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In
testimony during the investigation, Commander Harold Mount,
Fleet Air Hawaii staff said, "I think there were several
instances of uncommon valor in the attitude that the deck
crewmen had in manning their hoses and going back into it.
When an explosion would cut half of them down, additional
people would appear, reman the hoses and go back into the
area of the fire."
Q.
Do you have anything further that you would care to say about
this, Commander?
A.
No Sir, Except that I did view the USS Forrestal films very
carefully. We had a copy out here because it stopped off enroute
to CONUS (Continental US). We had the opportunity to take
the films and run them and re-run them all afternoon and at
that time I gathered all the men who assist me in the ORI
and we literally studied the film. What was so markedly different
about that first (Forrestal) episode was that the USS Enterprise
crewmen didn't quit. They went into the fire with what equipment
they had at hand. Many of them were hoses that didn't have
a stream of water or foam coming out of the hose more than
6 to 10 feet, totally ineffective . But they went ahead and
did what they could with it. When some of them were cut down,
they went back in without hesitation. And I think it was -
I think the flight deck crews deserve a great deal of credit
in containing and limiting the damage as much as possible."
Robert
A. Hoolhurst, Captain US Navy
Commander Fleet Training Group, Pearl Harbor
"Because
the intensity of the fire was well aft and the heat was so
much, you couldn't get across back there. This coupled with
the bombs blowing made fire fighting ineffective and asinine.
In my opinion, it was asinine trying to fight this fire until
the bombs had blown themselves out. You couldn't possibly
fight that fire. Many of the bombs and ordnance going and
the men were knocked down. I don't know how many were killed
or hurt because of the ordnance going but I did find out after
the fire was all over that the aft end of the island was pretty
well pocked up and scarred by shrapnel."
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