On 29 July 1967, a fire broke out on board the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, which was engaged in combat in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War. The fire was caused by an inadvertently fired Zuni rocket which ruptured an external fuel tank of an A-4 Skyhawk. The tank's jet fuel spilled across the flight deck, ignited, and triggered a chain reaction of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. The ship survived, but with damage exceeding US$ 72 million, not including the damage to aircraft. Future United States Senator John McCain and future four-star admiral and U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Ronald J. Zlatoper were among the survivors. Another on-board officer, Lieutenant Tom Treanore, later returned to the ship as her commander, and ultimately retired as an admiral.
This was the second of three serious fires to strike American carriers in the 1960s. A 1966 fire aboard USS Oriskany killed 44 and injured 138, and a 1969 fire aboard USS Enterprise killed 28 and injured 314.
The disaster prompted the Navy to revise its firefighting practices. It also modified its weapon-handling procedures, and installed a deck wash-down system on all carriers. A newly established firefighting school in Norfolk, Virginia was named Farrier Firefighting School after Chief Gerald W. Farrier, the commander of Forrestal's Damage Control Team 8, who was killed.
Background
Arrival in Gulf of Tonkin
Forrestal departed its home port in Norfolk, Virginia in early June 1967. After it completed required inspections for the upcoming West Pacific cruise, it sailed to Brazil for a show of force. It then traveled east around the Horn of Africa and visited Naval Air Station Cubi Point in the Philippine Islands before sailing to Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin on 25 July.
After arrival at Yankee Station, aircraft from Attack Carrier Air Wing 17 flew approximately 150 missions against targets in North Vietnam over four days.
Vietnam bombing campaign
The ongoing naval bombing campaign during 1967 originating at Yankee Station represented by far the most intense and sustained air attack operation in the U.S. Navy's history. The demand for general-purpose bombs (i.e., "iron bombs") greatly exceeded production. The inventory of bombs dwindled throughout 1966 and became critically low by 1967. This was particularly true for the new 1,000 lb (450 kg) Mark 83, which the Navy favored for its power-to-size ratio. A carrier-launched A-4 Skyhawk, the Navy's standard light attack / ground attack aircraft, could carry either a single 2,000 lb (910 kg) bomb, or two 1,000 lb bombs. The latter gave it the ability to strike two separate hardened targets in a single sortie, which was more effective in most circumstances.
The U.S. Air Force's primary ground attack aircraft in Vietnam was the much heavier, land-based, F-105 Thunderchief. It could simultaneously carry two 3,000 lb (1,360 kg) M118 bombs and four 750 lb (340 kg) M117 bombs. The Air Force had a large supply of these bombs, and did not rely as heavily on the limited supply of 1,000 lb bombs as did the Navy.
Issues with Zuni rockets
In addition to bombs, the ground attack aircraft carried unguided 5-inch (127 mm) Mk-32 "Zuni" rockets. These rockets were in wide use although they had a reputation for electrical difficulties and accidental firing. It was common for aircraft to launch with six or more rocket packs, each containing four rockets.
Specialized firefighting teams
Based on lessons learned during Japanese attacks on vessels during World War II, all sailors on board ships after World War II received training in fighting shipboard fires. These lessons were gradually lost and by 1967, the U.S. Navy had reverted to the Japanese model at Midway and relied on specialized, highly trained damage control and firefighting teams.
The damage control team specializing in on-deck firefighting for Forrestal was Damage Control Team No. 8, led by Chief Aviation Boatswain's Mate Gerald Farrier. They had been shown films during training of Navy ordnance tests demonstrating how a 1,000 lb bomb could be directly exposed to a jet fuel fire for a full ten minutes and still be extinguished and cooled without an explosive cook-off. However, these tests were conducted using the new Mark 83 1,000 lb bombs, which featured relatively stable Composition H6 explosive and thicker, heat-resistant cases, compared to their predecessors. Because it is relatively insensitive to heat, shock and electricity, Composition H6 is still used as of 2025 in many types of naval ordnance. It is also designed to deflagrate instead of detonate when it reaches its ignition point in a fire, either melting the case and producing no explosion at all, or, at most, a subsonic low order detonation at a fraction of its normal power.
Unstable ordnance received
On 28 July, the day before the accident, Forrestal was resupplied with ordnance by the ammunition ship USS Diamond Head. The load included sixteen 1,000-pound (450 kg) AN-M65A1 bombs. These bombs had been picked up by Diamond Head from Subic Bay Naval Base and were intended for the next day's second bombing sortie. Some of the batch of AN-M65A1s Forrestal received were more than a decade old, having spent a portion of that exposed to the heat and humidity of Okinawa or Guam, eventually being improperly stored in open-air Quonset huts at a disused ammunition dump on the periphery of Subic Bay Naval Base. Unlike the thick-cased Mark 83 bombs filled with Composition H6, the AN-M65A1 bombs were thin-skinned and filled with Composition B, an older explosive with greater sensitivity to heat and shock.
Composition B also had the dangerous tendency to become more sensitive if it was old or improperly stored. Forrestal's ordnance handlers had never even seen an AN-M65A1 before, and to their shock, the bombs delivered from Diamond Head were in terrible condition; coated with "decades of accumulated rust and grime" and still in their original packing crates (now moldy and rotten); some were stamped with production dates as early as 1953. Most dangerous of all, several bombs were seen to be leaking liquid paraffin phlegmatizing agent from their seams, an unmistakable sign that the bomb's explosive filler had degenerated with excessive age, and exposure to heat and moisture.
According to Lieutenant R. R. "Rocky" Pratt, a naval aviator attached to VA-106, the concern felt by Forrestal's ordnance handlers was striking, with many afraid to even handle the bombs; one officer wondered out loud if they would survive the shock of a catapult-assisted launch without spontaneously detonating, and others suggested they immediately jettison them. Forrestal's ordnance officers reported the situation up the chain of command to the ship's commanding officer, Captain John Beling, and informed him the bombs were, in their assessment, an imminent danger to the ship and should be immediately jettisoned overboard.
Faced with this, but still needing 1,000 lb bombs for the next day's missions, Beling demanded Diamond Head take the AN-M65A1s back in exchange for new Mark 83s, but was told by Diamond Head that they had none to give him. The AN-M65A1 bombs had been returned to service specifically because there were not enough Mark 83s to go around. According to one crew member on Diamond Head, when they had arrived at Subic Bay to pick up their load of ordnance for the carriers, the base personnel who had prepared the AN-M65A1 bombs for transfer assumed Diamond Head had been ordered to dump them at sea on the way back to Yankee Station. When notified that the bombs were actually destined for active service in the carrier fleet, the commanding officer of the naval ordnance detachment at Subic Bay was so shocked that he initially refused the transfer, believing a paperwork mistake had been made. At the risk of delaying Diamond Head's departure, he refused to sign the transfer forms until receiving written orders from CINCPAC on the teleprinter, explicitly absolving his detachment of responsibility for the bombs' terrible condition.
Unstable bombs stored on deck
With orders to conduct strike missions over North Vietnam the next day, and with no replacement bombs available, Captain Beling reluctantly concluded that he had no choice but to accept the AN-M65A1 bombs in their current condition. In one concession to the demands of the ordnance handlers, Beling agreed to store all 16 bombs alone on deck in the "bomb farm" area between the starboard rail and the carrier's island until they were loaded for the next day's missions. Standard procedure was to store them in the ship's magazine with the rest of the air wing's ordnance; had they been stored as standard, an accidental detonation could easily have destroyed the ship.
Fire and explosions
While preparing for the second sortie of the day, the aft portion of the flight deck was packed wing-to-wing with twelve A-4E Skyhawk, seven F-4B Phantom II, and two RA-5C Vigilante aircraft. A total of 27 aircraft were on deck, fully loaded with bombs, rockets, ammunition, and fuel. Several tons of bombs were stored on wooden pallets on deck in the bomb farm. An F-4B Phantom II (No. 110, Bureau Number 153061), flown by Lieutenant Commander James E. Bangert and Lieutenant (JG) Lawrence E. McKay from VF-11, was positioned on the aft starboard corner of the deck, pointing about 45 degrees across the ship. It was armed with LAU-10 underwing rocket pods, each containing four unguided 5-inch (127 mm) Mk-32 "Zuni" rockets. The rockets were secured against accidental firing by a safety pin that was only to be removed when the aircraft was lining up on the catapult for launch.
Zuni rocket launched
At about 10:51 (local time) on 29 July, there was an electrical power surge in Phantom No. 110 during the switch from external to internal power, which caused the firing of one of the four Zuni rockets carried in the aircraft's port-side inboard pod. The rocket, which was later determined to have been missing its safety pin, flew about 100 feet (30 m) across the flight deck – likely severing the arm of a crewman – and ruptured a 400-US-gallon (1,500 L; 330 imp gal) wing-mounted external fuel tank on a Skyhawk from Attack Squadron 46 (VA-46) that was awaiting launch.
Aircraft struck
The official Navy investigation identified the Skyhawk struck by the Zuni as aircraft No. 405, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Fred D. White. Lieutenant Commander John McCain stated in his 1999 book Faith of My Fathers that the rocket struck his aircraft, alongside White's A-4 Skyhawk. "On that Saturday morning in July, as I sat in the cockpit of my A-4 preparing to take off, a rocket hit the fuel tank under my airplane." Later accounts relying on his book also state that the rocket struck his A-4 Skyhawk.
The rocket broke apart on impact with the external fuel tank, and, although the warhead-safety mechanism prevented actual detonation, fragments of burning rocket propellant ignited the JP-5 fuel that had spilled from the ruptured tank and spread over the deck under White's and McCain's A-4s. A sailor standing about 100 feet (30 m) forward was struck by a fragment of the Zuni or the exploding fuel tank. A fragment also punctured the centerline external fuel tank of A-4 No. 310, positioned just aft of the jet blast deflector of catapult number 3. The resulting fire was fanned by 32-knot (59 km/h; 37 mph) winds and the exhaust of at least three jets. Fire quarters and then general quarters were sounded at 10:52 and 10:53. Condition ZEBRA was declared at 10:59, requiring all hands to secure the ship for maximum survivability, including closing the fire-proof steel doors that separate the ship's compartments.
The official report states that "at least one" AN-M65 bomb fell from an A-4 Skyhawk to the deck; other reports say two. The bomb fell in a pool of burning fuel between White's and McCain's aircraft.
Damage Control Team No. 8, led by Chief Gerald W. Farrier, were the first responders to any incident on the flight deck. They immediately took action. Farrier, without taking the time to locate and put on protective clothing, immediately attempted to smother the bomb with a PKP fire extinguisher, attempting to delay the fuel fire from spreading and give the pilots time to escape their aircraft. Based on their training, the team believed they had a ten-minute window to extinguish the fire before the bomb's casing would melt resulting in a low-order explosion.
The pilots, preparing to launch, were strapped into their aircraft. When the fire started and quickly spread, they immediately attempted to escape their aircraft. McCain, pilot of A-4 Skyhawk No. 416, on the port side next to White's, was among the first to notice the flames, and escaped by scrambling down the nose of his A-4 and jumping off the refueling probe. Lt. Cmdr. Robert "Bo" Browning, in an A-4E Skyhawk also on the port side, escaped by crossing the flight deck and ducking under the tails of F-4B Phantoms spotted along the starboard side. CVW-17 operations officer, Lt. Cmdr. Herbert A. Hope of VA-46, escaped by jumping out of the Skyhawk cockpit and rolling off the flight deck and into the starboard man-overboard net. He went to the hangar deck and took command of a firefighting team.