There It Was

Driving easily through a moderate sea, the vast U.S.S. John F. Kennedy catapulted jet aircraft into the night about 70 miles east of Sicily. One after another, the F-14 fighters braced on the catapults, revved their engines to a screech, then were flung off the bow of the 87,000-ton carrier. The red glow of their afterburners traced their progress as they climbed into the blackness.

When all the flight was safely aloft, the 1,047-ft. Kennedy got ready to position herself for the landing operation -- "to seek the wind," in the Navy's phrase. All was well. There was nothing difficult about the maneuver; it had been performed thousands of times by units of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. The job of the six much smaller ships shepherding the Kennedy was to change position to accomodate the movements of the attack carrier. The Kennedy radioed her planned change of course to the U.S.S. Belknap, a 7,930-ton guided-missile cruiser that was some 3,000 yards off the carrier's port bow. The Belknap began a starboard turn.

At 10 p.m. taps sounded over the loudspeaker system aboard the Kennedy, and the chaplain went on the ship's closed-circuit TV network to give the evening benediction. The atmosphere was equally relaxed aboard the Belknap.

Then in an instant, everything changed. Over the Belknap's loudspeaker crackled a call given only if the ship is in peril or coming under attack: "Captain to the bridge!" Gangways aboard the Belknap filled with jostling men racing to their stations. Fifteen long seconds passed while the men tensed against the unknown. Then a heavy shock passed through the cruiser, followed by a long, rumbling shudder that felt like an earthquake. Up above, the Kennedy's angled landing deck was smashing through the superstructure of the Belknap like a battering ram. The impact crushed the ship's funnels, sending clouds of acrid smoke billowing through the cruiser. Jet fuel from the Kennedy sluiced over the Belknap's mangled superstructure. With a roar, fire broke out on both ships.

Aboard the Belknap, an explosion blew Machinist's Mate Michael F. Cartolano Jr., 20, through a hatch into a bulkhead. He staggered on deck and looked up in horror. "The Kennedy was sitting right on top of us with her deck on fire," he recalls. "There it was -- a nightmare!"

Exploding Shells. On a nearby destroyer, the U.S.S. Claude V. Ricketts, the loudspeaker ordered: "Away the rescue and assistance team!" As the Ricketts prepared for action, her stunned sailors witnessed an awesome sight. "You know that movie, Towering Inferno?" Yeoman Roshon King, 20, later asked. "That's what the Belknap looked like."

As the Ricketts edged in close to play hoses on the Belknap, the destroyer suddenly found herself under fire. Three-inch shells were exploding in an ammunition locker on the Belknap, sending shrapnel whining across both decks. Twice the Ricketts had to back off before she finally was able to tie up to the Belknap. The Ricketts' crew had axes handy to cut the lines if the blazing cruiser seemed on the point of blowing up.

With the Belknap's communications gear knocked out, Captain Walter R. Shafer had to shout commands from the bridge to his crew. Some of his men were forward, and the rest were aft around the helicopter pad. Because of the fierce blaze amidships, they were cut off from each other, and for a while the men in each group were afraid they were the sole survivors. On the forward deck, rescue crews carried wounded and burned men to a comparatively safe area in front of the missile housing, where they lay on the deck in a cold, drizzling rain.

For 2 1/2 hours the Ricketts and Belknap fought successfully to keep the flames away from the missile housing and the ship's magazine. Chief Warrant Officer William Dockendorff, who led a team of firefighters on the Belknap, found that he had more volunteers than he could use. Tugging hoses, the men advanced on the fires, retreated momentarily when shells went off, then resumed the attack. Says one seaman who watched the battle: "That was either a bunch of brave guys or a bunch of fools."

When the fires died down, the Belknap's casualties were swung aboard the Ricketts in stretchers. Some of the men were so badly burned that they lost strips of skin during the transfer.

At daybreak the Belknap was a smoldering hulk in the water, her superstructure a jumble of twisted steel and aluminum; the damage was so extensive that she may have to be scrapped. The Kennedy, which had quickly extinguished her fire, suffered only minor damage to her flight deck and soon was again launching planes. One man was killed on the Kennedy, and six on the Belknap. Forty-seven members of the Belknap's crew were injured, 21 severely. Casualties would have been far higher if the crews of the Belknap and the Ricketts had not fought so heroically through the night.

There were starkly conflicting versions of the courses steered by the Kennedy and the Belknap, leading to the disaster that all sailors fear -- a collision at sea. The Navy began an investigation to determine who or what was at fault when the carrier and the cruiser started a maneuver that should have been so simple but ended so tragically.

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