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The FID Made it to Philly
June 19th, 2010
USS FORRESTAL (CV-59)
Thursday, I received an email from a friend of mine with whom I attended ET school, many years ago. After school we both went to different commands, he to the USS Impervious (MSO-449), and I to the FID – both of which were ported at Mayport. When I arrived shortly after C school, I had 8 days until we were to deploy to the Med. During that short time, we toured each other’s vessels, and remembered the good times we had up in Glakes.
Anyway, his email told me that his daughter, who is in the Coast Guard, escorted my old ship, the USS Forrestal, from Rhode Island to Philadelphia. It is great to hear from him. Small world.
Update! He was kind enough to forward a couple of pictures taken from the United States Coast Guard Cutter Mako (WPB 87303) as they escorted the Forrestal to Philly. The CGC Mako, an 87′ coastal patrol boat, is homeported at Cape May, New Jersey.
USS Forrestal in-tow to Philadelphia, PA. Photo by: SN Kris Metzler aboard CGC Mako
Starboard side of USS Forrestal while in-tow to Philadelphia. Photo by: SN Kris Metzler aboard the CGC Mako
AW1, your post, The bonds between Veterans,” is spot-on.
From today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:
USS Forrestal arrives in Phila. to await fate
By Joseph Gambardello
Inquirer Staff WriterThe aircraft carrier Forrestal arrived in Philadelphia Friday morning to await its fate.
The ship, decommissioned in 1993 in Philadelphia after 38 years in service, had been moored next to the Saratoga in Newport, R.I. It left under tow Tuesday.
The Navy initially offered the carrier as a possible museum, but withdrew it from the ship donation list when no viable plan emerged.
The ship, the first of the post-World War II “super carriers,” will now be either scrapped or sunk to become an offshore reef.
In Philadelphia, the Forrestal is docked on the Delaware River at the former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard next to the John F. Kennedy, an aircraft carrier decommissioned in 2007.
The Forrestal is named for James V. Forrestal, who was Navy secretary at the end of World War II and became the nation’s first secretary of defense in 1947. Shortly after he was fired by President Harry S. Truman, Forrestal died in May 1949 following a still-mysterious fall from a 16th-floor window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
During the Vietnam War, the Forrestal was the scene of the largest loss of life on an American aircraft since World War II. But it was an accident – not enemy action – that resulted in the deaths of 134 sailors. On July 29, 1967, a rocket accidentally fired on the flight deck while the carrier was in the Gulf of Tonkin, sparking a fire that triggered a chain of bomb blasts.
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Thanks for the linkage, shipmate! I remember when the Forrestal accident occurred. It was both tragic, and heroic. The dedication of those sailors, wading into hell to try and save their shipmates is in keeping with the highest of Navy traditions.
God Bless all who sailed on her.