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Published Sunday, August 14, 2011 in Local

Special

Mike Johnson poses on top of a sandbagged U.S. Army bunker while visiting the Vietnamese village of An Tho.

Coweta's Vets: Attack on USS Maddox triggers sending troops into Vietnam

By Alex McRae

The Newnan Times-Herald

Although the United States had been sending military "advisors" to Vietnam since the 1950s, American armed forces did not take an active combat role until 1964.

On Aug. 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats while sailing in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. That incident provided the excuse President Lyndon Johnson had been seeking to send U.S. forces to war.

On Aug. 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing Johnson to take all action necessary to protect American forces in or near Vietnam. Within days, carrier-based U.S. Navy planes were flying bombing runs against North Vietnamese targets.

U.S. Navy forces would not leave Vietnam for the next nine years.

Official Navy records show that from 1964 to 1973, 2,564 Navy personnel died in the Vietnamese theater of war.

The single deadliest day of that engagement was July 29, 1967, when 134 sailors were killed instantly or died from injuries received during a horrifying incident aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal.

Coweta's Wayne Moore survived the incident, but the memory of that day is inked on his mind forever.

"It was the worst thing I've ever been through," Moore said. "I try to tell people what it was like, but you had to be there. It was terrible."

Moore was born and raised in Moreland, and shortly after graduating from Newnan High School he enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

"I wasn't going to college and the draft was picking everybody up," he said. "I knew I'd get called so I decided to enlist and serve in the Navy like my father."

After completing Navy basic training, Moore headed for Norfolk, Va., to join the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal.

The Forrestal sailed to South America then around the tip of Africa on its way to Vietnam. The last stop was the Philippines, where the Forrestal was stocked with ordnance for the Vietnam mission.

The ship's weapons magazine filled up before all the bombs were loaded, leaving no choice but to stack a large quantity of bombs on the flight deck. Not just any bombs. The bombs stored on the deck were World War II-era, 1,000-pound bombs known as "Fat Boys." Unlike their 1960s-era counterparts, which only detonated when striking a target, the Fat Boys could be set off by intense heat. Storing them on the deck would soon prove deadly.

The Forrestal arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam in July 22, 1967 -- and Moore went to work. He was a member of a fueling crew that worked on the flight deck fueling the ship's planes before each mission and setting them up for the next fueling afterwards. The flight tempo was high and fueling crews typically put in 18-hour days in some of the most dangerous areas of the ship.

"There were lots of ways to get hurt on the flight deck," Moore said. "We got hazardous duty pay for working there."

On the morning of July 29, Moore had his planes fueled and ready. A few minutes before the 11 a.m. launch, he left the flight deck and walked down to the next deck below to relax with some buddies on the fantail.

He remembers hearing a huge explosion above on the flight deck. At first he thought the ship had been attacked by the Russians, since a Russian ship had come perilously close to the Forrestal a day earlier before it was chased off.

Within seconds after the blast, the General Quarters alarm rang and all crew were ordered to their battle stations.

As Moore raced up the ship's ladder to the flight deck, he encountered a sailor coming down, horribly burned and in agony. Moore helped him to sick bay and stopped to help another burned sailor before finally making it to the flight deck.

"I didn't know what was going on, he said. "But those guys were in awful shape. I had to help them."

The explosion on the flight deck had started when an electrical malfunction in an F-4 Phantom fighter launched a Zuni missile while the plane was still on the deck. The missile tore across the flight deck and went all the way through an A-4 Skyhawk piloted by a young Naval aviator and future U.S. Senator named John McCain.

McCain's fuel tanks ruptured and fuel spilled onto the deck. A spark set the fuel ablaze and the deck was soon engulfed in a massive fire. The heat took its toll on the massive Fat Boy bombs and one minute and 34 seconds after the missile went off, a 1,000-pound bomb from McCain's plane exploded. The massive blast tore a huge hole in the flight deck and caused even more damage on lower decks where the force of the blast was directed.

The initial blast killed more than two dozen crewmen and pilots immediately. Others would die from their wounds.

The first bomb also devastated the fantail where Moore had been standing when the fire started. "If I had been there then I wouldn't be here now," he said.

As firefighters worked to extinguish the rapidly-spreading fire, more of the huge bombs exploded. Moore and his mates rushed to push the remaining bombs off the deck and into the sea.

"It's amazing how much weight you can move when you're scared," he said.

Before the fire was brought under control, nine of the 1,000-pound bombs had exploded, blowing automobile-sized holes in the deck and devastating the ship in the worst aircraft carrier fire since World War II.

The explosions and fire killed 134 sailors and injured hundreds more. "I still can't believe I was there," Moore said. "It was awful seeing that whole thing happen."

Moore stayed with the ship while it was repaired at Portsmouth, Va., and spent the rest of his Navy tour in other parts of the world.

Moore left the Navy after four years and returned to Coweta County, where he had a long career with Douglas & Lomason and opened a deer processing business he has operated for 30 years.

"Nobody wanted to go to Vietnam," Moore said. "But I'm proud I served over there."

Newnan's Don Chapman served two tours in Vietnam based on an aircraft carrier. But Chapman spent the majority of his time in the air, flying 199 combat missions in a F-4 Phantom fighter jet. That kind of combat schedule made one commodity more precious than any other.

"Sleep was the biggest luxury we had and we didn't get much," Chapman said. "The flight tempo was so high it seemed like we were always in the air. If we ever got six hours of sleep it was cause for celebration."

Chapman grew up in southern Illinois. After graduating from Enfield, Ill., High School in 1959 he enrolled at the University of Illinois to study civil engineering with plans of becoming a pilot.

"I knew I wanted to fly but the military required college so I went to school," he said.

During his third year of school Chapman learned he could qualify for Navy flight training with only two years of college.

He left college, easily passed all the Navy's flight school tests, and in May 1963, began flight training in Pensacola, Fla.

One year later, in May 1964, Chapman earned his wings and went to Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego for fighter jet training.

He was assigned to fly F-4 Phantom fighters, and in April 1967, arrived in Vietnam aboard the aircraft carrier USS Constellation as part of the 143rd Fighter Squadron.

Chapman admits his first few combat missions were white-knuckled rides, but after a while he settled into a routine and went about his business.

"Once you figured out what you're doing and what to look for, you could just fly and that's what we all loved to do. And I was lucky. I never got hit."

On his first tour, Chapman's F-4 squadron escorted A-4 Skyhawk attack planes as they bombed enemy targets at low altitude. The F-4s went in first to suppress anti-aircraft fire and then circled between the Skyhawks and North Vietnam, ready to intercept any airborne threats.

"We went in before them and stayed after they got through to make sure nobody was after them," Chapman said.

A major part of the F-4 missions was spotting antiaircraft fire and directing the Skyhawks away from danger.

"You could see the flak coming," Chapman said. "We'd watch and when it got close we'd tell them to break, and they usually got away with no problems."

Antiaircraft fire was constant but didn't bother Chapman or the other F-4 pilots too much.

"You could see the tracers going by, and at first you'd think 'that was close.' But after a while, you didn't really think about it," he said. "We knew how to change altitude and course to make it a lot safer."

A much bigger worry was the threat from Russian-made SAMs (surface to air missiles). But American pilots found that since the SAMs were built to intercept an aircraft at a particular point in its flight, they could be dodged with evasive maneuvers the SAMs were unable to match.

The pilots' biggest concern was the threat of being shot down, captured and held as a prisoner of war.

One of the most famous survivors of North Vietnam's brutal prison camps is John McCain. He received shrapnel wounds during the July 29, 1967, explosion aboard the USS Forrestal but recovered quickly and was back in the air months later. McCain was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967 and held prisoner until 1973.

To teach them how to survive in the event they were captured, all pilots underwent a program called SERE -- for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.

The brutal training exposed the pilots to everything from being banged around by guards to living in the worst imaginable physical conditions. Chapman said he learned his biggest lesson when he was forced to go without food for a week and water for a day.

"Most Americans have never gone without food for a week. But I learned you could do it if you had to, and that was a great lesson," he said.

During his two tours of Vietnam, Chapman saw the military objectives change drastically. He once flew one mission over Haiphong harbor with orders to get the name of a cargo ship. The ship was carrying 18 military trucks but Chapman was forbidden to attack. Later that day, an A4-Skyhawk pilot was shot down while attacking one of those trucks.

"I could have done it while I was there with no problem," Chapman said. "It was crazy for me to pass those trucks by and lose a pilot later shooting at them."

Pilots were also instructed not to bomb a soccer stadium, even though a North Vietnamese missile battery was set up in the middle of the playing field.

"They didn't want us to cause civilian casualties, but that same missile battery was shooting at American planes," Chapman said. "That was nuts. When the politicians take over it's never good and that was the problem over there."

Chapman served six years in the Navy, and in April 1969, became a pilot with Western Airlines. When Western was bought by Delta in 1989, Chapman stayed on until he retired in 2001. He has called Coweta home for 20 years.

Chapman lost some close friends in Vietnam, including his roommate aboard the Constellation, who was killed during a carrier launch two weeks after his wife had given birth to a child.

"That was really tough," Chapman said. "I've been lucky and blessed all my life and I'm more fortunate than I can say. We all did our duty in Vietnam but to lose close friends, that's the hardest thing about any war."

Although the Navy gathered most of the seagoing military headlines from the Vietnam War, the U.S. Coast Guard also played a vital role in the action. While the Coast Guard is widely known for its efforts in American waters -- where it provides coastal security, operates search and rescue missions, enforces fisheries laws and interdicts drug shipments headed for U.S. shores -- the Coast Guard has also played a combat role in every U.S. war since 1790.

Coweta's Mike Johnson is a Coast Guard veteran who had a ringside seat for the action n Vietnam.

Johnson was born in Coweta but moved to Atlanta at age 5. When he graduated from Sylvan Hills High School n 1967, he wanted to join the service, but was too young. He worked as a letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office until November 1967, when he joined the U.S. Coast Guard.

After basic training in Cape May, N.J., Johnson headed to Boston to be assigned to a ship. One Friday afternoon, a commanding officer told Johnson he could either stay aboard a ship based in Boston or sail for Vietnam the following Monday on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Bibb.

Johnson had a Coast Guard buddy from the Boston area and decided to head for Vietnam so his buddy could stay close to home.

"I was already seven hundred miles from home," Johnson said. "What difference did another ten thousand miles make?"

Johnson was a member of the deck crew, whose main job was performing maintenance on the ship's lines and exterior fittings. "We chased rust," he said. But all Coast Guardsmen were rated for combat duty as well, and it wasn't long before Johnson got his share.

The Bibb arrived in Vietnam in March 1968 and got to work. The ship's mission was stopping and searching any vessel that came by. They worked the coastal waters and up and down the rivers that wove throughout Vietnam and were used as supply routes by Vietcong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese Army.

"We were looking for weapons, explosives and enemy soldiers," Johnson said. The VC (Vietcong) were all over South Vietnam and they used those rivers to move their people and supplies from place to place."

On a typical mission, Johnson's vessel would stop a local boat, board it and perform an extensive search of the ship and cargo, looking through bags of food, baskets of fish and any other place that could hide a man or a weapon.

"We confiscated plenty of weapons and ammo," Johnson said. It was everywhere you turned."

If the ship being searched was not carrying troops or weapons, the Americans ended the mission by offering the Vietnamese food and water, giving them medical care and doing what they could to provide for their other needs.

"We treated them like human beings," Johnson said. "That was part of the job, too."

The Coast Guard vessels were also called on to render combat support to land-based Army or Marine Corps units who needed a hand.

On one river patrol, Johnson's ship started taking fire from both banks of a river not more than 50 yards wide. The ship headed downstream at top speed to escape the initial ambush, then came back to the area where they had been attacked and started firing back at the places where enemy gunfire could be spotted.

"We just kept going by and coming back the other direction and shooting at any targets we saw," Johnson said. "We let them have it and did it all over again. We kept going back and forth until they weren't firing back anymore. We figured they had left and then we moved on."

Johnson's crew also worked closely with the people of two villages: Song On Doc and An Tho. Between combat missions, Coast Guardsmen visited the villages to render medical assistance and offer help with village projects from painting to cleaning.

"We helped any way we could," Johnson said.

Once, tensions ran high for several days when mortar shells started falling on a village. The Coast Guardsmen made several trips into the nearby hills to search for the mortar site.

On each trip, they passed an elderly woman coming down the trail carrying a sack the Coast Guardsmen assumed was filled with food or supplies. They were wrong.

The 70-year old woman had been firing the mortars at her own village.

"It broke our hearts when we found out she had been doing it," Johnson said. "We never knew why she was firing at her own village. She might have been trying to hit us, but she never did."

Johnson was in Vietnam when actress Jane Fonda famously appeared to show her support for the North Vietnamese, going so far as to pose with a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. "It still makes me sick at my stomach," Johnson said.

Johnson was also frustrated by some of the military tactics. On several occasions, U.S. military commanders, at the command of politicians in D.C., called cease fires, hoping to encourage peace talks. Instead, the enemy used the lulls in the fighting to resupply and reinforce.

"We'd take a place and then they'd have a cease fire and the enemy just reloaded and came back," Johnson said. "After the cease fire ended we'd have to go back and take it all over again. It was a real waste."

Johnson left the service in 1972 and came back to Atlanta, working another seven years with the Post Office before joining the Fulton County Fire Department, where he worked 24 years before retiring as a Battalion Commander. He has called Coweta home for years.

"Sometimes it got frustrating over there in Vietnam," Johnson said. "But we knew our duty and we carried it out. We did what we had to do."

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