Aboard the Navy’s 888-ft. aircraft carrier Bennington, Commander Michael Hanley, off-duty air group commander, slept peacefully through the usual clamor of the morning launching of jet fighters.

But as the last jet was shot off, Hanley snapped awake, suddenly aware of a strange hissing noise coming from the giant hydraulic catapult mechanism on the deck just over his head. He was hardly out of bed before he felt the soft concussion of a flash-fire explosion, then the rending blast of a second that shook Big Ben from stem to stern.

As Hanley fought his way topside, he saw steel bulkheads crumpled like tinfoil. Radiating out from the vicinity of the catapult room, the blast had smashed and seared its way through the forward part of the ship—through the junior officers’ wardroom, where pilots lounged over an early cup of coffee; through the enlisted men’s mess hall, and on into the enlisted sleeping quarters, where many a sailor was just blinking his eyes and wondering what the bonging call to general quarters was all about.

To make matters worse. Big Ben’s powerful ventilating system began to pump explosive fumes and heavy smoke through the ship. As far down as the sixth deck, the blast jammed the airtight doors. The eight men on duty in damage control put wet rags over their faces and went about their critical work of relaying messages from the bridge to the fire fighters, as their oxygen supply dwindled. “This is my last breath,” one of them gasped over his headset—and it was. With agonizing slowness, rescue parties cut through the wreckage.

Big Ben was 75 miles south of Newport when she took the explosion at 6:20 a.m.—on the way from refitting in Norfolk to her home base at Quonset Point, R.I. As soon as the alarm was flashed ashore, the Quonset Point Naval Air Station rounded up all helicopters in the area and began a ship-to-shore ambulance service. Fires were under control by 8, but as the carrier glided up Narragansett Bay at 12:30 p.m. for her homecoming, rescue parties were still prowling through the blackened compartments, and the dead, shrouded in white blankets, were spaced across the hangar deck.

At week’s end, the dead numbered 99, the critically injured 30, the less-seriously injured 40. Big Ben’s weary captain, William Raborn, settled down with a court of inquiry to try to find out why.

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