Lest we Forget
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2011 10:19 am
Last month I travelled around the country due to a sudden burst of nostalgia about my old Navy days.
I was an Electronics Technician for 8 years in the U.S. Navy during the cold war and the Vietnam war.
I did 3 Westpac tours on the USS James E Kyes DD-787, in which each tour included duty in the Gulf of Tonkin.
The U.S. Seventh Fleet spent so much time in the Gulf of Tonkin between 1963 and 1972 that it was often called the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club.
On my final tour our ship was a member of an exercise in the South China Sea that included ships from 4 nations. Our destroyer squadron consisted of 4 ships which always deployed together. One of those ships was the USS Frank E Evans DD-754. I had been aboard that ship many times. During our exercise, the Australian aircraft carrier HMS Melbourne accidently collided with the Frank E Evans, cutting the ship in half and causing the forward portion of the ship to sink in less than 3 minutes with a loss of 74 men. I was a witness to the events of that day. I tried to put it out of my mind over the past 42 years after I left the Navy. I came close to being a statistic myself after nearly being electrocuted aboard my ship, but I survived and went on with my post-Navy life.
This year I decided to attend the shipmate's reunion of my ship, the USS James E Kyes, in Dayton, Ohio and the survivors reunion of the USS Frank E Evans in Waterloo, Iowa. The Frank E Evans Association chose Waterloo because it was the home of the 5 Sullivan brothers who all lost their lives on board the USS Juneau during the battle of Guadalcanal in World War II. There were 3 brothers aboard the Evans who died on that fateful day, June 3, 1969, in the South China Sea. The survivors of the Frank E Evans asked me to join them and tell my story of what I witnessed on that day. After I told my story they asked if I would write it up so they could include it in a future memorial book or newsletter. Writing my story was helpful to myself and to others who were witnesses of that terrible accident and who spent their time on a destroyer during the Vietnam war.
http://www.timesrepublican.com/page/con ... 1&nav=5013
http://donnay-software.com:8080/dd754/F ... Donnay.Pdf
I was an Electronics Technician for 8 years in the U.S. Navy during the cold war and the Vietnam war.
I did 3 Westpac tours on the USS James E Kyes DD-787, in which each tour included duty in the Gulf of Tonkin.
The U.S. Seventh Fleet spent so much time in the Gulf of Tonkin between 1963 and 1972 that it was often called the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club.
On my final tour our ship was a member of an exercise in the South China Sea that included ships from 4 nations. Our destroyer squadron consisted of 4 ships which always deployed together. One of those ships was the USS Frank E Evans DD-754. I had been aboard that ship many times. During our exercise, the Australian aircraft carrier HMS Melbourne accidently collided with the Frank E Evans, cutting the ship in half and causing the forward portion of the ship to sink in less than 3 minutes with a loss of 74 men. I was a witness to the events of that day. I tried to put it out of my mind over the past 42 years after I left the Navy. I came close to being a statistic myself after nearly being electrocuted aboard my ship, but I survived and went on with my post-Navy life.
This year I decided to attend the shipmate's reunion of my ship, the USS James E Kyes, in Dayton, Ohio and the survivors reunion of the USS Frank E Evans in Waterloo, Iowa. The Frank E Evans Association chose Waterloo because it was the home of the 5 Sullivan brothers who all lost their lives on board the USS Juneau during the battle of Guadalcanal in World War II. There were 3 brothers aboard the Evans who died on that fateful day, June 3, 1969, in the South China Sea. The survivors of the Frank E Evans asked me to join them and tell my story of what I witnessed on that day. After I told my story they asked if I would write it up so they could include it in a future memorial book or newsletter. Writing my story was helpful to myself and to others who were witnesses of that terrible accident and who spent their time on a destroyer during the Vietnam war.
http://www.timesrepublican.com/page/con ... 1&nav=5013
http://donnay-software.com:8080/dd754/F ... Donnay.Pdf