Everybody Missed the 50th Anniversary Of The USS Forrestal Disaster
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Everybody Missed the 50th Anniversary Of The USS Forrestal Disaster
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Yes, folks, its been 50 years since July 29, 1967. That was the date that 134 lives were lost and 164 were severely injured during an explosion and subsequent fire aboard the USS Forrestal.
Why is that important? Because Lt. Cmdr John McCain was onboard and right in the middle of it.
First some background. Prior to this day, McCain was involved with three incidents with his jet. In one,
McCain admitted to causing that incident through “daredevil clowning” but returned safely.
and
McCain did lose two Navy aircraft while piloting them. One crash was found to be be McCain’s fault, the other due to an engine failure of undetermined cause.
However, his fourth was the disastrous mishap on the USS Forrestal.
There have been conflicting reports about who or what started the fire. One report stated that McCain deliberately “wet-started” his jet which resulted in the launch of a rocket that flew across the aircraft carrier into another jet. Other reports state an unfortunate electrical discharge led to the launch of a rocket that resulted in a bomb dropping from McCain’s plane. This led to an explosion and fire that killed 134 sailors and seriously injuring another 161 others. Regardless, the carrier nearly sank because of the damage it incurred.
Historian Mary Hershberger expands on this latter report. Her sources told her that
Only actions by the pilot could have caused any bomb to fall from McCain’s Skyhawk. These sources — who spoke under the condition that they not be publicly identified — agree with each other that, if any bomb fell from the McCain airplane, it was because of actions that he took either in error or panic upon seeing the fire on the deck or in his hasty exit from the plane. Two switches in the cockpit of a Skyhawk need to be thrown to drop such a bomb, according to the sources.
Instead of helping fight the fires on the carrier deck, McCain eventually went below to the pilot’s ready room and watched the fire on a television monitor hooked to a camera trained on the deck.
Within 30 hours, McCain left the Forrestal for some “some welcome R&R” in Saigon, South Vietnam. Merv Rowland, a commander and chief engineering officer of the Forrestal told Hershberger that
He found this “extraordinary.” Rowland added that only the severely wounded were allowed to leave the ship and that no one, as far as he knew, would have been given permission to fly to Saigon for R&R.
Regardless of any reasons for the explosion and resultant fire, McCain was the first non-injured man who was allowed to leave the Forrestal.
Lew Rockwell hypothesized that McCain’s father, Four Star Admiral John S. McCain was responsible for his son’s transfer off the Forrestal as well as covering up any of the information about McCain’s potential responsibility for the incident.
Pilot John McCain was now involved with four incidents with his aircraft, three of which were destroyed.
This begs two questions to be asked: Is John McCain just unlucky? Or is it something else?
We report – you decide.