BACK TO PEARL HARBOR

LUMBERING into Pearl Harbor last week, the mighty aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise looked like a belated victim of Dec. 7, 1941. Huge holes yawned in the flight deck. Shards of steel plate and gobbets of demolished aircraft were littered across the 41-acre deck. Cables dangled over the side, and the flattop's freshly painted grey hull was blackened and blistered. Said Samuel Spencer, who has been a Pearl Harbor shipyard rigger since the Japanese attack: "This is the worst condition I've seen a ship in since World War II."

Loaded and Ready. The nuclear-powered, 85,350-ton "Big E," the world's largest fighting ship and first nuclear-powered surface war vessel, had been performing routine maneuvers on her way to a fourth tour in Viet Nam waters. It was 0819 hours. On the stern, 30 Navy aircraft were ready to be catapulted aloft. Loaded with 500-lb. bombs, rockets and air-to-air missiles, the planes of Carrier Air Wing Nine were going to wage a simulated attack on the barren island of Kahoolawe, some 85 miles southeast of Honolulu.

In the cockpit of his F-4 Phantom, Lieut. Commander Ronald Foster, 33, of Milton-Freewater, Ore., was checking out instruments. He heard a blast and "saw an orange fireball coming across the deck. Bodies were coming out of the fireball." Another explosion knocked the canopy off his plane. Then, "like a hand picking me up and lifting me out, another blast blew me out of the plane." Others were not so fortunate: four men in a latrine just under the flight deck were killed outright, one impaled by a jagged water pipe.

On the bridge, Captain Kent L. Lee sounded general quarters and swung Enterprise into the wind to fan the fires astern. Below him on the deck, crewmen tried frantically to fight flames as exploding bombs sent shrapnel in all directions. There were many heroes. Chief Warrant Officer James Helton of San Diego was knocked down repeatedly, yet managed to get up and continue to fight the blaze. Airman Jack Benson of Portland, Ore., is credited with having helped 30 men escape the fire area.

Trapped by advancing flames, some crewmen were forced to jump six stories down to the water, despite the devouring suction created by Enterprise's 30-knot speed. Others held fast against flying shrapnel and searing heat. Airman George Conditt, 21, of Chicago tried to pull a Phantom away from the fire. "While I was hooking up," he says, "a big piece of shrapnel flew through the plane. Fuel started running out and caught fire. I jumped out of the tractor, and in a minute, both plane and tractor were blown to bits."

Tragic Experience. The holocaust killed 26 and injured 85; one crewman was missing. It was not extinguished for three hours and 21 minutes (though it was under control after 41 minutes). Back at Honolulu, 1,500 civilian and military personnel lined up outside of the U.S. Army's Tripler General Hospital and Queen's Medical Center in response to pleas for blood. Soon after the gutted ship returned to port, a team of damage experts boarded her and, after viewing the gaping deck holes, decided that the seven-year-old, $444-million carrier would have to return to the mainland for extensive repairs. Meanwhile, another team pushed through the charred rubble to try to discover the cause of the fire.

Initial speculation blamed the first explosion on an incoming jet with a bomb hanging from it, but this was later disproved because no aircraft was landing at the time. "All we know," said a Navy spokesman, "is that it took place in or near a Phantom. It could have been a rocket or a bomb, or a break in a hydraulic line that caused a fire and triggered the first explosion."

As serious as the Enterprise fire was, it could well have been far worse. The Navy had learned from tragic experience to be prepared for such a crisis. In 1966, a fire aboard U.S.S. Oriskany claimed the lives of 43 men, and the 1967 Forrestal blaze killed 134. As a result, Enterprise had been staffed with professional firefighters. Better equipment was provided, including improved water pumps, hoses that are less prone to break and special units that combine a chemical called "Purple K" and "light water" to produce a substance that smothers the fire with foam. Most important, the Enterprise crew had been thoroughly drilled in preventive tactics, which they performed superbly last week. As Chief Warrant Officer Helton put it: "That was the ultimate drill."

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