Good morning, Norm.
It’s Memorial Day, 7:29am Tonkin Gulf time.
Haven’t talked with you in a while. The USS ORISKANY, that magnificent lady on which we went through hell together, has slipped away into the deep and now rests forever in silent waters off the Florida coast.
Seems like a good day to make contact. This is the 43rd year since I last saw you, sitting on the edge of your bunk in our room on ORISKANY. You remember . . . it was the 26th of October 1966.
We were on the midnight schedule. There was a solid wall of thunderstorms over the beach, with tops to 50,000 feet; but McNamara’s Pentagon planners kept sending us on “critical” missions all night. At 4:00am, they finally ran out of trucks to bomb – in that downpour – and we got a little sleep.
The phone rang at seven; you were scheduled for the Alert Five. I had bagged a little more rack time than you, so I said I’d take it. I went to shave in the head around the elevator pit, the one near the flare locker.
The ordnance men were busy putting away the flares. They’d been taking them out and putting them back all night, as the missions were continually changed.
I finished shaving and started back to our room when the guy on the 1MC said: “This is a drill, this is a drill, FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!” I smelled smoke and looked back at the door that separated the pilot’s quarters from the flare locker. Smoke was coming from underneath.
I ran the last few steps to our room and turned on the light. You sat up on the edge of your bunk. I shouted at you: “Norm, this is no drill. Let’s get the hell out of here!”
I went down the passageway around the elevator pit, banging on the metal wall and shouting: “It’s no drill. We’re on fire! We’re on fire!” I rounded the corner of that U-shaped passage as the flare locker exploded.
The tremendous concussion blew me out of the passageway and onto