Families mark USS Forrestal fire anniversary
All Cathy Lowe has left of her brother Billy is a big box of military mementos and her memories.
There’s the flag from his coffin. An empty slug from the 21-gun salute at the Orlando sailor’s burial. A pristine copy of the Aug. 11, 1967, Life magazine with a cover story about the “Inferno at Sea” accident that claimed his life and 133 others ontheUSSForrestal, off the coastof NorthVietnam.
“I think about him all the time,” said Cathy Lowe, 61, who lives near Jacksonville. “He never leaves my heart.”
U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and 2008 presidential nominee who was diagnosed with brain cancer last week, survived the conflagration the morning of July 29,1967.
As the 50th anniversary of the blaze approaches, relatives of Billy Lowe join others in mourning their losses and to remember the accidentso catastrophicthat it led to the creation of a training video, “Trial By Fire: A Carrier Fights for Its Life,” that every Navy recruit must watch during boot camp.
The blaze in the Gulf of Tonkin started when stray voltage caused a Zuni rocket to fire accidentally, striking an attack aircraft on the flight deck and rupturing its fuel tank. Flames quickly spread to two nearby airplanes, including McCain’s A-4 Skyhawk, and set off a series of bomb explosions.
The casualties included firefightersandmenasleep in theirberthing quarters, fresh off the night shift. Another 161 crewmen were hurt. Twenty-one airplanes were destroyed.
“A lot of people injured got hurt helping others,” saidKenKillmeyer, 71, of Virginia, historian for the USS Forrestal Association.
About 700 people attended a reunion this week sponsored by the USS Forrestal Association. That includes 200 survivors, plus family and friends, said association president Bob Kohler, 87, of North Carolina. aformerMassachusetts police chief who retired to Winter Park 16 years ago, is one of them.
“It was a life-changing experience,” said Barry, 70, who rarely misses an annual Forrestal reunion. “It really made me appreciate life and the fact that I had survived when others didn’t.”
On Saturday, the anniversary date, the groupattended a service at Memorial Amphitheater at ArlingtonNational Cemetery.
Afterward, they travelled to the VietnamVeteransMemorialWall in Washington, D.C., to lay a wreath at the panel bearing the names of victims.
The Forrestal, named after the first U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, was decommissioned in1993 and scrapped in 2014. the