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On the morning of 14 January 1969 the Enterprise (CVAN-65) was about 70 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor, just beginning the second day of an operational readiness inspection. This inspection was to be our final examination before departing on the Enterprise's fourth Vietnam tour. We had our air wing on board, retrained, and with many new pilots.
The first launch—using fully armed aircraft against nearby island targets ■ had gone off at 0700. Our next launch was scheduled for 0830. At 0819 we were headed downwind at a speed of
The Rogers (DD-876) maneuvers alongside the Enterprise to help extinguish an A-7 Corsair and an F-4 Phantom, two of 15 aircraft lost.
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Proceedings / December
“bout ten knots, with a wind of 12-15 lots. I WaS in my sea cabin doing Paperwork when I heard a sharp explo- s'°n. It sounded like a percussion bomb bat is set off by the underway training ^oup when it starts an exercise, but I new that no drill would commence 'V|(hout my being notified. In the very °w seconds it took me to walk the 'Ve steps from my cabin to the bridge, eould see that the aft end of the car- r|er was enveloped in smoke and flames. The first thing 1 did was to order
I. S NAVY (L. T. HENDERSON)
general quarters. I knew there was some danger doing this, because when a ship like the Enterprise goes to general quarters, it’s sealed up from stem to stern. There were a lot of people from the air wing on the 03 level, and many of them would be trapped in their compartments if the fire went through the flight deck. There was no doubt in my mind that this was a major fire, because we had 15-20 aircraft on the after part of the flight deck, loaded with fuel and fully armed with ammunition, Zuni rockets, and bombs. The safety of the ship was paramount. I knew we had to flood the hangar deck with the overhead sprinkler system and try to keep the fire contained to the aft part of the flight deck. With the minimal firefighting equipment we had on the flight deck, there wouldn’t be much we could do. If the fire had spread to the hangar deck, we could very easily have lost the ship.
The second thing 1 did was to order the officer of the deck to reverse course and turn into the wind in order to blow smoke, flames, and fumes to sea over the stern.
The fire was started when a 19- year-old crewman, driving a tractor that is used to start aircraft, backed under the wing of an F-4 Phantom loaded with Zuni rockets. The tractor had a small jet engine mounted on its rear deck. The very hot exhaust of this jet engine was put directly onto the warhead of a Zuni rocket. In approximately one minute, the Zuni warhead cooked off. Red hot shrapnel from the warhead was sprayed over the flight deck, puncturing tanks and starting fires. As the fires took off, metal— aluminum and magnesium—began to burn at a very high temperature, and caused other Zuni rockets and 500- pound hombs loaded on the planes and piled on the deck to cook off. The planes exploded into a thousand pieces, scattering hot metal all over the flight deck and blowing holes in the solid steel deck. The JP-5 fuel tanks were punctured, spilling fuel which quickly ignited on the deck. With the threat these weapons presented, the only thins we could do was to let the fire burn itself out. In the meantime we were taking pictures of this with the various television cameras that were available, so that we would have a complete record of what had happened.
I was on the bridge the entire time, monitoring everything that was going on. 1 immediately reported the situation to Pearl Harbor, and helicopters were sent out to take off the injured and dead. These helicopters also helped rescue men who had had to abandon ship. The air officer was running the firefighting effort on the flight deck. The assistant air officer was in charge of the hangar deck. The engineer officer was running damage control. 1 directed that the water washdown system be turned on. We couldn’t get to the valve back aft, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. Destroyers came alongside and tried to help by spraying water, but they didn’t have the water pressure to do much good. Their efforts took great courage and seamanship, and were certainly appreciated. These ships also fished men out of the water.
The crew had just finished underway training, and we had had hundreds of drills—it all paid off. The skill and courage of the crew were just superb. We didn’t have enough equipment available to us to fight the fire, but what we did have worked. When the fire went down into the 03 level through holes blown in the deck, the damage control crews sprayed the bulkheads of adjacent compartments in an effort to make sure the bulkheads didn't flash into flames. Another problem was fuel that was pouring off the edge of the carrier. We had to keep spraying water on both sides and on the fantail.
After the Forrestal (CVA-59) fire in July 1967, carts equipped with water and fire-retardant chemicals had been put on carriers. We had two on the flight deck and two on the hangar deck. They were fine for a one-plane fire, but ineffective for something on the scale of our blaze. What we needed, but did not have, was a water cannon that could throw a vast amount of water.
After about three hours, the fire burned itself out and we headed for Pearl Harbor. When we got organized we started a nose count to see how many people were killed, injured, or missing. The final tally was 28 dead and 343 injured. Fifteen aircraft were destroyed and 17 damaged. I am not insensitive to the losses we suffered, but I felt it could have been much worse.
This is an edited excerpt from the as-yet unpublished oral history of Vice Admiral Lee, who served as command- inf; officer of the Enterprise (CVAN-65) from July 1967 to August 1969. For a more in-depth look at carrier fires, see Admiral Lee’s article, "An End to Catastrophic Flight Deck Fires," in the Spring 1983 issue of Wings of Gold.
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