that disaster was im-jmnent Saturday. He was Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III of Washington, D.C., a graying 30 and the son of the chief of U. S. naval froces in Europe. Hunched over the controls of his A4 Skyhawk, he was third in line from the catapult that was to blast his and the other planes off to North Vietnam.Loud BlastA loud explosion shook McCain.“I thought my aircraft had exploded. I looked out and fuel was spilling over the flight deck. Flame was behind me and in front of me. I thrust open my canopy and edged out along my refueling pole. The flames were 10 feet deep around the plane.”McCain jumped 10 feet to the deck and rolled through the fire, scorching his light tan flight suit.“I rolled clear and moved to* ward the starboard side. I . looked back and saw another pilot leaving his plane. Then he fell into the fire, he was burning. I ran toward him,” McCain said.“Then I saw a chief repairman come up. He ran right past me into the fire toward the pilot, carrying a fire extinguisher. Then the first bomb went off. We were blown all over the place. The pilot, the repairman, they disappeared.”Crouching by a Phantom jet as McCain jumped was Lt. (j.g.) Lee V. Twjford of Arlington, Va. He ran toward the pilot. Two men manning a hose passed him.The first bo,mb detonated. Twyford said he was flung to the deck. The hose was torn and spilled water on the deck. The two men carrying the hose had been killed.Alarm bells jangled throughout the 1,039-foot length of the carrier, echoing throughout the massive structure that, from her keel to the top of her mast, is as tall as a 25-story building.Rear Arim. Harvey P. Lan-ham, commander of Task Force77.6, was in his quarters.“I dashed for the bridge,” the admiral said. “Through constant practice I knew the time ittook-one minute and 50 seconds. I heard two violent explosions an the way to the bridge,Deckin Flames“When I looked down on the aft deck it was engulfed in flames. As I peered out through the thick plexiglass the bosun grabbed my arm and said, ’Get away from that window, it’s not safe.’ As I dropped down, another explosion shook the ship. A large piece of shrapnel crashed through the plexiglass where my face was,”The Forrestal’s skipper, Capt. John K. Beling of Harrington Park, N.J., was in his cabin when the general quarters alarm sounded. He ran to the bridge shirtless and slowed the ship down.The flight deck of the Forres-Classilied DisplayClassified DisplayAIR CONDITIONERTUNE-UP• Sight glass moisture check, • Evacuate system if necessary. • Vacuum check, • Condenser. # Inspect evaporator, check blower. • Check compressor clutch, belts and pulleys. • Recharge system if necessary, or add to system. • Check expansion and EPR valve.• Check head pressure and system for satisfactory operation,$.rn Plus Freon if necessaryAverage freon charge $3.00All work performed by factory trained technicians. Any type of Repair work available. No jobs too small or too large. Terms available with qualified credit.PRIELIPP OLDS•'Your Oldsmobile Dealer”200* MILTON AVE., JANESVILLE754-7754FIRE RAGES — Crewmen fight flames from burning planes- on deck of U.S. carrier Forrestal after accident Saturday in Tonkin Gulf off coast ofVietnam. Fuel tank accidentally dropped from fight er started conflagration. (AP Wirephot’o)tal, the first carrier built after World War II and the first with the revolutionary angled deck to aid plane launches and recoveries, was splintering under constant explosions of 750-and 1,-000-pound bombs. Some holes in the 2inch steel deck were 20 feet across.“The kamikaze pilots in World War II couldn’t have done this much damage,” one said.Chief Ordnapceman Thomas J. Lawler, 33, of New York City, crouched in his maintenance shop as the noise reverberated from the flight deck just above him. The steel roof glowed red. Lawler believed enemy planes were attacking.“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he called to an assistant. The inferno on the flight deck quickly spread down into the ship’s interior, Soon six decks were burning in the aft part, with serious fires in hangar 3.Lawler remembered there were some F4 Phantom jets armed with missiles in hangar 3. But the electrical wiring was destroyed and all the lights were out. In the pitch darkness and smoke, Lawler and two assistants groped from plane to plane, feeling for the missiles, disarming them and carrying them outside to threw overboard.Kept From SpreadingBy defusing the planes in hangar 3, Lawler and his men kept the blaze from spreading into hangar 2 where dozens more armed planes were stored.For the first hour of the battle, fought on the azure blue South China Sea in the hot noon sun of a clear tropical day, Capt. Beling had to consider theClassil id DisplayClassilied DisplayClassilied Displaypossibility that the whole ship, with its crew of 5,200 men, would be destroyed.“It was absolutely in the realm of possibility that we could have lost the ship,” Beling “To avert this, Navy men were braving death to grapple with burning planes and red hot bombs.”Lt. Robert E. Cates, 24, of St. Petersburg, Fla., a bomb disposal expert, disarmed two smoking 750-pound bombs on the flight deck while fire raged around him. Later Cates was lowered down a smoking hole in the steel deck to disarm two more.At the height of the fight to save the ship half of the ship’s crew were directly involved. They included men like Lt. Otis Kight of Oklahoma City, Okla., a 130-pound data analyst who, in a feat of strength his buddies figure he will never again equal, carried a 250-pound bomb to the edge of the hangar deck and threw it over the side.“I cannot in words express the gratitude I feel for this crew,” said Capt. Beling. “The heroism, the common sense was exemplary.”The 69 men missing today include scores trapped below decks, certain to be dead either from flash fires or from the chlorine gas.The most dangerous fires were extinguished within three hours. By early Sunday, the last blaze below deck was out. The Forrestal suffered no damage to her main engines or the steering apparatus. Control of the ship was maintained throughout.However, machine and maintenance shops and large berthing areas were wiped out. Fifty-seven of the 82 jet planes aboard were destroyed or damaged. Costs might run as high as $100 million.Claim GuardsmanCommitted MurderDETROIT (AP)—The Detroit News said in a copyrighted story today that two persons assert they witnessed a National Guardsman kill one or possibly two of three Negroes mysteriously slain at the height of the Detroit rioting.The News found where one of the reported witnesses lived, chartered a plane and flew city \ authorities -? who had been unable to locate the man — to the,witness.The victims, all shot early Wednesday in a midtown motel, were Aubrey Pollard, 19, Carl Cooper, 17, and Fred Temple, 18, all of Detroit. A Detroit police report said the three were “apparently shot to death in an exchange of gunfire.”But no gun was reported recovered from the slaying scene, and both the News and the Detroit Free Press launched independent investigations of thekillings.An intensive probe also was begun into the killings by the FBI, State Police, the Wayne Detroit County prosecutor’s office and Detroit homicide detectives.The News said it traced one of the reported witnesses, Robert L. Greene, 26, an Army veteran, to his home in Hopkinsville, ■ Ky. He had been in Detroit looking for a job the News said.In the story by reporter Joseph Strickland, the News quoted Greene, a Ngro as saying “I Greene, a Negro as saying “1 saw the National Guard officer kill two of the bovs.”n __The officials were not immediately available for comment.Greene was said to have stated that two white girls and two other Negro men besides the three gunshot victims were in the motel at the time and that they were herder against a wail.“The police just walked up and down the line and beat us,” the News quoted him. ‘They even beat the two girls,” he told the paper.One of the two other men, the News said, was Roderick D. Davis, 20, of Detroit, a member of a rock ‘n’ roll singing group.“We were herded into this hall,” Davis was quoted by the paper as saying,” and this National Guardsmen kept tellingus he was going to kill us all.“He tried to make one of the boys (the three victims) take a knife from him. He told the boy to cut him or try to stab him,” Davis was quoted as saying.“The boy refused, and the guy threw the knife at him, then shot him,” the News reported Davis as saying.Davis reportedly said he, Reed and Temple, were pushedout of a back door after they were made to leave thier shoes behind.“They told us to start walking toward home and not to look back,” Davis was quoted as saying.The News reported Davis as saying “Fred Temple asked if he could put his shoes on and the guardsman told him to go ahead.”Temple never rejoined them, the News said.
Newspaper Details
Janesville Daily Gazette
Janesville, Wisconsin, US
Mon, Jul 31, 1967
Page 18
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 29 Mar 2023
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