Georgia Girl 2, this is standard spotting.
Posted on 07/23/2015 12:28:26 PM PDT by US Navy Vet
Sources matter.
Please post a link to the blog post from which you drew those image links and that text. That way, folks will be better able to evaluate your source's credibility.
When the errant rocket launch occurred and the fires started the ship went to General Quarters immediately by order of either The Captain or the OOD on watch on the Bridge. That order would be noted in nearly all log books on the ship. McCain upon exiting his burning craft would report to his squadron ready room for further orders. I can explain why. He was a pilot that was his station because he was attached to a squadron. Ships Company Officers are the ones who take over repair parties and oversaw operations involving functioning of the carrier.
I'm going to explain a little bit more of the issue which made a bad situation worse. Fire fighting wise on the Forrestal or any other carrier of the day laked having a system which was later to be developed called a Hi-CAP. It's an automatic sprinkler foaming system using Aquios Film Forming Foam aka AFFF as we called it in the day. It is designed for foaming the flight deck and hanger deck below. Once it was installed on carriers foaming could be done in a matter of seconds once the HI CAP station was activated. Foaming before then required time and a bucket brigade type of set up to carry five gallon buckets of foam up to the hose station. A Hi-Cap could do in seconds what it would take crews many minutes and lots of manpower to accomplish.
In the case of this incident with what was happening with the bombs it likely would not have stopped the carnage looking at the time frame involved from the rocket launch to a bomb exploding. The fires and there were many were so intense that the Triage for the injured had to be done all the way up at the Forecastle portion of the ship which is close to the bow and anchors in the forward most part of the ship. I would assume because that was where air was better and for communication capabilities with the bridge which I won't go into specifics on.
Had the helicopters caught fire an even bigger issue would have happened because you are dealing with a Magnesium fire the worse of the worst type of fire. The way to extinguish a magnesium fire safely is to throw the craft into the sea and it will continue to burn even then until the magnesium burns up. It makes its own oxygen source when burning.
The Forrestal Fire is the most scrutinized Naval fire in USN history. Coverup people may say? How when there were live cameras rolling with time stamp. The only thing McCain had to do with the fire was being in his aircraft when the fires began. The Navy has used the footage of that fire ever since the early 1970's maybe earlier as a training aid Navy wide. It's horrifying and shown so sailors take fire fighting and Damage Control training serious. Every sailor who attends bootcamp sees in meaning all sailors. Every sailor who is sent to fire fighting or DC school sees it. I went to Firefighting school several times myself over 4 years for fire department training and saw it.
The Navy changed some ways of doing things even into the late 1970's when they began a permanent fire department on the carriers pooled from all SHIPS COMPANY departments. I did two different stints at that. The second time as One on One for my duty section. Before that the Hull Technicians were stuck with the fire fighting task at sea and not a good idea because all of the welders could be wiped out in a below deck fire.
The Flightdeck and Hanger Deck managed by the Air Department has their own fire department called Crash and Salvage. They also handled the flightdeck crashes. After Forrestal the Navy put actual fire trucks on carriers and the fire truck was manned by a crew two or three of them IIRC wearing asbestos suits during Flight Ops. Weapons Department also had their own responders. Due to security reasons only security clearance cleared sailors could enter weapons spaces. Why? Because they carried Nukes back then.
If you go to the link that was posted for the thread and look at the aircraft spotting charts that will more than debunk the wet start rumor and others like it. The launch came from the starboard side aft of McCain who was forward of that craft but across the flightdeck.
A person can not like nor support McCain's politically or even personally and still understand that that fire was not his doing by any of the scuttlebutt rumors going around. Almost any sailor who did time on a carrier can debunk it and definitely any Navy pilots or aircraft handlers known as Aviation Bosun Mates. There are many Freepers quite capable of debunking the McCain caused it rumor whether they like him or not and I know of no one who does including myself.
For those among us who have no experience with flight deck operations or aviation ordnance, I found and watched a good documentary on this incident. Of particular interest is the part that steps us through the investigative forensic analysis of the sequence of events.
USS Forrestal Aircraft Carrier Disaster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g6l_gjxXM4
This clears up all the writing that I’ve read about safety pins and pigtails and whatnot.
Earlier this morning I found the purported source of the ‘wet start’ rumors- a video that was published just before the election in 2008 and is an obvious piece of political propaganda. The video was uploaded to Youtube on August 3rd of 2008. Here is the Democrat propaganda piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIWeq2DL_N4
I don’t like McCain either, but I don’t see a shred of credible evidence that he caused the disaster.
Agree with you tank.
For a while there many years ago, the saying was “The USAF is not a ‘one mistake’ air force, but it sure ain’t a two-mistake one either.”
A change took place and the USAF became more reasonable about aircraft mishaps, and the Air Force made a decision that a ‘mistake’ was not something to ground you for but a ‘crime’ (deliberate violation of regulation) was.
However, Happy Hal Hornburg, Wing/CC of Seymour-Johnson, he didn’t go along with this approach (he wanted to make general). So, when we newbies arrived we were brought into his office where he looked us over and then said: “If you drop one of my jets, I don’t care if the mishap board finds you did nothing wrong. . .if I think you are wrong I will f&cK you.”
The message was clear: ride the jet to your death trying to save it even if you are blamless beause your career and life in the Air Force was over if you didn’t.
Nice guy. . .years later I was working in the private sector and saw he was caught doing a crime (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901261.html).
Karma.
“Zuni 5 Inch Rocket(See the Flight Deck spot Drawing(with chronology) from F-4B Aircraft Number 110 fired and went across the Flight Deck Striking and Detonating A-4E Number 405”...
knarf, thanks for your service. I’ve a Forrestal class centurion, also served as a carrier safety officer, also a flight deck shooter.
I wasn’t there... many have doubts (of course nothing personal).
My problem... why is the TRIAL BY FIRE training video about the Forrest Fire complete with great video.... except for the actual ZUNI shot?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6NnfRT_OZA
Everyone go to 3:10 and watch until about 3:45.
At 3:22, the training tape narrator says, “There it is...Zuni shot...”
But the problem is that there is a 1/2 second staged carrier flight deck shot of a VX-9 orange painted China Lake weapons test F-4. The narrator acts like it is the original shot by emotionally saying “there it is!”
I had to watch it 20 times to figure out what’s going on. There’s no airplane in front of the test fire. It’s the only plane in the frame. It’s 1/2 second of footage, and it’s staged and fake. No yellow shirts, brown shirts, nobody on deck.
At the same time, on the other side of the world, the USS Liberty incident was happening in Israel, and his dad had to cover for that.
Check out the film, it does’t prove anything. It’s just kind of crap that the TRIAL BY FIRE video has a fake element.
again, thanks for your service.
US Navy Vet, meant to send it to you... thanks for your service too.
Actually, three (3) airplanes. Once you sign the A-Sheet (Aircraft Commander Sheet) in the ADB (Aircraft Discrepancy Book), you own it until you sign the Yellow Sheet afterwards in Maintenance Control.
It’s not fair, but it’s tradition.
Doesn’t prove fault, just clarifying an old Navy Pilot-ism.
I didn’t know about the later jets. wow that’s a lot.
Was this the second or third plane he lost?
Best I can tell, this was the FOURTH airplane he lost: the first crashed in training, the second one he flew into a power line in Spain (I believe), the third lost an engine (he claimed) and crashed after he ejected, this one blew up on the aircraft carrier flight deck, and he won his ace when the North Vietnamese hit it with a SAM.
I recall getting a load of 81mm mortar rounds in Nam that were dated 1953. Excess Korean War production that probably sat in a warehouse somewhere and got shipped. We loaded it all on a boat and dumped it somewhere in Danang harbor. Our M2 50cals were ancient pieces that wouldn’t hold their headspace and replacement parts were impossible to get. I don’t know the truth of this McCain thing but I do know that the Navy bureaucracy’s conduct towards the men was criminal. We got orders once telling us not to use so much ammo because it was hard to get. And we were docked in Danang not 5 miles from the deep water piers where all the supplies for I Corps came through. Lol
Thank you for your service, dunblak.
We owe it to the memory of your shipmates to not allow this to descend into a pit of lies to serve a political purpose.
McCain is despicable.
But making up a lie simply to damn him (as many seem intent to do) when his own actions are quite enough to damn him on his own, is beyond the pale. We can’t let the lives of those men who died simply become a tool, and a punch line because people don’t have enough guts to impale him on the truth of what he has become instead of making up a fable.
I’ll do my part to not let that happen, as will other Freepers with a conscience. We owe it to those who died and who were injured that day to keep the truth intact.
Well said, cva66snipe.
Well said.
Georgia Girl 2, you have to let this go. I don’t mean this as an insult, but you don’t have any idea what you are talking about.
You don’t know the difference between a wet start and a hot start. You don’t know that McCain’s A4 was pointed out over the ocean in the standard spotting of aircraft on the aft section of the flight deck, and even if he did have a hot start, nothing would have come of it.
There are a lot of people here, myself included, who have spent a lot of time on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Your insistence on sticking with this is not only preposterous, it does you no justice and reflects very negatively on you.
You need to let this go.
Georgia Girl 2, this is standard spotting.
“What did McCain do after he got away from his A-4?”
He was hustled off the carrier before questions could be asked. How many other pilots were hustled off with him?
New York Times reporter R.W. Apple Jr reported on July 31, 1967 that Captain John J. Beling the Forrestal’s commanding officer stated:
“For some unknown reason a plane parked near the carrier’s island midway up the 1045 ft flight deck experienced an EXTREME WET START”.
McStain’s plane was struck by the Zuni missile. You do understand that the Zuni is a heat seeker right?
McCain was notorious for wet starts and had only recently been reprimanded for doing it previously. He was probably hustled voff the ship before the crew could find him and throw him overboard.
Good morning. Good to see your moniker.
Hope you are doing well.
5.56mm
Stop. Stop. You have no idea what you are talking about. You are so uninformed on the subject that you don’t realize what you sound like. I am trying to say this without insulting you.
First, as I have stated before, a wet start is what it implies...no flame or heat. A wet start is a cloud of jet fuel being blown out the tailpipe of the plane by compressed air being delivered by a huffer. If you wanted to, you could hold your breath, cover your eyes and walk into the cloud and exit unharmed except for being covered in jet fuel. Anyone who had any experience with jet engines knows this, Georgia Girl 2, and to hear someone state that a wet start was the cause of the fire on the USS Forrestal is to violate the saying “Better to be silent and have people think you are a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”
Secondly, the tail pipe of McCain’s plane was pointing over the port quarter of the USS Forrestal, out to sea. There was absolutely nothing behind it, that even if the “wet start” had progressed to a “hot start”, nothing could have been harmed by it.
Thirdly, the Zuni was an unguided rocket. It is NOT a “heat seeker”, but that would’t have made any difference. If you don’t believe me, you can look it up in hundreds of places on the Internet. In the last ten years, they tried to retrofit Zuni rockets with laser guidance, but in 1967 it was an unguided missile. Point and shoot.
Georgia Girl 2, you seem like a nice person from some of your unrelated posts. Please take my advice. Stop clinging to this. It does you a great disservice to buy into this as you attempt to spread the lie.
Trust me. I know what I am talking about here.
At one point, not knowing enough I bought into this thing thinking it was McCain's fault. It is easy to want to believe given his record in the Navy. Frankly he probably should have been cashiered out long before he crashed in Vietnam.
I kept reading about the USS Forrestal incident and McCain's so called culpability that I finally did my own research on it and satisfied my that McCain had no responsibility in it.
Thank you for your exhaustive research and explanation on this matter. Hopefully Georgia Girl2 will do some research n her own and discover the truth.
Glad to help.
Honestly, I DO understand why people do buy into it, I really do. There are a lot of things like this on the Internet...if you see it out there, it becomes the truth...well, not REALLY the truth, but perceived by some as the truth due to their own bias.
I am as susceptible as anyone, so I take far greater care to avoid falling into the trap.
Full disclosure: I was in McCain’s old squadron (VA-46) some years after he served in it, and when I entered the USN, McCain was my commanding officer for several months. I served as a plane captain trainee and was his plane captain as a trainee on several occasions. I grew up in a military family, and I held the torch for all of our POWs, including McCain, and gave him default respect for years due to all the factors above. I wore POW wrist bracelets (I had one for Denton that eventually corroded and fell off my wrist) and was at Andrews AFB to welcome them home when the first flight of them ended up there, so I have early roots in the POW awareness as a kid. When I joined the USN and was a trainee in his training squadron (VA-174 Hellrazors) some of the other guys didn’t know much about him, but I sure did...and about his father and grandfather.
I refused to criticize him for years, and am grateful to a Freeper who gently discussed it with me via Freepmail (not in a thread) and helped me see that McCain was not worthy of any kind of respect or support from me as a conservative. He could have flamed me to pieces in many threads about this, but not only did he not do so...he was reasonable and persuasive without being caustic and abusive.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that. I am stubborn about tradition, respect, chain of command, etc., and if that person had fired a few broadsides into me as others had, I would never have seen the light of day.
I still will not criticize his performance as a POW (even though I have reviewed and believe the evidence from other POW’s that confirms some of those negative accounts) because...I just wasn’t there. I don’t know what it was to go through that. We all know everyone (nearly everyone) talks under torture as Admiral Stockdale said (one of my signature heroes in life) I have an extremely negative view of McCain as a politician and husband.
I am fine with the most vitriolic characterizations of his actions in those aspects, but condemn in the strongest terms attempts to pin the USS Forrestal disaster on him. It makes us look foolish, and waters down the things he should be crucified for. And it disrespects the men who were injured and died that day in 1967 because it sacrifices the truth in an attempt to use the event as a political pawn. I despise that. I wish people would just stop with it.
Anyway, thank you. If I can help even one person see the truth, it is time well spent.
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