My ship spent about a month in the Tonkin Gulf cruising with an amphibious ready group. After the stress of being an officer of the deck for formation steaming, I looked forward to having the first watch when we left the other ships.
Well, we were right in the middle of the carrier and escorts launching planes for strikes that day. The carrier and escorts raced down my port side to the horizon. Then the ships turned 180 degrees and came right at me. By international rules of the road the passage should have been port to port, but that meant I had to cross in front of that 30-knot carrier with my 12-knot LST. Instead I ran off to port as far as I could go. Still the ship passed about 3,000 yards off the starboard quarter as it launched its strike.
Good God. That is how people get killed. Sitting on the flight deck of the Kennedy docked at pier 12 in Norfolk, the guy who would teach me how to be a plane captain (Delgado-great guy!) was telling me about the collision with the Belknap as we sat on the flight deck before we pulled out the next morning.
She turned into the Kennedy, and got crushed head on by the angled deck. The guy teaching me said we were sitting in the exact place where he was when the collision occurred. and he saw the dancing red mast light on the Belknap. He said he couldn’t see the vessel, but he saw the light, and was wondering what the Hell it was, when there was a massive screeching, grinding, thumping noise and a bright plume of orange flame leaped straight up high above the flight deck.
As they watched her burn, he thought they would have hundreds of casualties. He didn’t see how anyone could live through that, but...they only had eight men killed. Amazing.