![]() “I’ve heard different people say, ‘everybody in the Navy is a ,’” said Damage Controlman 1st Class Brent George, an instructor at Farrier Firefighting School. ![]() Compare that to the numbers above: more than 5% of all Navy lives lost in the Vietnam conflict were due to this one event. The disaster lasted 18 hours, crippled the ship and claimed 134 lives. One spark was all it took to ignite the fuel, creating an inferno that caused a chain reaction of nine bomb explosions across the flight deck. ![]() The fuel bled from the Douglas A-4E Skyhawk and sprayed the surrounding area, creating a pool below. Suddenly, multiple electronic malfunctions on the aircraft caused one of its four 5-inch Mk-32 "Zuni" unguided rockets to fire across the flight deck, striking another aircraft, tearing it to shreds, and rupturing its fuel tank. At 1050, a McDonnell F-4B Phantom II aircraft began pre-flight procedures. On the morning of July 29, 1967, USS Forrestal (CVA-59), operating in the Gulf of Tonkin, commenced air operations in preparation for the launching of a 24-plane alpha strike. Those assumptions weren’t always the case. It’s easy to assume all the lives lost in the heat of battle - typical imaginings of our men far from home-fighting in a war unlike any other in the jungles of Vietnam. While it's impossible to quantify the value of even a single life, we take pride in knowing each one of these people laid down their lives for their country. It was a war that would cost a total of 58,220 American service members. It was a costly war that would take the lives of 2,559 Sailors. ![]()
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