Thursday, August 20, 2026

260820 A Day like No Other

The second USS Forrestal was the first aircraft carrier with a new angled flight deck. The ship had a lot of problems.

This picture is Joyce’s mother and father on her Indian motorcycle. (Today, an Indian motorcycle would be hard to find and cost a fortune to buy.)

This link below is an example of what can happen on an USN aircraft carrier. This is just one thing that can happen on a flight deck of an aircraft carrier. I did two cruises working on the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk. Bad things happened, but none like the link below.

This occurred on the USS Forestal. It could happen on any day on an aircraft carrier. The link below is only 11 minutes long; if you just want to see the grisly horror, you can fast forward to the 8 minute mark when everything explodes into a massive fire where many sailors died trying to fight the fire. Future senator John S. McCain was nearly killed in this explosion and fire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5GVeH2ePy8&t=2s Every sailor in the USN was required to watch this film. What you see here was only part of the carnage, we sailors saw all of it. 134 men were killed fighting this fire.

Brother Bill