Tragedy remembered as USS Enterprise is retired

(CBS News) NORFOLK, Va. -- On Saturday, a legendary naval veteran will retire after a half-century of service. The USS Enterprise was the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and traveled the world in war and in peace.

USS Enterprise

/ CBS News

In five decades as one of the most powerful warships on the sea, the USS Enterprise's moment of greatest peril came one morning in 1969 during a final battle drill before heading to Vietnam.

Michael Carlin was a 21-year-old sailor getting a deck full of F-4 Phantom fighters ready to launch.

"On each F-4 Phantom, there were eight five-inch rockets and six 500-pound bombs," says Carlin, the author of TRIAL: Ordeal of the USS Enterprise 14 January, 1969.

The exhaust from a service vehicle overheated the fuse on one of those rockets, touching off what one sailor called "the vortex of hell" -- and all of it was recorded in silent horror by a deck camera.

Michael Carlin

/ CBS News

"We had eight rockets go off in the first 20 seconds," Carlin says.

Shrapnel from the rockets tore across the deck, mowing down sailors and puncturing the fuel tanks of the F-4s, each one of them loaded with nine tons of jet fuel. Then it got worse.

"Now the bombs started going off, and that was a totally different ballgame there," says Carlin.

What at the time was the largest warship in the world became a very small place.

"Stuff's getting blown all the way up on the bow," says Carlin -- a distance of about four football fields away.

The silent video did not capture the deafening concussions of bombs going off.

Michael Neville

/ CBS News

"Even in between detonations, it's the fire itself," says Michael Neville, who was 18 years old at the time. "It's just a sort of all-consuming roar."

Neville was trying to unload bombs and push them over the side before they went off. Then he manned a hose to fight the fire.

"We had to do what we had to do," he says. "We had to save the ship."

They did -- barely. Fifteen aircraft had been reduced to smoking hulks. Holes had been blown through the two-and-a-half-inch armor plate of the deck, sending cascades of burning jet fuel onto the decks below.

Twenty-eight crewmen died, and more than 300 were wounded.

The Enterprise returned to Pearl Harbor bearing wounds no enemy has ever been able to inflict. But after 51 days in the shipyard, it went on to Vietnam.

"Did what we had to do and just got right back in the fight," Neville says.

The great deck is empty now, the fire hoses are neatly coiled. The "Big E," as it's called, is being taken out of service, and the sailors who manned the decks have come to say a final goodbye to the ship which never gave up.

[TL_Cochran]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO4bMtTwc0I&feature=share&list=UUjruOI8gmnwM--QgglFxdeg

[MomsHugs]

To posters who served aboard the USS Enterprise, thank you for your first-hand comments and especially for your service one & all! Hugs ~ Moms

[MomsHugs]

Mr. Martin & CBS: Thank you for sharing this story with the public. I hope you do a follow-up story to answer these questions:

1. Was this out of the news at the time because we were at war?
2. Was the author required to wait 20 years to first publish the story in 1993 in order to include all the details?

My husband served aboard the Enterprise at the end of the Vietnam War, but this is the first I've heard of this tragedy.

My condolences to the all young men's families who were on board that day.

Hugs ~ Moms

[MustangsGFW]

This was on all of the news when it happened, MomsHug! I was 11 or 12 at the time and remember it vividly. We had come home from school and were all watching Dark Shadows when it was interrupted with the news of the tragedy. My uncle was aboard the ship and was killed in one of the explosions. The "quiet" part of it was HOW it happened. Until Michael Carlin wrote his book we did not know how the fire started. Thans to your husband for his service. The Big E has a special place in all of the hearts of my family.

[MrLiterally]

I hope the "Enterprise" name christens a new aircraft carrier. While they are at it, add in "Yorktown", "Lexington", "Hornet", "Wasp" and such instead of naming such great ships after Secretaries of the Navy.

[takacrat]

This ship could be used for something else in the US Navy. It could be a Hospital Ship, Transport for the Marines, Naval Supply Warehouse.

[Rafterman11]

Its nuclear powered, so no other country is going to get it. And its unsuitable for any other use in our own navy, other than a museum.

[MM2Messy86-92]

And with the usage of 8 submarine sized reactors, the cost factors of refuel make this vessel MUCH more expensive to maintain vs Nimitz class supercarrier which only have 2 large reactors each.

[ammo17]

in 1965 or early 1966 my ship the uss great sitkin was the first to re-arm the big"E".we had a fire in one our resistor houses on the main deck.you should have seen that ship go thru the water,it was awesome.i will never forget that day.

[[e-mail]]

Unbelievable - the first nuclear aircraft carrier is retiring from a highly decorated and successful HALF CENTURY of service, and a fire is the only notable thing you see. No wonder CBS News isn't trusted.

[Rafterman11]

CBS isn't trusted? Who says? I'm sorry, but the level of trust in any news organization is not dictated by how much you think they should trash Barrack Obama.

Noting a tragic accident and honoring the dead, as well as the heroic people who fought through it is worthy of remembrance. Not to mention the historic first occurrence of a nuclear powered surface ship surviving critical damage.

And don't use an email address as your ID. You are just inviting crank emails.

[rwsmith29456]

Retiring the Enterprise is worth a major series of articles that cover it's entire history.

[MomsHugs]

Rafterman11, you are SO right... this is about honoring not only those men who perished, but all those injured as well. Kudos to CBS for doing so.

I also hope CBS will do a series about the Big 'E' ... during prime time!

[redchile67]

Some of the fire footage they're using looks very much like it's from the Forestal fire. Every sailor who has ever been to fire fighting school has seen that film. It was later used for a TV program, so it's now in the public domain.

[Gonzo411]

You noticed that too? It looked to me like most the footage and quite a bit of the story was actually about the Forrestal fire. As a Forrestal veteran, I've just about committed every second of the movie Trial by Fire to memory and I thought much of this news story seemed to come from that movie. When I did a search for USS Independence fires, I didn't find much correlation to the story CBS presented. Except for showing the bond that sailors develop with a ship that's special to them, I give CBS a 'D' on this story.

[dautieng69]

Some of the footage is of the Forrestal fire. At .45sec into video the tail markings on the aircraft (A/A) are of Carrier Air Wing 17 which was assigned to CVA-59 USS Forrestal.

[Gonzo411]

After further investigation I find these two fires are strikingly similar. Am ordering Trial, the story of the Big 'E' fire by someone who was there, and will read up on it. But at first glance, it looks like both fires were started under very similar circumstances - the hot exhaust of a service vehicle lighting off a weapon attached to the wing of an aircraft staged on the flight deck. How sad that we didn't correct that after the 1967 fire aboard USS Forrestal. (But I still think some of that footage was from Trial by Fire.)

[Mudbone1938]

I served aboard the USS Randolph, CVS-15 during the October, 1962
Cuban Missile Blockade. The Randolph is a bathtub toy compared to
the Big E. I always stood in awe when I saw just how huge it was.
It has served the US Navy for 50 yrs. of noble duty.

[ammo17]

i served aboard the uss great sitkin 1965-1967 as an electician.we were the first ammunition ship to re-arm the "BIG E".we had a fire in one of our resistor houses.the BIG E took off thru the water at a speed that was unbelievable.it was awesome i will never forget it,i still think of it today.

[Rafterman11]

The paint peeled, the plumbing was often fouled and there were constant electrical problems. Many people, when they heard you were to report to Enterprise, gave you condolences.

But I didn't care. I was proud to be given assignment about USS Enterprise (USMC) - a proud name for a proud ship. Here's to (raises glass) the new CVN-80 hull being named USS Enterprise. That won't be launched until 2025 though, and it will be a long 13 years without a USS Enterprise in the fleet.

[rwsmith29456]

Yeah, that's a long time. Glad to hear that the name will go on, though.

[Rafterman11]

Actually, its not known what name CV-80 will get - I am HOPING it gets Enterprise. There's a petition to Congress right now to do just that. But i fear the the naming of carriers, which has become so political, we be yet another politician. The first two names, Ford and JFK, indicate that a Republican is up next.