Vietnam, Three Sage Brothers Killed when Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne collided with the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans
On the night of June 2, 1969, while on maneuvers in the South China Sea off the coast of Vietnam, the Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne was in collision with the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans. The impact cut the Evans in two, the bow section sinking almost immediately. Seventy-four American seamen were lost, including three brothers from Niobrara, Nebraska; Gary, Gregory, and Kelly Sage. The brothers, 22, 21, and 19 years of age respectively, were the sons of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Sage, and had been stationed together aboard the Evans at their own request. This tragedy was perhaps the greatest single loss suffered by any Nebraska family of the many who have contributed their sons to the service of the Nation.At memorial services in Niobrara on June 11, 1969, the Governor of Nebraska eulogized the brothers saying that “Every generation of Americans has answered the call to the colors. . . So it was with the Sage brothers who were serving in the finest tradition of the American fighting men. In the truest sense, they gave up their lives that we might continue to enjoy the fruits of freedom . . .”
Frank E. Evans steamed through a glassy calm sea beneath the moonlit and clear sky on the night of 2–3 June 1969. “The weather that night was absolutely, incredibly flat,” Rear Adm. King recalled, “there was not the slightest ripple on the water that night. It had been a bright moonlight night. There wasn’t the slightest ripple on the water all day long, up until late afternoon the next day.” Cloud cover sometimes created shadows that interfered with the moonlight (the moon’s azimuth was about 170°, altitude 22°), but it was otherwise nearly perfect weather, broken by practically no wind.
Blackpool had aggressively prosecuted a submarine contact the previous day, and so the exercise commanders changed the orders for the New Zealand frigate to act as the carrier’s plane guard and retained her in the screen. Frank E. Evans thus took her place as Melbourne’s rescue destroyer. From 2236 on the 2nd, Melbourne led the formation as the main body and guide, and the other vessels operated in a symmetrical anti-submarine screen about a bearing of 220°. Cleopatra, Blackpool, and Frank E. Evans sailed in adjacent 40-degree sectors 160°–280°, 3,000–5,000 yards, and adjacent 30° sectors 190°–250°, 7,000–10,000 yards, from the carrier. The instructions to the escorts prohibited them from approaching closer than 500 yards to the boundary of an adjacent occupied sector. From shortly after 2300, the ships zigzagged on a base course of 220° at 18 knots.
Frank E. Evans served in her assigned sector as the right flank escort of the inner sector screen, with outer bearings 240°–280°, 3,000–5,000 yards from Melbourne. The ship steamed in general condition of readiness III, engineering condition of readiness III, with both main generators on the line, and the engineering plant in split plant operation, including the electrical load. After sunset her at sea routine required Material Condition Yoke with darken ship. “Yoke and Xray fittings opened for any reason,” the board observed, “during this condition were to be noted in a closure log maintained on the Bridge.” Sailors opened at least two main deck Yoke fittings (hatch 1-136), however, and a door in the after deckhouse, starboard side (1-135-1), most likely to allow some fresh air to circulate through the ship in the sultry tropical night. The sonar contact from the previous day persisted, and some of the allied commanders considered it likely that a Soviet submarine was keeping any eye on the exercise participants. Frank E. Evans therefore streamed her variable depth sonar to a depth of 150 feet.
Cmdr. McLemore meanwhile promulgated his night orders and retired to his sea cabin, which was located between the pilothouse and the CIC. Twenty-four-year-old Lt. (j.g.) Ronald C. Ramsey stood watch in the pilothouse as the officer of the deck, and 28-year-old Lt. (j.g.) James A. Hopson as the junior officer of the deck. Most of the crew lay asleep in their racks. Melbourne signaled her program for flying operations overnight to the other ships, a plan that included launching and recovering helos in more than once cycle, and of recovering Trackers starting at 0330.
“The flight deck lighting on Melbourne was brilliant and completely outshone her running lights,” Rear Adm. King afterward noted. “Her running lights were hardly visible; we checked that out at a later time, at night.” As it happened, the three groups of moonlights on Melbourne’s mast illuminated the carrier’s forward, center, and aft sections of the flight deck. The sources of the moonlighting were not themselves visible from the other ships, but lookouts and watchstanders on board those vessels could see some of the light they shed and the objects they illuminated from some distance away. The Australians launched a Wessex at 0304 and turned off the red masthead or obstruction lights, as well as the flying lights on the mast and three red vertical droplights on the stern.
Melbourne sailed 260° at 18 knots at 0309–0310 on 3 June 1969, when the Australian carrier signaled Frank E. Evans to form a column in sequence on her, with the destroyer taking station astern at the standard distance of 1,000 yards. Frank E. Evans (apparently, as far as investigators could determine) steamed about 3,700 yards from Melbourne on an arc bearing 230°–240° when she acknowledged the signals. The destroyer was patrolling her station as ordered and swung right under 3°–5° rudder, thus probably steering on a heading 220°–260°. Conflicting reports gave her speed as 20–22 knots, and investigators could not verify conclusively any communications between the watchstanders on the bridge and those in CIC concerning the “Form Column” maneuver. The watchstanders also misidentified the carrier’s actual position via radar and visual fixes, and failed to wake the captain to inform him of the formation change. Frank E. Evans ordered right 10° rudder as she began to turn toward the new station.
Capt. Stevenson on board Melbourne saw Frank E. Evans begin to turn from forward of the carrier, and the maneuver concerned him and he ordered Melbourne to send a priority signal Frank E. Evans, telling the Americans that the Australians steered 260°. The watchstanders on board Frank E. Evans acknowledged the signal but incorrectly decoded Melbourne’s course as 160°, and apparently interpreted the message to mean that the carrier was turning left to that heading, possibly a flying course. The destroyer continued her turn and steadied on a course of 050°, which made her close from about 2,200 yards with Melbourne on a steady bearing. Melbourne in the meantime turned on her navigational lights to full brilliance, which took about two minutes. Frank E. Evans steamed with her port and starboard running lights on, though investigators could not determine when the ship turned them on.
“You are on a collision course,” Melbourne signaled ominously at 0313–0314. The bridge watch on board Frank E. Evans ordered 5° or 10° left rudder and the ship slowly began to swing left. About 15–20 seconds after the destroyer’s bridge team received the carrier’s warning, they ordered: “Right full rudder” and so notified the Australians, who acknowledged. Capt. Stevenson seemingly ordered “Port 30–Port 35”, at which point Frank E. Evans bore about 247° and 1,200 yards from Melbourne. Stevenson directed the carrier to inform the destroyer, “I am going hard left,” and Melbourne sounded two short blasts on the siren.
Twenty-seven-year-old Lt. Russell D. Lamb, RAN, stood as the officer of the watch in Melbourne and afterward testified that he decided that because of the carrier’s large displacement, she could not have slowed appreciably in time to avoid the destroyer. Rear Adm. King questioned Lamb for his opinion on whether Melbourne could have stopped and backed engines in full reverse. “Not very much difference, sir,” Lamb responded tellingly. King asked the Australian officer what would have happened if Melbourne had not turned and he replied: “I wouldn’t like to comment on that, sir. It would have been close.”
Lamb ordered, “Stop both engines,” and Frank E. Evans’ bridge called down, “All back full.” Melbourne then rang, “Full astern both engines,” but it was too late as the Australian carrier sliced Frank E. Evans in two with a horrific screech of steel ripping steel at 0315, near 08°59’2″N 110°47’7″E. The angle between the heading of the two ships reached approximately 90°–95°, and the force of the impact initially caused Frank E. Evans to roll deeply and violently to starboard and then ripped her in two in the vicinity of the expansion joint at frame 92½. The bow section rolled to an angle approaching 90° to starboard and began to settle with a marked stern down trim. As the forward section floated down Melbourne’s port side the section’s list to starboard increased to about 150°.
The impact hurled many men from their racks and others woke up and screamed as they died amid explosions, fire, falling debris, flooding, and severe rolls. The collision threw McLemore from his rack and he immediately thought that a mine or torpedo struck the ship. The captain bent jagged metal that barred his escape from his cabin, and the next thing McLemore knew he found himself in the water. “I was in the water…I don’t know how I escaped.” The captain even so called out to his men to jump clear from the hull.
The forward section sank quickly, so rapidly that many of the men trapped in that section could not escape. The sailors attempting to escape climbed, and in some cases swam, through compartments that lay 90° from the normal, in darkness and semi-darkness. Water gushing through the cracked hull surrounded men amidships when the ships collided. Whirlpools caught several sailors and dragged them down. The maelstrom sucked EM1 Everett O. Dees under but he managed to swim to the surface. “I looked around and I was alongside the captain,” Dees recalled. “We both clung to debris and were eventually picked out of the water by the Australians.” Plucked from the sea by rescuers and safely on board Melbourne, McLemore moved across the bridge when he met Capt. Stevenson. “We embraced each other and both said, ‘I’m sorry,’ at virtually the same time. Those were our first words.” McLemore expressed his desire to return to his ship, but Stevenson observed that his American counterpart appeared to be in shock and in pain, and persuaded him to stay on board Melbourne and look after his men.
FN Terry L. Baughman afterward described the harrowing ordeal and added, “everything let loose. The ship just took a brief roll to starboard. I just said we’re dead.” The shock of the collision also threw 33-year-old Lt. Cmdr. George L. McMichael, the executive officer, from his rack and onto the deck. “I was momentarily disoriented,” he candidly recalled. “I really didn’t know where I was. I reached to turn on my bunk light and there really wasn’t anything there,” he added chillingly.
“I stood up and took a step towards what I thought was my desk and instead stepped through the doorway of my state room. At this point the ship was already heeled over, I would estimate at least 70 to 75 degrees, so that the bulkheads had become decks.” McMichael expounded upon his narrow brush with death. “I moved across the wardroom. The water was already up to a point where it was half-filled. So I swam across the wardroom, went out the port side after door of the wardroom and ended up coming out through a hatch on the side of the ship. I mean that literally…” Concerned for his men, he shouted: “We better get off, it’s going.” The executive officer recalled stories of ships sinking and sucking people under, and of boilers exploding, and so he turned on his back and started backstroking away as fast as he could. In the process, he experienced a clear view of Frank E. Evans and the forward section’s final moments.
The bow rotated further to starboard and became completely inverted. “By this time it had totally capsized,” McMichael explained. The bow reared up out of the water, at an angle of 65, maybe 75 degrees. You could see the numeral 754 upside down, you could see the sonar dome in startling clarity because of the bright, bright moonlight.”
“And then the ship slid quietly down on into the water,” after end first, and sank into nearly 1,100 fathoms at about 0324. McMichael gathered some of the men in the vicinity and called “Let’s swim toward the carrier.” Australian aircraft responded rapidly and Wessex No. 831 appeared overhead, and dropped a harness (rescue winch) and hauled him aloft. The helo already flew heavily loaded for the exercise, which limited the aircraft to only carrying a single survivor at a time.
The force of the collision rolled Frank E. Evans’ after section over to starboard to an angle approaching 90° for a few agonizing seconds, and then righted herself. Crewmen ran through compartment after compartment in the after portion of the ship securing hatches and doors, thus preventing flooding in a number of the spaces. Others helped stunned or injured shipmates to the relative safety of the fantail. EN3 Charles M. Frey and another man pulled three others out a hole. Men shouted instructions and dug out lifejackets for anybody who needed one. All of those (save one fireman) stationed in the forward engine room in the after section endured first and second degree burns from high temperature steam escaping from the severed main steam line.
SA Mark A. Gee believed that the ship had “run aground, suddenly, everything heaved to the right,” he said. “Mattresses, people and other loose items were thrown to the deck.” Dazed, Gee heard someone shouting, “We’ve collided!” The young seaman apprentice staggered to his feet and fled the compartment. “Although it was dark, I managed to escape through one of the three doors and I followed several other men to the fantail.”
Eleven men were in the chief petty officer’s compartment when the grinding crash occurred. HMC Charles W. Cannington gave his penlight to another man to illuminate the darkened compartment and located an escape hatch, through which he directed the other men in the compartment. All but Cannington made it out. EMC Edward P. Hess and BMC Willie L. King apparently escaped through the hatch but drowned. Forty-two-year-old CSK Larry I. Malilay lay asleep when the collision threw him from his rack. Thanks to Cannington’s valiant sacrifice, Malilay also got out the hatch and swam as fast as he could toward Melbourne, but waited nearly an hour before a helo picked him up and brought him to the carrier.
The three Sage brothers of Niobrara, Neb., were among the men lost: Gary, 22; Gregory, 21; and Kelly, 19. “I had something to do with their joining the Navy,” Earnest E. Sage, their father, reflected. “I was an Army man during World War II and I told them I thought maybe they’d have a life a little better in the Navy. It seemed like good advice then,” he concluded ruefully. “It was their wish that they serve together,” Linda Sage, wife of Gregory Sage, reflected. “That’s the way they wanted it and that’s the way we accepted it.” Rear Adm. Henry A. Renken, Commandant, 9th Naval District, carried a personal message from President Richard M. Nixon, himself a naval veteran, expressing the chief executive’s condolences to the grieving family.