Disaster by Moonlight

On the eve of a SEATO naval exercise dubbed "Sea Spirit," Captain John P. Stevenson, skipper of the Australian aircraft carrier H.M.A.S. Melbourne, dined on board in Manila Bay with several allied naval officers. Talk turned to the somber subject of collision. Five years earlier, Melbourne had sliced into an Australian destroyer, and 82 hands had been lost. Stevenson said that his country's morale could not stand another such mishap involving the fleet's flagship. Four nights later, his fears became fact.

Cruising on a calm and brightly moonlit South China Sea last week during the naval exercise, the 16,000-ton Melbourne ripped into the U.S.S. Frank E. Evans, a 24-year-old, 2,200-ton American destroyer. Within five to six minutes, the bow of the bisected Evans sank in 5,500 feet of water; 74 of her 273-man crew were lost. Among the missing were three brothers, Gary, Gregory and Kelly Sage of Niobrara, Neb. Their deaths constituted the worst Navy family tragedy since the five Sullivan brothers perished aboard U.S.S. Juneau in 1942.

The Evans was the third U.S. warship involved in a major accident at sea this year. On Jan. 14, a series of explosions aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise killed 28 men as the giant ship conducted training exercises near Hawaii. Last month, fire killed four men aboard U.S.S. King, a guided missile frigate stationed in the Tonkin Gulf.

Complete details of the latest disaster will not become known until after a joint Australian-American investigation. But the survivors meanwhile have begun to reconstruct a saga of heroism and horror.

At 3:10 a.m., June 3, Evans was posted with four other destroyers as an antisubmarine net 3,000 to 10,000 yards off the bow of Melbourne. The carrier was scheduled to begin air operations at 3:30 a.m., and ordered Evans to change her position to 1,000 yards astern. In this station, the destroyer could rescue any fliers who hit the water. Although such close-in maneuvering is necessarily hazardous, Evans had made similar position changes earlier in the exercises without mishap. This time, inexplicably, the destroyer cruised right into the path of the massive carrier. The heavy steel prow of Melbourne shredded through the port side of Evans like a pair of tin shears.

Cool Rescue. Snapped electrical cables writhed about the Evans' decks, shooting off sparks. Hunks of metal gouged from the destroyer were welded to Melbourne's superstructure by the intense frictional heat of the grinding crash. In the stern, Evans' crewmen, most of whom were asleep in their bunks, were tossed about by the fearful force of the impact. Soon trained instincts replaced shock, and the crew calmly battened down watertight doors to keep the hulk afloat.

As the stern portion of Evans scraped along the starboard side of Melbourne, the carrier's crew sprang to action. One Australian sailor leaped aboard Evans' stern, and was soon followed by many others. They managed to lash Evans1 196-foot-long stern section to Melbourne long enough for dozens of stranded U.S. sailors to be lifted to the carrier. Scrambling through the unfamiliar ship, the Australian seamen coolly rescued their comrades. Sailors who had leaped from Evans into the water were soon searched out and rescued, some of them by the carrier's helicopter, others by whaleboats.

Commander Albert S. McLemore, Evans' skipper, was one of the last swimmers to be rescued. Aboard the Australian carrier, the American skipper made his way to the bridge for an emotional meeting with Stevenson. Later MCLemore recalled: "We met about halfway through the pilot house. I was still about half naked. We embraced and we both said, 'I'm sorry,' at about the same point."

Troublesome Lady. Crewmen aboard the Australian carrier could hardly be faulted for fearing that their ship is jinxed. Although the first indications are that the accident was the fault of Evans, Melbourne's record is replete with mishaps. Designed as a British warship during World War II, the ship soon acquired the title of "Troublesome Lady." Built to withstand North Atlantic cold, it became an oven in the warm waters off Australia. Despite air conditioning, engine-room temperatures sometimes soared to 153 degrees. After a year in Australia, the catapult system developed a structural defect that grounded the carrier's aircraft for seven months. Two years later, the ship had to drop out of SEATO exercises when its boilers became overstrained. Until last week, the worst mishap had occurred in 1964. Freshly fitted and equipped, Melbourne went to sea and collided with H.M.A.S. Voyager. (This collision was determined later to have been the destroyer's fault.) The repairs cost a quarter of a million dollars. Four months ago, after a year at dockside and a refitting that cost more than $8 million, Melbourne was scraped by a Japanese freighter, crushing a gun platform and demolishing a 40-mm. cannon.

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