Armed Forces: Fire on the Forrestal

Twice in the same day, the clang of fire bells sounded over the Gulf of Tonkin, and the cry of "Fire! Fire! Fire!" issued from the loudspeaker of the U.S.S. Forrestal, the Navy's third largest aircraft carrier (after the Enterprise and America). Each time the blaze was doused in minutes, but an uneasy calm settled over the 76,000-ton ship. Only the day before, the Forrestal had arrived off the North Vietnamese coast for her first combat duty, and her 4,500-man crew grimly recalled that a fire had killed 44 men aboard the carrier Oriskany in the same waters last...