|
Of all the strange episodes of the Vietnam War, none was more improbable than what happened aboard the monster U. S. aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin on the morning of July 29, 1967.
No enemy action was involved, and no ammunition was deliberately fired off. Yet within a few hours, 134 American sailors died, 161 more were seriously injured, 21 airplanes were lost and 40 more damaged, and damage to military property totaled $72.2 million dollars.
The tragic sequence of events began with the totally accidental firing of a small rocket from a plane waiting to take off as part of a large bombing mission near the Chinese border. The rocket struck another plane, igniting jet fuel, starting fires and soon triggering a series of nine monster explosions, as 1,000-pound bombs intended for Vietnamese targets blew up literally in the faces of those on the carrier's crowded flight deck. The explosions tore holes in the deck, allowing the flaming fuel to cascade down into crew quarters, airplane hangars, ammunition storage areas, and other dangerous places below decks. Most of the planes that were lost were deliberately pushed overboard so that they would not explode and make matters even worse. A total of 47 men either jumped or were blown overboard.
The story of this horrendous accident is told vividly by Gregory A. Freeman, a seasoned journalist and a skilled writer. He aptly compares the Forrestal that morning to "a crate of fireworks with a bonfire on top." The only problem with that metaphor is that it does not take into account the 5,000 human beings who were also on that "crate of fireworks."
Freeman has done his research well, interviewing as many survivors as he could find, from the Forrestal's captain John Beling down to lowly seamen, following the paper trail of investigations and even spending some time himself on a comparable carrier to get a firsthand look at how these enormous floating cities operate. His writing conveys well the personal stories of many people directly involved in fighting the huge fire; it also gives the reader a sense of the size and complexity of a huge ship like the Forrestal. He is also able to tell the story with only a minimum of the mind-numbing military jargon and acronyms that so often get in the way of lay comprehension in military memoirs.
Freeman also seems to have a political agenda, though this is not overtly stated. As the years have passed since the event, the Navy has tended to blame the disaster on the Forrestal's crew, even producing a training film about shipboard firefighting with that message. At one stage early in the post-event investigations there was an effort to scapegoat Capt. Beling; he was officially reprimanded, but the reprimand was later rescinded. Nonetheless, he finished his naval career at an obscure outpost in Iceland.
Freeman seems to want to do two things: Praise the crew as the true heroes of the event and lay the blame on old, defective ammunition, the source of those massive explosions that took most of the 134 lives that were lost. The ship's ordnance experts were enraged when they were supplied with these ancient, defective and dangerous bombs the day before the accident --- but they were told nothing else was available. Lyndon Johnson had ordered a big escalation in the bombing campaign, regardless of the fact that there was not enough modern ammunition available to do the job. Freeman claims this factor has been swept under the rug in official assessments of what went wrong that July morning.
Another contributing factor in the debacle was the short-circuiting of two separate safety precautions concerning the activation of rockets on planes ready to take off on bombing missions. This is one of those bureaucratic mix-ups that can happen in any large enterprise --- and as any veteran can tell you, there is no larger or more bureaucratic entity than the U. S. military.
The pilot whose plane was hit by that stray rocket that morning was 26-year old John McCain, who now sits in the U. S. Senate. McCain is, however, just one among a large and appealing cast of sailor heroes in Freeman's book. There are wonderfully affecting stories of young sailors whose lives were spared --- or taken --- by sheer chance.
Freeman has told this story well. Some of it makes gruesome reading, but it is a tale that should not be forgotten.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)
• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
