I was a Gunner’s Mate on the USS Noa DD841 at that time. Earlier that day the Evans was operating close off the coast of Viet Nam on the “Gun Line”. We came in on her last pass down the coast and relieved her . After she shot her last salvo with her stern gun mount we fell in line and began firing missions with our forward mounts. I saw her at Subic Bay later. I actually went aboard the remaining stern half sitting there in Subic. Even though there had been a lot of scavenging of parts from the remains you still could see the devastation of the collision. Most of us aboard ships at sea over there never really saw a picture of what that war was like especially for the infantry and artillery on land. We destroyer sailors only got to see the aircraft coming back to the carriers when we were plane guarding. The aircraft flew directly over us on their approach. We could tell when one was all shot up and damaged. We could hear the alarms on the carriers. We could see the lights frantically flashing. We could see the pilots eject and see the crippled F-4’s and A-6's hit the round down on the back of the flight deck and make that fiery plunge to the sea in front of us. Most of us were really young and because of the fact that we were not being fired upon and hit we did not sense the war. However seeing the stern of the Evans there at Subic put cold shivers down my spine. I am appalled that the names of those 74 men are not written on The Wall.
I was a Radioman onboard the USS Schofield DEG-3 we were in the exercise also, and I also remember the melborn being on TTY and telling us that she had just cut our can in half. Our CO was real close with the Evans CO and we ran to there location, it was real erie arriving there at the brake of dawn, seeing the stern section floating in a clear calm sea, it was so smooth, I have never seen it like that before. I was talking to the Radioman on the Evans when all of a sudden there was nothing there.