Sometimes the stories I encounter in this job leave me stunned. To wit, I recently spoke with Aviation Electrician’s Mate 2nd Class Anthony O’Malley, who served aboard the USS Forrestal during a deadly disaster in 1967.
Graduating high school in 1963, O’Malley was inspired by his sailor uncle to enlist in the Navy in ’64. Interested in work as an electrician, he opted for a Navy career in aviation electronics. He was proud to be aboard the supercarrier Forrestal, commissioned as the lead ship of her class only 12 years earlier.
The Forrestal arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 25, 1967, and commenced bombing operations over North Vietnam. “Wherever they sent me, that’s where I was willing to go,” O’Malley told me. On July 29, O’Malley was in the wheel well of a North American RA-5C reconnaissance jet working to reactivate a malfunctioning gauge. Then the pilot shut off the engines. This annoyed O’Malley, who needed only a few more minutes so the pilot could launch his mission. He came around to set the pilot straight, but heard a loud noise and turned to see the aft part of the ship in flames.
He would later discover a Mk-32 Zuni unguided rocket mounted on a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom fired across the deck and struck the fully-loaded fuel tank of a Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. The jet fuel leaked. The rocket’s safety prevented its explosion, but the rocket propellant ignited the fuel.
The flight deck was packed with 27 aircraft, fully loaded with bombs, rockets, and fuel. Plus, tons of bombs were on deck waiting to be loaded, and due to a bomb shortage, some of these were old and dangerously unstable. All that and high winds meant O’Malley was staring at a perfect nightmare.
Another explosion, and an arm landed 50 feet away from O’Malley. “I don’t think I’m in the right place,” he told me he said to himself. He saw a group of men rushing toward the flames with a fire hose and rushed to assist. But the hose was not long enough, and that plan was abandoned. This was just as well, because soon the first bomb cooking in the fire exploded, killing much of the first damage control team on site. They later learned water wasn’t the best extinguishing method.
Many men were killed. Many were forced to jump overboard, and other ships scrambled to their rescue. O’Malley and others worked to carry or roll bombs, ammunition, and even aircraft into the sea in a desperate struggle to save the ship. O’Malley himself would rush down a deck or two for munitions, and then back topside to toss them overboard.
“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.
“No, because we’re doing what we were trained to do. The training … just takes over. You do what you think is the right thing to do.”
Fourteen hell hours later, the fire was at last extinguished. The crew was exhausted. “It’s a life-changing experience. I’ll tell ya that,” O’Malley said. “You grow up fast in the military. You have to.”
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The fire destroyed 21 aircraft and damaged 40 more. It killed 134 men and injured 161. Back home, O’Malley’s girlfriend watched the lead news story in horror, with no way to know if he’d survived. Maybe, in part, due to his brush with death aboard the Forrestal, O’Malley asked her to marry him one week after he returned home. “The best move I ever made,” he said.
Books have been written about the disaster aboard the USS Forrestal. It’s more complex and terrible than space here allows telling, and in my interview with one of its survivors, I wondered out loud if the horror had darkened Anthony O’Malley’s outlook on his service. He answered at once, with the slightest tremble in his voice. “I’m so proud to have served.”
Trent Reedy, author of several books, including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
