The Gulf of Tonkin was a pressure cooker in July 1967. On the deck of the USS Forrestal, the air was thick with humidity and the deafening roar of jet engines. Dozens of aircraft were packed wingtip-to-wingtip, fueled to the brim and loaded with enough ordnance to level a small city.
Inside the cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk sat a 30-year-old Lieutenant Commander named John McCain. He was waiting for his turn on the catapult.
Then, everything went wrong in about two seconds.
Basically, a Zuni rocket accidentally fired from an F-4 Phantom across the deck. It wasn't an enemy attack. It was a "stray voltage" incident—a freak electrical surge. That rocket didn't just hit a plane; it tore open a fuel tank, spilling hundreds of gallons of JP-5 jet fuel that turned the flight deck into a literal river of fire.
The John McCain USS Forrestal story is often buried under his later five-year ordeal as a POW, but what happened on that carrier deck changed the U.S. Navy forever.
The 94-Second Countdown to Hell
Most people think a fire is just a fire. On a supercarrier, it's a chemical nightmare. When that Zuni rocket struck either McCain's plane or the one right next to it (eyewitness accounts and the official JAG report still have a tiny bit of daylight between them), the ignition was instant.
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McCain didn't hesitate. He scrambled out of his cockpit, climbed down the refueling probe, and jumped into a lake of burning fuel. He rolled to safety, but the real horror was just starting.
Under the wings of those burning planes were 1,000-pound bombs. These weren't the modern, stable bombs the crew was used to. Because of supply shortages, the Forrestal had been forced to take on old "fat bombs" from World War II era stockpiles that were notoriously "sensitive."
Just 94 seconds after the fire started, the first bomb "cooked off."
It didn't just explode; it vaporized the specialized firefighting team that had rushed to the scene. Chief Gerald Farrier, who was leading the charge with a handheld extinguisher, was gone in a flash.
Why the USS Forrestal Fire Was a "Perfect Storm"
Honestly, you've got to look at the systemic failures to understand why 134 men died that day. It wasn't just a bad wire. It was a chain of "good enough" decisions that ended in catastrophe.
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- The Ordnance Issue: The ship was using old Composition B bombs. These things were supposed to withstand a fire for several minutes. Instead, they blew up in about a minute and a half because they were old, crusty, and unstable.
- Training Gaps: Believe it or not, back then, only specialized damage control teams were fully trained in firefighting. When the main team was wiped out by the first blast, regular sailors had to step in. They meant well, but they actually made things worse.
- The Water vs. Foam Mistake: Untrained sailors started spraying water on a fuel fire. If you’ve ever seen a grease fire in a kitchen, you know what happens next. The water just spread the burning fuel around, eventually washing it down into the lower decks where sailors were sleeping in their bunks.
It took 24 hours to fully put out the fires below decks. When the smoke finally cleared, 134 sailors were dead, and 161 were injured. 21 aircraft were destroyed.
Clearing Up the John McCain Rumors
If you spend enough time in the dark corners of the internet, you'll see a nasty rumor that John McCain actually caused the fire by "wet-starting" his engine to show off.
That is 100% false.
The official Navy investigation (the JAG report) is very clear: the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction in an F-4 Phantom (tail number 110, piloted by Jim Bangert) on the opposite side of the deck. McCain was a victim of the incident, not the cause. He was hit by shrapnel in the legs and chest when the bombs started going off, but he stayed on deck to help other pilots and sailors until he was ordered to evacuate.
It's one of those weird historical footnotes where a person’s later political career causes people to rewrite their military history. But the records don't lie.
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The Legacy of a Tragedy
The Navy doesn't just forget a disaster like this. They made every single sailor a firefighter after 1967. Every recruit, regardless of their job, now goes through intensive "Damage Control" training. If you're on a ship, you're a firefighter. Period.
They also stopped using those unstable Composition B bombs on carriers.
What You Can Take Away from the Forrestal Disaster
While most of us aren't sitting on a flight deck with 1,000-pound bombs, the John McCain USS Forrestal incident offers some pretty heavy lessons for any high-stakes environment:
- Redundancy is king. The Zuni rocket had safety pins, but they were removed too early because of "operational tempo." Never skip safety checks to save five minutes.
- Cross-train everyone. In a crisis, your specialists might be the first ones sidelined. If the rest of the team doesn't know the basics, the system fails.
- Check your "legacy" equipment. Using old tools because "that's all we have" is often a recipe for disaster.
If you want to see the raw footage of what the crew faced, the Navy produced a training film called Trial by Fire. It’s still used today. It’s brutal to watch, but it’s the only way to truly respect the men who stayed on that deck while the world was blowing up around them.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Search for the USS Forrestal "Trial by Fire" documentary on YouTube to see the actual flight deck footage from July 29, 1967.
- Read the 1967 JAG Manual Investigation Report if you want the technical breakdown of the electrical surge that triggered the Zuni rocket.
- Visit the USS Forrestal Association website to read first-hand accounts from survivors who served alongside McCain.