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.
I’ll maintain that hitting bow on is probably what saved them. That is where the frames are closest together, so a collision may rupture a lot of voids and compartments, but a ship should stay afloat. I remember in a course I took you were supposed to turn away in certain cases, but I had decided that in extremis I would always point my bow at the ship.
That day in the Tonkin Gulf I may have been just a 24 year old Ltjg, but I knew Yankee Station belonged to the airdales and I was trespassing.