USS FORRESTAL (CV-59).“LOOK OUT!! SHE'S GONNA EXPLODE!”

Two months before being shot down over Hanoi, Naval airman John McCain III narrowly escaped a fiery death in a tragic shipboard accident that claimed 134 lives aboard the super-carrier USS Forrestal (CV-59)

Hundreds of Forrestal’s 4800-man crew were scurrying about the 4.5-acre flight deck readying and positioning planes.

Suddenly, one of an F-4B Phantom’s armed Zuni rockets accidentally fired, its warhead piercing the 250-gal external fuel tank of a taxiing A-4 spilling its volatile content of jet fuel onto the flight deck. The sloshing liquid ran under several still parked aircraft and the feet of scores of running crewmen.

The Link to this tragic ordeal:

ORDEAL OF FIRE

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