At 7:28 on the morning of October 26, 1966, a magnesium parachute flare was accidentally ignited in a flare locker aboard USS Oriskany (CVA-34). Within minutes, the fire had spread through the forward part of the ship. By the time it was extinguished, 44 sailors were dead — among them 25 naval aviators, including several commanding officers of embarked squadrons. It was the deadliest carrier fire of the Vietnam War, and it happened on a ship that was, up to that moment, doing exactly what it had been built to do: flying combat missions off the coast of North Vietnam in the middle of one of the most intense air campaigns in American history.
The Ship
USS Oriskany (CVA-34) was an Essex-class carrier, commissioned in 1950 and extensively modified under the SCB-125 program that transformed her from a straight-deck ship to an angled-deck carrier capable of operating jet aircraft. She was homeported at Naval Air Station Alameda in California and was a Pacific Fleet ship through her entire career, making her deployments to the western Pacific year after year throughout the 1950s and 1960s as Vietnam escalated around her.
By 1966 she was one of the most experienced combat carriers in the Pacific Fleet, and her air wing — Carrier Air Wing Sixteen (CVW-16) — was a seasoned outfit with pilots who had flown previous combat deployments. She arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin in the summer of 1966 and began flying strikes against North Vietnam as part of the Rolling Thunder campaign. The missions were demanding, the targets increasingly defended, and the losses real.
The Fire
Magnesium flares require careful handling. They ignite at temperatures that can be reached accidentally, and once burning, they are extraordinarily difficult to extinguish. On the morning of October 26, a sailor in the forward flare locker mishandled one — precisely how has been described differently in different accounts, but the result was immediate and catastrophic. The flare ignited. The fire spread into the flare locker, and then through ventilation passages into the O2 and O3 levels — officer country, where many of the aviators had their staterooms.
The fire killed 44 men. Among them were the commanding officers of two fighter squadrons and one attack squadron — a devastating loss of senior aviator leadership that represented years of experience and training. The aviators who died in their staterooms had no warning, no chance to escape. The fire moved faster than the alarm system could respond.
Damage control crews fought the fire for two hours. The ship returned to Subic Bay in the Philippines, then to Alameda for major repairs. She was out of action until the following year.
The 1966 Deployment: Before and After
The fire did not define the entirety of the 1966 deployment. Before October 26, Oriskany had been flying combat missions continuously. CVW-16 struck targets in North Vietnam as part of Rolling Thunder's escalating campaign — roads, bridges, railroads, supply depots, and the power plants and industrial facilities that were being added to the authorized target list as the Johnson administration slowly expanded the rules of engagement. The strikes were dangerous: North Vietnam's air defense network was one of the most sophisticated in the world, with Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missiles, MiG fighters, and radar-directed antiaircraft artillery. Oriskany's air wing flew into that environment day after day.
The losses were not confined to the fire. Oriskany lost pilots to combat before October 26 as well — men shot down over North Vietnam, some killed, some captured and held as POWs in Hanoi. The 1966 deployment was one of the most costly in the ship's history in every sense of the word.
Oriskany's Return
Oriskany returned to WestPac deployments after repairs, including a 1967-68 deployment in which then-Lieutenant Commander John McCain served aboard as a naval aviator. On October 26, 1967 — exactly one year after the fire — McCain was shot down on his 23rd mission over Hanoi, captured, and held as a prisoner of war for the next five and a half years. The date was a coincidence that the ship's crew understood in full.
The fire of 1966 cast a long shadow over Oriskany's history, but the sailors who served aboard her in those years remember more than the tragedy. They remember the missions, the months at sea, the work of keeping an aircraft carrier flying combat operations in the most demanding air campaign since Korea. The fire was the worst day. There were many other days that were something else entirely.
If you served aboard USS Oriskany or want to honor someone who did, browse the Oriskany 1966 collection. The store carries cruise shirts and gear for every year of her service.
Legacy
USS Oriskany was decommissioned in 1975 and eventually sunk as an artificial reef off Pensacola, Florida in May 2006 — the largest ship ever intentionally sunk to create a reef. She sits in 212 feet of water and has become one of the most popular dive sites on the Gulf Coast. The ship that was named the “Mighty O” by her crews, that survived fire and combat and years of hard service, now serves as a habitat for marine life off the coast of a state that has trained naval aviators for a century. It is not the ending anyone would have written, but it is a distinctly American one.