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1967 USS Forrestal fire [50 years ago today]
wikipedia.org ^ | July 29, 2017 | Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted on 07/29/2017 1:42:57 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper

In July 1967, a fire broke out on board the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. An electrical anomaly had caused the discharge of a Zuni rocket on the flight deck, triggering a chain-reaction of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. At the time, Forrestal was engaged in combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, during the Vietnam War.

...The impact of the rocket had also dislodged two of the 1000-lb AN-M65 bombs, which fell to the deck, and lay in the pool of burning fuel between White's aircraft and that of Lieutenant Commander John McCain.

(Excerpt) Read more at en.wikipedia.org ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: forrestal; mccain; mccainussforestal; ussforestal; ussforrestal
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To: All

41 posted on 07/29/2017 6:06:10 PM PDT by TigersEye (TTKTA)
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To: TigersEye

You mean what I read might be wrong... I’m just going by what I have read over the years.

There has been fifty years of wrong from dozens of sources that have been published then.

“That Youtube video is where the Democrat propaganda about the BS “Wet Start” began.”

It was first written in a statement from a Senior officer who was on the deck many years ago shortly after it happened. I might be mistaken on this, but I think this officer even wrote a book about it.

In the meantime you guys are welcome to harass some of the other posters who said the very same thing instead of singling me out. :)

The fact that I am not going to lick John’s boots will not change, right or wrong. But you are absolutely free to do so if you like.


42 posted on 07/29/2017 6:24:36 PM PDT by Openurmind
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To: Openurmind
In the meantime you guys are welcome to harass some of the other posters who said the very same thing instead of singling me out. :)

Get over yourself. Yours was the first post about that "Wet Start" BS.

The fact that I am not going to lick John’s boots will not change, right or wrong. But you are absolutely free to do so if you like.

That is, without equal, the stupidest accusation ever made on FR against anyone at any time.

43 posted on 07/29/2017 6:29:21 PM PDT by TigersEye (TTKTA)
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To: TigersEye

My point was that I have no right to judge what you believe, It is your right to believe what you like. As it should be.

But I am from Az and they have been forcing us to lick John’s boots for many years now. It is offending and demeaning and I’m not doing it anymore.


44 posted on 07/29/2017 6:42:18 PM PDT by Openurmind
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To: Openurmind

Knowing the truth and telling it isn’t licking anybody’s boots. If you’re accusing me of that it’s the stupidest thing anyone has ever posted here.

But you indicated that you had read a lot on the Forrestal fire so I’m sure you’ve already read everything I linked to and watched the videos too. Or you will before you post to me again because you really are interested in being informed. Right?


45 posted on 07/29/2017 6:49:10 PM PDT by TigersEye (TTKTA)
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To: Sontagged

Sontagged, anything you wrote simply doesn’t have any bearing, any at all on the facts of what happened on the USS Forrestal in July of 1967.

I don’t know anything of what you wrote. But I do know what happened on the USS Forrestal in July of 1967.

We can and should denigrate nearly everything McCain has done as a politician, but to characterize him as being responsible for what happened that day does not do us credit on FR. He had nothing more to do with it than being in the cockpit of a plane when the conflagration began, and to suggest otherwise is to place ourselves squarely in the crackpot domain, and that isn’t somewhere we want to be.

Lets skewer McCain for what he has done to damage this country. It is enough.


46 posted on 07/29/2017 6:49:26 PM PDT by rlmorel (Donald Trump: Making Liberal Heads Explode 140 Characters At A Time.)
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To: Captainpaintball

Not a word.


47 posted on 07/29/2017 6:56:28 PM PDT by mylife (the roar of the masses could be farts)
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To: rlmorel

?

Where is this “forced respect for a RINO traitor” meme coming from?

McCain is a CFR member who had lied, cheated, failed to defend Sarah Palin, attacked Tea Party...

... made anti American propaganda for the N Vietnamese.

bailed out over Ohio and flew too low in Spain in an international incident...

Ronald Reagan hated him.

The fact he was talking to the NYTimes and OFF the Forrestal the day after the incident tells you what kind of special treatment he got.

But forget about the past.

McCain’s stateside behavior indicates something is VERY amiss about his public bio.

It does NOT add up.

Now stop your weird whining, as if the damnable traitors in the GOPe, including McCain, deserve our respect.

They don’t.


48 posted on 07/29/2017 7:07:12 PM PDT by Sontagged (Lord Jesus: please expose, unveil and then frogmarch Your enemies behind You as You've promised...)
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To: TigersEye

I am always as objective as I can be and willing to look at anything that might have bearing on a topic. But this issue you have decided to champion is apparently not at all as important to me as it is to you. There are much bigger fish to fry.

We are now both spending quite a bit of time over a nickname that I did not give him. I just pointed out that this is what they call him.

It is simple, John needs to go and deserves no respect at all no matter what happened on the Forrestal. If he is innocent of this particular event fine, There are plenty of others for me to use as example.


49 posted on 07/29/2017 7:17:49 PM PDT by Openurmind
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To: Openurmind
The truth is an issue I will always champion. YMMV.

There are plenty of others for me to use as example.

Yes, there are. You could start with this list I first posted in Nov. 2007 and have since posted in excess of 1,000 time since then. At least 800 of which I posted during the 2008 primaries.

When it comes to dirt on McCain that's the tip of the iceberg of what I've posted. But I don't care to make FR look stupid by posting easily debunked Democrat propaganda.

50 posted on 07/29/2017 7:24:59 PM PDT by TigersEye (TTKTA)
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To: TigersEye; Openurmind

Your post makes me want to start calling McCain “Wet-Start”

What conclusive evidence do you have that McCain did NOT wetstart on the Forrestal?


51 posted on 07/29/2017 7:36:57 PM PDT by Sontagged (Lord Jesus: please expose, unveil and then frogmarch Your enemies behind You as You've promised...)
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To: Red Steel
As I said to another poster, Red Steel...if this sounds like I am insulting you, be assured that this isn't personal, and I am saying these things because we need to be correct on these things. It is easy to read accounts from people who don't know of what they speak, and accept that as fact. I know what I am talking about here. And this isn't out of any love for McCain. I was in the squadron he was in years after this happened, and he was my commanding officer for a short time in a training squadron, but that is not my motivation for this post. My motivation is the truth.

As I said, I was turn qualified on A-7s, which VA-46 had transitioned to from the A-4 Skyhawks, but the concepts are exactly the same.

A wet start can lead to a hot start. I have experienced a wet start, but if you follow the proper procedures that can prevent a hot start, you shouldn't get one barring an unforeseen circumstance of a strange equipment malfunction. I was very careful (as are many young men who don't want to do the wrong thing) so I never had a hot start. The rules you follow when you start are pretty straightforward, as I recall. If you don't see the EGT (exhaust gas temp) begin to rise appropriately within a certain period of time, you stop and IIRC, use a huffer to blow the raw jet fuel out the tail.

Two things: Nobody plays around like that with a deliberate hot start on the flight deck of a carrier. Nobody. Plain and simple, no exceptions, even for the son and grandson of a famous admiral. Nobody does it, take it from me. I spent the better part of my four year tour doing flight deck duty from oil king to troubleshooter, and I never saw anyone, officer or enlisted, screwing around on the flight deck.

There is not, and never has been any tolerance whatsoever in that respect, and anyone who has ever spent time on a flight deck will tell you as much. I expect if any Freepers want to chime in and support that, they will.

There is too much chance, even following regulations for death, injury, and damage. It simply is not done.

As for McCain starting it by hot-dogging and doing deliberate hot starts, here is a schematic showing how the planes were spotted that day:

I was actually in VA-46 about eight years after this incident, and our planes were routinely spotted in those very spots, which is common for attack aircraft. They are spotted that way with the tailpipes pointing out over the water. Even in the event McCain did a deliberate hot start as some claim, how on earth is that going to do any damage to anyone or anything? It can't.

The truth is, he didn't. The plain truth is exactly as they state in the investigation.

As I said, we should (and rightfully do) heap abuse on McCain for the things he did do. We shouldn't be making up things that are so easy to disprove and would show us in a very negative aspect.

52 posted on 07/29/2017 7:38:09 PM PDT by rlmorel (Donald Trump: Making Liberal Heads Explode 140 Characters At A Time.)
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To: Sontagged

Oh, good, someone else who is too lazy to avail himself of the links I posted.


53 posted on 07/29/2017 7:42:24 PM PDT by TigersEye (TTKTA)
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To: TigersEye

I just thought it was humorous that you were accusing conservatives of availing ourselves of dem talking points when we are discussing a virtual “Dem” — John McCain.

The problem isn’t the Forrestal; the problem is all the other suspicious and traitorous things McCain has done over the years that have made the Forrestal suspicious.

And for me personally, the fact he said not a word in defense of Sarah Palin after she nearly dragged him over the finish line for the Presidency.


54 posted on 07/29/2017 7:55:13 PM PDT by Sontagged (Lord Jesus: please expose, unveil and then frogmarch Your enemies behind You as You've promised...)
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To: Sontagged; Openurmind; TigersEye

Sontagged, I would appreciate it if you would keep this discussion both civil and rational. There is no “weird whining”, “respect for some RINO”, mention of a CFR member, or anything having to do with the Tea Party or even whether Ronald Reagan liked or hated him. That is all completely and totally irrelevant to the matter of blaming him for something he didn’t do. As other posters state, doing that just makes it so much easier to discount our voice when we blame him for things he did do.

Read my post at #52.

This has nothing to do with “forced respect” or any kind of respect at all for McCain, as I dislike him every bit as much as you do.

The truth is, Free Republic posters look like fools when we post things like this about someone like McCain, because it simply is not true and is not only easily disproven by the facts, it is easily disproven in concept.

And posting it makes us look like crackpots. And I have been posting on here long enough to care about that.

There are two salient points here:

First, If McCain had performed a “wet start” as you maintain, nothing would have happened. A wet start is no more than a cloud of jet fuel exiting out the tail pipe of a plane because the spark igniter in the combustion chamber failed to ignite.

Second, even if he HAD performed a “hot start” which could follow from a “wet start” any flame produced would have been out over the port quarter of the Forrestal. There was nothing behind it to damage or set off.


55 posted on 07/29/2017 7:58:11 PM PDT by rlmorel (Donald Trump: Making Liberal Heads Explode 140 Characters At A Time.)
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To: rlmorel

Well ok makes sense. You got the experience and it wasn’t insulting. Thanks for the in depth post.


56 posted on 07/29/2017 8:01:14 PM PDT by Red Steel
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To: TigersEye

TigersEye, you are correct in that many of those things on that list you linked to are perfectly damning of McCain, and are representative of things we should crucify him for. (Excellent compilation, by the way)

Seriously trying to tack on the assertion that he started the fire on the Forrestal is enough for people (whom we may be trying to reach) to just disregard any criticism at all we level against him.


57 posted on 07/29/2017 8:03:25 PM PDT by rlmorel (Donald Trump: Making Liberal Heads Explode 140 Characters At A Time.)
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To: Red Steel

I very much appreciate your taking the time to read it.

Honestly, I can understand how many people would come to the same conclusion you do, and it is why I try to counteract it. You don’t know what you don’t know...how could you?

I don’t try to do it out of respect for McCain, because for me, he exhausted any I had a long, long time ago.

In my mind, the same way that Benedict Arnold had negated the good things he had done for our country by joining the British, McCain has done much the same for me by conducting himself as he has.


58 posted on 07/29/2017 8:07:50 PM PDT by rlmorel (Donald Trump: Making Liberal Heads Explode 140 Characters At A Time.)
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To: Sontagged
I just thought it was humorous that you were accusing conservatives of availing ourselves of dem talking points when we are discussing a virtual “Dem” — John McCain.

It may be ironic but one fact on one subject doesn't cancel out another fact on another subject.

The problem isn’t the Forrestal; the problem is all the other suspicious and traitorous things McCain has done over the years that have made the Forrestal suspicious.

It helps to know the facts so that emotional kneejerk reactions aren't the only thing you have to go on.

And for me personally, the fact he said not a word in defense of Sarah Palin after she nearly dragged him over the finish line for the Presidency.

That was despicable of him, but probably didn't have any significant effect on what happened on the Forrestal 41 years earlier. I'm not an astrophysicist so JMO.

59 posted on 07/29/2017 8:12:19 PM PDT by TigersEye (TTKTA)
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To: rlmorel
Honestly, I can understand how many people would come to the same conclusion you do, and it is why I try to counteract it. You don’t know what you don’t know...how could you?

I didn't come to any conclusion. It was an on the spot and spur of the moment hypnosis because the other poster didn't respond to you.

60 posted on 07/29/2017 8:16:55 PM PDT by Red Steel
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