Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam (7 page)

CHAPTER 10

“Wolfe!” a yellow-shirted man Wolfe didn’t recognize barked at him. Wolfe, wearing a blue jersey, had been sitting on the seat of the tractor, looking out the hangar bay opening to the elevator, watching the sea roll by. The elevator spent most of its time at the flight deck level, coming down to the hangar deck level only to drop off or pick up aircraft. He had been on
Oriskany
for a little over three weeks and had learned the names of most of his comrades. The man continued, “You and Higgins go with Byrnes. On the double.”

Byrnes, Wolfe knew. He also wore a yellow jersey and was one of the aircraft directors in the crew in which Wolfe struggled to learn terminology and his new menial labor job. The blue-jerseyed sailors physically pushed aircraft around the hangar deck, when the tractor and spotting dolly could not fit in a space, or were not available. That was most of the time on the crowded hangar deck. Constructed during World War II and commissioned shortly after,
Oriskany
had been designed for smaller aircraft. Blueshirts also carried the chocks and chains used to immobilize and tie aircraft to the deck. It was their job to break down the tie-downs prior to moving a plane and then to re-attach them after it had reached its new position. The job was dirty, the chains often coated with grease, fuel, and grime. It was also slightly dangerous. The underside of every aircraft bristled with antenna, rocket and bomb fins, and devices that secured fuel tanks, bombs, and other devices to the aircraft. To get firm leverage on the aircraft without pushing on control surfaces or other fragile parts, blueshirts crawled under the planes and pushed on the landing gear struts, bomb racks, fuel tanks, or bombs. Occasionally, after being distracted, a blueshirt would have a foot or hand run over, or have the skin on his back raked by a bomb fin. In the subtropical heat, on a ship with no air conditioning, the back breaking work had everyone in the crew smelling of sweat and salt.

The yellowshirts determined the direction the plane went by giving instructions to either the driver of the tractor or a man who pivoted the nose wheel of the aircraft with a long steel pole, the nose wheel steering bar also known as the tiller. A fully loaded A-4 Skyhawk, better known as the Scooter, could weigh almost 20,000 pounds, an F-8 Crusader almost twice that. During air operations the hangar deck crew routinely worked 15-18 hour days. They moved aircraft to the flight deck for launches. Later they moved aircraft dropped from the flight deck to the hangar deck during recoveries. Most recovered aircraft dropped to the hangar on elevator #1 in the middle of the forward hangar bay. One plane after another dropped quickly from the flight deck. From there the three crews took turns pushing the planes toward the stern, filling all three hangar bays. That left room on the flight deck for the recovery of aircraft to continue. After air operations ended, they spotted and re-spotted aircraft for the squadron mechanics, so they could make certain each aircraft was in flying condition for its next sortie.

Depending upon how exhausted the aircraft handlers were, they either lounged for the two hours between launch and recovery, or worked at duty stations, cleaning up messes on the hangar deck made by the mechanics, polishing brass, or repairing or upgrading hangar deck equipment. The navy required all support and maintenance equipment, generators, tractors, aircraft jacks, rolling ladders, and more to be painted yellow. Sailors referred to the collection as
yellow gear
.

Coated in salt from evaporated sweat, his blue jersey ringed by many layers of white, Wolfe rolled out of the yellow tractor seat and stood quickly. He located Byrnes, who waved at him and Higgins from a hatch in the third hangar bay. “Run!” the yellowshirt yelled.

Higgins beat Wolfe to the hatch by a step. The three men climbed the ladder on the outside of the ship to a sponson several feet below the flight deck. Catching his breath, Higgins, another lowly blueshirt, asked Byrnes, “What’s up? Why the rush?”

Silently, Byrnes pointed to the starboard horizon. A funnel of black smoke ascended from a large ship about five miles away. After they fixed the ship in their gaze, Byrnes said, “
Forrestal
may be dying.” Pointing next to the rolls of fire hose on the sponson, he added, “When I give you the word I want each of you to carry a fire hose to the helo after it lands. Keep your heads down. The rotor blades dip occasionally. There will be injured men from
Forrestal
on the chopper. We’ll take them off the helo. Four of us to each stretcher. We’ll carry them down to sick bay. Got it?”

Wolfe nodded, staring in the distance. He had heard stories about
Oriskany’s
fire. It seemed unreal that
Forrestal
would repeat the disaster less than a year later. More men joined their group, and another crowd of sailors watched them from the other side of the flight deck, the Landing Signal Officer’s station. If they stood upright, their shoulders were even with the flight deck. “Down!” Byrnes shouted. They squatted and the blast of prop wash from the chopper’s rotors and its jet exhaust blew over their heads.

“Go!” Byrnes ordered. Wolfe climbed the last ten steps on the ladder to the flight deck, arms around the coil of canvas hose. In a crouching run, he ran as fast as he could toward the helicopter and tripped, landing on the roll of hose. V-2 division had set up the arresting cables used to stop aircraft by their tail hooks. The cables stretched across the deck from port to starboard and about six inches in the air. Wolfe’s foot had caught one of the cables. Scrambling to his feet, he completed his mission in time to grab the fourth handhold on a stretcher.

“Oh, and mind the arresting gear,” Byrnes said to Wolfe, no trace of sarcasm in his voice.

The man on the stretcher howled in pain. Only shreds of his shirt remained, the rest burned away. From the waist up, his skin peeled in large sheets. A medic poured water over gauze on his face and chest as the four men struggled to carry him down to the hangar deck and then to sick bay.

Over the next two hours, Wolfe, Higgins, and Byrnes made four such journeys. The injuries looked worse with each trip. Finally, they ran out of firefighting equipment to load onto the helos. They made three more trips to sickbay. Exhausted the men climbed again to the flight deck. A large man in a yellowshirt waited for them to gather around him on the sponson. “
Forrestal
feels she can continue air operations after the fire is out. She needs men to take the place of her injured flight deck crew. I’m looking for  volunteers.”

Wolfe never hesitated. He raised his hand. Ten other sailors did the same. “Never volunteer, Wolfe,” Byrnes said.

The flight deck chief took the men’s names. “Okay. Back to your duty stations. We don’t expect any more casualties to come here.
Bonny Dick
is taking them now,” he referred to the USS
Bon Homme Richard,
another World War II era aircraft carrier nearby. “I’ll contact you if you are indeed needed.”

The Air Boss or the admiral canceled flight operations for the day. Wolfe spent an hour under several aircraft moving them for the mechanics. Byrnes got into an argument with an aviation mechanic because the man refused to tie down his aircraft jacks securely. The yellowshirts and blueshirts constantly moved the jacks to avoid hitting them with an aircraft. Dinging an aircraft on a jack, another aircraft, or part of the ship earned a yellowshirt director or his safetyman the ire of the hangar deck chief. Too many dings and a yellowshirt might find himself reduced to blueshirt status, as a driver or nose wheel tiller man. If the chief was angry enough or the damage serious enough, he might even be demoted to tying down and pushing.

Chief Powell ran the hangar deck as his own personal fiefdom. Even the hangar deck officer knew better than to argue with him. Out of the corner of his eye, Wolfe saw the pot-bellied, gray-haired chief step out of hangar deck control and stare in his direction. Elevator #3 operator put down his sound-powered headphones and sauntered over to Wolfe. He and the third bay crew stared out the starboard elevator space at
Forrestal
less than a mile away. The two destroyers, USS
Rupertus
and USS
MacKenzie,
which had been spraying
Forrestal
with foam and water in an effort to control the multitude of fires had pulled away from the carrier. At one point they had been within feet of the huge ship. They joined a third destroyer, USS
Tucker
, searching the debris field for survivors and bodies of crew who were blown or jumped overboard. The dark black smoke had lightened to a haze gray funnel that climbed into the sky. “What did you do to piss off the chief?” the elevator operator asked Wolfe.

Blank look on his face, Wolfe shrugged. “I haven’t done anything all day, except carry fire hoses and injured up and down ladders. Don’t imagine that could have pissed him off.”

“Well, he’s pissed about something,” the operator said. “Wanted me to tell you to double time to control. Wants
a word
, he said. By the way, that’s never a good thing.”

“Great,” Wolfe said, turning and jogging between aircraft and yellow gear to the second hangar bay and hangar bay control.

Four men occupied the ten by twelve foot room, seated on a couch or two chairs or standing behind the status board: the Hangar Deck Officer, Lieutenant Rogers; Chief Powell; Airman Jake Snow; and first-class petty officer, Guy Munford. Chief Powell had returned to his usual position in hangar deck control, sitting next to Snow on tall stools behind the Plexiglas
Ouija board
, a desk-sized Plexiglas representation of the hangar deck. On the board, V-3 Division Chief Powell choreographed the movement of aircraft on the hangar deck. Flat, plastic, scale silhouettes of aircraft sat parked on it, as they were in the hangar deck. Lt. Rogers and Munford sat in plush lounge chairs near the huge coffee machine drinking coffee.

Airman Jake Snow wore a sound-powered headset. A microphone hung under his mouth. Pushing a button on the large round microphone, Jake the Snake spoke to the elevator operator in Hangar Bay 2, “Elevator #2, F-8
,
VF-162 #213, needs an engine swap. Coming down in two minutes.”

Chief Powell took a flat silhouette of an F-8, marked it 162/213 and positioned it on the Ouija board in a space large enough to enable an engine swap. He then turned his attention to Wolfe. “Where did you think you were going, Wolfe?”

Wolfe looked at the chief, confused. “Pardon me, sir?”

“Don’t sir, me, Wolfe. Save that for Lt. Rogers,” Powell said pointing at the officer who smiled wanly when Wolfe glanced in his direction. Wolfe returned his attention to the chief. “I work for a living. Got it?”

“Yes, si- Chief,” Wolfe said, glancing again at Rogers, who seemed to blush slightly. Munford grinned. The totally bald petty officer enjoyed Rogers’s discomfort sitting in Chief Powell’s domain.

“I said: Where did you think you were going when you volunteered to work the flight deck on
Forrestal
?” Powell repeated.

“To the
Forrestal
, Chief,” Wolfe said, even more confused.

“Well,” Powell continued, “if they need your assistance, Boot. Which I doubt by the way, since you barely know your way around this ship, and never stepped foot on the flight deck until today. And if you
do
go to the
Forrestal
, I will place you on report as AWOL. Got it?”

Totally bewildered, Wolfe shook his head. “You don’t want me to help the
Forrestal’s
crew?” he said.

“Correct. I want you working in Hangar Bay 3, on
Oriskany
. Now, get back to work.”

“Yes, Chief.”

Munford spoke as Wolfe left the control room. “If you can’t find something to do at your duty station, you let me know, Wolfe.” Then he howled like a wolf baying at the moon. The others in the compartment laughed.

Byrnes found Wolfe later, after chow. He slept soundly on the wing of an A-4. Mechanics had disassembled the aircraft into three large pieces: a large forward section including the wings, the back half of the fuselage and tail section, and an engine. Both the old engine and newer engine sat in rolling frames as the aviation mechanics worked on swapping them. The noise they made did not disturb the exhausted Wolfe. Byrnes had to shake Wolfe’s leg repeatedly to wake him. “The crew’s looking for you,” Byrnes said.

Groggy, Wolfe replied. “I’ll be there as soon as I get my boondockers on.” He reached for his shoes.

Byrnes grabbed his arm. “Not for work. You are about to have an initiation, a pink belly.”

“Are you serious?” Wolfe asked. “What is this, a sorority?”

Byrnes laughed. “I suggest you keep every derogatory remark to yourself and submit. The harder you fight, the worse it will be.” He turned and walked away. Thirty minutes later Wolfe’s crew dragged him bodily from the A-4, carried him to hangar deck control, held him to the deck, pulled up his shirt, and slapped his stomach until it glowed red.