Sailors to the End

Gregory A. Freeman

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061856563
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The aircraft carrier USS Forrestal was preparing to launch attacks into North Vietnam when one of its jets accidentally fired a rocket into an aircraft occupied by pilot John McCain. A huge fire ensued, and McCain barely escaped before a 1, 000-pound bomb on his plane exploded, causing a chain reaction with other bombs on surrounding planes. The crew struggled for days to extinguish the fires, but, in the end, the tragedy took the lives of 134 men. For thirty-five years, the terrible loss of life has been blamed on the sailors themselves, but this meticulously documented history shows that they were truly the victims and heroes.

Chapter 1

CAST YOUR FATE TO THE WIND

July 1967

Bob Shelton was still troubled by the nightmare when he reached the bridge of the aircraft carrier. He had hoped that getting out of his bunk and making his way topside to watch the sun rise would help him shake it off, but it was still with him–the puzzling images of fire and smoke on the ship, and the vague sense of dread. He kept going over it in his mind as he watched the horizon begin to glow golden, finally breaking into brilliant sunlight while the USS Forrestal sailed in the waters off of Vietnam.

For Shelton, sunrise on the carrier was one of the few reliable indicators that time had passed. Life aboard the carrier could be disorienting and stressful as the young men worked long hours completely separated from the rest of the world. The Forrestal was an island where nothing seemed just like home, not even the hours that made up a day. Most of the crew worked belowdecks, the long workdays and irregular sleep schedules melting together, with few clues from the outside world that yesterday had ended and today had begun. But for those who could see it, the sunrise was a reassuring reminder that there was life beyond the ship.

It hadn’t taken Shelton long to realize that he didn’t care much for life on board a carrier—even though he had always longed for a job in aviation, one that involved the planes that fascinated him so much. He wanted to be part of the fast-paced, glamorous world of navy flying even if he wasn’t the one sitting in the cockpit. His deployment to the USS Forrestal, the world’s biggest and most sophisticated warship, was a plum assignment by most standards and his actual workstation wasn’t far from the flight-deck operations. But still, the novelty had worn off quickly and he had grown weary of standing in line for everything, whether it was a meal or a haircut. Like so many of the other thousands of young men on board, he was riding out his military service and looking forward to going home. Shelton had been in the navy for more than a year and still had a year left to serve on the Forrestal. The war in Vietnam was heating up, and the workload on the carrier had increased dramatically since the ship arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin a few days earlier and started launching air strikes against the mainland. He knew the next year on the Forrestal would be hard.

In the meantime, Shelton tried to take advantage of the little perks afforded him, and the sunrise was one of them. He reminded himself every day that many men belowdecks rarely got the chance to see daylight, much less something as beautiful as the day slowly breaking over the calm waters.

Shelton had access to this small joy because sheer luck and a few innate skills had resulted in his assignment to a group of sailors who worked on the bridge, standing within feet of the captain in the big control center that rose over the flight deck, the panoramic windows providing a bird’s-eye view of everything happening on the flight deck and the world beyond. Shelton didn’t work there every day, sometimes rotating through a few other assignments, but even if he wasn’t working a shift on the bridge, no one minded if he hung around one of the nearby break areas for a cup of coffee and some conversation.

On this morning in late July 1967, Shelton was arriving even earlier than he had to. He wanted to take some time to relax before reporting to duty as quartermaster of the bridge, keeping detailed records of every order given and nearly everything that happened. It could be a demanding job if a lot was going on, so he liked to relax a bit first. And besides, he couldn’t sleep after that nightmare.

Shelton was still a little shaken by it. The whole experience just seemed so unusual. Shelton wasn’t the type to have nightmares; he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had one, and he rarely remembered any dreams when he woke up. He wasn’t worried or upset about anything, so he was surprised by how much it had grabbed him. The experience was so bad that when he awoke, panicked and breathing like a racehorse, it took Shelton a minute to realize it was only a nightmare. The images were too vivid, the sense of horror too real. Shelton had sprung up and sat on the edge of his bunk, waiting for his heart to slow down, wiping the sweat from his face. He was glad to be awake. He was glad to see that everything was okay, and yet he couldn’t get past the feeling that something wasn’t.

Shelton had lain back in his bunk, wide awake and still energized from the nightmare. With the rustling and snoring of his crewmates in the background, Shelton’s mind kept flashing with images from the nightmare. There were great bursts of light, loud noises, and fire. Nothing was clear, but he did see fire. More than anything else, though, there was a terrible sense of fear and dread.

Shelton realized he would never get back to sleep, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to anyway. After lying in his bunk for a while, wide awake, he got up and dressed. He was assigned to work on the bridge that day, so he had to put on the crisp white uniform instead of the denim work clothes he might wear to other assignments. On the way out of his sleeping area, he passed by his buddy James Blaskis, who was sound asleep just a few bunks away from his. Shelton noticed that Blaskis had a new pinup of a girl taped to the bottom of the bunk above him, yet another added to the collection just a few inches from Blaskis’s face. Shelton often wondered how many of those girls were from magazines and how many were girlfriends from back home, but Blaskis never seemed interested in talking about them. It was one of the things Shelton just accepted about Blaskis without question.

Shelton and Blaskis had become close friends soon after coming aboard the Forrestal, though it was unlikely that they would ever have met in the civilian world and there was even less chance they would have struck up a friendship. But the military has a way of throwing very different men together in close quarters, giving them no other choice than to be friends or be miserable. When Shelton and Blaskis first met on the Forrestal, the only things they had in common were their mutual awe of the massive ship, their assignment to the same division, and their shared duties.

Both of them were also a bit older than the typical crew member. Shelton was twenty-two years old and Blaskis was twenty-one. Once they were thrown together, they found their differences immediately. Shelton was from Longview, Texas, and Blaskis was from Akron, Ohio. Shelton didn’t understand much about places where it snowed and nobody rode a horse, and Blaskis couldn’t relate to people who drank iced tea so sweet it might as well be syrup. But soon they discovered that their personalities fit well together, sharing a sense of humor that nobody seemed to find as funny as they did. Shelton could see that Blaskis was a real character, a fun-loving type who made everyone comfortable around him. The two young men were soon laughing about their differences and finding more and more things that drew them together.

One of the young men’s favorite pastimes was listening to music. After the ship sailed for Vietnam and out of civilian radio contact, they had to rely on their own recordings, and someone in Shelton’s division had bought a reel-to-reel tape player when the ship stopped in Rio de Janeiro. The player had become a centerpiece for the crew’s recreation. They would play the same music over and over again while they lounged around between work shifts or wrote letters home to their families. One song in particular had become Shelton’s and Blaskis’s favorite. “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” written by Carel Werber and Vince Guaraldi, was filled with a youthful optimism and willingness to see what the world would offer.

A month of nights, a year of days

Octobers drifting into Mays

I set my sail when the tide comes in

I just cast my fate to the wind.

They played the tape over and over, losing themselves in its dreamlike melody. The tune came to Shelton’s mind as he stood there looking over the water, the sunrise and cool morning breeze helping to clear his head. A few cups of strong coffee also helped. The images from the nightmare were becoming fuzzier and he wasn’t at all sure what had made it so scary. When it came time to start his shift, he stepped inside to the bridge and relieved the quartermaster who had worked the overnight shift. Shelton took his position behind the little desk where the logbook lay and prepared for a long day of taking careful notes, documenting any orders given and any activities on the bridge. As soon as he looked at the logbook, he saw that his buddy Blaskis had been there some time earlier.

“Bla is alive!” read a note in the margin. It was Blaskis’s graffiti signature. Shelton saw it often.

The day was long, as usual, but fairly routine. The ship had just arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin a few days earlier to begin bombing targets in Southeast Asia, part of the escalating but still undeclared war against the communists trying to take over South Vietnam. Four hundred thousand ground troops were already fighting in the jungles, but the bombers from aircraft carriers stationed off the coast were playing a key role. They mostly targeted North Vietnamese supply lines, and in 1967 the bombing had moved closer to major cities like Hanoi and even to targets just shy of the Chinese border. The Forrestal launched bombing missions over Vietnam every day from a spot in the ocean called Yankee Station, several miles out but still close enough to see the coastline across the flat water.

That Thursday morning was uneventful, with the planes launching safely and then returning without harm. By late afternoon, Shelton was relieved from the bridge and he went belowdecks to perform a few small chores before dinner. After eating, he had a little free time to play cards and listen to music with his buddies. The day had turned out to be just another typical stretch of work, standing in line for meals, and a few moments with his friends. By the time he went to bed, Shelton had put the nightmare out of his mind. He fell asleep easily.

And then it happened again, but this time it was even worse.

Shelton was sound asleep when he suddenly shot up from his pillow with a stifled scream, sweat pouring off his face. There were explosions all around him, fire everywhere, and he was trapped. He was blinded by incredible flashes of light and the explosions were striking him as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Things were flying through the air, knocking people down and ripping bodies apart. He had little sense of what was happening, other than loud sounds and men screaming in pain and begging for help. He could see that they were still on the ship, that men were dying all around him, and he was going to die with them.

After he woke up, the details began to blur in his mind, but the nightmare was even more intense than the night before and it held him in its grip as he frantically looked around the dark compartment. He wanted to flee, but he didn’t know what to do. Time stretched as he tried to separate the hell in his mind from what he saw around him. No fire in the compartment. No alarms. No explosions.

It was quiet on the ship.

Oh my God. That was worse than the last one.

Last night’s had been bad, but Shelton was far more shaken by this nightmare. He couldn’t get rid of the fear that it brought, even after he came to realize that he was safe in his bunk.

He was sweating and his chest was still heaving when he swung his legs out of the bunk and walked out of the compartment. There was no way in hell he was getting back to sleep. It was early, about 4:00 A.M., but Shelton had gotten all the rest he was going to get. As on the previous morning, he threw on his white uniform and headed up to the bridge. It was hours before he had to report to duty, but he couldn’t have stayed in that bunk any longer.

Again, he had passed by his buddy Blaskis and watched him sleeping peacefully.

Chapter 2

THE SAFEST PLACE TO BE

Bob Shelton and James Blaskis fit right in with the Forrestal crew, which was a mixture of young men who were inexperienced in nearly everything and old hands who had been riding the seas for many years. In some ways, they were a slice of America in 1967. The young far outnumbered the older men on the ship, and back home America was just getting used to having teenagers and young adults swarming the country in record numbers. Youthfulness has always been welcome in the military, however, because some jobs can be done only by someone who still thinks he will never die. The old hands on board knew better, because many of them had been through the kinds of experiences that will convince a young man of his mortality. On the Forrestal, these veteran sailors guided the youngsters through the daily hazards and lessons of life on an aircraft carrier, providing support that many of the boys would not understand or appreciate until they, too, were old enough to offer advice. It was a common scene to see an older sailor explaining the navy’s ways to a lot of younger men who were eager to do the right thing, if only they knew how.

The navy has excelled at turning boys into men, and for many, it represented an opportunity for a career and travel that were otherwise out of reach. Times were difficult for young men in the States in 1967, with the looming possibility of a draft letter arriving in the mail. Even if they hadn’t been drafted yet, any day they could be, so employers were reluctant to waste time hiring them.

If a young man did get drafted, he would most likely end up in the infantry and be sent to the jungles of Vietnam. Even though most American youths didn’t know much about what was going on in Southeast Asia, they did know that a lot of boys already had been killed in the jungle wars. But if they volunteered instead of waiting to be drafted, they could select which branch of service they would serve in, and might even have some input into the sort of duty they were assigned. That is how a great many of the young men ended up on the Forrestal.

If you weren’t a gung ho volunteer, eager to be in the thick of things, an aircraft carrier was the plum assignment. Vietnam had little navy to speak of, and carriers did all their work sitting out in the water, far away from any land-based threats. Being assigned to the Forrestal, one of the world’s biggest and most powerful carriers, was a relief to many because they saw it as the safest place they could be. Safety is a relative matter, of course, and an aircraft carrier actually can be extremely dangerous. But for a young man going to Vietnam in 1967, there was little doubt that he would go home after a year or two on the Forrestal. They would ride out their tours of duty there and then return home to pick up the lives they left, satisfied that they had fulfilled their obligations.

Shelton and Blaskis joined the Forrestal about the same time as Ken Killmeyer, Robert Zwerlein, and Paul Friedman. When they first reported to the ship, they were all dumbstruck by its size. Especially for youngsters who grew up in small towns and had yet to see anything of the world, the ship looked like the biggest thing on earth. And they weren’t too far from the truth.

When she was constructed, between 1951 and 1954, the Forrestal was the largest warship ever built. At 1,039 feet long, the carrier would reach the eightieth floor of the Empire State Building if stood on end. Even sitting in the water, she was as tall as a twenty-five-story building. The ship’s tall masts, which are full of radar and other equipment, were designed to swing down and lie on the deck temporarily so the ship could pass under the Brooklyn Bridge.

The flight deck was 252 feet wide and as long as three and a half football fields, creating four acres of “sovereign U.S. territory,” as the navy likes to brag. The ship displaced eighty thousand tons and was way too big to fit through the Panama Canal, making it necessary to go the long way, an easterly route around South Africa in order to get from her usual territory in the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The Forrestal was so powerful that she was considered to be the crown jewel in the navy’s fleet, and she had to be named for a prominent leader from American history—the late James V. Forrestal, a former secretary of the navy and the first secretary of defense, acclaimed for building the modern navy. She was nicknamed “FID” for “First in Defense,” a reference to both her namesake and her position as the country’s big muscle that would be moved into position against an aggressor. Later, the navy added “Fidelity, Integrity, and Dignity” to the FID moniker.

Military ships tend to get a reputation as they age, and the Forrestal was known for always being on time, and also as the “ship with a heart” because of the charity work that her crew always did in the local communities they visited around the world. They would lend a hand with building a clinic or would donate books to a third-world library.

As the new men stood in long lines waiting to board the ship, her gray hulk was all they...