We Will Not Forget 5

These are some of my notes regarding the tragic Forrestal (CVA-59) fire 50 years ago this Saturday, on 29 July 1967.

http://sargeantstudios.net/?p=109 Profile view of http://catherinecrouch.com/wp-vatva.php Forrestal with profiles of all the types of aircraft and representative squadrons on 29 July 1967.

In all my research about the fire, I had not seen a correlation between the PLAT film and the aircraft as they were spotted at the time.

Based on drawings in the Navy’s official Manual of the Judge Advocate General Basic Final Investigative Report Concerning the Fire on Board the USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59), which is the Navy’s definitive statement on the topic, I redrew the flight deck to scale and spotted the aircraft per the official drawings.

I then roughly plotted the plat camera angle based on the photograph and identified the aircraft in both the plan and the PLAT. There are some minor discrepancies, especially at the far left. This is because the flight deck was extremely dynamic. Not just because of the fire, but because of preparations for the Alpha Strike and normal movement of aircraft.

But for the A-4s across the fan tail from 410 to 303, and up the port quarter from 414 through 316, it is as accurate as I can make it.

 

Deck with aircraft as spotted at the time of the fire according to the official report. The PLAT film image is correlated with the diagram. 405 is the aircraft struck by Zuni, piloted by LtCdr. Fred White. 

Below is a drawing of the plane spots as presented in Naval Aviation News in October 1967, just three months after the fire.