Aircraft Carriers, Pictures of the Fire on the
USS Forrestal in 1967. 

Click Here's some photos of the fire on the USS Kitty Hawk in 1968

As poor as these photos are, they are rare! No one else was allowed
to get within photographic distance of us!

Remember we had 5-inch gun turrets before the fire? They're gone.
Melted down.

Anyway, we must have been just as much a sight to Tidesurge as
they were to us. We had both endured hardships above and beyond.

Brad

Due to the Forrestal fire, the Navy quit using TNT bombs. The new type just melted down from extreme heat and the Air Force had been using them for some time (but we in the Navy had butter while they only had margarine!). Due to the Kitty Hawk fire, large quantities of Purple K became a routine item on aircraft carriers.

Anyway, a day or so later some Navy Intelligence guys came down into the RVAH-11 berthing spaces, cut the lock off a sailor's locker that was about 2 or 3 rack spaces from me, inventoried his locker contents, and left. We never saw him again and the scuttlebutt was that he had started the fire so we could go back to the States. It worked on Forrestal, so why not Kitty Hawk? Can't recall his name, but he had a color poster that measured about 3 feet by 5 feet of Mama Cass Elliot lying naked on her stomach in a flower bed (big ole butt up in the air) with a long-stemmed rose in her mouth.

Which reminds me, if Mama Cass had shared that ham sandwich with Karen
Carpenter, they'd probably both be alive today.

Brad