On 29 July 1967, on Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin, a five-inch Zuni rocket fired on its own from an F-4B Phantom on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal and ruptured the fuel tank of a Skyhawk across the deck. About a minute and a half later the first of the old Korean War-era bombs in the fire exploded, and then more. 134 men died, about fifty of them asleep in the berthing one deck below the flight deck. This film follows what happened to them, compartment by compartment, from the Navy's own investigation: the sixteen old bombs, the rocket plugged in early, Chief Gerald Farrier and Damage Control Team 8, the men below decks, the volunteers who saved the ship, the destroyers alongside, and the training film every Navy recruit has seen since.

Chapters:
0:00 29 July 1967, 10:51
1:11 Five Days on the Line
3:33 The Fat Bombs
6:22 Ten Fifty-one
9:14 The Chief With the Purple K
12:54 The Oh-three Level
19:46 No One Asked to Leave
22:54 Alongside
25:00 The Count
27:39 The Reflection
30:24 Learn or Burn
32:47 The List

Sources:
Judge Advocate General of the Navy: JAG Manual investigation (Informal Board of Investigation) into the fire aboard USS Forrestal, 29 July 1967, with endorsements (COMNAVAIRLANT 26 Sep 1967, CINCLANTFLT 1 Dec 1967)
Naval History and Heritage Command: Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Forrestal (CVA-59); H-Gram 008-6, USS Forrestal Disaster (Samuel J. Cox, 2017)
Naval Aviation News, October 1967 (Brave Men of the USS Forrestal); All Hands, November 1967; All Hands / DVIDS (2017); Navy News Service (2012, 2017)
Naval Safety Center (LCDR Robert Browning's statement); U.S. Navy film Trial by Fire: A Carrier Fights for Life
The Boston Globe, 31 July 1967; WTKR NewsChannel 3 (2014); News4Jax (2011); The Redstone Rocket (Ken Killmeyer); Capt. Dave Dollarhide's account
The Virtual Wall (the roll of the 134)
Film and photographs: U.S. Navy PLAT deck-camera tape and film of 29 July 1967 (National Archives, Record Group 428, via Internet Archive), U.S. Navy and DoD photographs (National Archives; Naval History and Heritage Command; Wikimedia Commons), photographs printed in All Hands (Sep, Nov 1967) and Naval Aviation News (Oct 1967), Department of Defense newsfilm release (1967). Photographs of other ships carry their ship and year on screen.
Drawings: the Navy's spotting chart of 29 July 1967 (Naval Aviation News, Oct 1967); Booklet of General Plans of Forrestal's sister ship USS Saratoga (CV-60), approved for public release; Naval Research Laboratory Memorandum Report 1851 (Jan 1968); Principles of Naval Engineering (NAVPERS 10788-B); Aviation Ordnanceman (NAVEDTRA 14313); Aviation Boatswain's Mate H (NAVPERS 10303-B)
Maps: Natural Earth (public domain)

Some scenes are reconstructions, marked on screen. Where the sources disagree (the injured count, which jet was hit, the seconds to the first explosion) we name the source for each number. U.S. government film and photographs are in the public domain.

Photo credits (CC BY):
Photo: Tim Evanson (1 image) - CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (USS Forrestal group burial site - Arlington National Cemetery - 2013-03-15)
USMC Archives from Quantico (2 images) - USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Independent and educational. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy or any armed force.