FrancSevin
Proudly Deplorable
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Military Pics / Photos
- Thread starter Doc
- Start date
Letter home from boot camp.
Lol
Lol
USS Forrestal CVA-59 General view of the vessel off Newport News, Virginia on 12 December 1954 shortly after her launching.
Due to fire damage the Forrestal was permanently docked in Norfolk when I was serving my time. We used it as a comm sta when we were in port. They watched and got all the messages we would normally get and we would pick them up once or twice a day.
Due to fire damage the Forrestal was permanently docked in Norfolk when I was serving my time. We used it as a comm sta when we were in port. They watched and got all the messages we would normally get and we would pick them up once or twice a day.
Yep, she was at Yankee Station. Here is her story here. from: https://www.virtualwall.org/units/forrestal.htm
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| When placed in commission on 01 October 1955, USS FORRESTAL was the first of the "super-carriers" and the largest warship ever constructed. She displaced almost 80,000 tons and was 1,076 feet long and 129 feet in beam at the waterline. When her air wing was embarked she had a complement of over 5,000 sailors and Marines, and her "main battery" consisted of 80 to 100 aircraft of various types. She was a formidable weapon of war. FORRESTAL was home-ported on the East Coast and spent the first twelve years of her commissioned life serving with the 2nd and 6th Fleets. She departed Norfolk (Virginia) on 6 June 1967 for her first deployment to Vietnam with Carrier Air Wing 17 and about 80 aircraft embarked:
The ship was preparing to launch a major strike and many fully fueled and armed aircraft were parked about the deck. At 10:52 AM a 5" ZUNI rocket accidentally fired from an F-4 Phantom parked on the starboard side of the ship and pointed inboard. The rocket impacted an armed A-4 Skyhawk (piloted by then-LCDR, now Senator, John McCain) parked on the port side. The rocket's impact dislodged and ruptured the Skyhawk's 400-gallon external fuel tank and ignited the jet fuel which poured out. A 1000-pound bomb also fell to the deck, into the spreading pool of flaming jet fuel. Within 90 seconds the bomb "cooked off" and detonated. That explosion resulted in a chain reaction as the closely-packed aircraft were first engulfed in and then contributed to a massive fire with repeated high-order bomb detonations. The ship's "plat" cameras, mounted on the island and embedded in the deck itself, provided ample video coverage of the initial accident and the subsequent catastrophe. The first responders were Repair Party 8, led by Chief Petty Officer Gerald Farrier, who can be seen in the plat tapes running toward McCain's Skyhawk immediately after the rocket strike. The fuel tank had already ruptured and burning fuel was spreading around the aircraft. Chief Farrier had, as his weapon against this blaze, a hand-held fire extinguisher. He had not yet reached the Skyhawk when the first detonation occurred . . . he simply disappeared in the blast. A number of air- and deck crew were trapped in the inferno; many died there, while others were able to escape to the deck-edge catwalks. Outside the rapidly spreading fire, the flight deck crew immediately began an effort to contain the blaze. The on-deck firefighting crews rallied after the first explosion and attacked the fire, only to disappear in the second, and larger, round of explosions. The plat tapes show the decimated firefighters recruiting help from anyone in the vicinity, and these make-shift crews once again pressed into the growing inferno. The third round of detonations cleared the deck of men and fire-fighting gear, but within a minute more crewmen from the forward deck and below-deck areas had reconstituted fire-fighting teams and were working their way aft.
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USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59)
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Over a dozen 1,000 and 500 pound bombs detonated within the first few minutes of the fire, punching holes through the 3" armor plating of the flight deck. Flaming fuel poured through those holes, into the working and berthing spaces on the O-3 level, then down into the aft hangar bay. Numerous smaller explosions occurred as lesser weapons, ranging from the Skyhawk's cannon ammunition to 5" rocket warheads, detonated.
Although it was 13 hours and more before the last fire was extinguished, FORRESTAL's crew did put it out ... but at the cost of 135 dead and hundreds more injured. FORRESTAL left Yankee Station under her own power, steaming to Subic Bay for temporary repairs before returning to Norfolk on 15 September 1967.
After shipyard repairs, USS FORRESTAL continued to serve, making many more deployments with the 2nd and 6th Fleets ... but she never again deployed to Vietnam. The Aircraft Carrier USS FORRESTAL was decomissioned on 11 September 1993 after 38 years of active service.
The listing below includes all of the men who died as a result of the 29 July fire. Names are linked to their personal memorial pages on The Virtual Wall. Several are marked with asterisks (*) to indicate men who died after 29 July of injuries received.
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AN Robert L Zwerlein, VA-46 *
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Selected web sites for the USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59)
members.tripod.com/Forrestal_CVA59
www.forrestal.org
The USS Forrestal Association
Navy Days - 1965-1970: USS Forrestal
The Last Voyage of the USS Forrestal
USS Forrestal is Scrapped for a Penny
[/td]members.tripod.com/Forrestal_CVA59
www.forrestal.org
The USS Forrestal Association
Navy Days - 1965-1970: USS Forrestal
The Last Voyage of the USS Forrestal
USS Forrestal is Scrapped for a Penny
Royal Marines drawing a man through a 15-inch gun to clean it. 1916. Imperial War Museum photo.
I've heard anecdotal reports of small men being passed through the bore of large guns for maintenance. I guess I believe it.
Umberto
Well-known member
Umberto
Well-known member
importantmentalityphilosopher
"Sorry, Goose, but it's time to buzz the tower..."
The iconic photo of Capt. Dale "Snort" Snodgrass, performing an aggressive, ultra-low, "banana pass" along the deck of USS America (CV-66) during the 1988 Dependents' Day Cruise.
@AcePilotAV via X
On this day in 1943, Cornelia Fort is tragically killed. She is best known as one of the most accomplished female pilots to serve during World War II. Did you know that an American woman was flying the skies during the attack on Pearl Harbor?
Her father wouldn’t have liked it. He’d seen the dangers of flight, and he’d hoped that his children would have nothing to do with aviation. When Cornelia was only 5 years old, he made his sons swear an oath on a Bible that they would never attempt to fly.
It didn’t occur to him to include his little girl in that promise. Who would have thought that a southern, gently bred girl like Cornelia would ever attempt to become a pilot? But she did.
Cornelia was a spirited tomboy who didn’t want the life of a Nashville socialite. She admired Amelia Earhart, who’d once attended her boarding school. And then, one day in 1940, she had the opportunity to ride along with a friend in a small plane.
She was hooked—and she never looked back. “Flying apparently added a sense of wonder and joy to her life,” her sister said. “It had been a lumbersome, cumbersome growing up . . . . she was a great rebel of her time.”
Cornelia soon had both her pilot’s license and her instructor’s license. By October 1941, she was teaching future military aviators in Hawaii.
Which is why Cornelia was in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In fact, she was already airborne when Japanese planes first started to stream into the area that morning. What was that plane in her path? She jerked the controls away from her student, narrowly avoiding a collision before turning to look.
She couldn’t believe her eyes. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.
“The painted red balls on the tops of the wings shone brightly in the sun,” she later wrote. “I looked again with complete and utter disbelief. Honolulu was familiar with the emblem of the Rising Sun on passenger ships but not on airplanes. I looked quickly at Pearl Harbor and my spine tingled when I saw billowing black smoke. Still I thought hollowly it might be some kind of coincidence or maneuvers, it might be, it must be. For surely, dear God . . .”
She landed her plane as fast as she could, hopped out and fled for the hangar, even as the Japanese strafed her plane.
A few months later, she left Hawaii, as she said, because “there was no civilian flying in the islands after the attack. And each of us had some individual score to settle with the Japs who had brought murder and destruction to our islands.”
Cornelia was invited to join the newly formed Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron. Her job was to ferry planes around, freeing up male pilots for combat.
Her time with the WASPs was cut tragically short. On March 21, 1943, she was ferrying planes with other, less experienced pilots. Unfortunately one of the new pilots flew too close to Cornelia’s plane, and his landing gear nicked the tip of her wing. Cornelia’s wing tip, along with 6 inches of its leading edge, broke off. She went into an unrecoverable dive.
The tragedy made her the first woman pilot to be killed on active duty.
“I loved the sky and the planes,” she’d written her mother after Pearl Harbor, “and yet, best of all, I loved flying. . . . If I die violently, who can say it was ‘before my time’? . . . I want no one to grieve for me. I was happiest in the sky . . . . Think of me there and remember me, I hope, as I shall you.”
Daddy, the Philippines.
He was a young squid then.
I just posted this on Facebook lol
The man who gave me my strength and courage.
He was a young squid then.
I just posted this on Facebook lol
The man who gave me my strength and courage.
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WHAT WAS THE CONCEPT BEHIND FIRE BASES IN VIETNAM?
A firebase in Vietnam, wherever in Vietnam, would be well-known to whoever habituated one anywhere. There were several thousand firebases during the conflict, manned by many units and many men, bu…
cherrieswriter.com
WHAT WAS THE CONCEPT BEHIND FIRE BASES IN VIETNAM?
Smoke flare marks landing spot for evacuation helicopter coming in to take out U.S. 1st Cavalrymen wounded in the battle for control of the vital A Shau Valley.
Date: August 19, 2023Author: pdoggbiker
A firebase in Vietnam, wherever in Vietnam, would be well-known to whoever habituated one anywhere. There were several thousand firebases during the conflict, manned by many units and many men, but they were all the same. Similar to the 19th-century fort concept, fire support bases in Vietnam could reinforce each other across long distances with powerful effects. Read the article to learn more about these firebases.
By DAVID T. ZABECKI
Vietnam was a non-linear war. There were no front lines with enemies on one side and friendlies on the other. Tactical problems could become very complex, with the enemy potentially in any or all directions. It was vital to be able to observe and fire 360 degrees all-around.
Although atypical of most 20th-century warfare, those conditions were not necessarily unique to military history. Perhaps the closest American experience was the Indian Wars of the 19th century—with isolated forts established to control certain areas and provide security to overland travel routes and civilian settlements in the sector.
One solution to the Vietnam War tactical problem was the fire support base (or firebase). Most 19th-century forts were isolated and had to be self-sufficient. Thanks to 20th-century technology, the firebases used by the allies in Vietnam could communicate with each other instantly and could be resupplied and reinforced by air.
WHAT WAS A FIREBASE?
The fire support base was a combined infantry-artillery position that sometimes included armor. Depending on the planned duration of the position, firebases could be dug-in heavily and reinforced with engineer assets.
Perhaps the greatest strength of the firebases was their ability to cover each other with mutually supporting fires over great distances. It is a long-standing principle of firepower that massing fires is the most effective way to use artillery.
Through the 19th century, the only way to mass fires was to physically group the guns together on the ground. Between World Wars I and II, improved communications combined with innovative advances in fire direction control techniques made it possible to mass fires instantly on enemy targets from many widely-dispersed guns.
Firebases could reinforce the fires of their own internal guns with the guns of any or all other firebases within artillery range. It was a powerful multiplier effect.
HOW WERE FIREBASES SET UP?
The size, composition, and positional duration of a firebase depended on the planning factors of mission, enemy, terrain, and troop availability. Some firebases were very large and held positions for months or longer. Other firebases were relatively small and remained in position for days or weeks. A smaller firebase might consist of a company of infantry with a two-gun artillery platoon in the center of the position. A larger firebase might consist of two or three infantry companies, or possibly an entire battalion.
The artillery would consist of an entire six-gun battery. Instead of being positioned in the normal staggered line, the guns were deployed in a star position, with the base piece at the center and the other five guns forming the points of the star to provide rapid and effective fire in any direction. Smaller firebases with two or four howitzers deployed their guns when possible in square or triangle formations.
Firebases on flatter terrain were usually round, and those on ridges generally were rectangular due to terrain. Most larger firebases contained a helicopter landing pad for resupply and medical evacuation. When a firebase deployed forward, the guns often were moved by air.
FIREBASES USED IN ATTACK AND DEFENSE
The firebases were not merely passive defensive positions. Infantry patrols aggressively pushed out from the perimeter, day and night, but usually stayed within the guns’ maximum effective range fan—roughly 11,000 meters for 105mm howitzers and 14,000 meters for 155mm howitzers. When a patrol made contact, it could call for fire support not only from the guns of its own firebase but those of any other firebase in range.
The firebases, of course, invited attack. One gun inside the firebase usually fired illumination rounds to deprive attackers of the cover of darkness. Other guns delivered fires where needed outward from the perimeter. Firing close to friendly troops could be complex because of the large bursting radius of HE ammunition. The solution to that problem was the M-546 Antipersonnel Round for the 105mm howitzer. Popularly called the “Beehive Round,” it fired 8,000 steel flechettes, triggered by a time fuze set to detonate just outside the perimeter. A green star cluster hand flare fired just before the Beehive warned troops on the perimeter to take cover.
Between 1961 and 1973, U.S. and allied forces established more than 8,000 fire support bases in Vietnam; only a small fraction existed at any given time.
Some of the war’s fiercest battles were fought over firebases, including Firebase Ripcord in Thua Thien Province (July 1-23, 1970); Firebase Mary Ann in Quang Tin Province (March 28, 1970); and Firebase Gold in Tay Ninh Province (March 21, 1967). Neither the VC nor the NVA ever managed to overrun a U.S. forces firebase.
Doc, great post ^^^ Thanks!
I said it then and I'll say it now: We should not have put men on the ground. We should have lined up B-52 Bombers and bombed the SH*T out of them! We didn't need to "murder" over 58,000 American soldiers, while the jerks in Washington, DC were eating in fancy restaurants at our expense!
I said it then and I'll say it now: We should not have put men on the ground. We should have lined up B-52 Bombers and bombed the SH*T out of them! We didn't need to "murder" over 58,000 American soldiers, while the jerks in Washington, DC were eating in fancy restaurants at our expense!