It’s called Flight Deck Pay, and it’s richly deserved. A typical Carrier deployment will have a fatality and several near-misses.
Almost, but not quite: A starter cart was left running where it’s exhaust could vent over the body of an armed Zuni rocket. th rocket “cooked-off” and flew across the flight deck loaded with ordnance-laden and fully-fuelled aircraft, striking an aircraft just ahead of LCDR John McCain’s A-4. Yes, that John McCain. Showing remarkable presence of mind, and isolated from rescue by the blazing fuel from the ruptured fuel tanks, he crawled out along the refuelling probe to get past the flames. Meanwhile, fuel had spread across the flight deck, and a bomb had fallen off one of the stricken planes. It cooked-off, killing the primary flight deck fire crew, and setting off a chain-reaction that killed 132 men, left two missing, and injured another 60+.
Uncommon heroism was the order of the day, including:
• Ltjg. Robert Cates, the carrier’s explosive ordnance demolition officer, calmly recounted later how he had “noticed that there was a 500-pound bomb and a 750-pound bomb in the middle of the flight deck . . . that were still smoking. They hadn’t detonated or anything; they were just setting there smoking. So I went up and defused them and had them jettisoned.”
• Ltjg. Cates also told how one of his men, whom he named only as Black, volunteered to be lowered by line through a hole in the flight deck to defuse a live bomb that had dropped to the 03 level — even though the compartment was still on fire and full of smoke. Black did the job; later, Ltjg. Cates had himself lowered into the compartment to attach a line to the bomb so it could be jettisoned.
• Two Forrestal flight deck crewmen, reports said, were knocked overboard by one of the explosions, fell 70 feet into the water, were picked up by a rescue helicopter and deposited back on the flight deck — and resumed fire fighting at once.
• Filipino stewards, some who appeared to weigh no more than 100 pounds, rolled 250-pound bombs to the edges and pushed them overboard.
• With strength born of adversity, 130-pound Lt. Otis Kight single-handedly carried a 250-pound bomb to the edge of the hangar deck and threw it over the side. His shipmates are certain he will never be able to repeat that feat.
Much more detail here.
Truer words are rarely spoken.