There’s not much breaking news on the Vietnam War any more, but an Associated Press story earlier this year brought back Dennis Cahoon’s 48-year-old memories of a U.S. Navy tragedy.
The Battle Ground resident witnessed the aftermath of a naval disaster that killed 74 sailors when the USS Frank E. Evans was sliced in half by an Australian aircraft carrier.
In the news report in May, the Pentagon announced that the names of those sailors will not be added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial because they died in a training exercise.
Cahoon said that he was aboard another destroyer in that 1969 exercise, the USS Schofield. The American ships were training with Her Majesty’s Australian Ship (HMAS) Melbourne.
“It was the middle of the night and we were running without lights,” said Cahoon.
When the USS Frank E. Evans was ordered to trade positions with another ship, the destroyer turned directly in front of the aircraft carrier, which was doing 25 knots.
“It hit her amidships, and the bow sank in 3 1/2 minutes,” Cahoon said.
The rest of the ship survived.
“They got watertight integrity and the aft half stayed afloat,” Cahoon said. “When daylight came and we looked over there, there was half a ship sitting there, and there was a 50-foot gash on the carrier.
“Basically, they did recovery after that. They did what they could to find all the people” who had been on the lost bow section. “Most went down with the ship. Most of them went down alive, in 5,000 feet of water, as I remember.”
With his own personal link to the disaster, Cahoon said he agrees with family members who want the names of their lost sailors on the memorial wall in Washington D.C.
Clark County has its own monument that lists names of servicemen killed during the Vietnam War. Cahoon, a 1965 graduate of Battle Ground High School, has a personal link to some of those men as well.
“There are several I knew. I went to grade school with some of them.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
