USS Forrestal film footage.

Did the Cheif Petty Officer ever receive anything (posthumously) for his actions?.

I have never seen such a selfless act ever caught on tape, if that man didn’t receive some form of award then it would be a travesty of the highest order.

Regards,

John.

The Forrestal fire caused a number of changes in USN fire-fighting doctrine… relearning the lessons of WW2.

Yes, while there were more firefighters aboard, only 1 8-man firefighting team was stationed on the flight-deck (and 1 in the hangar bay), the others were on stand-by.

The general flight-deck crew was not trained in firefighting to save money… the lone man you see running with the extinguisher as the very first responder was an old-timer Chief Petty Officer, who remembered the lessons of war… quick action is better than delayed organized action.

According to the later analysis, he almost got the fire out before the first bomb exploded… 1 or 2 more men with extinguishers joining him at the start would have done the job, but “you need to wait for the trained experts” was how they had been taught!

After this, and the similar fires on the Enterprise & Oriskany within a couple of years, the USN began training everyone in the crew & air wings in firefighting.

Well, while not the Forrestal…

I did catch ‘Sinking An Aircraft Carrier’ last night on History Television over here (Canada) – the 1 hr doc on the stripping and sinking of the Oriskany. Not sure if its available on video or not.

It opened up with some very nice colour footage of ‘Skyhawks’ and ‘Crusaders’ trapping and shooting (and one view which included a ‘Destroyer’ on the forward port cat – man that put some sizes into perspective), in addition to some nice construction footage. The producers also included some BW footage of the “Big O’s” tragic fire in ’64.

BTW – Thursday night they are carrying a 3 hr doc entitled “Goering – A Career”

JJ

Also it seems unlikely that the Forrestal only had eight trained firefighters, they stated that in the first explosion six of them were killed and two seriously burnt rendering ALL trained firefighters out of action.

The notion that this was a conributory factor is somewhat dubious as a carrier of such size would have had more firefighting personell than eight and with a fire of that magnitude then the stocks of foam would have given up long before the fire was extingushed.

What then?, sorry lads no more foam we better let it burn us all to death?, I have tried a couple of times to watch these sort of programmes hoping to learn something and I have……..not to watch them again!!.

Regards,

John.

To be fair, there was some excellent footage of the fire, that poor Fireman with the hand held extinguisher, he was either brave or nuts, cannot decide which.
As for using water on a fuel fire, where the fire-fighters not trained properly? must admit, did not manage to see the last 20 mins, my other half hogged the remote and started to watch a film that she had seen 6 times in the last month (not unlike most programs on Sky or Cable)!!!!!!!

It was Bunty, Bucc, Hunter and Victor all played parts

For the eagle eyed out there was a fleeting glance of side panel with a ram air duct for cooling to the reheat pump on 728, where’s our royalites 😉

Why :confused:

I watched it for a while and got fed up

I gave up watching that a long time ago.

I got fed up with the repeating nature of the show.

Most seemed to be filmed with a budget of about 2p with the quality of backdrops and props.

I was probably Bruntingthorpe.