Word: decking
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Amid gentle swells 50 miles off the coast of North Viet Nam, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Oriskany swung north ward into the wind. Four A-4E Skyhawk jet bombers soared gracefully off the flight deck. At 7:38 a.m., four more were being readied in a hangar bay far below, when a shouting sailor burst from a 15-ft.-square locker near by. Be hind him was an ominously hissing stack of 700 Mark-24 magnesium parachute flares. He barely had time to dog down the hatch on the locker and race for a phone when the flares began...
Helpless Horror. Superbly trained fire crews dragged hoses toward the burning locker. Other crewmen fought desperately to roll four planes to the far end of the hangar deck: three of them were already laden with bombs; the fourth, a tanker, carried 900 gal. of JB5 jet fuel. The fire fighters watched in helpless horror as the steel bulkheads of the flare locker started ballooning under the 7,000° heat inside. The steel hatch blasted open with a great gout of flame that engulfed the hangar and sent fire balls rocketing down every passageway, igniting two helicopters. Five sailors were...
...automatic sprinkler system opened up, spraying curtains of water into the lower-deck compartments. But the magnesium-fed fire continued to burn, turning sections of the flight deck above into a sizzling skillet. Choking clouds of dense, dirty-grey smoke poured through seven decks of the Oriskany's forward sections. Two more blasts sent flames belching along the flight deck, where red-shirted ordnance experts worked feverishly to jettison 500-lb., 1,000-lb.and 2,000-lb. bombs they dumped dozens overboard into...
...fire caught hundreds of the Oriskany's 3,400-man crew below deck. Worst hit was "officers' country" in the forecastle, where many men had not yet climbed out of their bunks. As the choking fumes billowed into their compartments, they tried to escape, only to be forced back by the deadly smoke and heat in the passageways. Lieut. Commander Marvin Reynolds opened his porthole and managed to alert some hands on the top deck; they handed down a hose and an oxygen mask. Then Reynolds spent three hours spraying water around his oven-hot compartment. Commander Richard...
...Then, again as usual, he climbed into khakis and scuffed brown desert boots for a two-day whirl through American units stationed all over the country. He listened to reports on Operation Irving from Air Cav officers in the central swamplands, watched A-4 Skyhawks being catapulted off the deck of the carrier Oriskany, paid brief visits to Danang, Cu Chi and the rapidly building military port of Cam Ranh Bay. But the highlight of his trip was the 3rd Marine Division's forward command post at Dong Ha, where he got an on-the-spot briefing...