An A-6 Intruder returning from a night bombing mission with two 500 lb. bombs still attached to her wings crashed on landing, hurtling toward a group of recently recovered and parked aircraft, some of which were still armed.
According to Jack Forrestel, a former sailor who served aboard USS Midway (CVA-41) during the Vietnam War, it was just another quiet evening in the South China Sea during the last year of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Writing on Quora, Forrestel recalls that the USS Midway CVA-41 was on her second cruise to the war zone since her recommissioning following a major refitting and modernization in the late 1960s.
Forrestel notes that Midway had been one of the carriers active during the early years of the war and was present for duty immediately following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which led President Johnson to unleash the fury of America’s armed forces into the growing conflict in 1964. One of her pilots downed the first MiG over the Gulf in 1965, but during the most turbulent years of the struggle, the ship was at Hunter’s Point undergoing a massive refitting.
As Forrestel recounts, six months had been spent operating on Yankee and Dixie Stations in 1971, though that proved to be a relatively quiet period of the conflict. The air wing’s main function was interdiction of NVA transport along the Ho Chi Minh Trail along the Cambodian and Laotian borders, while the ship quietly cruised in large loops off the coast of Vietnam above and below the DMZ at the 17th parallel. Midway returned to Alameda and was scheduled to deploy again in six months, but the NVA launched a massive attack in April of 1972, sending the carrier back to the war zone on four days’ notice.
The NVA invasion—named the Easter Offensive—prompted Midway, along with five other carriers, to be charged with the mining of Haiphong Harbor and the resumption of bombing military and industrial targets in North Vietnam, as well as breaking the siege at An Loc and other surrounded ARVN bases during Operation Linebacker II. According to Forrestel, the American Naval and Air Force effort was equally massive, and the NVA invasion was halted. Midway pilots flew as many as 80 strikes a day during what became an eleven-month combat cruise, which brings Forrestel’s account to the evening of October 24th, seven months into the deployment.
When the A-6 Intruder hit the deck with its two unexpended 500 lb bombs still attached, something went wrong, and the aircraft crashed, careening toward some recently recovered and parked planes, some still armed. General Quarters was called, and the entire crew leaped into action. Firefighting teams moved into position throughout the ship, while on the flight deck, the situation was rapidly deteriorating.
Forrestel describes how, about fifteen minutes into the event, a call for blood was made on the main mess decks, which was being used as a triage area for wounded airmen directly above the sick bay. Five men were killed outright when the flaming aircraft careened into them as it crashed into the parked planes. The navigator ejected as the plane went down, but he was never recovered from the sea—the weight of his ejection seat likely pulled him to the bottom, as he was too low for his parachute to open. The pilot survived the crash, having stayed with the aircraft, and was pulled from the wreckage by a quick-thinking plane boss.
Two heroic firemen, Forrestel recounts, drove their small truck directly into the blaze, dousing it with foam and extinguishing the fire in approximately ninety seconds—saving Midway and her crew from what could have been another catastrophic fire on Yankee Station. About two dozen injured sailors were evacuated to Da Nang for flights to hospitals in Japan that night, even as the airfield was under rocket attack. There were no further injuries, and the ship’s doctors and corpsmen performed remarkable work, including an emergency amputation on the flight deck—reportedly carried out by one of the ship’s two dentists.
The line of sailors volunteering blood at the triage area proved more than adequate to meet the need. As Forrestel concludes his account, the captain ordered flight operations to resume the following morning, and the ship remained on Yankee Station until its next scheduled rotation.
Forrestel dedicated his account to the men of the USS Midway and Air Wing 5, especially those lost that night and throughout the ship’s wartime service.
