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Click here to watch Oriskany "Fire" Video Footage!!
| "Fire" killed 44 officers in forward staterooms!! |
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| Magnesium Flare Locker in forward Hangar Bay Exploded!! |
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| Oct. 26, 1966, Gulf of Tonkin, "Yankee Station" |
| Burial at Sea, on way to San Diego, Nov. 3, 1966 |
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| Victims from Oct. 26, 1966 |
| Burial at Sea, Nov. 3, 1966 in the Philippine Sea |
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| Dennis's picture taken with Kodak 120 Instamatic Camera |
| A4 Skyhawks on Flight Deck suffered Fire Damage! |
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| Fire in Hangar Bay, USS Oriskany, October 26, 1966 |
The carrier was on station the morning of 26 October 1966 when a fire erupted on the starboard
side of the ship's forward hangar bay and raced through five decks, killing 44 men. Many who lost their lives were veteran
combat pilots who had flown raids over Vietnam a ew hours earlier. Oriskany had been put in danger when a magnesium parachute flare exploded in the forward flare locker
of Hangar Bay 1, beneath the carrier's flight deck. Subsequent investigation showed the flare functioned as designed and the
cause of the fire was human error. A seaman accidentally ignited the flare, and in a panic, threw it into the weapons locker
where the flares were kept for storage, instead of throwing it over the side into the water; this allowed the entire storage
locker to ignite and caused horrific damage. Some of her crewmen jettisoned heavy bombs which lay within reach of the flames,
while others wheeled planes out of danger, rescued pilots, and helped quell the blaze throughout the next three hours. Medical
assistance was rushed to the carrier from sister aircraft carriers and .Oriskany steamed to Subic Bay on 28 October,
where victims of the fire were transferred to waiting aircraft for transportation to the United States. A week later, the
carrier departed for San Diego, arriving on 16 November.
The San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard was a short-lived shipyard formed in 1965
as the combination of the San Francisco Naval Shipyard and the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The combined yards were the largest
naval shipyard in the world, but the desired cost savings did not materialize, and the two completed
repairs on 23 March 1967 and Oriskany, with Carrier Air Wing 16 embarked, underwent training. She then stood
out of San Francisco
Bay. San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining
from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains,
enters the Pacific Ocean...On 16, June, 1967the USS Oriskany took station in waters
off Vietnam. Designated flagship of Carrier Division 9 in Subic Bay on 9 July, she commenced "Yankee Station"
operations on 14 July. On 26 July, she provided medical assistance to the fire-ravaged attack carrier USS Forrestal (CV-59).
| Hangar Bay fire smoke seen from flight deck !! |
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| Magnesium flares fire melted inch thick steel bulkheads . . . |
| As fire below progresses, smoke gets thicker. |
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| Men on flight deck soon start rolling bombs over side of ship!! |
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